I am teaching this week at a school in 2012 that is designated specially to value native culture. It is within the public system and operates kindergarten to grade 6. The old school building just outside downtown has on its walls posters of native leaders, sayings about native culture and I very much respect that we finally are valuing what our earliest peoples in the area already had. We open with O Canada in English and then in a native tongue, played loudly over the PA.  It is touching.  We will have math games to do and the kids get to play with the iPads later in the morning. But first is the smudge ceremony.  We sit in a circle, the other teacher leads us as she lights the sweetgrass and recites a ritual, then passes it around, smouldering in a marble-like container.  She is passing fire to the kids and they can handle it. I am stunned by the beauty of the prayer we are to recite. It was written by Chief Yellow Lark of the Lakoda Tribe.

Oh Great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
hear me!
I am small and weak,
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes
ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the
things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with
clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset
my spirit may come to you
without shame.
–Chief Yellow Lark, Lakota Tribe

The grade 3 kids are excited to play the literacy games with the tiles and some of them cleverly show me astounding new words they already know in English..  I sit stunned for a moment at what I have just seen.  The schools finally are working to try to respect this culture that was  here even before settlers came.

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In the 1870s  early settlers found 4 native campgrounds in the Calgary area. 

One was at the Elbow River near where a Catholic mission had been set up. Cree and Metis were there. One was in the Elbow Mount Royal area and mostly there were Sarcee (now called Tsuu T’ina).  Another camp was where the Shaganappi golf course is now, and Metis, Cree and Stoney gathered there. Finally at some times of the year another camp was at the mouth of Nose Creek where it meets the Bow River – Blackfoot, Cree or Sarcee sometimes camped there.

When the churches heard there were natives here, they had sent out missionaries, to help show people white ways, to convert them along with offering religious guidance to the settlers who were arriving. The intention was doubtless good, to help, and not all missionaries apparently thought of the natives as savages needing to be changed.  When the Bible was presented to them it was sometimes given via translation into the native tongue and this created a writing system that respected that language at least.

In 1876 the federal government promised in treaties with natives to help educate their children.  A school was set up for the natives, on the Bow River in 1896. It served 50 young men aged 12-18, and was built was on 300 acres of land where the Deerfoot Trail is today.  It was however a residential school. It was not till 2008 that the Prime Minister of Canada apologized for the policies those schools used for years, the assumption that British culture was superior, the whisking away of native children from their parents and the punishment given to them for even speaking their own language.    We have made big changes since then, but many say not enough.

What we did for the settlers’ children tried to cater to immediate needs. The land around Fort Calgary  was at the time part of the Northwest Territories, not even called Alberta. Government to oversee education was the North West Territories government and for years that government simply let missionaries handle education. There was no priority given to setting up public schools for the few children in the area. However by 1875 a decision was made to let any small group of taxpayers in a district ask permission to set up a school..

Calgary in 1884 was a small community. It had a church, blacksmith, stables, dry goods store, grocery, general merchant, doctor, jeweller, preacher and even a sign store and photographer before any school was set up.  Reasons for the delay were likely many. One was the lack of students. As in any frontier area, most of the people who arrived were single men. Even by 1911 the ratio of men to women was 155 to 100.  In its early years the place had a reputation as a rough town with lots of drinking. In 1904 men on pay day would cash their paycheque and spend it immediately and since most of the hotels and drinking places were on the south side of the street, women often stayed to the north side of the street.  It was an era where even prohibition for a time was advocated to tame the wildness.  Some bars opened at 8AM every day.

What children there were may be needed on the farm and school was an afterthought. Even when schooling was desired, it was hard to get kids to attend at harvest time or seeding. Children of richer settlers, as they arrived, might be sent back to Winnipeg to get advanced schooling instead of staying here for it..

Another problem was that it cost money to set up schools and money was scarce. In 1865 the Hudson’s Bay company had set up some school classes for children of those who lived at the posts but few such schools were out west.

Calgary  in those early years was a small fort but other settlements in all directions were also springing up. They too were trying to establish schools, one room buildings for nearby kids.  After the railway line was laid down, the company that built it laid off workers and some of them stayed in Calgary. A few of the Chinese workers opened laundries or restaurants after 1880. The train brought in settlers  arriving from Montreal and Toronto every Monday. By 1884 Calgary had 4000 people, some of them children.

In 1902 Calgary was still just one square mile long. It extended from 4th street west to 6th street east and from the river to 17th avenue south.  Districts we now think of as part of the city, even inner city, were just prairie or tiny settlements. Crescent Heights was a private farm. North Hill was grassland. Sunnyside was not part of Calgary and belonged to the McHugh family.  Killarney and South Calgary were still farm land and the Elbow Park area was a race track.  Mission was another settlement, and had 7 homes..

This means that many of the early schools in the area, in and out of Calgary proper were the most basic type of schools- just one room.  At first governments took little interest in schools and the churches were left to decide books, teacher licenses and school rules.

However by 1888 the Northwest Territories government had a group of 8 who served as a school board for the entire area. They met twice a year, in Regina and set up rules for farmers and local residents who wanted a school, to pay a property tax for 70% of its cost. The board arranged the hiring of teachers, selected all books and maps for schools and registered and monitored attendance of students. Most farmers were willing if not always able, to pay that tax.

Calgary set up some early schools temporarily. As of 1889 it had three schools but 14 saloons. In 1890 a school was set up in the basement of Knox Presbyterian church and the teacher there, Florence Brown, had 53 students. The students could be of many ages, and a teacher had to examine them for skills to figure out their current level. It was ‘individualized  learning’ of a century ago since there were no grades.

Attendance was sporadic. In 1891 Calgary became a city and many more people arrived. By 1892 though there were 88 students registered, though only about 27 attended on any given day.  The committee that had set up the school district in 1886 wanted to make sure students did attend and a strong policy was set up to discourage truancy..

In 1893 Reverend Turner held a  class in the back room of a frame and canvas building near the Elbow River that on the weekends was also the church. In 1895 a small school opened at Nose Creek and some classes met on the second floor of a town hall above the police cells. At that time Miss J. S. McIntyre had 80 students.

Soon there were students who finished the levels matching grades one to eight and who wanted to go on. James Short organized a high school and was teacher and later school board secretary.

By 1898 there were 604 elementary students in Calgary and 66 taking courses past grade 8 level.  By 1900 a survey of the area found that 80% of the people were from the British Isles, the Maritimes or Ontario so even then their children in schools had cultural diversity.
 
Overcrowding of the first few schools necessitated more makeshift solutions.  In 1900 an unused hotel room became a classroom and in 1903 Calgary got its first separate building for a high school. It was called the City Hall school officially but students nicknamed it “Sleepy Hollow”. It was located just behind present day city hall.

Meanwhile in the outlying settlements, small rural schools were also struggling to serve their populations. In 1905 some schools only operated June to September since winter roads were impassable and farm chores took up much of spring and fall.

When Alberta became a province in 1905 it was in large part due to lobbying by the premier of the territories at the time, Frederick Haultain.  Haultain had been born in England but grew up in Ontario in the 1860s and attended law school. When Canada formed in 1867 the new nation had only four provinces but the dream had been for it to expand. Haultain, who had moved west, joined the government of the Northwest Territories since 1897. He very much valued education and at one point promised a school grant of $250- $350 per teacher and $2 per pupil for anyone who attended over 100 days a year.

Haultain had the idea of forming the territories into one big province called Buffalo. It would include Alberta, Saskatchewan , Athabasca and Assiniboia, and would be the biggest province in Canada. The government in Ottawa would not allow that however and decided instead to set up separate provinces and Alberta and Saskatchewan came into being in September 1905.

In that year the new Alberta Act said that public education must be universally available and that any 3 ratepayers could petition to form a school district under five miles in any direction.  The minimum number of children for such a school was eight.

This means that many rural schools were very small but education was now a priority of government, and official policy. Premier Rutherford, the first premier said that education was the foundation of all good government and named himself minister of education. The new province had 34,000 students spread among 562 schools and there were 1200 teachers. 

When Alberta became a province, Calgary had already been a city for 14 years. It had a population of nearly 10,000 and 3 police officers. The city had just over a thousand students.

In a typical small rural school of those early years, children might be aged 5-14. It was common to quit at age 14 to care for family or work the land. Midnapore and Springbank had schools since 1887 and since some students arriving had not had schooling before, they might be aged 5 to 8 in the equivalent of grade one, and some who were at a grade two level might even be in their teens.  However the teacher moved them through the skills as well as she could and some advanced several levels in one year.

The teachers in rural schools were often young. It was not uncommon to have 16-18 year old teachers teaching students who were just a few years younger. One time a school inspector came to see how the class was doing and mistook the tall male in from of him for the teacher. It was a student in grade 8.

So early schools had children arriving at the door, wanting to learn. I think of this sometimes when I wait in hallways before the opening bell even in 2012.  There is that magic moment when the doors open, the kids rush in and I notice as I stand there ushering them past us, the parents waiting, in the background, waving to their little ones, kissing them and making sure they have their books for the day.

It always nearly tears me up.  The parents are there again, like clockwork, at the end of kindergarten morning, or they have sent the nannies, the grandma or granddad, or even the daycare worker.  Someone is there to get these loved children and usher them back.  They pile onto buses, and for those in afternoon classes the older ones get on their bikes or start the walk, some get into cars as parents line the avenue for pickup time.

I am struck that we in the schools are being trusted with the most treasured possession these parents have.  It is a heavy responsibility and a huge honor.

 I know they are turning over to us their whole child, warts and all, insecurities, dreams, foibles and all, and yet we can only get around to helping the child with that more restricted set of things that are our business to attend to.  We teach the basic skills. We teach about sharing and taking turns and we listen to their joys and sorrows and try to be supportive. 

Childhood is one of the most pivotal stages of anyone’s life and we are treading on very important ground here.  I want so much to do it well. And that is what all teachers apparently have always felt, even in pioneer schools.