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