Birch Cliff P.S. History Part 3

This is part three of our series on the history of Birch Cliff Public School, written by an unknown author in 1966 for the school’s 50th anniversary.

On the steps of the new school, Mrs. Reece watched her new pupils advance toward her.  She held the school bell by its clapper, and switching it from one hand to another, nervously smoothed her long black serge skirt and flicked imagined dust from her starched white blouse.

Mrs. Reece, Birch Cliff Public School Principal, 1916

Arriving in Canada only the year before, this was her first principalship, and for the time being she was the only teacher in the school.  As she wrote later, she was “filled with fear and trembling” as she rang the bell and ushered her 45 charges in Birch Cliff School that September 5, 1916.

Second classroom finished in October

The early days of Birch Cliff School were most exciting, a woman who was as student in 1916 told us.  As she leafed through an old album she recalled that the second room of the school was finished in October.

Mrs. Reece and presumably Miss Bunner, June 1918

“That was the second teacher, Miss Bunner” she pointed to a class picture.  “And the third room was completed right after the new year, when Miss Wilson joined the staff.”

The children’s faces looking out from the brownish photograph could be those of the children today – one is having her pigtail pulled by a smug-expressioned girl behind Her).  One or two of the pupils have their eyes closed, several more are squinting against the bright sunlight, and one girl is blurred in the act of scratching her head.  It was difficult to stand absolutely quiet for a fifteen-second time exposure.

The date of the photograph is June, 1918, and the girls are wearing cool, white or checked gingham dresses, long white stockings and large floppy hair ribbons that almost obscure the faces of those behind them.

The boys, however, appear to have made no concession toward a bright, hot day in June, and sport turtle-neck sweaters, belted jackets, knee-length pants and long black stockings.  The teachers stand stiffly on either side of the little group and look slightly disheveled.  Any teacher who has tried to arrange, seat, threaten and subdue 53 children for a class picture would admit this is an understandable strain.

Newspaper article from 1916 details some of Birch Cliff's 45 prizes

School Fairs

This same pupil recalled vividly the first Birch Cliff trip to the Agincourt School Fair.  The children met at the school at seven, each juggling his or her fair exhibit in one hand and a lunch in the other.  There was much excitement as they boarded the radial for East Toronto, filling first one car, then the next, to capacity.

She remembered how she and some other of the older girls had fits of giggling, watching one small boy, sitting across from them, try to manage his lunchbox and a sheaf of corn that completely hid his face.  At East York (Danforth Station) they boarded the train for Agincourt, where they won 24 prizes in all.

Many prizes won

The next year, at Newmarket, the school won first prize for the county.  From that day forward, the girl laughingly remembered, there appeared to be a lessening of interest among the other schools, as Birch Cliff consistently won “first” at county fairs.  Eventually Birch Cliff School had fairs of its own.

In June, 1917, the only upper fourth (eighth grade) pupil, Alex McCartner, passed his “entrance” examination to high school with honours, and the first year of Birch Cliff School closed successfully and happily.

Mrs. Reece's journal entry on first Christmas concert, Dec. 1917

First Christmas concert

Another former student fondly remembers with affection the first Christmas concert in 1917.  Although some living rooms by now were graced by a pump organ, few could boast a piano and the tiny half-finished Birch Cliff School had no accompanying instrument for the pupil-performers. Undaunted, the teachers organized a kazoo band, and the show went on as scheduled.

Apparently it was a tremendous success.  With the aid of a tuning fork, Mrs. Reece taught her choir Christmas carols in three and four-part harmony.  The senior room had festive drawings on the blackboard, the flags of the allies former a border across the top.  A creditable curtain was rigged with two uprights and a sheet, and the overflowing audience of parents and friends praised each selection with thunderous applause.  So fine was their reception, they say, that the school was asked to present the concert again, after New Year’s Day.

An interesting sidelight is that before the second concert the ratepayers of Birch Cliff presented the school with a beautiful piano – not intended, we trust, as reflection on the excellence of the original kazoo band!

Mrs. Reece's thoughts on the Armistice in The Great War (World War I)

Influenza and Armistice 

In October, 1918, the school close for a time to check the spread of the terrible influenza.  This was not just a winter “flu” as we know it today, but a full-fledged epidemic.  Birch Cliff School, fortunately, did not lose a pupil or parent through the disease.

Close on the heels of the tragic flu epidemic came the wonderful news of the Armistice – November 11, 1918 – the end of the “Great War”.  After four years many pupils could not remember peacetime, and hardly knew what to expect from the “cessation of hostilities”.

They knew the suffering, certainly, caused by the absence of a brother or father to the front lines, and the principal recorded that they “were greatly moved by the emotion of the day”.

~~~

Next time…students from the 1920’s remember “extras” in the curriculum that “astonished” their parents.

To read previous stories in the series, please click on the links:  Part One, Part Two.