Historic Sites of Manitoba: Shoal Lake School No. 458 (Shoal Lake, RM of Yellowhead)

Link to:
Principals | Vice-Principals | Teachers | Photos & Coordinates | Sources

The Lake View School District was organized formally in July 1885, named for the Shoal Lake in close proximity. With the coming of the Manitoba and Northwestern Railway, the town of Shoal Lake developed here. Classes were held in a railway freight shed until a schoolhouse could be built. With growing enrollment, elementary classes were later moved to the nearby Thompson’s Hall.

In 1906, a two-storey brick school building was erected by contractor E. R. Snider based on a design by F. R. Evans. It was replaced in 1926 with a one-storey red brick school designed by Winnipeg architect Gilbert C. Parfitt. (Similar schools were constructed in Brookdale, Deloraine, and Ninette.) The district was renamed Shoal Lake School in April 1937.

In 1956, it joined the school consolidation movement, becoming Shoal Lake Consolidated School No. 2352, by merging with rural schools in the surrounding area: Edgehill School No. 130 and King School No. 1337. It joined the Birdtail River School Division in 1959 and, two years later, a two-storey addition containing eight elementary classrooms, principal’s office, teachers’ room, library, and gymnasium was made to the red brick school, which became the high school. The older building was taken down and its lumber was used to construct two houses on Jane Street.

In 1978-1979, a larger gymnasium, science lab, library, and principal’s office were constructed, and officially opened in November 1979. The 1926 brick school building was demolished in the 1990s but a pair of metal signs at the site commemorate it.

Principals

Period	Principal
1899-1900	John Wesley Shipley (1878-1943)
1900-1910	Alfred Dickson (1876-1957)
1910-1912	?
1912-1913	John Hazelett Duffy (1878-1942)
1913-1914	Neil D. Reid
1914-1918	George Herbert Robertson (1876-?)
1918-1920	Howard Robert Haines (1891-1974)
1920-1924	Arthur Herbert Hoole (1889-1991)
1924-1926	Albert Hill (1882-?)
1926-1931	John Francis Goodwin (1885-1975)
1931-1934	Tordur “Theodore” Sigurdson (1896-?)
1934-1936	John Albert “Jack” George (1899-1970)
1936-1937	Clifford W. Biglow
1937-1938	John Leslie “Jack” Morrow (1896-1989)
1938-1940	William George Delgaty (1901-?)
1940-1941	John Melville Brown (1913-1996)
1941-1945	Wesley Sterling McGill (1904-1986)
1945-1959	Elmenia Jean Mollard (1901-1991)
1959-1961	Paul Robinson
1961-1962	Ernest Lorne Moffat (1899-1982)
1962-1963	J. W. Milner
1963-1965	Mrs. Helen Hepworth
1965-1967	Mr. R. V. Buschau
1967-1968	Andrew John Legebokoff (c1924-2014)
1968-1969	R. D. Bell
1969-1973	Andrew John Legebokoff (c1924-2014)
1973-c1978	?
c1978-1988	Wayne Basso
1988-1998	?
1998-1999	Dennis Schoonbaert

Vice-Principals

Period	Vice-Principal
1988-?	Lyall Wilson Nelson Luhowy

Teachers

Among the early teachers who worked at Shoal Lake School were Mr. Ambler (1886), Alice Victoria Short (1910s), Sarah Ann Sproat (1920-?), Dorothy Strachan (1927-1928), Sybil Francis Shack (1934-1935), Alys D. Hunter (1935-1939), Charles T. Cresswell, and F. Douglas Crandle.

School Year	Teachers
1961-1962	Mr. H. Giesbrecht, Miss M. Graffin, Mrs. Helen Hepworth

Photos & Coordinates

Shoal Lake School building erected in 1906 (1906) Source: Education Department Report, 1906, Manitoba Legislative Library. Postcard view of Shoal Lake School (circa 1912) Source: Gordon Goldsborough, 2014-0303 Postcard view of Shoal Lake School (no date) Source: Gordon Goldsborough, 2021-0097 The first Shoal Lake School, built in 1906 (no date) by G. W. Bartlett Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs, GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 64. The second Shoal Lake School, built in 1926 (no date) by G. W. Bartlett Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs, GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 64. The former Shoal Lake School building (circa 1986) Source: Historic Resources Branch, Public School Buildings Inventory, slide 1228. Site Coordinates (lat/long): N50.43292, W100.59194 denoted by symbol on the map above

Sources:

Annual Reports of the Manitoba Department of Education, Manitoba Legislative Library.

“Shoal Lake, Man,” Western Canada Fire Underwriters’ Association map, 16 October 1916, Archives of Manitoba.

“School report,” Shoal Lake Star, 26 April 1928, page 1.

“Council reports,” Birtle Eyewitness, 3 October 1961, page 10.

One Hundred Years in the History of the Rural Schools of Manitoba: Their Formation, Reorganization and Dissolution (1871-1971) by Mary B. Perfect, MEd thesis, University of Manitoba, April 1978.

Ripples On The Lake: A History of Shoal Lake Municipality, 1884-1984 by Shoal Lake History Book Committee, 1984.

“Trustees conduct regular meeting,” Hamiota Echo, 13 September 1988, page 7.

A Study of Public School Buildings in Manitoba by David Butterfield, Historic Resources Branch, Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism, 1994, 230 pages.

“Teacher assistants,” Shoal Lake Star, 27 July 1998, page 8.

We thank Reid Dickie, Tricia Tennant, Malcolm Bell, Nathan Kramer, and Ken Kristjanson for providing additional information used here.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 25 January 2022

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