Marion Grierson Marks had read my book and was delighted to inform me that she knew many people in it. Her mother, Aleta Stevenson, attended S.S. No. 7 Fitzroy, 3321 Diamondview, north of Grant Side Road, Kinburn, as did her first cousin, Nelda Styles (story on page 43). She also went to school with all the Davis girls – Ada, Dorothy, Frances, Ethel and Helen (stories on pages 64-67).
Shirley Cameron Pigeon attended S.S. No. 20 Osgoode (Vernon School p. 70) for Grade 6 and S.S. No. 23 Osgoode (Dalmeny School) for Grade 7. This schoolhouse has been a private home for 50 years and is on the Blair family property.
Teachers were hard to come by in Darling Township. Gerry Sutherland taught (S.S. No. 3 Darling & Lanark (Halls Mills School) from 1951-1952. His older brother, John Sutherland, also began teaching there, fresh out of high school, in 1945. He later went on to become the Director of Education for the Carleton Public School Board.
As a student growing up in Renfrew, Jeanette Jobson used to bike past a red brick one-room school near the Renfrew Glen off of old Highway 17. One day, she and her friends saw that the windows had been left ajar, so they climbed into the schoolhouse. She remembers putting a log on the teacher’s desk and they writing all their names all over the blackboards (harmless fun). It wasn’t long after she returned home that she was greeting by a stern mother. The police had called as the windows of the schoolhouse had been broken and the place vandalized. Jeanette had forgotten to erase her name on the blackboard, hence the phone call. Luckily nothing came of the incident, but I would surmise that Jeanette never unlawfully entered a schoolhouse again!