Interesting Architecture at John XXIII Catholic School

By Jill Passmore, Visitor Experience Coordinator

The following is an excerpt from the Olive French Manuscript – a document in the archival collection about Oshawa’s earliest schools from 1867 – 1967.

To accommodate its increased enrolment, the separate school board is building a new elementary school, John XIII(sic), on Athabasca Street. It will be the first to feature the new team teaching technique. It will have operable walls in one of the three quadrants that will open a three-classroom unit where groups of pupils can be taught by a team of teachers.

This circular school is 136 feet in diameter and will have a 64 foot inner court. It will have eight classrooms and a kindergarten area. It will accommodate more than 300 students. It is expected to be ready for classes in December 1967.

The principal is not yet appointed.

Olive French, Public and Separate Schools in 1967

Earlier this year, I taught the Oshawa Museum’s First Nations program to multiple classes at John XXIII. Arriving in the parking lot, you get the first glance at the circular dome. The school has had several additions since 1967, but the apex remains its most prominent feature.

The curved hallways make for a less institutional feeling inside than in most schools. Many teachers have told me, ‘well, you won’t get lost!’ The dome’s peak is in what is now the library, which facilitates a great teaching space.

Sadly, the traces of the operable walls Olive French mentions are no longer there, but John XXII remains Oshawa’s first circular school.

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March 13-17 is March Break at the Oshawa Museum, and we’re going back to school!

Join us for School Days: discover what school was like for kids back in the early 1900s! Step back in time when you enter Guy House. Sit in school desks, write on slates, dress up like a Victorian kid, and more!

March Break at the OM is taking place from March 13 – 17, and we’re open from 9am-4pm. The last tour leaves at 3:30pm. Please allow around 1.5 hours for your visit!

March Break activities is $5/child (free for OHS Members), and this includes a tour of the Oshawa Museum.

Student Museum Musings – A Student Placed at Home

By Nova S., Trent Child & Youth Studies Intern

From the beginning of my university career, I had my eyes set on a particular fourth year course in my major. Said course allowed students to try field-based learning, a chance to gain practical experience. Students could actually apply what they were learning in the classroom.

Well, so much for that.

So much for field-learning, and heck, so much for classrooms, too.

I never minded online learning. Really, I didn’t. It seems like most people would gape at me for that, but there were benefits for someone with anxiety like me. Yes, maybe it was an escape of sorts, but at times, in-person was overwhelming sensorially, with all the people and noise. So it was, honestly, sort of a nice break. Online, I didn’t have to commute. Online, I didn’t have to face the cold. Online, I could go at my own pace, and rewind my professor as many times as I needed.

It took a while for someone with anxiety like me to miss people, but wow, do I miss people. (Some people, at least. I think my fear of crowds is worse now than ever, along with everybody else’s). The benefits of being online were all still there, but the cons began to sink in.

Somehow, moving forward from there, I made a couple of friends from my university. I also made friends out of others on the Internet in general, because where else are you supposed to hang out? Okay, I think to myself, still, being online isn’t so bad.

And then it came time for my field-based learning.

Before I was a fourth-year, I took advantage of a few other opportunities to meet and interact with kids. I guess now would be a good time to mention that my major is Child & Youth Studies.

I volunteered at my family’s church for a special day of activities. My brother was, not-so-coincidentally, assigned to be my helper. We spent the day going from station to station, corralling kids only a few years younger than my brother at the time, holding hands, making crafts for them to show their parents afterwards, and encouraging participation in song and dance. We helped each other, we kept track of each other, and we made sure we all felt included.

Though I’m not in touch with that church anymore, I’m sure special days like that are no longer running – at least on such a grand scale.

I joined the Pen Pal Club at my university, in which we were paired up with a student from an elementary school nearby. The letters were fun to write, using different colours and stickers, but it was even more fun to receive. Messy and scribbled spelling mistakes, drawings you have to squint at to figure out what they’re supposed to be, excited retellings of their accomplishments in school, and eagerness to meet you! Yes, we would meet two or three times a year at the university and have a few stations we would rotate through, where stories would be told, colouring would be done, magic would be performed, and more. And at the end of the day, the kid paired with you would hug you goodbye and file out the door with their class.

When the pandemic started, we had already established pen pals and written to them once. It was a couple of weeks before the kids were supposed to come in person to visit when the whole thing was cancelled.

Lastly, I had a part-time job at an indoor playground, mainly rented out for children’s birthday parties. Usually, supervision was the job of the host parents – whoever’s kid’s birthday it was. But, rather frequently, we helped kids down from parts of the playground they’d climbed up and then realized too late that they were scared. We served food and got thank yous. Once, even, this adorable girl asked me to help her wipe her face and hands.

My boss texted us not too long into the pandemic that we were closed until further notice. And so, I waited. And waited. It wasn’t until I tried applying for other jobs and needed them for a reference that I texted my boss and discovered that, actually, the place had closed permanently. I guess it was a smaller business that was one of the many to, unfortunately, not survive this pandemic.

And now, here I am. I have a placement, yet I am not out in the field with kids, but at home. And I finally realize that I miss the kids more than I miss adult people, probably. (Sorry).

It’s nobody’s fault, after all. We all have to continue being safe or this will really never end.

Still, it’s not all that bad. I was fortunate enough to be able to go in-person once for a brief initiation, and my supervisors, both at the museum and at the university, are determined to make sure I benefit as much as possible from it.

I was, as I’m sure many people are, never focused on history. Sure, it was fascinating, and I was fortunate enough to have a pretty good history teacher in high school. But like many others, I moved on from it after graduating with my own interests in mind.

My first duty after being accepted by Oshawa Museum was to familiarize myself with their programs, exhibitions, values, and blog. I didn’t expect to get so sucked into it. Everything looked so fascinating. I fell into a rabbit hole of sorts, clicking link after link, reading letters, viewing photographs, learning, and being fascinated.

Here at the Oshawa Museum (from my home), my main task is to improve on and build programs. Children’s programs, flexibly built for online or in-person, that are mindful and expressive of the diversity within ourselves and within others.

I’m determined to help make kids fascinated in history, because our present and our futures have roots in the past. As I have had the fortunate opportunities to see, kids are full of excitement, wonder, and curiosity. But it’s not about what those kids will be in the future – it’s about what they are now. They are fully capable of forming their own opinions and being participatory citizens, and I hope I can play a part in inspiring them to realize that they can do plenty in diversity and equality activism just as they are now. It all starts with that fascination.

A Visit to the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine

By Quinn J., Summer Student

On Wednesday July 21st, I visited an Anglican holy order, the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, in Toronto in order to access their archives. The order used to own the Bishop Bethune private girls school in Oshawa, and thus they had primary documents related to my research into the school which could help me better determine the school’s purpose and who exactly attended it. The visit was one that I was looking forward to, not only because of the benefits for my research and because it would enable my possibly unhealthy obsession with mundane things from the past, but also because being able to experience history first hand, something that my time in school had never given me the opportunity to do.

The sisterhood was very welcoming to me, and I had a nice time talking with the archivist about the various materials they had to offer me. I was looking specifically at things related to the Bishop Bethune school, but from what I could glean, the sisterhood was involved in other educational ventures outside of city of Oshawa, throughout the province and country. It was overall a very enjoyable experience for me as I was able to dig through various records and even copies of the school magazine for my research into Oshawa’s educational past.

The most interesting thing in the collection, however, was the school’s ledger. It was a giant book that was over 100 years old, having been first written in when the sisterhood took control of the school in 1889. It’s probably the oldest thing I’ve ever touched, and it gave me a bit of a thrill to be able to just be able to go through it and get a window into how people lived over 100 years ago.

Perhaps I’m being a little too subjective, but I still get such a thrill from experiencing history, no matter how I experience it. Getting that glimpse into the lives of people who lived even just a hundred years before me is still very exciting for me, and this visit to get a window into the past like that was an incredible experience.

Oshawa’s Educational History

By Quinn J., Summer Student

In 1894, The Globe (which would go on to merge with The Mail and Empire into the Globe and Mail) did a profile on Oshawa. At the time, Oshawa was only a village of “4,000 souls,” but already it was noted for two things: its prominence as a manufacturing centre, a reputation Oshawa would hold on to up until the present day, and for its high quality educational institutions.

The Globe article not only mentions the high quality public schools but also the Bishop Bethune and Demill Ladies’ Colleges, both of which were renowned institutions outside of the province, and they attracted students from across the country. But today, this past as a centre for education is rarely remembered. I only learned about the two ladies colleges and the early Canadian public school system when I began working for the Oshawa Museum last month. My question is, why this is the case? If the Globe felt it was important enough to mention Oshawa’s status as an educational leader in its profile, why has it been so easy for us in the modern day to forget?

One possible explanation is that the signs of the educational institutions of the past haven’t been preserved as well, through no fault of the town or anyone in it. Bishop Bethune College was located in the house of former mayor T.N. Gibbs, but when the school closed in 1932 amid financial troubles, the land was sold to the city and a new school, the Central Collegiate Institute, was founded on the spot (it has since been home to Village Union School and currently Durham Alternative Secondary School). The Demill college was destroyed by a fire just two years after the publishing of the Globe article, and the college eventually moved to St. Catharines. This lack of standing physical evidence that could tie the city to its educational past could present an answer as to why that aspect is much better remembered, especially when contrasted with the large number of not only buildings that were built around Oshawa’s manufacturing, but the amount of people still alive who were there to witness the city’s manufacturing based economic boom.

In the same vein, education in the past was very much shaped around the industrial revolution that all of Ontario was experiencing in the mid to late 19th century. Public schooling during this period heavily focused on preparing children for their new roles in industrial society, as both labourers and citizens of the British Empire and Dominion of Canada. The close ties created between industry and education could provide a further example of why Oshawa’s educational past was not as common in the collective memory of the city; when creating new workers for manufacturing was the end goal of education, it could have become a lot easier to forget what got workers to their positions in the first place.

The history of Education in Oshawa is something that surprised me personally with how deep it went and how much history there was in something that I, and many others, take for granted in today’s age. It’s caught my attention, and I hope to dive even further into it as I continue my research with the museum over the summer.

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Sources

“Oshawa: A Manufacturing Centre R. S. Williams & Son F. L. Fowke D. Cinnamon The Queen’s Hotel Eli. S. Edmonson Mrs. M. E. May The Joseph Hall Machine Works Demill College Ed. E. Rogers Bishop Bethune College Provan’s Patent Car, Fork And Sling The McLaughlin Carriage Company.” The Globe (1844-1936), Oct 27, 1894.

French, Olive. “DeMill (1871-1920)”, The Olive French Manuscript, https://olivefrench.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/demill-1871-1920/.

Hood, M. MacIntyre. “Bishop Bethune College Recalled,” Daily Times Gazette, Nov. 17th, 1955.

Houston, Susan E. Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth Century Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

The Science of Homemaking

By Grace A., Summer Student

In May of 1930, The Oshawa Daily Times cut the metaphorical ribbon on Oshawa Collegiate’s new technical wing with a thirty-page special edition paper. The headline read “What Technical Education Means to the Youth of Oshawa,” implying, of course, that the opening of a vocational school meant opportunity. Industry-based learning was intended to prepare students who wouldn’t be attending university for direct entry into the trades. For boys, this meant taking courses in Motor Mechanics, Drafting, Woodworking, Electricity and Blue Print Reading. The curriculum was designed by the city’s most prominent industry men. With their vast knowledge and resources, the program was state-of-the-art. Across the hall, the young girls of Oshawa were also thinking about their future. That is, as Miss V. I. Lidkea, Head of Household Science, put it – “their life work of matrimony.”

“Some of the Special Vocational Department Classrooms,” Oshawa Daily Times (Oshawa, ON), May 7, 1930.

Lidkea’s program was one of many educational opportunities which emerged in the early twentieth century that was specifically designed for girls. Home Economics was a response to the question of how women’s work might be able to adapt to industrial society. Through technical training, young girls would learn the science behind sewing, cooking, laundry, home nursing, and the management of household appliances- and it was a science. At Iowa State College, women could receive a degree in homemaking after completing rigorous courses in physics and math, as well as instructions on electric circuits and household equipment. The ideal 1930s housewife could not only use an oven, but she could take it apart and put it back together again too. Despite their proficiencies in a multitude of technical subjects, it was clear that female students would be directed towards homemaking. Perhaps the question that economists actually meant to ask was, “how can we industrialize women’s labour while maintaining the idea of separate spheres?”

In the one-page feature, “Oshawa Girls Will Take Courses in Home-Making Arts,” Lidkea specified what technical education meant for the girls of Oshawa. Like the boy’s program, Oshawa Collegiate’s Homemaking Arts courses were created for girls who would not be pursuing further education. In a rather progressive effort, Lidkea assured readers that the girls would also be given the skills to meet the needs of industry. If a student decided to contribute to the family income through waitressing or nursing, she would be considered a competitive candidate. She would be able to earn a wage, regardless of whether she was single or married. (Lidkea explained that statistics showed both single and married women were working those days.) Above all, girls could use their education to improve the standard of living in their household. She would be a more efficient cleaner, launderer, cook, and dressmaker. She would run her home like a factory. Thus, the opening of Oshawa Collegiate’s technical wing seemed to walk the line between women’s work and economic activity. Was she a wife or a worker- or both?

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Sources

Bix, Amy Sue. “Equipped for Life: Gendered Technical Training and Consumerism in Home Economics, 1920-1980.” Technology and Culture 43, no. 4 (2002): 728-754.

Leonard Turner, Katherine. “A Woman’s Work Is Never Done: Cooking, Class and Women’s Work.” In How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working Class Meals at the Turn of the Century, 121-140. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014.

“Oshawa Girls Will Take Course in Home-Making Arts,” Oshawa Daily Times (Oshawa, ON), May 7, 1930.

“Some of the Special Vocational Department Classrooms,” Oshawa Daily Times (Oshawa, ON), May 7, 1930.

“What Technical Education Means to The Youth of Oshawa,” Oshawa Daily Times (Oshawa, ON), May 7, 1930.