Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

Each school section in Nova Scotia had a school building erected near the centre of the area served.

The one-room school buildings were constructed according to the regulations of the Department of Education and enforced by the Superintendent and Inspector of Schools. They consisted of a wood structure and pitch roof with one entrance facing the highway and a window on each side of the entrance and a row of windows facing the south. According to regulations, the windows were to open from the top and the lower section to provide ventilation. The ceiling was about 12 feet high. Air and light were primary considerations when the specifications for buildings were set.

Inside the building was one large room with a section cut off for the lobby. The lobby had two doors to facilitate exit and entrance without crowding…particularly the exit!

The teacher’s desk and chair were placed at the front of the room, usually on a raised platform, facing the pupils. The children’s desks and seats were placed in three or four rows, depending on the dimensions of the school, with two pupils to a seat. There were three seat sizes; small, medium and large, to suit the age, grade or size of the student. All the schools in the district taught Beginners to Grade Eleven.

The heating system was comprised of a wood stove placed as near as possible to the centre of the classroom. A good supply of hardwood was provided by the Ratepayers. Each supplied firewood for two weeks. Occasionally, a bad load of green fuel would arrive. This meant difficulty for the pupils as it was they who had to light the fire, remove the ashes, make kindling, and see that the fire was fed regularly during the day.

Some cold mornings, it was necessary for the pupils and teacher to encircle the stove, perhaps for two hours, fully dressed for the outside, until the room was warm enough for all to take their places. You can imagine that very little would be accomplished in those two hours!

Drinking water for the whole class was provided by a pail replenished two or three times a day from the nearby neighbor’s spring and placed on a shelf in the corner. A common dipper was placed by its side and from this, all would partake in turn.

The school was in session from 9am to 3:30pm with one hour for lunch and two fifteen minute recesses.

Much of the mathematical calculating was done on slates and on the blackboard set in front of the class. Erasing form the slate was accomplished by using a small bottle of water and a cloth. When the water was used up or the rag was misplaced, the other methods of cleaning were resorted to that were less hygienic.

There were three sizes of slates with a wooden frame encircling the flat surface. The beginners started with the smallest slate and the older grades used the larger one. The frames were either softwood or hardwood. The hardwood frame was more expense but it made for a better, more long-lasting slate. The frames were glued together at the corners and often separated from the use of water for cleaning. Then a small nail, tack or rabbit wire came into use. These held the frame together but could damage the surface of the desk.

A number of slate pencils were used at this time. Two were factory-made; a hard one which was excellent and long-lasting and a soft one which was also excellent until you came to a hidden bit of material which scratched the slate severely. Homemade slate pencils were whittled from soft rock taken from the bed of a running stream or patiently carved from a broken slate. All served their purpose well, and many algebraic equations were solved and the unknown x and y discovered with the slate and slate pencil.

On school property there was also an outbuilding with two compartments, boys and girls. It was built in one corner of the half acre playground (where such was available) and was a continuous problem for the Trustees and Ratepayers of every school section. Cleanliness and maintenance were, at all times, questionable.

The Administration of each School Section was carried on locally by a board of three Trustees elected by the Ratepayers to serve three years with one Trustee retiring each year. The Trustees in turn appointed a Secretary to serve the Trustees.

There was also a Board of School Commissioners. This board was made up of representatives of a number of School Sections and met when called to deal with problems affecting any of the Sections. For example, they may have been called on to settle School Section boundaries.

A meeting of the Trustees was conducted in the usual parliamentary manner. The Secretary read the minutes and presented the financial report and budget for the coming year. It was at this meeting that the Secretary read the applications for the position of teacher and the choice was made as to who would carry on the work for the next school term.

Through the Trustees, the Section raised the funds necessary to pay all the expenses, including the teacher’s salary. Some help was received from the Provincial Government called “Provincial Aid” which was paid out twice a year depending on the attendance as reported by the teacher, and from the County called the “County Voucher,” which was received once a year.

Some funds were also realized for entertainment, usually a pie social and dance, held in the school three or four times a year. The bulk of the money was raised, however, by property taxation levied on the Ratepayers based on Municipal assessments. This was referred to as the “School Tax” and was very difficult to collect. The Trustees had the right to seize property to realize the levy, though this was very seldom done. The result was that teachers worked for very long periods of time without receiving any pay for their efforts and sometimes it was well into the next school term before they received final payment of salary.

The Trustees were also responsible for final disciplinary action and were often called to the school to settle student misbehaviour. They had the power to expel any student who defied the discipline of the teacher. The conduct of the teacher was also subject to the discretion of the Trustees.

In the 1920s the province was divided into “Inspectorial Divisions” over which was appointed an Inspector of Schools. The East Lake Ainslie District was in the Inverness-North-Victoria Division, with Inspector James MacKinnon as Supervisor. He visited the School once or twice each year. It was a great relief for both teacher and pupils when the visit was over. He not only examined the exterior and interior of the building and the outbuilding but tested the students. It was indeed common practice for the teacher to have his or her students prepare a lesson to turn to when the Inspector arrived. The teacher was inspected as well as the students and always wanted to make a good impression.

Over the whole system presided the Superintendent of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia and in the 1920s it was A.H. Munro. All were subject to the direction of the Council of Public Instruction.

I recall the year Superintendent Munro, with Inspector of Schools James MacKinnon, visited all the schools in the Division. When they entered a certain school, the teacher had her grade five class line up in front of the room. Geography was the topic under consideration. Mr. Munro immediately talked to the children and in so doing posed the question: “If you resided in the capital city of Halifax and boarded a ship there, and then sailed in a North Easterly direction over the Atlantic Ocean, what would you come to?” A little girl shyly raised her hand and prepared to answer. “The other side!” said the little girl, and a slow smile crossed the faces of Inspector MacKinnon and the teacher as they glanced at each other. It was necessary for Superintendent Munro to reword his question. “The British Isles” was the answer he was looking for.

The School system of the 1920s continued for some years, although changes took place little by little. Due to concerns about student health, the slate was abolished by 1925. The scribbler and lead pencil took its place.

Free school books up to Grade nine were introduced in 1933. Compulsory attendance to age sixteen became law in 1934. Home and school organizations in most of the School Sections were organized in 1944. These organizations of parents and teachers did much to advance and improve the facilities and the teaching in each Section. A single seat with a desk attached and a drawer underneath for books was later replaced by table and chair.

The heating system changed from wood fuel to coal, to oil. By the late 1950s all schools were using oil. Also outbuildings were done away with and ‘HESCO’ inside washrooms were installed throughout. The open water pail and single dipper was replaced by a creamer and individual mug and later by a cooler and individual mug.

Teacher’s salaries increased rapidly following the Second World War. The method of levying and collecting school taxes changed and by 1945 the assessment of property was done by a single assessor stationed in Port Hood. “Equalized Assessment” over all the county was the objective. Cost sharing of Education by the Provincial Government came into effect. Teachers’ salaries were paid monthly and later semi-monthly from the Education office in Port Hood. The higher grades were taken out of the small rural schools. A student who wished to complete Grade Twelve would have to go to a larger center. Inverness or Mabou had schools where higher grades were taught. The student would board at a private home and the parents would pay the board.

The first conveyance was provided in 1956 and the vehicle used was a three quarter ton Chevrolet Panel body truck converted to a bus by raising the roof and putting two rows of longitudinal seats inside. It could carry sixteen to eighteen pupils. The Grade eleven and twelve students were thus conveyed to Inverness from the schools north of the Trout River bridge and to the Whycocomagh School from the schools south of Trout River.

The first driver of the bus in the northern end was Ernest Burton of Scotsville followed by Murdoch MacDougall, who with a larger bus conveyed all the pupils from grades seven to eleven to the new Inverness Consolidated School. In 1966, a new multi-room school was built at Scotsville and beginners up to and including grade eight from Trout River, Hamilton, Twin Rock Valley, North Ainslie and Scotsville were transported with a smaller bus to Scotsville with D.J. MacLean driving, while the larger bus with Murdoch MacDougall driving took grades four to eight to Inverness.

By 1970, the Scotsville School had closed and all pupils in the area were conveyed to either Inverness Consolidated or Whycocomagh Consolidated School and so the year 1970 marked the end of the Little Red Rural School in East Lake Ainslie District.

This depiction of life in a small rural school is an excerpt from the book The Way We Lived: Stories of East Lake Ainslie, edited by Janice MacLean.

© 2005 Janice MacLean