SUNDRIDGE – There was a time when reading, writing, ‘rithmetic and all kinds of school day memories were learned and experienced between four walls.
One-room schoolhouses are the places where many of Almaguin’s older residents did their learning.
Lynch Lake School was one of them.
Formally known as S.S. #1 Joly, students came through its doors from 1884 to 1946.
While its foundations are long gone, the Lynch Lake School’s legacy lives on through the graduates still living in the region.
Isobel Brimacombe is one of them.
The school’s lifespan began long before her days.
S.S. #1 Joly was first built in 1884, to accommodate the wee learners of the growing settlement east of Sundridge.
That schoolhouse would serve the children of the surrounding communities until 1923. The original schoolhouse, Brimacombe explained, burnt down then.
Brimacombe never heard what the cause of the fire was.
A new schoolhouse was built nearby in 1923.
“It was just an ordinary one-room school with an old box stove at the end of it,” Brimacombe remembered.
Students were responsible for shoveling the snow and putting on the fires in the winter, she explained.
“I can’t really remember having to shovel, maybe the boys did it, or maybe by family,” Brimacombe said.
There may have been no caretaker, but Lynch Lake School enjoyed one amenity other era schools didn’t have. They had chemical toilets, so students didn’t have to take a trek to an outhouse to do their business.
The schoolhouse stove served a dual purpose: in winter months the students would prepare hot meals to eat, such as tomatoes and macaroni or soup, Brimbacombe explained.
“At the back of the school were two church pews,” she remembered. “There was church in there during the summer months. In the winter months, we lined them up and sat there and had our hot lunches.”
One pew would be for sitting, the other would act as a table.
When Brimacombe attending Lynch Lake School, she estimates that there were about 12 to 15 students.
They varied from grades 1 to 8, and one teacher taught them all.
Teachers juggled the different curriculums for different grades.
“I think we learned a lot from listening to the other guys, too,” Brimacombe said, adding that because the teacher had to spend time addressing other age groups in the class, students had to be able to work alone.
“We came out of there just as smart as the other kids,” she said.
Other than the traditional classes like English and math, students at Lynch Lake were also schooled in more domestic arts.
Boys, Brimacombe remembered, would learn to build projects like birdhouses in class.
Girls were taught to knit and sew, she said. “We learned to hem handkerchiefs and stuff.”
They also learned to crochet, marking the school’s effort to support Canadian troops fighting overseas during the Second World War.
The students would work on squares of crocheting, Brimacombe said. “The teacher crocheted the squares together and made afghans out of them.”
Students also made scarves to send to the soldiers, she explained, while the mothers, who were more handy with needles, would make socks.
The knitted items were turned over to the Red Cross, who shipped them overseas.
Students at Lynch Lake School often spoke about the goings-on overseas during wartime.
For good reason.
Their teacher, Mrs. Georgina Mick, of Powassan, had a son serving with the forces, so the classes spoke often about war.
Mrs. Mick proclaimed a school holiday the day they got word that the war was over and sent the students home, Brimacombe said. “She was so happy.”
Another teacher at the school was a casualty of war. Mr. W. Ebert, of Cache Bay, was killed at war after teaching at Lynch Lake School, Brimacombe said.
Military records show that Ebert was a pilot officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force and was skilled in January 1943.
Mr. Ebert holds a special spot in Brimacombe’s schoolday memories.
He helped his students make an outdoor rink on the school’s grounds.
They flooded the rink using a pump from the school well, she explained.
They also ensured it was shovelled.
“There was no Zamboni,” Brimacombe joked.
Mr. Ebert gathered up skates from the community to give to students who had none, so the whole class could enjoy skating, Brimacombe remembers.
Fun was found outside in the summer, as well. Students would pick teams and play baseball, Brimacombe said, or they’d play a game that entailed throwing a ball between teams over the school’s roof.
Christmas was a favourite time of year for students.
That’s when the school held its concert.
“We’d spend hours practicing,” Brimacombe said.
The concert would showcase the students singing, performing drills, reading Christmas pieces and acting in many funny plays, she said.
There would be a dance after, Brimacombe explained, and the desks would all be pushed up against the walls.
Younger kids would sit on the desk chairs and sleep while the older set danced into the evening, she said. “My dad taught me to dance there when I was nine.”
There were many fine memories of Brimbacombe’s time at Lynch Lake School, she said, adding that she can’t remember any bullying or such between the students.
“No one beat up other kids,” she said. “I don’t think kids fought there like they do now.”
If you misbehaved, she added, you wouldn’t just be in trouble at school, where the strap was used as punishment, but you’d likely be in trouble at home, too.
But happy memories of the school couldn’t last forever.
Lynch Lake School graduated its last class in 1946.
Brimacombe transferred to Sundridge Public School, along with her Lynch Lake classmates, to further her education.
That meant taking the bus, driven by her father, over the four-mile route to her new school.
“It meant we didn’t have to walk anymore,” she said.
She and her sibling had to walk a mile to the Lynch Lake School, but “some of them walked three miles,” Brimacombe said.
There was at least one more time Brimacombe had to make her own way to school.
“My brother and I skied out once because the roads weren’t plowed,” she said.
She entered a Grade 7/8 split class, much different than having eight grades in one room, she said. Sam Rennie was her teacher.
“We missed not being in our own school,” she said, and participating in things like the Christmas concert.
However, at least one feature she liked about Sundridge Public was its track and field program.
“I liked to run mostly,” she explained. “We’d just compete between Burk’s Falls, South River and Sundridge.”
The transfer to Sundridge Public School was a big change, but Brimacombe said, “I guess we knew it had to be.”
And that was a matter of fact.
Schools moved from being small hubs or small communities to being bigger, more modern hubs that encompassed larger areas.
And little one-room schoolhouses were left behind.
Lynch Lake School was bought by a resident and made into a home.
The building is no longer, Brimacombe reports, and a new house sits on the property her school once sat on.
But as she lists the residents of the area who are graduates of Lynch Lake School, it is clear that its influence is still in the area, even if its walls are not.
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