HomeMy WebLinkAbout2103ALTONA SCHOOLHOUSE
SCHOOL SECTION #17
5460 Sideline 30 (North Road)
Concession 9, Lot 31
City of Pickering
PIN 632
March 2003
by
John W. Sabean
Historical Consultant
Altona Schoolhouse
School Section #17
5460 Sideline 30 (North Road)
Concession 9, Lot 31
City of Pickering
PIN 632
Built in 1911; closed in 1966.
Unoccupied
INTRODUCTION
In 1871, under the Free School Act, all public schools in the Province of Ontario were made
free for all children of school age.1 This was an important step in the development of
education, but it took three-quarters of a century to achieve it. The founding fathers were
mindful of the need for a good educational system and as early as 1798 the Executive
Council of Upper Canada recommended the establishment of grammar schools in certain
towns, but these were meant to serve only the privileged few. Even at that it was not until
after the passage of the Grammar Schools Act in 1807 that the first schools were founded.
2
A broader measure was achieved under the Common Schools Act of 1816, which enabled
local citizens to build and operate a school under the direction of “discreet trustees.” Where
this occurred the government would contribute £10 towards the teacher’s salary. The first
school in Pickering Township to benefit from this provision was a school taught by William
Sleigh in 1822.3 This is the earliest documented school in Pickering Township, although
tradition says that schools had been in operation from before the outbreak of the War of
1812.
The educational system in Ontario made a great leap forward when Egerton Ryerson was
appointed Superintendent of Education in 1844. Under his direction a series of school acts
beginning in 1846 gradually eliminated the haphazard inefficient school methods of the past.
4 The Act of 1846, which came two years after Ryerson set out to inquire into the province’s
educational needs, bound the province to provide free education for all children up to the
age of sixteen.5
In 1844 George Barclay became the first superintendent (or inspector) of schools for
Pickering Township. He reported that Pickering had 15 school districts and 893 pupils (out
of 1703 children in the township). Two years later the number of common schools in
operation was reported to be 21.6 This may have been a bit optimistic as reports for 1847,
1849, and 1851 reported only 18 (out of 21) active schools.7 The number of school sections
fluctuated for a number of years, but eventually ended with 17 and several union schools—
with Whitby, Uxbridge, and Scarborough—in addition.
The Illustrated Historical Atlas of Ontario County, which appeared in 1877, just after three
quarters of a century of settlement had been completed, provides a good summary of the
development of education in the county (and the country) to that date.8
[I]t may be well to put upon record some authentic facts of these olden times, as described
by the few ancients that still connect us with the primeval forest, and to revive those
memories which are fast becoming lost in the multiplied experiences and ever shifting
panorama of these modern days. There are people still living whose memory can carry them
to the time when there was not a school-house in the County of Ontario. There are many who
can recollect when school-houses were few and far between, when the machinery of
education was of the rudest description, and when the highest ambition of parents was that
their children might be able to read and write. There are hundreds who can remember when
the literary attainments of the teacher were gauge by his own appraisal of them; when an
itinerant system of boarding supplemented his scanty wage; when ‘healths five fathoms deep
’ and mighty potations were thought no discredit to him nor were supposed to obscure his
mental vision nor mar his usefulness; when a prime requisite for success in his work was not
so much the ability to impart knowledge as to inflict innumerable punishments of the most
fantastic complexion for the most trifling offences, and to subdue backwoods, lawlessness to
some system of transatlantic civilization.
In these primitive times the school-house was constructed of logs frequently unhewn, and it
contained but a single room. The furniture was of the rudest description, consisting chiefly of
long pieces of dea [teak?], supported by pins inserted in the wall, used for desks, in front of
which extended huge pieces of square timber supported by legs of uneven length, whose
unaccommodating imparity afforded more opportunities to the pupils of determining the
centre of gravity than practising the art of caligraphy [sic]. Utterly blank were the walls,
except indeed where some adventurous youth had carved his name, or with bold design had
traced in carbon the well-known visage of ‘the master.’ Maps, charts, and all the other
triumphs of Caxton’s art that now adorn the walls of the humblest school-house in the land
were then unknown, and we doubt not many middle-aged men and women can recall their
first impressions when they beheld, unrolled before their admiring gaze, a map of this stately
planet, which they heard for the first time had been bowling around the sun for thousands of
years. Like many dwelling-houses of the time, the school-house was heated by means of an
immense fire-place, upon whose ample hearth blazed tremendous logs cut from the
adjacent woods—a system that served the double purpose of heating and ventilation. Of
fresh air, indeed, there was no lack, for after a few years’ occupation this building disclosed
many holes and crevices through which wind or rain found an easy entrance, and through
which the youngsters, tired with their unaccustomed toil, might espy the progress of the
world without. Tradition tells that the first stove in any school-house in the county was made
from an old potash-kettle, two accidental holes—one in the bottom and the other in the side
—suggesting to some ingenious patron of learning the stoking-hole and the flue. Turned
bottom up and furnished with a chimney, what need to state that it became the admiration of
all the country-side. Rude and destitute of conveniences as these first school-houses were,
they nevertheless cost the early settlers much patient labour and no little self-sacrifice. Often
the burden of completing them fell upon two or three public-spirited men of the section, and
often too, extreme difficulty was experienced in raising sufficient means wherewith to pay the
teacher.
These striking memorials of backwoods times are fast disappearing, and giving place to
elegant and commodious structures which dot the landscape in every direction, and which
are no less the pride than the ornament of the whole country. May they all soon disappear,
and may not antiquarian zeal nor blighting parsimony prevent them being replaced by
school-houses more in accord with the progress of education and the necessities of the
times!
Ryerson may have shaped the educational theory and the curriculum in Ontario, but it was
his deputy superintendent, a former student of Ryerson’s, J. George Hodgins, who was the
architect of these “elegant and commodious structures” that began to appear in the 1850s.
As Professor McIlwraith has written:9
If one person can be said to have shaped the landscape of public education in Ontario, it
was J. George Hodgins. As deputy superintendent of education from the 1850s until 1876,
deputy minister until 1890, and an inexhaustible promoter of literacy, he presided over the
period when compulsory, free public education took its place as one of the taken-for-
granted aspects of provincial life. Attractive, durable, functional schoolhouses were the
centrepieces of Hodgins’s policy. Hundreds are scattered across the province, readily
identified by their hall-like lines, roadside site, shade trees, and dated marker, frequently
with the township name.
The Public School Act of 1846 bound the province to providing free education for all children
up to age sixteen. Buildings were to be designed for the purpose and spread across the
countryside for easy access. Qualified teachers, spinster or bachelor, were to board
inconspicuously in the neighbourhood; they would leave no trace. By 1863 there were nearly
four thousand public schools in Ontario, seven or eight buildings in every township south of
the Precambrian Shield. More than four out of five were wooden.
Hodgins’s great hope was that each building would be ‘the most attractive spot in the
neighbourhood.’ [J. George Hodgins, The School House: Its Architecture, External and
Internal Arrangements (Toronto: Province of Canada Department of Public Instruction, 1857),
iii.] His treatise, The School House, opens with more than thirty pages picturing showy
school buildings for the aspiring town or township….
Changes rapidly followed passage of the Free Schools Act and abolition of fees for primary
schooling in 1871. Three windows on each side became standard, and some schools had
separate entrances for boys and girls. Ventilation flues and raised ceilings improved air
circulation, and interior arrangements and equipment were upgraded…. [J. George Hodgins,
The School House: Its Architecture, External and Internal Arrangements (Toronto: Copp,
Clark and Company, 1876), 76.] Brick or stone country schoolhouses continue to be a highly
visible aspect of the general rebuilding in that era. Some were entirely new; the best of the
older ones were modernized and veneered, and still others were redesigned surplus
churches.
Despite this variety of origins, Hodgins worried about ‘such an uninteresting sameness’
among schoolhouses. [Hodgins, School House (1876), 10.] He urged that full attention be
given to architectural detail. Cambered, Romanesque, and flat-headed windows all were
widely used; end walls received gothic treatment. Vernacular forces and personal pride
were sufficiently strong that variation on the standard theme occurred naturally.
School grounds also came under Hodgins’s scrutiny. The 1876 manual prescribed that the
lot be one acre (0.4 ha), and certainly not less than half an acre, with the building centred
from side to side. [Hodgins, School House (1876), 21.] The site ought to be planted in
species of trees that the children could study. [Hodgins, School House (1857), 38, 40.] This
practice would help re-establish respect after generations of forest destruction. Sugar maple
was popular, and the centrepiece of many an Arbor Day ceremony in May. Huge, mature
specimens continue to shade school sites all over the province. Paling fences were required,
faced on the boys’ side of the play yard (boys pushed harder than girls). A two-seat outhouse
was similarly divided down the middle. A well and pump were mandatory. [Hodgins, School
House (1876), 21-2.]
BUILDING HISTORY: Altona Schoolhouse
A brick schoolhouse in Altona, built in the 1850s, fell victim to fire in 1909. The school that
stands today in Altona is therefore of a much later period—by nearly fifty years.
In June 1909, a call for tenders was advertised for the erection of a new brick schoolhouse
for Altona.10 The building was completed and opened in 1911. For the next fifty-five years
the ‘new’ school served the community. Renovations to the basement were made in the
early 1960s to accommodate a second school room, and a second teacher was hired. With
the advent of the regional school boards, however, the school was closed in 1966 and the
students were bused away from Altona. Trustees at the time of closing were Joseph
Nighswander, Millard Reesor, Gordon Wideman, and Marion Meyer (secretary).11
Arthur Latchum of Stouffville, as he did with many another rural school, purchased the old
building and presented it to the community as a recreational facility. Later other groups
rented the building for various periods and for various activities. Most recently it was used
by a church group. It has been boarded up for several of years.
Accounts of the educational history in Altona in the years before 1909 are contradictory.
Ross Johnston, remarking on his visit to Altona in 1884, wrote in the Whitby Chronicle:
The village school is … brick and was built in 1858, the old school house having been built in
1834 when the school section was first formed. Mr. Jas. E. Forfar is the present highly
esteemed teacher. I am told that five out of six of his pupils who tried passed successfully
the intermediate examination.12
Johnston was apparently wrong about the date of the formation of the school section, but
this is corrected by William Wood writing in 1911. Wood cites an early record—the opening
page of “The Secretary and Treasurer’s Book for Union Section No. 3 Pickering and 5
Uxbridge” (now lost):
School Section formed 1844; School house built, 1834; Number of Inhabitants 1856, 286;
Unable to read and write, about 30 per cent.13
If we correlate these two accounts with other information at hand, it appears that the first
schoolhouse in the area—a log building still in existence in 1857 when George McPhillips
prepared his Plan of Altona for David Reesor—was built in 1834.14 According to McPhillips
Plan the log schoolhouse was located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Sideline
30 and the Uxbridge-Pickering Townline. Ten years after this building was erected the
school section was formed. In the beginning Pickering shared this section with Uxbridge, but
they later went their separate ways. The log schoolhouse was the first public building in
Altona—by about ten years.
In 1858 the first schoolhouse was replaced by a brick building. This was located on the west
side of Sideline 30, a hundred metres or south of the townline. The contractor for the building
was William Feaster.
From at least 1854, for about nine or ten years, the teacher was Archibald McSween. His
salary for 1856 was £80. He (along with subsequent teachers) seems to have been able to
upgrade the intellectual level in Altona if we can judge by Ross Johnston’s comment.
McSween died in 1888 and is buried in the Altona Mennonite Cemetery.15
About 1909 the ‘old’ brick schoolhouse burned down. During the interim until the new
building was erected the students crossed the townline road to attend classes in the
Temperance Hall (on the northwest corner of the Altona intersection).
LOT HISTORY: Lot 31, Concession 9
Lot 31 in the Ninth Concession was originally a Clergy Reserve. Christian Stouffer is
recorded as having purchased it in 1829, but he may not have actually taken possession as
Martin Nighswander purchased the lot at a subsequent Clergy Reserve Sale in 1838.
Nighswander took out the patent. Nighswander had been on the land already for at least a
year as he appears in Walton’s Directory of 1837. He sold 1/4 acre in the northeast corner
to the Trustees of (union) school section #3 in January 1858.16
Notes:
1 Ontario, 34 Victoria, cap 33 (1871).
2 Upper Canada, 47 George III, cap 6 (1807).
3 Johnson (1973), p. 155, as cited from Colonial Advocate, 14 August 1828. In the previous
year Pickering had 334 children under 16 years of age, but no school qualified for the annual
grant. William Sleigh, a native of England, immigrated to Upper Canada about the year
1820. In 1824 he purchased Lot 27, Concession 5 from William Baldwin. To that property he
brought his new bride (the wedding was in 1824 as well) Mary Major, a member of the Major
family of Majorville (later renamed Whitevale). In 1825 he served as township clerk. The
Sleighs lived on the south half of the lot, so his school would have been located a little east
of where the Whitevale school (SS #8) was later built. Abstract Index of Deeds; Beers
(1877), p. ix; Walton (1837); Wood (1911), p. 294 (Wood mistakenly locates him on Lot 28).
4 A couple of Acts predated Ryerson’s appointment: the Acts of 1841 and 1843, Province
of Canada, 4-5 Victoria, cap 18 (1841), and 7 Victoria, Cap 19 (1843). The second
provided for local superintendents to prepare reports and distribute money.
5 Province of Canada, 9 Victoria, cap 20 (1846).
6 Smith (1846), p. 82
7 Smith (1852), II, 43-44; [Ryerson] (1851).
8 Beers (1877), p. xi.
9 McIlwraith (1997), pp. 161-162.
10 See the advertisement in Pickering News 18 June 1909 (See Appendix 2.)
11 Nighswander (1985); Nighswander (1999).
12 Traveller (1884).
13 Wood (1911), pp. 179-180.
14 George McPhillips, Plan of Altona for David Reesor. Registry Office.
15 Pickering Township Account Book, 1851ff (PMV); Census of 1861; Assessment Rolls;
Altona Mennonite Cemetery.
16 Abstract Index of Deeds.