Mrs. Finlayson was Principal of Cartierville School as far back as 1946
Recently, Beverly (Johnson) Renaud has shared with me several very interesting messages about Cartierville School. With her prior permission, I’m pleased to share with you what I’ve learned.
Cartierville School, May 2015. Scott Munro photo
Click here for previous posts about Cartierville School >
Beverly went to Cartierville Elementary School in 1946.
“My name then was Beverly Johnson,” she writes. “My sister Irene and my brother Ronnie also attended the school.
“I lived on Sources back then it was called Rang St. Remi. I remember the names of some of the students, Eleanor Baker and her sister Lynda Baker. Carol Fraser. There was a room that we went to for lunch. In the winter they would bring us soup.”
She adds: “There was also a student named John Monroe that attended Cartierville School.
“And Yesterday I saw 0n the news that there was a fire in Cartierville at a school. Was that Cartierville school?”
Fire at Cartierville School
Indeed, the fire was at Cartierville School. The school, which had been abandoned for many years, burned down on April 5, 2024. It’s my understanding (from a comment at an earlier post about Cartierville School) that the school was to be demolished in June 2024.
If anyone can update us regarding such a demolition, or if you have a recent photo of the school site that you may wish to share, please let me know.
Below are links to three videos documenting the April 2024 fire at Cartierville School:
The Principal was Mrs. Finlayson
Beverly Renault remarks, as well: “Another student was Douglas Cunningham. The Principal was Mrs. Finlayson.”
I still remember Mrs. Finlayson from when I was in Grade 4: I’d see her walking down the hall and I’d think to myself, “Now, here’s a person who has authority, no question about it.”
In recent years we’ve also shared many posts about the Marlborough Golf Club. The course, now gone, was close to the school.
At one of the posts about Marlborough, I note that Henri Richard, who used to play at the course, was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease. That’s one of the things I learned when writing posts about the course, where many local kids used to caddy.
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The year 1946 brings to mind the next year, 1947. That was, among many other happenings, the year of the partition of India. I have been reading Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Century (2023) by Joya Charrerji; the book enables a reader to deeply grasp what the partition entailed and to understand the effects which are reverberating even now.
A July 3, 2023 Guardian article is entitled: “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji review – charming, genre-defying study.”
I feel very fortunate that I learned about this book and now have the opportunity to learn things about the history of the Indian subcontinent – written by an accomplished researcher who writes in a manner that is even-handed, perceptive, always interesting, and always easy to follow.
I attended Cartierville school in the early 60’s and Remember Mrs. McKenzie being the principal. I also remember Mrs. Carpenter, Mrs. Wahlburg, Mrs. Talbot. Miss Batula, Ms. McBain and Ms.Shantz as teachers.
This is so interesting: to know of who was teaching and who was principal in the 1960s.
My own connection to the school, a connection which definitely lives on in my memory, was in the 1950s. Some people who’ve written at this website about their own connection speak of the school as it was known to previous generations going back to the 1920s. So interesting to think of all the history connected with the school – which lives on in our memories.
These are among my most vivid memories – the Grade 4 classroom, Mrs. Shields our teacher, the snowball fights at recess, the happenings in the hallway outside the classrooms, the place where we ate soup at lunch, the place where we had gym.
I remember I was not a big eater. I seldom finished the lunches sent from home. I would stuff bits of sandwiches in my desk where they would dry out and eventually appear to lose any connection to their origin.
My most vivid memories are that the principal suggested I start a year back as we had just moved from Ontario and I had missed a year of French My mother said no and I remained in grade two I think, another thing I was so far behind in development and as time progressed I still appeared to be a six years old in oxfords and sox while all the other girls in my later classes were in bras and nylons and garter belts , it was before pantyhose. They were so sophisticated and grown up and some had boyfriends ! Jeoffrey chased me around at recess and it bugged me ! I did like boys I liked horses. I recall soup was tomato soup . Then when we graduated many of us from Roxboro went into grade 8 at Mount Royal high school high school and we took the train instead of the bus , I still looked like a baby and was scared stiff No boys was good as I concentrated on school instead and never had a boyfriend until second year university .I was still horse mad . Linda Spence Barclay Allan were a couple, I eventually caught up ,
Sad the building is gone but the memories prevail
It’s fascinating to read of your memories of Cartierville School, Kathleen. I remember Mrs. Finlayson as a person who wielded power. In grade 4, whenever I saw her walking down the hall, I would think of the fact that a lot of authority was connected to the position she occupied. It was around that time, I think, that I first began to think about how power relations are set up and enacted – in a school and in the wider society.
Many years later, when I was teaching grade 4 at a school in Mississauga at the Peel District School Board, I would wait until the end of the school year and then I would tell my students that when I was in grade 4, a girl sitting next to me let me know that she was madly in love with me. When I would, in my role as a teacher, tell my grade 4 students this story, they thought it was among the most momentous things that they had ever learned from me.
I knew that the end of the school year was the right time to tell the story. By that stage of maturation, of growth, in an elementary student’s life, such matters were of more significance than if I had told the story at the beginning of grade 4, when students were just past the grade 3 stage of life.
It’s now been close to twenty years since I retired from teaching. Yesterday, I met a volunteer at the Stratford Festival, who was welcoming guests at the Festival Theatre. She had retired a few years before me. It’s good to know there are quite a few retired teachers in Stratford, where I now live with my family. It’s good to look back and to think of all of the experiences that are inherent features of public education in Canada.