Those Places Thursday: Evadale School in Saskatchewan

I’ve long wanted to write an article about my husband’s elementary school days, especially because he had such a different experience than I did. For instance, he went to a one-room rural school on the Prairies, while I went to an urban school in northeastern Ontario. He received a public education, while I was taught by nuns and secular teachers.

Michael attended Evadale School, located about seven miles northwest of Arran, Saskatchewan. He was there for Grades 1 through 5, from September 1959 until June 1964. Later, when his sister was old enough, she too went to Evadale, but only for Grades 1 through 3, because the family moved into the nearby town of Kamsack. Michael took these photos on a trip to his home province in the summer of 1973.

I've gathered his reminiscences in point form.

• My Dad told me that we lived exactly the same distance from three schools, but he chose to send us to Evadale.

• The school was three miles east from our farm. For the first couple of grades, my Dad drove me until I was old enough to walk by myself or with friends.

• My Mom used to tell me the story about my very first day at school (Grade 1) and how I couldn’t wait to get there, but when I arrived, I started to cry and refused to go inside. It took a lot of coaxing and I finally went inside.

• The school was on two acres. There were swings and teeter-totters, a teacher’s residence, and off in the distance, a barn and an outhouse.

• It was one large building: 2/3 of it was one room for the classroom with a wood-burning stove, then the other 1/3 was divided into the entrance (we’d hang our coats and leave our boots here; firewood was also kept here) and a storage room for supplies.

• Just about every year we had a different teacher. There were about 28-32 kids in all per year. Sometimes there’d be only one student in a grade. Our teacher taught one grade at a time.

• I think I started walking to school in Grade 3. I remember meeting up with my friends Dmitro, Doris, and Lawrence on the way.

• I’d leave about 45 minutes before class started. Some days I’d take my time and explore the bushes on the side of the road. One day I was late and was scared to go inside, so I stayed outside and sat by myself. A student going to the outhouse saw me near the school door and he told the teacher. She came out and asked me why I didn’t go inside. After talking to me for a bit, she told me to not worry and just go to my seat and that no one would notice.

• In good weather, my sister and I would walk or take a two-seat horse buggy that we’d park at the school’s large barn. There was room for about a dozen horses.

• I don’t remember which horse it was, maybe Fly or Prince, but after it was trained, it knew the route to take, enter the school grounds and pull up to the barn. I’d unhitch him, take him inside to his stall and then give him some hay.

• In winter, we’d get into an old car that my Dad had removed the roof and dashboard, and added runners. Our horse would pull the car to school. When it was very cold, my sister and I wrapped ourselves in blankets and duck under where the dashboard used to be to keep warm.

• I remember we had sports days before the end of the school year. I usually would enter track-and-field events like broad jump, high jump and 100-yard dash. Sometimes, I’d get ribbons for broad jump.

• I did well at school and almost always got straight As. It was hard to leave all the friends I made there when we moved into town in July 1964.

Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Those Places Thursday: St-Joseph and St-Charles Schools

Here in British Columbia, school has been in session since last Tuesday (September 3rd). Just about every year at this time, I think back to my elementary school days in Timmins, Ontario and reminisce about how I loved school.

What I loved most about school was learning new stuff. I was a good student in every subject (except Arithmetic). I behaved, I was quiet and studious, I was eager to please and eager to help.

There were times, though, when school wasn’t such a nice place. I was very poor at Arithmetic and would be kept in class during part of recess so that the teacher could get me to understand a concept. (I didn't mind so much losing the chance to play outside at recess, but worried that I was different from the other children.) Some of the boys would make fun of my last name (they made up rhymes and teased me), and walking to and from school in winter was an ordeal on many days. (I can still see myself slipping and falling on icy patches.)

My schools, St-Joseph and St-Charles, were rather plain looking two-storied buildings that shared one large town block. St-Joseph was the smaller building and had eight (possibly ten) classrooms; it’s where I did Grades 1 and 2. St-Charles was bigger and had twenty classrooms (four in the basement and eight on each of the two floors); it’s where I did my Kindergarten and Grades 3 through 6.

The two schools were part of what was known as separate schools. These were French or English Roman Catholic schools where Catholic children could be instructed in their language and in their faith. Very basically, we were ‘separate’, because we weren’t public, non-denominational schools.

Our teachers were mostly women (the first time I was taught by a male teacher was in Grade 6), a fair amount of whom were from the Soeurs de l’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge (s.a.s.v.), an order of teaching nuns.

Yvonne (right) and her sister Marianne, 1966

This picture of my sister and I shows us in our school uniforms: a navy blue jumper (sleeveless V-neck dress that fell just above our knees), a white blouse, and a red tie and vinyl red belt. Marianne and I were 5½ and 8 years old, so we were in Grades 1 and 3, respectively. I can tell it was winter time, because we’re wearing pants. Our hometown had very cold winters, so we wore tights and pants under our uniforms because we walked to school. (We took off the pants once in class and stored them with our coats, boots, hats and mittens.)

Let’s see if I remember the names of my teachers.

• Kindergarten: Madame Sylvia St-Jean
• Grade 1: Mademoiselle Dagenais
• Grade 2: Soeur Lorraine Marie, s.a.s.v. (Sister Lorraine Marie was also the principal at St-Joseph. Whenever she had to attend to some official duty, a stand-in teacher would take over the class.)
• Grade 3: Mademoiselle Blanche Desjardins
• Grade 4: Madame Jeanne Lauzon
• Grade 5: Mademoiselle Dicaire
• Grade 6: Mademoiselle Larose, Monsieur N… (a male teacher from Haiti), Madame Jastrebski, and Mademoiselle Nicole Melançon (I don’t recall why we had a group of teachers during Grade 6, as opposed to one teacher in previous Grades. I remember that Miss Larose and the male teacher were replaced in the first few months by Mrs. Jastrebski and Miss Melançon, because we were somewhat of a rowdy bunch. Miss Melançon knew how to tame us, and she quickly became our favorite.)

I still have a few souvenirs from my K-6 school years:

• my Diplôme “Jardin d’Enfants” (kindergarten diploma)
• a few examples of classwork (printed letters and numbers)
• some artwork (from Easter and other holidays)
• a holy image (which I received for learning the Gloire au Père)
• my bulletin scolaire (Grade 3 year-end report)

St-Joseph and St-Charles were eventually found to be too old (I think they were built in the 1930s or 1940s) and outdated and were torn down to make way for one modern school in the 1970s or 1980s.

I have (mostly) great memories of my school days. What about you, dear readers? What memories or stories do you have of your school days?

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.