Sandy Dehler from the Briarbrook Morgan’s Grant Community Association asked me to speak at their AGM on October 20, 2011.  I enjoyed meeting several people who are helping to ensure this area in Kanata is a vibrant community in which to live.  Regional counselor, Marianne Wilkinson updated those in attendance with information about the upcoming changes in the area.  The Old Town Hall on March Road is often mistaken for a one room schoolhouse.

The convention of the Eastern Ontario Women’s Institute Convention in Almonte proved to be a wonderful venue for selling my book.  I ended up running out of books and had to race home and back again to replenish my stock.

Cindy Zorgel asked me to be one of their keynote speakers.  I couldn’t get over the number of women who had attended or taught in one room schools.  Each attendee was asked to write down their schoolhouse/schoolroom memories.  They hope to compile these memories and publish a book next year.

Gertie Hodges recalled being a caretaker.  One morning on November 1st, she went to open the school the morning after Hallowe’en.  As she opened the door, she was greeted by several roosters.  Needless to say, the school was closed while everyone helped with the clean-up.

Myra Kelly attended S.S. No. 10 Osgoode with Hughie Latimer.  She also taught in Manotick Station. 

Many more women had stories to share, and I hope they will send me information and pictures I can share with you on my website.

If you Googled 'one-room schoolhouses', you realize this is now the #1 site for information about the early educational history of Canada.  I've surpassed Wikepedia!

 Abbotsford @ The Glebe Centre offers many programs for seniors.  Pat Goyeche asked me to be a part of the “Learn and Explore Speaker’s Series”.  Three people attending my presentation were Les Scharfe, his wife, Derele (Armstrong) Scharfe and Greta Sheard. 

From 1947-1953, Les Scharfe attended a one-room school in West Templeton P.Q. from Grades 1-6.  His two teachers, Rose McKlechie (Grades 1-4) and Mrs. Logan (Grades 5 & 6) instructed 8 girls and 3 boys in various grades. 

Les remembers his school had no water supply or electricity.  The toilet was outside in a rear shed where wood was stored to fuel the stove in the centre of the school.  Each day, two students would carry a pail to a neighbour’s farm and fill it with water from the well.  The farm belonged to the Kelly family where Rose McKlechie boarded.  Les fetched water two or three times a week with his friend Barry.  It was often a frightening experience as the Kellys had many aggressive geese and a red Jersey bull who did not tolerate visitors.  The boys were chased many times!

The school was located in a wonderful place for playtime.  Rose McKlechie was very generous and allowed her students to fish and swim in the nearby creek, or ski and slide on the adjacent hills.  Mrs. Logan was not as pleasant and she spanked her student many times for breaking the rules.  Les doesn’t have fond memories of her, although her husband had a nifty 1950 Chev ½ ton truck and Les remembers him picking up his wife after school in it.

Les’ school no longer exists because of its prime realestate location.  It was demolished some 50 years ago with a very expensive home replacing it.

In 1953, Les’ family moved into Ottawa.  It was quite a difficult adjustment for Les to attend Grade 8 at Glashan Public School, as he had had no previous exposure to music, shops or physical education.

Derele Scharfe went for teacher training at the Ottawa Normal School from 1963-1964.  The student teachers were assigned a classroom in a rural school for a two-week period.  Derele’s assignment was in Kenmore School (S.S. No. 15 Osgoode).  She elected to travel back and forth to Ottawa with other teachers in training, despite being offered a place to board with a family living close to the school.

Her most vivid memory of this experience in the two-room school (housing grades 4-8) was lunch.  The children brought a potato from home.  They were wrapped and put in the fire to cook for lunch.  Meanwhile, the regular teacher had a large pot that fitted well on top of the stove.  She then busied herself and made a large pile of Tapioca pudding for everyone for lunch.

During these two weeks, a school inspector visited and brought with him the jaw of a beaver.  The children gathered around and had their science lesson.  These were wonderful memories for a ‘city’ girl.

Greta Sheard attended the two-room Metcalfe Continuation School.  There were four grades in each class.  Greta recalls her teacher, Miss Foreward, having to deal with an unruly student, Roy Rolston.  Roy had filled the pot-bellied stove with firecrackers when she wasn’t looking.  The smoke and loud bangs scared the younger students half to death and lifted the fitted lids on the stove right off!

Greta looked forward to the visits from the inspector, Mr. Thomas Maxwell.  He had the amazing ability of adding up columns of 4-5 digit numbers in his head and always got the right answer.  He was a big jolly fat man who often sent the students home early after his inspection.

Greta’s daughter, Norah Sheard, attended the Dalmeny one-room school (S.S. No. 23 Osgoode) from 1955-1957.

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!  If anyone has any information about how students and teachers in one-room schools celebrated Thanksgiving, please let me know.  As a French teacher, I have my Grade 1 students make a little booklet with pages as part of a cornucopia.  Each page says "Je mange" followed by a picture and the name of the food they would eat at Thanksgiving.  My Grade 2 students cut out pictures of fruits and vegetables and glued them to form a cornucopia.  They had had a little paragraph to read to their parents.  I'll check tomorrow to see if they did so.

This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Ottawa Carleton section of the Retired Teachers of Ontario.  RTO has hundreds of members in the Ottawa area who came to celebrate this week at Confederation High School in Ottawa.  There was even a former teacher who was 102 years old!  What stamina!

I met several teachers at the celebration who had attended one-room schools and some had taught in them too.  In 1934, Sam Yashuk went to one in Maple Grove in Grimsby, Ontario.  He was only 5-years-old and wanted to go with his brothers.  There was no Kinderarten, so he went into Grade 1.  He has great memories of those years.

Joyce Gould Watts attended S.S. No. 6 South Elmsley in Lombardy on the road to Rideau Ferry.  She went with her sister, Audrey from 1937-1945.  This school had been boarded up for years, but I'm pleased to report, renovations have begun to fix it up.

On September 22nd, I had the pleasure of speaking to residents of the Pinehill Adult Community in Bridlewood, Kanata.  I met several people who went to one-room schoolhouses and came with several pictures to show everyone.

I was delighted to reconnect with Deanna Dawson Stobo, who had played the lead role of Mrs. Goldbloom in my play “Let’s Pier into the Past”.  She had so much fun acting along side her son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters who attended St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School in Barrhaven.  Deanna attended S.S. No. 13 Winchester, the Cass Bridge School starting in 1951.  Her husband, Reg Stobo, attended Cloverdale school in 1949.  Deanna remembers her teacher, Elva Kingsley, who boarded with a family near the school.  Of course, teachers were not allowed to date, despite being at an eligible age.

Mrs. Vincent said her children went to a one-room school in Toronto in Warren Park, a valley on the bank of the Humber River.  At first she and her husband were concerned at the quality of education their daughters would receive.  Their children did very well with one daughter obtaining a PhD.  This daughter still feels the four years she spent in that first school was a great starter.

Doris Darling Collier grew up in Cardinal village which at a school with two stories and four classrooms.  She claimed that many of my stories sounded like her experiences in a small school.  Her father, from Darlington in northern England, and her grandmother, from southern Scotland, were both teachers.  She thinks some British and Scottish families who settled in the area came over to teach in the Darling School.

Sandra Wall-Foley thought it was great to read my book as she went to S.S. No. 2 Ramsay from Grade 1 to 7 (1955-1962).  She felt she had the best education and spoke fondly of her teacher Mrs. Tina Hollinger.

Bill Duncan attended S.S. No. 7 Goulborne from 1944-1952.  After graduating from South Carleton High School in 1958, he obtained a B.Eng. from Carleton University in 1962.  He worked for Imperial Oil (Esso) for 30 years in Toronto, Sarnia, Edmonton and Tripoli, Libya.  He is now a retired farmer in Kinburn.  As you can see, a lot of successful people got their start in a one-room schoolhouse.