One Hundred Years of Schools

Settlers one hundred years ago came into a valley which had never seen any development except the Shuswap village at Tete Jaune. Then construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway clattered and blasted its way through from Alberta.

Track maintenance sections were set up about every eight miles and if the farmland was good or timber available, people settled in the area. With the settlers and workers came families with children who needed schools. The first school was at Tete Jaune, the largest construction camp along the line.

Once a settlement had enough children for a school, a meeting was held, application made to the government and a board of trustees for that school was elected. In some communities the land was donated and the school built by volunteers.

When the McBride trustees built their first school they put it in the most convenient place which later turned out to be in the middle of First Avenue. After the government sale of lots in 1914, they were required to move it within 60 days which they failed to do. At the cost of $118 and a great deal of volunteer labour to clear trees and roots, it was moved to the present site on Main Street.

Some of the smaller communities had to wait for some years to have enough children and when the number only lacked one or two, infants were recruited to make up the names. A contentious matter in some rural areas was where the school should be. In 1935 a dispute between Tete Jaune and Shere was settled by putting a school in each place.

At that time each school had its own school board who received a grant from the government and could levy taxes. If a settler couldn't pay the taxes they were required to supply ricks of firewood for the school woodstove. Winter could be a miserable time for school children. They arrived at school on foot or horseback, sometimes wet and cold. Drying off by the woodstove took some time and those far from the heater continued to freeze. Sometimes schools had to be closed because of cold.

The 1946 Education Act disbanded the individual school boards and at that time all the schools in the valley and Valemount came under the McBride School District #58.

Some rural schools only lasted a few years as sawmills came and went, but over the hundred years these places had schools: Lucerne, Red Pass, Tete Jaune, Shere, Croydon, North Croydon, Dunster, Lee, Beaver, McBride Mountain View, Cariboo, Lamming Mills, Crescent Spur, Loos, Snowshoe, Dome Creek, Bend and Penny. In 1970, further amalgamation took place with Prince George School District #57.

The only original school building still in public use is at Dome Creek, built 1917.

- Marilyn Wheeler, 2012