, , l . ’ I. y)“ a
LOG SCHOOL AT CEMETERY AND PUPILS Back row, left to right: Jennie Boyd, Allce Stevenson, Emma. Graham, Hannah Boyd, Ivan Cumming, Carl Simpson. Jim Garnett, Mary Coulter, MISS Young, Martha Whiteside, Maggie Garnett, Lizzie Campbell. Second row: Charlie Graham, John Ridley, Edna Frazer. Ruby Campbell. Ethel Collins, Laura Coulter, Zella Colllns, Sarah Camp- bell, Vida Frazer, Annie Garnett. Third row: Benson Dundas. Willard Cumming. Everett Hunt, Henry Whiteside, Billy Cowan, Bob Thomson, John Clarke. Fourth row: Billy lronside, Etta Thomson, Ella Reeve, Flora Reeve, Myrtle Hunt, Vera Stubbs, Maggie Graham, Sarah Boyd. Fifth row: Eva Clarke. Harry Frazer (visitor). Roy Stubbs, Elmer Nixon, Harold Clarke. Picture taken between 1892-94. a result the school sxte was transferred back to him for one dollar plus
the costs of transfer.
Nellie McClung’s poem, entitled “Schools”, with which this chapter opens, is indeed a vivid picture of the early schools. But the empty Presbyterian Church equipped to function as a school to which the pupils of the Blair School were transferred did not have the torn maps nor the tapping window blind. In fact, it did not have anything save the barest necessities. The walls were bare, likewise the windows — not a picture, not a blind, not even a plant. Rows of double desks filled the centre of the room. Back of them, and in front of the entrance door, stood a long black iron stove, with a broad front damper which burned full cordwood-length slabs of solid oak from the forests round about. Each cold Monday morning the pupils stood in a circle around it and tried to concentrate on their “spellings or times tables,” as they were called, while roasting in front and freezing behind. These tables were not popular and the day on which a pupil could recite from 1 x l = l to 12 x 12 = 144 without a single mistake was one to be remembered — it meant no more staying in at recess to study them.
In front of the stove along the east wall stood a home made bench on which sat a water pail and tin cup, out of which the pupils drank. The school yard did not boast a well and ]ohn F. Campbell brought a
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