EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS (Manitoba)
(source unknown)

Each school district was awarded a number in chronological order of district formation within the Province of Manitoba.  Therefore, the lower the number, the earlier the school district was formed, thus settlement patterns are evident.

To form a district, there must be the certainty of 10 prospective students within a 20 square mile area.  The proposed district must also be prepared to provide a stable for the horses of those children who must drive to school.

With population shifts, district boundaries and, occasionally, schools were moved to accommodate students.

When Range 13 was placed outside McCreary Municipality in 1937, the schools within that range, Budka, Lake Mary, Armstrong, Glenhope and Marshall, were formed into one new school district of McCarthy, with each school retaining its own name.

Most schools were formed and remained with a local school board until economic pressures of the depression caused the provincial purse to support the system. At this time, an Official Trustee headquartered in Winnipeg was the governing agent.  By the early 1950s most schools had returned to the original local board system.

For many, the school year highlights were the Christmas concert and the summer Field Day.

LAKE MARY No. 1739

Lake Mary School District was formed April 3, 1914 by an award of Arbitrators to consist of the following lands in the Municipalities of McCreary and Westbourne:  Sections 5 and 6 in Twp. 21 Range 12.  Sec. 1 and 2 in Twp. 21 Range 13; Sec. 19, 20, 29 to 32 in Twp. 20 Range 12; Sec. 13, 14, 23 to 26, 35 to 36 and E1/2 of 15, 22, 27 and 34 in Twp. 20 Range 13 W.

The following Sections in the Lake Mary district became part of the R.M. of Glenella at its formation in 1920:  19, 20, 29 to 32 in Twp. 20 Range 12.

Adjusted April 24, 1926, By-law 268 of R.M. of McCreary transferred E1/2 of section 34-20-13 to Glenhope School district No. 1861.

The school was built on Sec. 30-20-12 in 1914.  The first report from Lake Mary was the fall term of 1914 with John Quinlan as teacher, and seven boys and eight girls enrolled.  The first grant was $63.75.

The teacher's annual report dated July 1, 1929 to June 30, 1930 states annual salary of teacher $800, with seven boys and three girls; six maps, 169 square feet of blackboard, one globe.  Eleven trees planted during the year, four children between 5 to 16 who did not attend any school during the year.

Our Minerva Faris taught school at Lake Mary from 1918 - 1919.  This school is described as being between Glenella and Alonsa, Manitoba.  She would have been 24 years old.  She is also said to have taught school at Riding Mountain, Manitoba for about 2 years.

Lake Mary School was destroyed by a prairie fire in 1926 and a new school was opened in 1928.  During the interim, students were transported five miles to Mellonville School.  The school apparently closed about 1935 and remained vacant for several years before it too was destroyed in a prairie fire.

The following is a story submitted to a history book (which one is not known, perhaps McCreary?), by a former teacher, Margaret Taylor (nee Stark), who taught from 1921 - 1924.  Although it is not Minerva's story, it was close enough in time to her teaching days at Lake Mary to perhaps be indicative of her experience there.

March is an unusual time of the year to hire a new teacher but Lake Mary S.D. had sent out an S.O.S. to the Dauphin Normal School.  Their teacher had to leave and go home because of a death in her family.  I was sent to take her place.  The year was 1921.  This was my first school.

Mr. R.M. Taylor met me at the station in a little village named Glenella, and drove me on what seemed an endless trail through farm and bush country to my new home.  Mrs. Taylor's kind welcome and wonderful dinner helped to ease my homesickness.  Then I was driven two miles to see Lake Mary School.  I would have to walk the two miles to school but a boy who lived a mile from it would be there early and have the fire going in the one-room building.

It was explained that I would have to teach the children the English language as the parents did not speak it at home, having so recently come from foreign lands.  This was demonstrated about the third day as I trudged through the knee-deep snow.  A broad-faced man with a grin had overtaken me and said in a friendly voice, "Hallo teacher! Hallo!  Hop out!  Hop out!".  He patted the wagon seat and I climbed up and enjoyed the sleigh ride with this kind neighbor.

Sometimes the parents seemed to think that "Teacher" was a sort of super-woman.  They would come to the school with all kinds of scratches and cuts.  They knew that I had a first-aid kit and would disinfect and bind their wounds.  I'll never forget when one father came with a huge sliver embedded under his thumbnail.  It could be seen through the nail and was about three-quarters of an inch long.  The trouble was that it had broken off inside when the unfortunate man had tried to pull it out.  I got tweezers and started digging.!  He sat without flinching.  I did enough of that for two of us!  Finally I was able to grasp the big splinter and get it out.  The whole group of children cheered!  They were so proud of "Teacher", you would have thought I was a famous surgeon in an operating room!

The two-mile walk was a pleasant one.  I hit upon the plan of putting newspapers under my long stockings in the summertime.  The paper foiled the attack of the mosquito army that ambushed me every time I stepped out on the road.  Their sharp bayonets could not pierce the paper and so I felt like a "conquering hero", especially after I bought some mosquito netting in Glenella, and draped it over my wide-brimmed hat.  The netting fell around my shoulders and covered my arms.  Then I was able to laugh and sneer at those vicious critters and the little black gnats there were always diving at me!

Of course in the winter the walk presented different problems.  Sometimes the snow drifted so deep that the fence posts were covered.  Then I got out my moccasins, with their half-inch thick felt insoles, and off I went on my snowshoes.  (I had learned to use snowshoes in Dauphin, when our high school classes would go on hikes to the Cruise farm for singsongs around the big bonfire and have corn roasts.)  Most of the children lived closer to the school.  The Turko children lived farthest away but they had their own horse and buggy or cutter.

Each Christmas the children put on a concert in the Bellhampton Community Hall.  We made our own costumes.  When the girls stood high up on the ladder in the corner of the stage, with garlands of tinsel and wings of wire and white cheesecloth, no angels could have looked more beautiful.

I wanted to give those children and their parents something different, and through a Teachers' Catalogue I had ordered some "Tableau Powders".  A young neighborhood man named Willie Merrick turned off all the lamps at the proper time while another young man named Ollie Day took charge of the lighting effects.  A powder was poured into a tin can behind a corner curtain on the stage, then lit.  The whole stage was enveloped in a beautiful unearthly blue glow for about a minute. Then suddenly it turned to gold.  It was at this point that the curtain was pulled to reveal the angels, and the children sang the age-old song "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" and everyone who felt like it sang about, "angels bending near the earth".  For some reason a few of the older people were weeping  I didn't know if they wept because they were so far away from their homeland or if they were weeping for joy because they had come to this new and free country!  At any rate the next Christmas season we were deluged with requests for us to show a "picture" again, so we prepared a number of tableaux.  The Bellhampton Hall was overcrowded in spite of bad weather as other districts had heard about Lake Mary's Concert!

The Christmas Present:

During the years I taught in Manitoba and Saskatchewan I must have received several hundred gifts from children:  Some Valentines, or at Easter and of course at Christmas.  Yet there is only one that I distinctly associate with a certain child.  It was my last year at Lake Mary School before leaving for Normal School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  I had provided a treat for the children, a little Christmas party with cookies and all-day suckers.  As was the custom, each child brought a small present for the teacher, pretty in bright paper and ribbon.  Sometimes they used home-made flowers for decorations.  That fall a new child had started school.  He was six years old, a pathetic little fellow who always acted as if he was scared of something.  He was shy and didn't make friends.  I heard that he lived in an unhappy situation with his two grandparents who were very stern with him.

After lunch, the children could hardly wait to deliver their presents.  They gathered around my desk, each wanting me to open his or hers first.  In due time I had finally opened every little gift; handkerchiefs, pencils, etc., and had satisfactorily thanked each eager little giver.

All but one!  Little Bobby, (as I will call him), was still sitting at his desk with his hands clasped tightly around a rather bulky parcel.  "C'm on Bobby", called a big boy.  "Give Miss Stark her present".  For a moment Bobby looked scared but he got up and slowly approached the desk.  He looked down at his feet and then without word his arm shot out and he handed me the package and hurried back to his seat.

Bobby's gift was wrapped in crumpled newspaper.  It was tied with a piece of coarse binding twine.  But it was tied into a bow (sort of).  "Thank you Bobby!"  The children were all anxious to see what the "new kid" had brought.  Carefully I opened the newspaper.  There was another crumpled paper, and yet some more.  There was enough paper to make the present look big, at first.  Then out it fell!  It was a safety pin, a little bent out of shape but still a good looking pin.  I picked it up and unconsciously opened it.  The point was blunted a bit.  Still it was quite useable.  I heard the tittering as I walked own the aisle to Bobby's seat where he sat with flushed face and I knew that tears of embarrassment were near the surface.

Holding up the pin I said brightly, "Look children!  Wasn't this a smart idea that Bobby thought of?  You know, every lady needs safety pins.  Of course, I have some but they are all little ones.  I don't have even ONE great big strong pin like this one.  Thank you, so much Bobby, for giving me such a fine present.  It is something very useful.  It looks much stronger than any others I have.  Thanks again Bobby and Merry Christmas!"

The relief and pure joy that flooded the child's face was like a miracle.  His eyes were shining and he looked at the others and smiled happily.

The tall boy who had told Bobby to get to the desk, with all the kids watching, and who had laughed right out loud when he saw the safety pin, that tall boy who was taller than the teacher, was watching me carefully as I talked to Bobby.  Now, he flashed me a strange look, just a quick flash, and to this day I wonder what he was thinking.  Then he reached across a row of seats toward Bobby and, slapping him lightly on the shoulder like an old buddy, he s aid "Good thinking kid!  Good thinking!."  I believe that on that day those children realized, though vaguely, that they had learned an important truth about giving and receiving.  Of course they didn't try to analyze such ideas.  It was time to go home and teacher had invited them all to her desk where there was that big box of big suckers.

"Each person take one for yourself," I said.  "Then take one for each person who lives in your house."  Bobby watched fascinated and then reached in and took three.  Hesitating a moment he reached in again for one more.  He looked at me and said "I think my mamma is going to come back."

The Skunks:

It would have been nice if Mr. Herriot had come by one particular day.  He was the kind school inspector with the cheery smile.  I am quite certain he would have really enjoyed it.

We ran the flag up the pole as usual and saluted.  "Can we sing, God Save The King, instead of O Canada or The Maple Leaf Forever?" asked Ellsie Semeriak.  "Please?" said little Katie.  "It's quicker"   Well God Save the King was all right with me.  Still I wondered why they marched into the school in double-quick time and sat up straight in their seats without the usual shuffling.  Strange, I thought!  I even imagined I could feel tension in the air, a sort of expectancy and it showed in their faces. They were not smiling, but they certainly were not frowning as they all watched me as I rose.  "Good morning boys and girls".  "Good morning, Miss Stark".

I sat down to call the roll.  Still no fiddling with pencils or whispering.  As I started to pull open the long drawer of my desk I heard it, a sort of gasp.  I stopped what I was doing and looked again at the children.  There was a long indrawn breath and I realized that all twenty-five or more children were not just looking, they were in a frozen stare, and waiting - but for what?

I jerked open the drawer.  I don't know if I said anything.  It was now my time to stare.  In my desk were jammed six baby skunks!!  I counted the squirming little creatures.  Yes, six!  There was complete silence in the room.  I was the only person who was surprised and I just sat there.  But suddenly there was excitement enough!  The jarring had sent some kind of signal to those little beasties, and they did their duty.  It was unbelievable!  Most county people know what I'm talking about. It was overwhelming.  The windows and doors were shut and the little school room was a gas chamber, as everyone started to cough and gag.  I ran to the window and managed to get it up.  The bigger boys flung up the rest of the windows and we all rushed outside.

It didn't take long to figure out who had done this "dastardly deed" as the novelist might put it.  Joe Latta, the boy who lit the fire early in cold weather, had a key.  It was he who had "cooked up" this great idea.  So it was Joe who had to go back with a box and carry out what he had carried in (Imagine what his hands and clothes smelled like after manhandling six little critters who regarded him as an enemy!)

We all accompanied Joe as he carried his load across the road to the edge of the big irrigation ditch.  He had found the skunks on the far side, so he climbed up and put them on the grass.  We did not talk.  We just waited.  It seemed a long time but I suppose it was only about five minutes.  Suddenly a little head appeared in the bushes about fifty feet away.  It disappeared.  It soon reappeared, this time a little closer. It inspected the territory before going back out of sight.

Suddenly the mother cautiously walked straight toward her children.  She must have given them definite marching orders, because they all lined up, one behind the other, and followed her dutifully along the edge of the ditch for several yards.  Suddenly she turned into the bushes and they all followed one by one until they were out of sight.

I said to the children "I guess they will find a pool and take a bath right away."  In answer to the questioning looks, I said "Well, those children have all been handled by human beings.  They have been inside a building with people.  I don't think they will want to carry our scent around among their friends.  I'm sure they like their own perfume much better."  The kids made faces and turned up their noses.,  "Whew!"