1916 - 1963 Beausite | A Saskatchewan Country School | Norma Galambos

This story is published in the winter 20/21 issue of Saskatchewan Folklore Magazine.

The District of D'Amour

In the early 1900s, my maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada from Normandy, France. He worked in Montreal, Quebec, and in Henribourg, Leask and Marcelin, Saskatchewan. When he met and married my grandmother in 1914, while living in Leask, there were sixty-five residents.

Initially, the government divided the province into many districts. Eventually, those districts were combined into larger municipalities. My grandparents wanted to try farming, so in the early 1920s, they moved their young family to a homestead in the D'Amour District, sixteen miles west of Leask. 

The district of D'Amour opened to homesteaders in 1903. The community consisted of French-speaking, Catholic families. The landscape consisted of rolling hills, lakes and forests; over time, homesteaders cleared areas for farmland.

It was there, on the family farm, that Mom was born in the winter of 1929. Eventually, eleven children completed the family, Mom being the fifth youngest. Sadly, they suffered the loss of a daughter in infancy.

Beausite Country School 

The Beginning

A school board, formed in 1916, worked diligently to help the people of the district realize their dream of a school. Constructed in 1916 on two and a half acres of donated land, it was a mile from the farm where Mom grew up. The school officially opened in April of 1917. Board members chose the name Beausite which originated from two French words meaning a beautiful site.  Throughout the early 1900s, country schools popped up throughout Saskatchewan, many of which were only five miles apart. 

The School 

On the property, there was a one-room school, a rough playground area and a barn. A fire guard was ploughed to protect the school. An older student arrived early to build a fire in the pot-bellied stove. The light came from a bank of windows; if it was hot, they lowered the blinds to keep the room cool. The library consisted of a couple of shelves of books. In 1951 the purchase of a set of encyclopedias was a big event. 

On the porch sat a bucket of drinking water, hauled from a nearby farm, with a worn communal dipper hanging off the side. The water often froze in the winter.

Original Beausite School 

Beausite School site 2020

The school hill is visible in the background. 

A piece of the foundation remains. 

Teachers

It was not easy for the school board to find teachers that could speak French and wanted to live in a remote area. At times, the demand for teachers outweighed the pool of qualified candidates, so teachers were hired without completing their training.

The teacher boarded with a local family, paying $20.00 a month in the 1940s. This included a room, meals, lunch and transportation to work, by horse and buggy or caboose. They tended to stay only one or two years before moving on; some got married, others found employment elsewhere or left because of the isolation. 

The number of teaching days in a school year was about twenty days longer than it is today. Classes were offered to students in grades one through eight. In the early years, grade nine was completed at home by correspondence, later it was offered at the school. 

Finances 

As was the case for many country schools at the time, there were always financial struggles. The school's budget was made up of government funding and taxes collected from the residents of the district. The school survived through two world wars and the Spanish Flu pandemic when it was closed for three months. The great depression of the 1930s left the board no choice but to cut the teacher's salary from $80.00 to $50.00 a month. In 1927 the school briefly shut down so the students could receive the newly developed vaccine to prevent the spread of diphtheria.

The Life of a Student

In 1935, at the age of six, Mom began attending Beausite School. She was shy and spoke only French, but quickly mastered English, "learning without knowing as children do". 

Mom walked to school with her older siblings. She didn't think much about having to walk "as she had two feet like everyone else". She took pride in her excellent attendance, and when the teacher praised her in front of the class, she was elated. Eighty-five years later, she still remembers receiving those words of encouragement. This goes to show that we should never underestimate the lasting impression words can have.

When Mom told me about walking to school in the winter, I imagined how cold and windy it was out there on the prairie. She said it wasn't that bad because there was more bush for shelter then. On summer days, the kids ate wild berries on the way home from school. When they got home, golden loaves of freshly baked bread sat cooling on the kitchen table.

Mom had a little pair of red wool mittens. Her dad had purchased them for ten cents and gave them to her as a gift. The mittens were thin, not meant for frigid days. When she got the mittens, she wasn't old enough to go to school, but her older sister desperately wanted to be the first to wear the little mittens, despite being told it was too cold. She couldn't resist and wore the mittens anyway. As a result, she suffered frostbite on her hands. They were pretty sore for a while, but she recovered nicely. Every time we reminisce about the perils they faced walking to school, Mom tells the story of her sister and the little red mittens. It is one of those "if you don't listen, you feel" life lessons.

She carried her lunch, which consisted of a peanut butter, cheese, or ground meat sandwich and a cookie in a syrup pail. The sandwiches were placed directly in the pail, unwrapped. Fruit was included if there was some available from the garden. Mom recounted being sent outside to wash her hands in a snowbank before eating lunch. 

She wore dresses to school year-round. In winter, wool socks and a long coat protected her legs, and slip-on rubber boots with extra insoles covered her feet.

Students sat in one-piece wooden desks, grouped by grade. The teaching of courses was primarily in English; students also received one hour of French instruction daily, plus catechism lessons. Mom's favourite subjects were reading and science.

My beautiful mom 1944

- second row from the back on the left 

Activities 

Summer recess activities consisted of ball games and swinging on the only piece of playground equipment, a swing set. In the winter, the kids piled on donated homemade toboggans and slid down the hill by the school. According to Mom, the hill was "sharp", meaning you got to the bottom fast. 

The students made a skating rink on the slough at the bottom of the sliding hill, running there at recess to play hockey. They kept the rink clean with homemade scrapers and shovels, dragged to school from home.  Some kids had skates; others went on the ice with their boots. It didn't matter, everyone played. Indentations carved into the snowbanks at either end of the slough served as nets. They used the few well-worn sticks they stowed in the barn. 

The slough at the bottom of the school hill where students played hockey. 

If a fight broke out during a hockey game, the other kids broke it up, and those involved sat on a snowbank to cool off. When the weather was nice, the teacher joined the kids outside for recess; otherwise, she kept a watchful eye from the window, coming out to ring the handbell to signal the end of the break. When they were settled back in class, the teacher would read to them. The students rested their heads on the desks; some fell asleep.

On occasion, Grandpa used his truck to take students on field trips. These excursions included travelling to other country schools for ball games. I commented to Mom how precarious kids riding in a truck box seemed. I naïvely thought that this safety breach would be a big deal. I asked what happened if someone fell out of the truck box. She responded that they simply stopped, picked them up and kept going. That made me laugh out loud. Simpler times indeed.  

My grandfather, the teacher and a truckload of kids on a field trip. 

Behaviour

Behaviour issues consisted of the odd practical joke like locking the teacher in the outhouse or putting a dead snake on her desk. With many siblings attending the same one-room school, there wasn't much hope that your parents wouldn't learn of your transgressions. For the most part, kids knew if they misbehaved at school, their parents would get wind of it, and punishment would be doled out at home as well. The use of a strap to discipline a student was often as traumatic for the teacher as it was for the student. Concerns regarding behaviour were communicated to parents on report cards. Having a school to attend was considered a privilege. The people of the district were proud of their school. If your child misbehaved, it reflected poorly on you as a parent.

Other Uses of the School

The school was the centre of the community. It was used for socials, dances, picnics and card parties. Local musicians provided music for dances with guitars, violins, and fiddles. To light the event, those attending would bring coal oil lanterns from home. A simple lunch was served; the lunch wasn't the main focus of the evening, though, as everyone's attention was on who else was there. 

Changing Times 

Beausite School became part of the Blaine Lake School Unit in 1946. In 1954 the original school was designated as the teacherage, and a new larger building was moved in to use as the school. Enrolment at the school started at twenty-eight students, spiked at almost fifty, and eventually dwindled to fourteen when it closed in 1963. From that point on, students received bus service to school in Leask. 

Family Connections 

Mom's family has a deep connection to the D'Amour District and Beausite School. My grandfather, George Brad, a distinguished and intelligent man, served several terms as a school trustee and as Secretary-Treasurer for many years. Other family members also served as trustees or teachers. Even though I have lived here my entire life, researching this story has given me a new appreciation for the area and its people, past and present. 

Lasting Impressions 

• kids were not continuously supervised; they learned to solve issues on their own
• there was no playground equipment other than a swing set; they played on what nature provided; trees, hills and sloughs  - interestingly, schools today have moved towards a greater focus on outdoor learning
• teachers being hired to start work at remote schools after attending a few months of college
• Grandpa and his truck box full of kids
• the image of kids blasting down the hill on toboggans and Mom in rubber boots - no wonder she thought the school hill was "sharp" (a Grandmaism as we call her sayings)
• the teacher standing on the school step ringing the handbell
• washing their hands in a snowbank; hand sanitizer wasn't invented until 1980
• the sharing of the drinking water dipper
• the set of encyclopedias - I remember my parents buying a set of encyclopedias for us to use at home from a travelling salesman
• as we await the development of a Coronavirus vaccine, one still used today, was developed and given to the students to prevent further spread of diphtheria 

Conclusion 

Mom commented that in the 1930s and 1940s, "one adapted to hardship quickly and silently". That statement made me pause and think about how society views and deals with life's difficulties today. 

The Beausite School buildings are long gone, repurposed to other locations. A commemorative sign and the stories passed on by those who taught and attended there preserve its rightful place in history. 

Mom 2011

September 2020

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