The classroom has come to the archives here.
The museum and archives recently opened an exhibit on the history of the town’s high schools, public schools and Catholic schools dating back to the late 1800s to 2004 when the former Mount Forest District High School became the new Wellington Heights Secondary School and moved to its new location on Sligo Road East.
“We have stuff that goes back to the 1870s,” curator Marlene Markle said of the display.
Markle said some of the books, photographs, school sweaters and school banners are a snapshot of school life from their respective times. Much of the material has been donated to the archives for the exhibit, while other material was transferred from the former high school when the move was made to the new building in 2004.
Volunteers have been busy archiving the material as it came into the museum located in the Old Post Office building at the corner of Main and Wellington Street. Among the volunteers doing the work were retired teachers Pauline Brown and Joan Woods. In one year book, students of the then literary department explained school events and activities in 1954, that Markle found a fascinating read. “I went through a lot of this and some of the writing is really good,” she said. “The kids were writing stories, using their imagination. They were inventive.
Included in the book are stories about day-to-day chores, how to do hair, jokes and even a play with a full cast of characters.
“I just found it an eye opener,” Markle added. “It reflects on the teachers who were interested and had the time to guide the students.”
On one walls hangs a high school sweater and jumper in the school colours of blue and gold donated by Joan McIntyre and worn by her daughter Cindy who graduated in 1957.
The collection also includes commencement programs and valedictorian addresses from decades past.
“I just finished doing 63,” Brown said of the commencement programs she archived.
Woods, who retired in 2006, said putting the exhibit together “ has been my second career.”
Two old school desks also make up part of the display along with an old typewriter which has captured the interest of students visiting the archives.
“The kids that came were so fascinated with the desks and the typewriters,” Woods said.
The work also uncovered that the community was once home to a business school and from 1900 to 1907 a teacher’s college then known as “the model school,” Brown said.
The model school offered courses for students wanting to be teachers.
“It gave them a temporary certificate so they could teach for a couple of years and then they would have to rewrite it,” Brown, who taught for over 40 years, primarily at the Kenilworth public school said.
Pictures of snow carnivals, once held annually in the community, adorn the walls showing the creativity of students who put together snow sculptures dating back to the 1980s.
“There was lots of school spirit,” Markle said of the exhibit and what the materials have uncovered of the past.
