Collection ORS - One Room Schools collection

Since 1908, the area around Milo has been home to 14 one-room schools. School districts were established when a group of three or more ratepayers petitioned the Provincial Ministry of Education, and there generally had to be at least five eligible students within a 4-5 mile radius.

The first one-room schools in the area were established at Queenstown (April 1908) and Pioneer (June 1908), and they were quickly followed by Liberty (1909), Corbie Hill and Willard (1910), Lake McGregor (1912) and Eastway (1913). East Majorville was established in 1917 (though it didn’t open until 1920), then Giffen and Kirkdale (1918), Fawn Hill (1919), Rocky Buttes (1921), Sunny Lake (1922) and finally Robertson (1928). Enrollment at the schools ranged from five to twenty-five students, and occasionally if the numbers dropped too low, a school might close for a year until enrollment increased. Since many of the students travelled long distances each day, schools were often closed when the weather was bad, with the missed time being made up in the summer. Closures due to epidemics lasted anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Most schools offered grades 1-8, after which students who wanted to continue their education had to travel to – or board in – a larger community. In 1926 Queenstown School moved into town and became a two-room school, going through to grade 12.

Corbie Hill and Kirkdale were the first of the one-room schools to close, both in 1937, and in 1938 supervision of the remaining schools was taken over by Bow Valley School Division #43. Consolidation became the guiding principle, and by the end of World War II the only one-room school left in the Milo area was East Majorville, which closed in 1952. A van was used to transport the children from Pioneer, Liberty and Rocky Buttes School Districts into Milo.

The collection consists of Minute Books, Daily Registers, correspondence and Assessments and Tax Rolls from some of the one-room school districts in the Milo area.

The collection has been arranged into the following series: Bow Valley School Division #43, Liberty, Pioneer, Rocky Buttes.