3 minute read
Step Back in Time with the Blackstaff's Heritage Schoolhouse
BY FRANCESCA PACCHIANO
Shirley Blackstaff always wanted a schoolhouse, and when the opportunity to turn an old storage shed into the one-room schoolhouse of her dreams came, she took it. The schoolhouse opened officially last month on September 15 and is a near replica of the Old Koksilah School.
“We knew what we wanted. I’ve done some research on the internet, and I also visited Koksilah Schoolhouse. It’s like the Koksilah School, except it doesn’t have a basement. It’s the same colours: the brown and the cream. The windows are smaller than Koksilah because it’s a one-story building, whereas theirs was two.”
Blackstaff also got the original desks from the Old Koksilah School for her school. “They gave me all the desks. I went there to just get textbooks, and then I went up to say thank you, and they said, ‘Would you like the desk?’ And I said, 'sure,' because their desks were in better condition than the ones I’d purchased over the years.” The rest of the furniture and decorations are items that she purchased at garage sales over the years.
Blackstaff put a lot of long, hard hours into building this schoolhouse, including staining each floorboard by hand before it could be placed inside. But this schoolhouse represents more than just personal satisfaction and a hobby. “Heritage is the basis of us. It’s what makes us know where we come from. And we should save our heritage for the children that are coming after us… Otherwise, you would never know what your grandparents did or how they were brought up at school.”
The walls of the school hold pictures of the King and Queen, plaques thanking the people involved in building the school, and a poem sharing the experiences of children in schools like this one. “That poem shows [that] a lot of children really loved [their] school. It wasn’t a scary place for them, especially the country schools. They could get their work done and then they would go outside and play, or they would do nature trails.”
The Cowichan Valley Schools Heritage Society (CVSHS) recently proposed a project that aims to “show the development of education” by using Blackstaff ’s Heritage Village School. The project will use the school as a place of preservation for documents, photographs and collected school items. The CVSHS plans to keep original documents at the Cowichan Valley Museum Archives for safe keeping.
The CVSHS also plan on using the schoolhouse as a site for “a hands-on educational program…to share the history and activities of past school days and to take advantage of the heritage and nature opportunities at Blackstaff ’s Ladysmith site to enrich field trip programs.”
The CVSHS is looking for new members who are interested in this and other projects that focus on saving and preserving local school heritage.
