by Valerie Green –
To commemorate the first week of school this September, I checked out some historical facts about education in our area.
In 1849, the first school opened for the children of Hudson’s Bay Company officers. It was known as the “Company School,” and operated within Fort Victoria itself. Three years later, the “Colonial School” was established for the children of the so-called “ordinary” employees. This school was run by the Reverend Robert Staines and his wife, Emma, who served as both teacher and school matron.
In 1855, a school was opened at Craigflower for the children of families employed by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, with a schoolmaster named Charles Clark. Today this school is the oldest surviving school building in Western Canada. Gideon Halcro was the school’s building contractor and the two-storey building had one schoolroom, with six other rooms for the teacher, his family and some student boarders. The school bell, which hung in the school yard, came from the steamer Major Tompkins, which had been wrecked off Macaulay Point.
In 1861, a school near Mount Tolmie had its beginnings in the kitchen of a Mrs. Henry King at 1706 Kisber Avenue. She taught the children in the area for two hours a day, five days a week, but by 1863 regular classes and a paid teacher occupied St. Luke’s Chapel on Cedar Hill Cross Road. The first two-room school, known as Cedar Hill School, was built around 1872 and a new Cedar Hill School was built in 1912.
By 1891 a one-room school had also been built in the “wilds of Gordon Head” to accommodate the children of the pioneers in that area who couldn’t travel the long distance to Cedar Hill or into town on a daily basis. This school was built on land valued at $150 and was donated by William Dean and James Houlihan. The project was initiated by pioneer John Vantreight who had petitioned for the building of a school.
1920 saw the establishment of an official Department of Education. Two years later the association known as the British Columbia Parent-Teacher Federation was formed. It was initially based in New Westminster.
In 1936 School Safety Patrols were introduced for the first time and by 1947 were sponsored by Kiwanis Clubs throughout the province. In 1938 new standardized report cards were introduced for the first time.
Braefoot Elementary was named for Braefoot Farm, owned by Dr. Simon Fraser Tolmie, a Premier of B.C. Lambrick Park Secondary School was named for Arthur Lambrick, a Gordon Head dairy farmer and one-time Reeve of Saanich. Lansdowne School stands on the site of an old airport and is named for a Marquis and Governor-General of Canada. S.J. Willis was named for Samuel John Willis (1877-1947) a Superintendent of Education and one-time school principal. Stelly’s Secondary School is named for Saanich Peninsula pioneer George Stelly. Land for the first school on the Saanich Peninsula was donated by pioneer William Thomson with an enrolment of just six students! It was built in the vicinity of Mount Newton Cross Road.
Just a smattering of educational history as the school bell rings once again and another year of learning begins this September! Happy School Days.
Valerie Green is an author and historian and can be reached at valgee@shaw.ca.
