A Documentary by Sam Dickie
KAWARTHA LAKES- Education in the Fenelon Falls area began with volunteers instructing students as an act of charity, including Anne Langton and her minister, Reverend Thomas Fidler, who taught at the Anglican Church. Fenelon Falls’ first public school opened in 1869, in a Colborne Street building that still stands —at the time secondary education was unusual indeed. In 1882 work began digging the Fenelon Falls canal and the stone was used to build a second school south of the river, completed four years later. Sixteen years later, the school began to offer continuation courses, which would allow students to gain some education beyond public school. Starting in 1912, the stone school operated as Fenelon Falls Continuation School, allowing students to achieve a Grade 12 education. At the time, to finish Grade 13, they would have to travel to Lindsay Collegiate Institute.
Families had to figure out how their kids would get to school, and for many rural students it was not practical to finish high school. Many rural students rode horses or brought sleighs to school, leaving their equines at the Brooks Hotel or the Livery Stable, and heading over at lunch time to care for them. It was not socially acceptable for girls to wear pants, they would have to clean up, and change before they could attend school. Some students who lived near the railway line brought the train to school, but they typically could not attend all their classes because they were bound by the train schedules. Burnt River’s Wilkinson Family operated the Burnt River Express, where students sat in the back of a van on a bench to travel to school.
The stone school had no running water, and an outdoor lavatory—boys and girls were to walk in opposite directions around the school to access it. For many years, the school’s concerts, performances and convocation were held at the community hall, now Immanuel Baptist Church. Fenelon Falls’ cadets were founded during the Great War and for decades it was a common sight to see local students marching—no coats allowed, even in cool weather—and hot tunics in the summer sun. On August 30, 1933, Fenelon Falls’ new brick continuation school opened with four classrooms and indoor plumbing!
In the first half of the twentieth century, Fenelon Falls, Bobcaygeon, Kinmount and Woodville each had their own Continuation School. Starting in the late 1940s, school buses were gradually introduced—at first some of the drivers were using their own vehicles to pick up students living in their vicinity. Each community had overseen its own education, but once the Victoria County District High School Board was formed in 1951, it immediately prepared to amalgamate the schools, renaming the new central institution, Fenelon Falls High School. Three additions were completed by 1960, allowing the school to accommodate 600 students. By then, regular bus routes brought students from as far away as Norland, Bolsover, Woodville, Kinmount and Bobcaygeon. The school was no longer populated largely by students from its home village.
The construction of the first gymnasium and auditorium in 1952-3, made possible indoor physical education. Within five years, the cadets would be disbanded—long a fixture of student life. In 1962, the school filled in a nearby swamp to create a football field, with ever more clubs, like the Academy Motion Picture Society—Keith Stata would go on to found the Highlands Cinemas. A yearbook, the Broadcast, was published in 1939, then in 1955 and 1956 “Fenelon High Life” was printed. The annual yearbook, the Kawarthian was first published in 1968.
The additions in the 1950s, created specialized classrooms for Industrial Arts—as shop class was called—science, typing and home economics. For decades, proficiency on a typewriter would prepare students for a career in office work. By the late 1980s, computers were becoming mainstream technology, as spreadsheets and computer programming could do amazing things. In the 1990s, the school began to introduce students to the internet, which teachers explained had revolutionary potential. It would not be long before students would Google what they had once been expected to memorize.
After Fenelon Falls Secondary School expanded to become a district high school, a generation of young teachers came together, many of whom would teach together for decades. In that era, they had the freedom to share their interests in the classroom, and practically all volunteered to help create wonderful cultural possibilities at the school. By the late 1990s, the school had not just a band, but an orchestra too and a great variety of sports teams. It hosted musicals and plays, with clubs to promote equality and Christianity. It sponsored more children through the Foster Parents Plan than any other organization in Canada. Every night, the school would be filled with students for hours after school, enjoying all of the extra-curricular activities that Fenelon Falls Secondary School had to offer.
By the 2020s, the amazing variety of clubs and teams that Fenelon Falls Secondary School boasted three decades earlier has become a distant memory. As today’s students are part of the global village, the halls are no longer filled with students for hours after school each night. Many students go home, and interact via their smartphones and computers. Students can live a virtual life through video games. They work on their computers all day, in all kinds of different classes, with course materials online and presented on smart boards. Handwriting has become as much a novelty as typing once was. Fenelon Falls Secondary School students are taught in a very secure building, where outside visitors must be escorted by staff. Giving students guns and live ammunition to learn marksmanship, without teacher supervision, would be as unimaginable today, as a robotics class would have been to the good soldiers of generations past. Fenelon Falls Secondary School continues to change with the world around it… who knows what will come next?
You can see the video in person at Maryboro Lodge Museum or online at:
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
50 Oak Street
Fenelon Falls, ON
K0M 1N0
