The Little Red Schoolhouse actually existed. It arrived in Coquitlam sometime before 1907 as a result of parents petitioning Victoria for a school in the newly settled community.
It was one of hundreds of schools established across B.C. between 1900 and 1925. Wherever a settlement grew up, a school was established as soon as 10 children of school age could be rounded up.
The schools were run by three-person elected school boards, which were also responsible for maintaining school buildings, hiring teachers and ensuring teaching standards were met.
It can't have been easy being a teacher back then - strict rules governed their conduct, as evidenced by the Rules for Female Teachers established in 1915 by the B.C. Superintendent of Schools; they included the following:
You may not dress in bright colours.
You must wear two petticoats.
You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.
You must sweep the floor once a day, scrub the floor once a week and start the fire at 7 a.m. each day.
Coquitlam was similar to other fast-growing municipalities, with schools springing up wherever people homesteaded. Millside school opened in 1907 and, for decades, the basement woodpile, stacked ready to feed the wood-burning stove that heated the school, was a favourite play area for boys.
A school opened in east Coquitlam in 1910 - settlers there sent children as young as four in order to maintain a minimum of 10 children. Schools also sprang up in Port Coquitlam and Port Moody but the next school to open in Coquitlam was Mountain View in 1923.
In Maillardville, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic school met the needs of the French Canadians who came to work at Fraser Mills. Initially housed in two rooms above the general store and, then, by 1910, in its own building, Lourdes was staffed by teachers who came from a convent in New Westminster via streetcar and a walk through the bush.
Maillardville pioneers have fond memories of their early school days, including the rivalry between Lourdes and Millside, to which some of them had to transfer when their parents could not afford the convent fees. Many were held back a grade due to their lack of English and playground fights between French- and English-speaking children were common.
As one of the writers of Coquitlam 100 Years - Reflections on Pioneer Life, I was privileged to interview many of the city's pioneers, from Maillardville seniors who spoke only halting English to the sheriff who presided over the last hanging at the B.C. Penitentiary and the elderly gentleman who used a brass ear-trumpet into which I had to shout my questions.
I learned how Maillardville school children walked uphill through the bush, past Como Lake and down the other side for the annual school picnic at the beach in Port Moody, about winter skating expeditions to Como Lake and tobogganing down Marmont on homemade sleds.
The book notes that the first teacher in the Little Red Schoolhouse was Miss Dorothy Eldridge, who was paid $50 a month to teach 29 pupils.
For many decades, Coquitlam children had to travel to New Westminster for high school and then suffer the indignity of having their provincial exam results published in the local newspaper, The Columbian.
Although Coquitlam School District was formed in 1946, it was 20 years later that Coquitlam's first high school, Centennial, opened its doors.
Your History is a column in which, once a month, representatives of the Tri-Cities' three heritage groups writes about local history. Hazel Postma, a former newspaper reporter and editor, is a director of the Coquitlam Heritage Society and association vice-president external at Douglas College.
