The Rural Voice, 2003-03, Page 38The Legacy of Ontario's
Rural Schools
Rural schools contributed a huge number of future
leaders throughout Ontario's history.
By Larry Drew
Ontario's rural communities
probably did more to educate
the province than is
commonly recognized — and if you
and your family are long-time rural
residents, it is just as likely that you
have teaching in your genes.
When Ontario's rural population
peaked in the 1880s, the province
had 1.4 million rural residents.
Those raised on Ontario's farms
represented the vast majority of the
population, as a large portion of
those living in the cities, including
many of the professionals of the
time, had also been raised on the
province's concessions and side -
roads — and educated there too.
Early education in rural Ontario
sprang up from community to
community, and at each community's
own will and toil. Of course,
schooling had to be balanced with the
other priorities of building a new life
in this country. The history papers of
my ancestors, who emigrated from
Ireland around 1830, record "limited
attendance during winter sessions of
school", with the sons spending a
large part of their "boyhood and
youth assisting their father in clearing
of his land". Heck, this first
34 THE RURAL VOICE
generation of school children also
toiled to build the seats that they
would learn from: with the boys
"hewing the bench seats for the first
school out of basswood logs" as
recorded by a Mr. Hickey, a
neighbouring Irish settler of the day.
Realizing it or not, these pioneers
also made history by attending what
was perhaps the first integrated
Schools sprang from
each community's
will and toil
school in the province, located on the
Middle Road of Raleigh Township,
Kent County. Records indicate that
the first school was shared between
the Irish Catholics — who were, I
suppose used to a certain degree of
suffering and persecution — and the
neighbouring community of African
Americans arriving from the U.S. in
escape of terrible suffering under
slavery. This shared arrangement
continued until the communities
eventually grew larger and built their
own larger and newer schoolhouses.
In 1855, the Irish built their new
Students pose inside St. Patrick's
schoolhouse in 1936, typical of
one -room schoolhouses of the day.
schoolhouse a couple concessions
over and across from their newly
erected church of St. Patrick's.
Cost and convenience dictated
that this "larger" school, like most of
its day, be built of logs. Various
sources from the 1840s indicate that
a log structure could be built for as
little as a few pounds — with no
shortage of timber in the bush, and
with a "bee" organized to provide the
labour, it could be erected in a matter
of a few days. Consequently, a frame
structure would cost "5 to 10 times as
much". Like a farmer's homestead, it
generally took a settler — and a
settlement — "30 years or more"
before it was established and
productive enough to afford the
investment in frame or brick
construction. Following this trend,
our log schoolhouse was replaced by
a frame one in 1873, and finally by a
brick structure which served the
community into the 1960s.
In fact, if you walked out the farm
lane to your first day of school prior
to 1967, then you probably recall the
experience of these one -room
schoolhouses. And what's probably
just as likely, your mother, aunts or
ancestors, just like my own, would
have at one time taught in just such a
school. While 19th century teachers
were usually young men, it was
women who dominated the teaching
ranks in the first half of the 20th
century. As a teacher in this era, my
mother fired the furnace every day
and faced a classroom of some 50
kids ranging in age from five to