Tales from one-room schoolhouses.
S.S. No. 1 March is located at 400 Goldridge Dr. in Kanata. Author Joy Forbes put together a book about one-room schoolhouses in and around the Ottawa area.
Submitted photo
The way Joy Forbes talks about her teaching job you can tell
she loves what she does.
Forbes, who teaches grades 1 and 2 French and social studies
at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School in Nepean,
said she loves using the arts to make history come alive.
“I’ve been passionate about Canadian history,” she said. “I
love doing it through story telling and the arts. History comes alive if you
can sing it or dramatize it”
Forbes, a Kanata
Lakes resident, recently
published Perseverance Pranks & Pride - Tales of the One-Room Schoolhouse.
Her first written and published book, Forbes said it was a
great feeling once it was finished and the completed project in her hands.
“It was very exciting to get it from the printer.”
She spent two years compiling research and speaking with
former teachers and students of the one-room schoolhouses in and around the Ottawa area.
“I think it’s important to know our history and where we came
from,” said Forbes. “These lasting relationships people made is amazing.”
Many people who attending the schoolhouses still meet
regularly, she said.
The title of the book comes from the stories she was privy
to. She talked to people who attended schoolhouses in Kanata,
Nepean, Barrhaven, Manotick, Stittsville, Perth and all around the Ottawa area.
There are hundreds of one-room schoolhouses in and around Ottawa, she said. Many of
them are still used today, albeit in a different way.
The Cheshire Cat Pub on Richardson Side Road used to be S.S.
No.1 Huntley.
S.S. No.2 March is now Kanata Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery
owned by Dr. James Lacey on March Road.
Perseverance Pranks
& Pride
“You really admire the perseverance of (everyone),” she
said.
There was a fire in a community where the schoolhouse was
burned down. Within two weeks a new one had been erected thanks to the
community banding together, she said.
Forbes said she had planned to just talk to the former
teachers for her book but soon found out the students had much better stories.
“The pranks, the stories are really just funny,” she said.
Forbes has countless pranks written in her book. In one
story at S.S. No.1 North Burgess/S.S. No.2 Bathurst
in Perth, the
facilities were located inside the school.
There was a trap door in the floor used to clean them out
and the boys used to crawl through them under the school to the girls’ toilets
and pop up and scare them. If no one was there to scare, they would exit
through a window and spend the rest of the day playing hooky.
In another, children put snow in cylindrical containers used
to house maps and hide them in the ceiling in the hopes class would be
cancelled due to a leaky roof. The teacher, however, just put out a bucket to
catch the water and class continued as usual.
“They weren’t meant to hurt people but more to be fun,” said
Forbes.
The pride, she said, came from the teachers.
“The teachers were fiercely proud of the curriculum they
taught,” said Forbes. “They were proud of their school.”
Teachers in one-room schoolhouses could have up to 80
students, teaching grades 1 through 8.
The older children helped with the younger kids, said
Forbes, which helped to make it more manageable.
Classrooms weren’t like they are today, she said. Children
sat in rows in unattached desks, didn’t talk to each other or work together on
assignments.
The saying was “Children are better seen and not heard,”
said Forbes.
The mentality was completely different from what it is
today, she said.
The one thing that has stayed the same is the teachers’ love
of their jobs, she said.
“Teachers still deeply care for the kids,” said Forbes.
“They don't last in the profession with out it. You’ve got to love kids.”
Forbes, who is president of the Canadian Federation of
University Women – Kanata branch (CFUW/Kanata)
is planning a tour of one-room schoolhouses in Ottawa for March 29, 2011.
Tickets are selling for $10 with the proceeds going to fund
four scholarships CFUW/Kanata gives to high school girls going on to higher
education and one mature woman attending Algonquin College.
For more information on Perseverance Pranks & Pride -
Tales of the One-Room Schoolhouse, visit www.oneroomschoolhouses.ca.
For more information on CFUW/Kanata or to purchase tickets
for the schoolhouse tour, visit www.cfuwkanata.ca.
jessica.cunha@metroland.com