It was a fine, sunny day in mid-August 1913. My brother and I had just arrived in Vancouver from England only the evening before. Our parents and a brother and sister were due to join us the next year,
Now we were on board the CPR steamer to Victoria, enjoying our first sight of the beautiful Gulf Islands. Our chief mission besides earning our living and being of some use in the developing country of Canada, was to find a suitable spot for us all to settle. From the ship we thought the surrounding islands looked enchantingly wonderful. Could we find our future home on one of them? We wondered.
We landed in Victoria about five hours later. After finding a place to stay at the YWCA and YMCA respectively, our first necessity was to find work. Don had his matric., a little experience in office work, and some glorious months training at a Scout Farm, in England, but was willing to try anything. This turned out to be helping a man build a fence.
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Winifred New and her class, 1913 |
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I had an English Kindergarten certificate, and had understood that this year English certificates were to be accepted owing to a teacher shortage. So next morning I went with some other newly-arrived teachers to the registrar's office in the Parliament Buildings, where we were dismayed to find that the deadline for this was June 30. However, the registrar, an understanding man, said he would not turn us down, as we had come so far in good faith, but would give us first class B.C. certificates, and back date them. There were still some one-room country schools needing teachers, and one of them was on Mayne Island. So here I was given a chance to try island life.
I set off eventually for Mayne Island in the Joan. She was a well-planned and comfortable, small steamboat that had originally been the private yacht of a wealthy American, and was now owned by the CPR. She travelled among the Gulf Islands, calling here and there, every day except Sunday, using Victoria as base, but going once a week to Vancouver and Nanaimo. The latter, I gathered, was a dangerous place, owing to a wild strike by the coal miners,
On arriving at Mayne, I went to the hotel, close to the wharf, I found my new quarters comfortable, so decided to stay there while teaching, as it was only a short distance from the school. Some people thought this was very extravagant as it cost $15 a month for room and all meals, and I could have stayed on a farm a considerable distance from the school for much less. But I felt wealthy with my $60 a month salary.
The hotel was comfortable, the proprietor was friendly, so were his wife and two small children. The older one, a boy, was starting school. There were also other congenial guests. The weather was perfect, and I enjoyed the wide verandah with the green climbing plants around its posts, with the bright-coloured hummingbirds skimming about them from their nests nearby. I had a big bedroom upstairs, with wide windows facing the water, looking across to Galiano. I liked to hear the CPR steamers whistle every time they passed through Active Pass before I drifted again into a sound sleep.
The school seemed very strange at first. Instead of a dozen or so pre-schoolers as in my training days, there were close to twenty husky youngsters ranging in age from six to fourteen, and all at different stages of learning. They could leave when they were fifteen, even if they had not reached the then highest elementary class, which was grade eight.
They sat in double wooden desks. They seemed comfortable, even when 1 was courageous enough to have a window open, which was frowned upon by the School Board in the colder weather, as then more wood was needed in the stove,
I was amused recently to read the description of the present Mayne Island school, with its wall-to-wall carpeting—which is cheaper to heat and all the other improvements. Away back in 1913 we had a wooden floor, and some of the older girls were paid so much a month to sweep it every evening with damp sawdust. Some of the bigger boys were paid to carry a pail of water from nearby. In cold weather they would also split and carry wood, and light the fire before school,
There were more wasps in the building than I had ever seen in one place before; they seemed to be everywhere. But we achieved peaceful co-existence, and, miraculously, neither I nor any of the children were stung. Still, it was a relief when they disappeared with the cold weather.
I had one pleasant surprise, I had taught for only the last week in August, as was the custom then, and yet 1 received a month's salary for a week's work.
The following Monday was Labour Day, September 1, a holiday, so off I went to Victoria for the weekend to see Don. He came back to Mayne with me and went to work on a farm there.
Don often came to the hotel for evening dinner, and afterwards he would help me with the grade eight arithmetic for next day. This is because Math was never my strong point, and the book provided was not easy for me to follow.
One evening a question was about the number of shingles per square foot on a certain roof, and how much it would cost. I had never heard of these wooden tiles before. All I knew of shingles was that it was a disease! If I had been more mature, less green and fearful, I might have explained this to my serious-minded pupils, and we would all have had a good laugh.
Most of my problems I had to tackle myself. There was a curriculum book with a carefully-planned course of study for each subject for each grade, but no indication of how one teacher could follow these with almost all the grades in one room at the same time. No doubt guidance about this was given to students as they trained in the two provincial normal schools, but I did not have this advantage, so had to invent my own methods.
The most difficult part was to keep all the children busy all the time in what would now be called a 'meaningful' way. Some of the girls spent far longer than reasonable in painting pictures of flowers, an occupation they dearly loved, and which kept them very quiet and happy. I was sorry for the little beginners, who I felt must get very bored, and was relieved, as they no doubt were, too, when they were dismissed an hour before the others.
I enjoyed some of the poems and stories in the readers that were new to me, and found the Canadian history, which 1 had to learn along with my pupils, really fascinating, especially the early part about the explorers. I've learned a lot about this type of teaching now, but will never forget that first frustrating term. |
