Jan 17, 2013


Sharbot Lake Public School, which is slated to close at the end of the 2013 school year, will long be remembered by countless former students and staff alike as one small rural school with one big family feeling.

The construction of the original one-room schoolhouse, which was the first official school in Sharbot Lake, commenced on April 21, 1887 following a public meeting at which a building site was chosen. The schoolhouse was located near the present school, but down the hill and closer to Road 38. It housed students from 1887 until 1930.

Jerome Thomson of Sharbot Lake was a merchant and lumber dealer who moved to the area in 1870, when he was 20 years old. He died at his Sharbot Lake residence on December 16, 1946 at the age of 96. He was also a keen hunter and it was while hunting that he crossed paths with children who did not attend school, an experience that inspired him to become a champion of education in the area. He approached W.D. Black, representative of Lennox in the Ontario legislature, and asked him to consider erecting a school in the north. In fact, before the first school was built, classes were held in one of Thomson's buildings beside his Sharbot Lake home and he paid the salary of the first teacher in Sharbot Lake prior to the school’s opening in 1888.

Thomson, who was elected to Frontenac County Council in 1907 and served until 1913, became warden in 1910. He also served on the school board for a number of years.

By 1928, overcrowding in the Sharbot Lake schoolhouse forced some classes to be moved to the local community hall. The original schoolhouse remained until 1930 when it was decided to build a new, brick, two-room building on land that was purchased from M. Avery, with one room above serving as the principal's office. The new building was where the present day school is now located. Students from various one-room schoolhouses in the vicinity would eventually come to this new school to write their grade eight entrance examinations, a policy that remained in effect until 1937.

In January 1946, this newer school also became overcrowded and the board opted to pay for grade 9 and 10 students to be transferred to Sydenham High School. In January 1947, grade 7 and 8 students were also moved temporarily to the Masonic hall due to overcrowding. As a result, in September 1948 four new classrooms were added and renovations were made to the two original existing classrooms. New washrooms with running water and a new hot water heating system were installed at this time.

In September of 1965, an $85,000 three-room addition was made to the school. The addition consisted of two new classrooms with one all-purpose room below them. When the school officially opened after this renovation, the event attracted over 200 guests. In an article published at that time, the high school’s principal, Robert Joyce, commented on the benefit to older students attending the school, who up until that time were having difficulty adjusting to high school. Joyce said he felt that the new consolidated school would help bring students together at an earlier age and therefore would allow grade nine students entering high school to have greater success in their first year there.

In 1975 additional office space was added to the existing principal’s office. The library at the school, which had been initially located between the two original school rooms, was moved to a new room in the basement in the early 1970s and after a time was moved again upstairs to the main floor. In June 1980 the school celebrated its 50-year anniversary with a reunion organized by the parent teacher group.

I spoke with two residents of Sharbot Lake who worked as staff at the school for years, and who look back on their years there with a special fondness. Pam Woods, who taught kindergarten and grades 1 and 2 at SLPS for over 15 years and who retired in 2009, recalled the school as being “a wonderful environment” to work in. “The staff were incredibly cohesive because we had to work closely together to accomplish all of the tasks that came our way. That is really what accounted for the kind of big family atmosphere that really defined the school.”

John Pariselli, who was a principal at the school for five years before retiring in 2000, said arriving at SLPS from Toronto was like “coming home. … It was a great experience and it was also a different time and generation; a time when the roles of staff were more blurred and tended to overlap, which made for strongly knit bonds among staff.”

Both Pariselli and Woods said they feel that the move to the new school need not remove the big family feeling that was predominant at SLPS. Regarding the feeling at the new school, the biggest factor will be seeing if the adults involved will have the same intent. “No matter the size of the school, it is the intent of the staff there that will set and define the tone at the school,” Pariselli said.

Woods agreed that the closure of SLPS need not be seen as a negative. “It (the new school) obviously will not be as intimate a setting as that at SLPS but I’m sure that plans have been made to accommodate the younger students in the best way possible so that the school functions well as a whole,” she said, adding, “It seems to work at North Addington so it will interesting to see how it works at the new Sharbot Lake school.” Woods said that the older students will surely benefit by the addition of younger students to the school. “Staff will be able to tap into the benefits of inviting older students to take on more leadership roles and that can be a really positive thing. Seeing older students accepting new responsibilities and taking them seriously can be a really wonderful thing.”

* History and old photos were taken from a history compiled by Shirley Peruniak, a dedicated and long-time volunteer at SLPS

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