School House

July, 2000

by Jay Bulloch

Abandoned for many years, the 133 Mile Schoolhouse was torn down in May 1997 and recently rebuilt at 108 Heritage Site.

"One day it was so cold we were sitting around the stove (round barrel) reading and I looked down the end of my skirt started to burn," laughed Mary (Johnson) Patenaude. "Somebody put a chimney in later. But the chimney at the back wasn't there when I was there."

She was reminiscing about the three years that she taught at the Enterprise Schoolhouse at 133 Mile. The old Enterprise school had burned down and a new school was built on Felker's land in 1938 remembered the 79-year- old former school teacher.

The third school teacher to teach at the 'new' school, Patenaude taught between 1941 and 1943.

Patenaude remembers going to school in Vancouver at the Vancouver Normal School. Prior to coming to this wild country she spoke to Laura Cyrstal and another former teacher. "They were in Vancouver and I went to see them before I went up," she remembered. And before she came up she also went over to see Mr. Lord, the principal of the normal school who gave her a few pointers.

With her things loaded up in her dad's car she traveled the Cariboo Road winding in and out. "I had never been any further than Chilliwack," she said. "I was a city girl."

There she was, at 20, single and miles away from home. "I was in a different world," she said from her home in Enderby, B.C. "Then it certainly was a different world. I was getting into ranching world and the countryside."

She admitted that she wasn't quite prepared for the vastness of the land and certainly not the cold weather. "I wasn't used to that," she stressed. "The second winter I was there we had to close the school for three weeks. It was minus 60 Fahrenheit."

She boarded with Enid and Ernie Wright at the 132 Mile Ranch. "She was a real go-getter," she remembered. "She helped me with a lot of things in and out of school. Enid was great. She was artistic, musical and wonderful."

A dozen pupils filled the little school and at times Patenaude taught as many as 15 students from Grades 1 to 8. "I was scared silly of the little Grade 1s," she said. "I thought, 'what if I can't teach them how to read!'" One little Felker girl learned to read all by herself, she remembered and one little Wright boy had to be sent home because he was too young.

But when she first got to the school, it was logs inside and out and there was no porch. "I decided I would paint the window sills, put up pictures, maps and brighten the place up," she said. Then the inspector dropped by. Although there was no school board, they did have a trustee who was also the inspector. He traveled from Kamloops to inspect the rural schools.

"Mr. McArthur liked our little school," she said. So, she decided to ask him for a new porch. "I had no porch and it was just horrible. I asked the inspector, 'how can I rustle up a porch?'" The district finally agreed to supply the lumber but Patenaude would have to find someone to provide the labour. So she asked the men around the area. "I got my porch built," she said. "That would have been the second year maybe."

Inside the school there was the infamous round barrel made out of an old oil drum used for the fire. A couple of the boys were the janitors and they lit the stove in the morning. One of the locals, Harry Felker supplied the wood for the school. There was a bucket of water and Patenaude asked the children to bring their own cups. "They didn't like drinking out of the dipper," she said. They used gas lamps, although Patenaude doesn't remember having to use them very often. Out back there were two outhouses.

While some of the students walked to schools, others rode their horses. Patenaude was given a ride to school each morning in Ernie Wright's car. "I had one girl that came all the way over from Enterprise and the railway station," she said."She was over 15 years old and wanted to come for the social things and to learn a few more things."

There were the Christmas concerts that the school children and Patenaude prepared. "We had one one Christmas," she said. "But the next year it was too cold and we never did get to put it on."

She remembered that Santa Claus visited and gave the children presents. "It was a social event and we had a tree and so forth." One year they made the play up themselves. Another year they used excerpts from Winnie the Pooh. "I was so surprised when it became popular again," she laughed.

One fall, the school didn't open right away. Patenaude had gone to school but the children weren't there. "I got on the crank phone," she said. "They had all come down with something. One of the girls had lost her hair." Later then learned that the students all had Scarlet Fever.

Classes started at 9 a.m. and finished at 3 p.m. "Those were the days when the Department of Education was hung up on integration," she said. "We had to take one theme and work all our subject matter into one theme - arithmetic, social studies, English" That year they worked with the Mexican theme, and it worked extremely well. "They dropped that integration directive a few years later."

"At the time we had to teach sight reading," she said. She felt it didn't work so she started in on some phonics and mixed the site reading with the phonics.

She enjoyed her three years at the Enterprise Schoolhouse at 133 Mile, later known as the San Jose Schoolhouse. Patenaude has many fond memories. "I did learn to ride a horse. Well I was forced into riding a horse," she quipped. "I rode all the way to Wright Station and was scared silly there and back."

On July 7, 2000 the schoolhouse was moved to its new home at the 108 Heritage Site where volunteers from the 100 Mile and District Historical Society will preserve it.