The washrooms at the new schools in 2012 are very nice. Some have wood doors on each cubicle, light polished wood and great sound proofing. The recently renovated washrooms at the older schools have bright tile and aluminum sinks, replacing the porcelain sinks of the 1920s that are still in a few of the older classrooms.  Hand dryers now are often electric not just the white ones of the 1990s but shiny metal ones too.  Paper towels from a dispenser are the norm, having replaced the roller towel of earlier times.  Some of the elementary schools even have shorter toilets and some have low flush ones even.

Drinking fountains abound in most schools but again, the trend is changing. A lot of students actually bring thermoses of water from home, maybe as a hundred years ago and a lot purchase or carry water in plastic bottles from vending machines. We always need water, but how we get it in schools has changed.

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If they could, settlers set up a water source for the school, a well on the property ideally or they put the school near a stream.  If there was no well or it was winter and the stream had frozen over, students would bring water from home. It was a student chore to get water and carry it in a metal pail. When placed in the classroom this clean drinking water was placed in a location for easy access and all students often shared a common ladle, dipper or drinking cup.  On cold days not only would the water in this pail freeze but the ladle might be frozen inside it.  Later rules required that there be a fountain or a crock with a tap to not share a communal cup.

In Calgary in 1885 John Brennan dug a well near city hall and filled a galvanized iron tank with water from it. He put the tank on the back of a horse-drawn wagon and went around selling the water to residents for 25 cents a barrel.

School trustees around the North West Territories had to make sure that each school had a supply of water and in 1892 if weather was frosty, water had to be left twice daily at the school so the children would have something to drink.   Those who lived right in Calgary had access to water, electricity and telephones by 1891 but this did not apply to all residents or all schools.  In 1900 the city of Calgary purchased water from the water works company and took on the responsibility of supplying water to residents but by 1906 only two schools were getting water piped to them directly.

If water was stored in a cistern near the school that worked well unless something contaminated the water.  Cleaning the cistern involved using rags, tubs of clean water and emptying the contaminated water pail by pail. If someone spat in the water or if a mouse was found floating in it, the system had to be cleaned.

In 1904 Central school students had a fountain in each classroom so they did not have to leave the room to get a drink. Rurally though, kids were often still bringing water from home, hauling it in tall cream cans.

There were two big fires in Calgary in 1912 and the 40,000 people living in the city felt strongly that it should be easier to get water to homes.   A pump house, built in 1913 on the banks of the Bow, helped and this building still exists, 99 years later, but it has been converted to a drama theatre called The Pumphouse Theatre.

A tunnel 12 feet in diameter, with concrete walls two feet thick was dug 58 feet below the Bow riverbed. Water would be pumped by two large pumps through smaller pipes along this tunnel over to North Calgary. As it flowed by gravity it entered two 40 foot deep wells and a cistern. Screens blocked any debris that also got collected and in 1918 chlorine was added to ensure the water was safe. After about 1925 a water reservoir on the Elbow River at Currie collected water in huge pipes and in 1929 a pipe from a reservoir at Glenmore also was used to supply water. In 1968 Bearspaw Dam supplied water to north Calgary and the original pumphouse was no longer needed.  Calgary now is known for its supply of very clean drinking water, but kids in schools often still carry bottled water to drink. It may, it seems to me, be a victory of marketers.

Early schools usually had a washbasin in the corner, with a pail of water or like they had at home, a sink with a slop pail under. Students used soap, often handmade, to wash up, and dried their hands on one communal towel.

They also usually had outhouses, sometimes two, one for the girls, one for boys and the latter was usually the one farther from the school.  A few even had three outhouses, one for the teacher.

These outhouses existed from the 1890s and in rural areas of Alberta still were there in the 1940s.  It all depended on the plumbing of that area. These were usually wood shacks and pioneer kids often had the same arrangement at home so it was not new to them.  In the winter a path had to be worn through the snow to enable kids to get to the outhouse and it was given many affectionate names – little house, water closet, biffy, WC, privy, backhouse, lavatory, privy, throne room, closet, opera house, parliament, outdoor convenience. On a cold day kids did not always make it all the way there. At home they’d use a chamber pot. At school apparently some actually headed to the hay in the barn, where the horses were and the building was warmer.

There was an trick to the construction of an outhouse, because for one thing you wanted kids to be safe in there and the holes they sat on to not be too high off the ground or too wide.  Inspectors came around in the 1890s to make sure that the outhouse was clean.  If it was not, the school grant may be denied or delayed. 

In 1896 one inspector suggested that the outhouse door have a weight put on it so it would close automatically.  Another strongly suggested that the seats above the holes be somehow made so it was impossible for children to stand up on them.  Some inspectors made a note of obscene writing on the walls of the outhouse and required the teacher to clean them.  If a windstorm blew the outhouse over, or kids for a prank did so at Hallowe’en, inspectors also made rules to try to anchor the outhouse more firmly.  When replicas have been made of early school outhouses, designers now  put metal posts deep into the ground so the outhouse is not tippable.

The toilet seat was going to be very cold in winter so sometimes it would have a warm fabric lining around it, for comfort.  If there were lots of kids at the school or if little kids were scared to go alone, it was often provided for two or even three kids to ‘go’ at once and there were double and triple hole privies. In 1929 there were often two sizes of toilet seats to be placed over the hole opening. Some later outhouses actually had seating for five.

By 1937 rules were passed in some districts that the outhouse had to use galvanized buckets under each hole and a back door so that someone could reach in, remove the buckets and empty them.  This back door became for some pranksters, a place to spray the unsuspecting with water.  By 1941 some outhouses were wallpapered and cozy with fur-lined seats even. Some even were heated by gas.

Paper was hard to come by and at the toilet kids might use pages from old catalogues or newspapers.

The door to the outhouse had to allow some ventilation and often a design would be subtly carved into it, or above it. It also should be a very safe place so that nobody got stuck inside, but also nobody could get inside who was not wanted there. It had to have some sort of lock from the inside, or at least a rope or twine to hold the door shut. The door of the outhouse usually opened inward. Though that might be an inconvenience as you went out, it did ensure that snow would not pile up and prevent you from leaving, and neither would any kids’ prank to block the door.

There was an etiquette to using the outhouse too. It was not considered proper for a woman to emerge from an outhouse if a man was in the vicinity.  If a child wanted to go to the outhouse, permission must be granted from the teacher and in some early schools this permission was granted by a simple hand gesture.  Putting up one finger or two indicated what type of production was involved and if you think of it may have also been a subtle indication for need of supplies or urgency.  For many years urine got nicknamed number one. A common joke then was to take care of yourself in life, look after number one, but don’t step in number two.

Some of the later outhouses had posters on the wall and there was real effort to make them cozy.   In rural parks in the country there are still some public outhouses though they now usually have hand sanitizer pumps on the wall, and real toilet paper.

There were pranks nonetheless and accidents. It was a common crisis to have dropped a mitten down the hole or for little boys to throw rocks at the girls’ privy if a girl was inside. On Hallowe’en  night a well known  prank was to knock over the outhouse. It was a vital but not always pleasant task to clean the floors of the outhouse and the district school inspector would usually inspect it to see if that was done.

The first replacements for the outhouse were indoor chemical toilets. They did not flush fully but they did store the contents in sanitary ways.   I 911 Calgary got its first public lavatory and at Connaught school when washrooms were installed, they were put in the basement.  Even by 1921 only one tenth of rural schools had indoor chemical toilets yet though.  The ones that had them found that they did not always work well either. Belfast school still had an outhouse in 1934.