Books
The Victoria Schoolhouse - A Sense of Community (2006)
is the story of
the Victoria (Bush's) community and how education developed in this
rural farming community from the early 1800s to 1966. This story is
told through pictures, anecdotes, remembrances, and archival research.
The story examines some of the factors
that may
have made this one-room
school unique and how a sense of community
developed with the school
and church closely related as the central focus. In addition, our
book gives a good account of the development of education in Ontario
during the same time period.
The Victoria Schoolhouse
book is available at most local bookstores and the QEMA office in
Ameliasburg at a cost of $19.95. Books can be shipped to you with a
shipping and handling cost of $2.95.
The
Saga of the One-Room Schoolhouse (2010) chronicles the development of
education in Ameliasburgh Township (7th Town) from 1800 -1966.
Included in this illustrated history, are the roles of the various
stakeholders responsible for delivering the evolving education model,
and the first-hand accounts and memories of those members
of the community who remember education in Ontario in its earlier stages
of development.
The Saga of the One-Room
Schoolhouse will be available at most local bookstores and the QEMA
office.
About the Authors
Dan Rainey and Helen Tompkins are a brother and
sister team who have collaborated on several educational and writing
projects during their teaching careers. The recording of the
history of the one-room schoolhouses in Ontario is of particular
interest to both of them, since they attended a one-room schoolhouse in
Innisfil Township in Simcoe County.
Dan is proud to have experienced
teaching in a one-room school with eight grades, while working closely
with a small community to meet the educational needs for their children.
When the one-room schools closed in Prince Edward County in the mid-60s,
Dan was the Principal of the Bloomfield School and became Principal of
the new Pinecrest Memorial Elementary School in the fall of 1967.
Additional education roles have included employment with the Ministry of
Education in teacher training summer programs and a Consultant of
Culture and Curriculum with the P.E.C. Board. Always with a deep
commitment to the community, Dan has served as a Councillor in
Wellington, sat on the Board of Directors, Children's Aid for Prince Edward County,
and has been a Board of Director with QEMA since 2003, serving as
Historian since that time, and President since 2006. Dan is proud
to have been a recipient of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee Award for
community service in 1978. Along with
his enthusiasm for history, Dan has a passion for photography and
many of the photos from his photo collection appear in this new
publication.
Helen has experienced
a long and varied career in education . As well as a classroom teacher
and teacher-librarian, Helen was employed as a Regional Educational
Consultant for the Ministry of Education, has worked in teacher
education, presented on the professional development circuit, in
addition to the writing of curriculum for the Ministry of Education and
several school boards. Always with an interest in meeting the
needs of 'the whole child', much of her career has focused on the
individual needs of students. Helen's special interests include
architecture, antiques, archives, and history, and more recently
one-room schoolhouses and the communities they served. Helen lives
in Richmond Hill and is deeply committed to her family and her cat,
Harrison.
Nellie Montgomery
(1921-2008)
Nellie Montgomery, a
lifelong resident of Prince Edward County, loved history and spent many
hours researching local history and family genealogy. She served
many years as Curator of the Tweedsmuir Histories kept by the
Rednersville Women's Institute. As a charter member of the
Seventh Town Historical Society, she helped research and write its book
on Ameliasburgh Township history. Nellie was also a charter member
of the Quinte Educational Museum and Archives and served on the Board of
Directors from 1977-1984 . She was a contributing author of
The Victoria Schoolhouse - A Sense of Community, the QEMA
publication about the school where she had taught for a few years prior
to her marriage to Harmon Montgomery. A researcher to the end,
Nellie was helping research our current publication, The Saga of the
One-Room Schoolhouse, until her death in 2008.
Our Numbered Print
by Local Artist, Laurie Scott
The watercolor of "Drop the Hankie" The Victoria Schoolhouse circa
1904, painted by Laurie Scott, a Prince Edward County artist, was
presented to the Quinte Educational Museum and Archives by the artist.
This superb piece of artwork was painted to celebrate the move of the
Victoria Schoolhouse from the Gore Road and the Weese Sideroad in
Ameliasburgh Township, to the Ameliasburgh Historical Museum and Pioneer
Village, in
the
summer of 2005. Numbered prints have been created from the original
watercolor to raise money to restore this century-old building. The
QEMA Board of Directors is grateful for Laurie's gift.
About the Artist
Laurie Scott is self-taught artist who was born and raised in Picton,
Ontario, just a short distance from the
village of Bloomfield, where she presently resides. Since her retirement
from a rewarding teaching career in 2006, Laurie has begun to devote
more attention to her art work and is looking forward to developing many
new ideas and projects during this
stage of her life. Laurie is a five-time winner of the annual art
contest sponsored by Essroc at the Picton Fair, and this honour has
earned her much recognition and created a demand for her work.
Laurie Scott has worked with a variety of art media.
About the Composition
The Victoria Schoolhouse has been painted as it may have appeared in
1904, the year it was built in the Victoria community in Ameliasburgh.
The children depicted in the painting are playing 'Drop the Hankie', a
circle tag game that was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. The reference material for the children in the painting was
a small photograph taken in 1904 of the artist's grandmother as she
played this game with siblings and neighbours on her family's
Saskatchewan farm. The 'circle of children' is symbolic of the
cooperation demonstrated by students, as they organized and played their
games during noon hours and recesses on the rural playgrounds of
one-room schools across Canada at the turn of the century.
Prints are available at the QEMA office at a cost of $29.95 for a small
print, $39.95 for a large. Also available are greeting cards, a.k.a.
hasty notes, available in small ($2.50), medium ($3.50), and large
($4.50). And, brand new, you can get souvenir postcards featuring 'Drop
the Hankie'.
QEMA will also be selling our prints of "Drop the Hankie", hasty notes,
and our book at local fairs and craft shows
