Contributed by Doug Van Tine
Our school was a one-room log building with a cloak room added on to the front. The school’s only heat was a drum heater, and the cloak room was not heated. We would take turns being janitor: lighting the fire in the morning, cleaning the blackboards and sweeping the floor. There was only one teacher for eight grades.
The old school was three miles from our house so by the time we fed the animals, milked the cows and was janitor, we were sometimes late, often late.
The water was delivered once a week and filled a water fountain, which was insulated to stand the cold in the cloak room. It held about 90 gallons of water. A local resident named Frank Bennett used to deliver water in two 45-gallon drums, on a sleigh in the winter, and a wagon in the summer.
The attendance would average about 12 students. Those poor teachers sure earned their pay. They walked to and from school. They usually stayed at Bennetts, or our place, Van Tine’s, until later years when a local teacher got the job.
The outside toilets were behind the school, one for the girls and one for the boys. The woodshed was attached to the back of the school, we had about five cords of wood a year.
In the days before the water levels came up on Ootsa, Alcan prepared by having many of the buildings burned down in the communities along the lake. Peter Funk, from Surrey, BC., was hired for that job. Our schoolhouse was one of the buildings that was destined to be burned.
All the windows had been removed and cases of explosives were stored at many of the properties for the demolition jobs.
Again, it was a Halloween night that a group of local boys got hold of some of the explosives and had a little fun at the old school. Dynamite was set under each corner of the building, and a good amount was also set under the brick chimney. The group touched it all off at once, using electric firing caps.
It was a huge explosion.The whole building lifted about three feet off the ground and the flames shot out through the cracks in the logs.
As they all ran for cover, the bricks and debris hit the ground around them.
Within minutes, there was a steady stream of cars coming up the road, people wanting to see what the explosion was, but the culprits were long gone.