By Marsha Brick
Over the Christmas holidays I had lunch with my Mothers cousin who moved back to Winnipeg after being gone for over 50 years. One of the things we have in common is that her childhood home was where I spent a lot of time with one of my childhood friends who is still a friend. I knew that we had gone to the same High School; so, I asked her where she went from Elementary to Junior High. She told me Seven Oaks Elementary School on Smithfield and Edmond Partridge Junior High; exactly the schools I when to, just 20 years earlier.
What was interesting about this was that the Seven Oaks Elementary school on Smithfield that I went to was build in 1962. So, I did a little digging and discovered that the first Seven Oaks School was built in 1905 and a second floor was added in 1955. In 1961 the cost of bringing the building up to code was over $2,000.00 and the vote was taken to have a bylaw allocating funds to build the new Seven Oak school in 1962.
When they tore down the old school it was the last wood schoolhouse operating in Winnipeg. The Seven Oaks Elementary School that I attended had six classrooms; only 5 were used for classrooms and other was our gym as well as resource class and where we had our Drama class after school. Every morning and end of the day we would line up outside our classrooms and sing O’ Canada in the morning and God Save the Queen at the end of the day.
When the old school closed, the principle was Mrs. G. M. Stewart. She was the principle for the next 20 twenty years the new school operated. It closed its doors at the end of June 1982 with a closing tea. I remember going to the tea and Mrs. Stewart called me over to give me a
hug.
There were 7 or 8 of us from our class that all teared up knowing this was the end of our great school with the wonderful principle. That evening our group went out for coffee to talk and laugh for over 5 hours. I still remember that to this day.
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