Cantley 1889 Articles
The following article first appeared in The Echo of Cantley Volume 33 no 3, September 2021. This article is made available for the enjoyment of others with the express permission of the Echo of Cantley.
Memories of the Cantley Protestant School
By Hubert McClelland
Hubert McClelland is one of the few remaining Cantley residents who remembers attending the Cantley Protestant School in early 1950s. Its three small buildings were built in 1900 on the south-east corner of montée de la Source and chemin Sainte-Élisabeth. Two of these structures still stand today.
The majority of Cantley students attended one of Cantley’s three Roman Catholic schools. The only Cantley Protestant School existed because non-Catholic education was assured by law in Quebec. Its one teacher managed to teach seven different subjects to seven grades, each day, in its one classroom - without electricity (until 1952) and no plumbing, furnace, phones or internet!
Today, the small building closest to the corner of chemin Sainte-Élisabeth looks almost the same as 70 years ago when it was painted white. This was the school’s horse stable with stalls for at least six horses and a loft to hold enough hay to feed them daily. During my time, we had but one pupil, Myrle Brown, who rode her pony to school some days. The stable was a popular place for us to play Hide and Seek.
Still standing next to the stable is the woodshed which held enough wood to heat the school from October to April. Attached to it were the “Boys” and “Girls” outdoor toilets.
The schoolroom building was next to the woodshed. It had a one-door entry porch. Inside, on either side of the door, were “cloakrooms” for students to hang their coats and school bags.
The school’s one room was about 11 meters long by 9 meters wide with a small window at the back and a bank of windows facing the road on the west side. A black chalkboard covered the entire width of the front wall. There were two smaller blackboards along the east wall. Over these was a large map of “The Dominion of Canada” which could be rolled up when the blackboards were needed. A large globe of the world hung from the ceiling on a rope and pulley system with a counterweight to lower it to the floor for reference during geography classes.
During my primary grades, a round barrel-type wood stove stood the centre of the classroom. Its stove pipe rose to about 2.5 meters above the floor then stretched to the chimney in the north wall above the teacher’s desk. Grade seven boys brought wood from the woodshed to fire up the stove. One boy was paid to start the fire early in the morning so that by 9:00 am the school was starting to feel warm when classes began. I remember extremely cold mornings when the ink bottles in the desks would be frozen so had to placed on the stove to thaw before students could fill their fountain pens. By my third grade, the school board installed an oil stove to heat the school. From that time on we had steady heat and the woodshed was only used for play on a rainy day.
In Cantley, unlike many neighbouring municipalities, religious discrimination was rare. Many children from the Protestant School and the neighbouring St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic School were neighbours who were long-time friends.
In 1959 the Cantley Protestant School closed when the government funded student transportation to the city school. Later, the Lesage government consolidated Cantley’s Roman Catholic schools into one central French/English school where École Sainte-Élisabeth stands today.
