Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1972-05-25, Page 4HURON EXPOSITOR, SEAFORTIC"..0917., MAY 25, 19 The Public is invited to atteni the ceremonies in connection with the OFFICIAL OPENING of an addition to the SEAFORTH PUBLIC SCHOOL by Donald A. MacTavish, MA., B.Paed. Assistant Director of the Teacher Education Division of the Ontario Department of Education and a Graduate of Seaforth Schools. MONDAY, MAY 29th at 8, o'clock Following the opening ceremonies there will be an opportunity to inspect the new facilities. Seaforth schoo 27 Park St. , Kitchener. 745-7862 5,21,-0307 R.R.2, Seaforth FREDERICK KUEHNER ,SIGNS.- PAINTING - INTERIOR DECORATING HEARD . CONSTRUCTION ASPHA L T` PAVING,- GRADING - GRAVEL STONE Later, a primitive system of central heating was added , and it was no good. The school was high-ceiling'ed, full of draughty corridors, and not made for the' early type"of furnace., But teachers an d students alike were a hardy breed in those days. They- had to be if, for example, Nature called ur- gently and it was necessary to make a trip on a frosty winter day to the -outdoor conveniences. These were of imposing propor- tions and stood at the western extremity of the schoolyard. Primitive, as we of the era of indoor plumbing may consider them, they recognized a basic principle about children: that la, children do not all come in the same size, and these early con- veniences were designed with this undoubted fact in mind. When the first inside plumb- ing was installed, they forgot all about this matter of simple biology, and more than one lad, Served as principals at SPS Archibald Dewar 1868-18'71 William O'Connor 1871-1873 I. J. Birchard ,1873-1874 Leonard McFaul 18'75-1901 William J.• Moffat 1902-1910 J. T. Curtis:, 1910-1912 Alfred. Naylor 1912-1919 Foster T. Fowler 1919-1924 E. R. Crawford 1924-1931 Peter B. Moffat 1931-1949 Donald N.Eastman 1949-1953 J. W. Talbot. 1953- MILTON BERGER representing White Consolidated Industries Ltd., Toronto, Seaforth 527-0821 Specializing in White Sewing Machines and Service Donald A. MacTavish, a'Sea- forth native who is an Assistant Director (Special Education) of the Teacher Education Division o f the Ontario Department of -Education will be guest speaker at the official opening of the new addition to Seaforth Public School On Monday; May 20, at 8 p.m. Mr: MacTavish is a son of Mrs. John MacTavish, West St. . The new addition includes lie- commOdation for additional stud- ents from grades 4 to 8 in McKillop Township a nd the Walton school area. The new wing also has provided space and equipment for the introduc- tion of Home Economics and Industrial Arts courseafor grade seven and eight students of Sea- forth Public School, Hulled Cent- ral School and Huron Centennial School. The improved facilities in the enlarged school Include: a lib- rary,-resource centre; rooms specially designed for teaching music, art and science; showers and change rooms for the Phys- ical Education program; and a room for Health Services ,and Counselling. Expansion proposals were cleared by the board in Sept- ember 1970. By the first of the following year plans had been prepared and had received the approval o f the board and -de- partment. r At a meeting in May of last year the board accepted the ten= der' of Cale Doucette Construction Ltd. for $349,152. It' was the lowest of eight tenders received. Construction got under- way immediately and had advanced sufficiently to permit school to resume in September. However during much of the fall term (continued on page 5) Seaforth Public School has a proud record of service extending over more than a century, When the present school was opened in 1953 James Scott spelled oat-`in words his pride and that of the community in the contribution those associated with the school through the years had made to Seaforth. In a foreword to the brochure' "Gateway to Leareing" which the board issued at that time, Mr. Scott said: This is not a "history" of the 'Seaforth Public School, nor is it a chronology of facts, figures, • dates and names related to the school's development. Hather,(1' have tried • to show how, two**. r the years, the old. building itself and the students' and teachers who inhabited it reacted to the needs of the-community. It might be said that what I have written could be said of any school. I am riot interested in this. What I am interested in is that it can be said of our school, for it is a proud story and one I believe in, sicerely9 'On the cracked blackboard in the Senior Fourth of the old Public School, somebody picked up a piece of chalk and scrawled: "Good-bye, old jailhousei" And underneath, somebody else added: "C'est dommage." It is a pity; no one will quarrel with that but in my day, nobody, net even the intellectual- giants of the Senior Fourth, were in- ternational enough to express the sentiment in French. In fact, it is doubtful if anybody from back in the Confederation year of 1867, when the first school was, built, right up to very recently, knew a word of Canada's other official language: Oh, maybe after 1918 there were a few of the bigger boys who had picked up "Mad-a- masell from Arm-a-tears, parlee-voo," from their older brothers, but that- hardly counts. JuSt the same, that war - that old war as it is called nowadays - was the beginning of some- thing new, something no •one had fofeseen or planned for; which has resulted, thirty-five years later, in the new school - a' buildifig so different from the original conception of what a school ought to be that it is doubtful if the first principal, Mr. Archibald Dewar, would know what to make of it. He ainiost certainly would consider you a lunatic if you tried to tell him this queer- leaking building was a school. . But then, Mr.' Dewar and his assistant, Jennie- Guthrie, and his. successor, Leonard McFaul, would have had a good laugh if you had told them that before Canada was a hundred years old people three thousand miles apart would be able to see each other and hear each other talk. If you had tried to tell them that it would be a very simple matter for a man to travel from Seaforth to Torefito in three hours, they would have called you crazy. If you had told them that men would fly through the air faster than sound, and were thinking of try- ing to go to the moon - well, they would' have just given you up. Yet none of us is so 'foolish as to charge these early teachers ' with no foresight merely because they - like most of us - could not predict jet propulsion and the' More bomb. The wonder of it is that, with the raw materials at 'hand, they were able to do so Much for the future. Before we See what the , teachers did for the minds of the grubby little boys and the dainty little Ririe who canw- them for instruction, let's take a look at what the builders of the town did for its children. Take a walk down Church Street and contemplate the old schoolhouse Architecturally, there is no finer school building in western Ontario of similar vintage than the Seaforth Public School. The early citizens of Seaforth proved they had a nice eye for line and symmetry when they erected this colonial Georgian building. It was not done all at once. The first part of the building was the centre section and north wing. It was, in the days when Seaforth was a struggling village, fighting to supplant its powerful rivals - Harputhey and Egmond- -ville - really nothing -more than an ambitious two-room school- house. • The significant thing is that it Was not built like a two-room• schoolhouse. In 1867 it is quite • clear that the. Seaforth people had a sturdy faith that they would deVelop into a stirring and pros- perous town (which they did), and when they planned their first school it was with an eye to the future. All you haVe to do is look at the first portion of the school to see that it was never Mtended to ' stand by itself. In fact, it was lopsided, a fault which was quickly 'remedied a f ew years later when the balancing addition was made - the south wing which completed the front elevation of the building as it stands today. Careful examination of this oldest part of the building re- veals that all this was considered in advance. On the exterior, care was taken -that the brickwork is the same throughout; inside, you can detect no break or change of design in the woodwork between the original section and the added wing. So there she stood, an impos- ing building, topped by an octa- gonal.turret in the centre, com- plete with weather vane. It was built of the white brick which is native to the kilns of this district. Later it was painted barn red, btrt this was soon softened by a fine planting of rich ivy. The splendid lines, softened by the ivy, with the rosy glow of brick peeping through, the proud white- painted turret, the terraced lawns and trim shrubbery, all com- bined to make the school look like a fine example of a small, old-world college. Tne new Public School is a functional design, but it is a far cry from the Victorian utili- tarian additions which were put on to the back of the old school-. In those times it was not realized that the functional could also be pleasing to the eye. It took the upsets of two world wars, a dizzy ,boom and a terrible depression to set us soundly along the new path, but the Seaforth Public• School - 1953 version - stands to-day to prove that we finally did learn our lesson well. In the interval, the old build- ing reflected our fumbling contacts with progress. tr the beginning each class- room was heated by its own stove, - a good' big one which ate up four-foot sticks of wood. It was the teacher's responsi- bility to keep a good fire going. More than one pedagogic repu- tatiOn depended on little more than- his ability to Stoke the stove well. Teachers with cold rooms werep not popular. The woOdbox- was a focal point in the classroom and was regularly used he a force for discipline. On at least two occasion in the history' of the school, the stu- dents turned the tables and in- stead of filling the box with wood, filled it with the teacher. small for his years, can recall a period of awkwardness be- cause the sanitary equipment was out of reach. Now the wheel has come full circle , and in the new school the kindergarten has its own facilities, all built to the proper scale. AS for eduhational equip- ment, it did not change much over the years. The teacher had his blackboard and chalk, his textbooks and map, and his -ruler and strap. He needed nothing more. The Principal had no office, save his desk, set on a raised platform at one end of the room. There were no special washrooms, cloakrooms, rest rooms or kitchens for the convenience of the teacher. When racess was called, he or she usually took a short nap. There was not much visiting among . the teachers in the old days. In each classroom, the teacher was king, _and it was a jealously- guarded realm The students themselves needed, even less elaborate equip- ment than the. teachers. In the first couple of years the student's • world was hi s desk - which he shared with another student - his slate and his slate pencil. Some of the more fastidious girls also carried little bottles of water and a rag for cleaning the slate. In a later era, when the slate had 'largely been supplanted by the scribbler, and penci4 there was a- great vogue for fancy pen- cil boxes. In the old days, about the only thing which• the school sup- plied was the ink. The thrifty practice was for the principal to make the ink by the gallon for the- whole school. The vagaries of the inkpot can --be taken as a symbol of how the Whole school operated from day to day. Inside the beautiful shell of the building the equip- ment could not meet the demands of -order and regimentation. On dark winter days, school often had to stop before four because, until recently, there was no ade- quate lighting system. If the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, certain classes would have to be dismissed because; no .matter 'how hard •-the teacher stoked the stove, the room could not be, heated Much above freez- ing. • If an epidemic of scarlet fever or diphtheria broke qut, they would interrupt the work of the whole schodi because medi- caVscietice MeV/ lel" itio 'other 4li,91 Of_controlling.,the' spread Of "the' disease. Judged by our standards, the day-to-day running of the school 'was haphazard, unsanitary and inefficient. But ., the human animal with a passion for Warning is a per- sistent and adaptable creature. Regardless of the change in the school building and its equip- ment since 1867, one factor re- mains'the same; the teacher still is dealing with the minds of the girls and boys who come to him. No ' matter whether they, have cleaner hands, more hooks on which to hang their hats and coats; no matter whether they carry-a slate pencil, a pencil- box or a pencil supplied by the school board - • their potential for reading, , writing "and -arith- metic, is just. about the same. The sizes of ---the 'pitchers which are brought to the Well in 1953 are just about the same as in 1867. And the teacher, must • fill them all. 0 a '1 a a a Recall 'history of Seaforth school