A One-of-a-Kind One-Room School

I received a number of e-mails about my article two weeks ago on one room schoolhouses in Mississauga. Judging by the number of responses, there are many in this modern city who remember attending them. Most of these correspondences inquired about the one one-room schoolhouse that still functions as a school (including an e-mail that challenged my 1876 construction date). So here’s more on the Old Britannia Schoolhouse.

Students at this Mississauga school line up at the door, girls in their bonnets and long dresses, boys donning straw caps with pants hoisted ankle-high by rope suspenders.

This may seem like a scene from the days of the early settlers, but it’s really 2009 and these students are on a day trip to the Old Britannia Schoolhouse at Hurontario Street and Matheson Boulevard. Students here are encouraged to attend in period costume. Britannia’s one-room school is restored to look as it did in the 1930s, back when it was known by the official, and uninspired name of “School Section #12 - Toronto Township.” The “section” includes 80 hectares of farmland that border the school on three sides.

Inside, the students take a seat at one of the small desks, made of iron and maple – screwed down to the floor in perfect columns to provide a sense of order that might be said to be lacking in today’s schools. The Union Jack still hangs from the wall and there’s the obligatory photo of King George V in his naval uniform to remind students of a time when duty to the Empire was more important than reading and writing. Some items in the Old Britannia Schoolhouse date back to the 1880s.

The atmosphere is post-Victorian, but the lessons taught in the schoolhouse today are part of the present school curriculum. But things haven’t changed too much.

“Schoolmaster” Dennis Patterson maintains a strict set of rules, and methods of proper correction for visiting students who break them. Boys are usually the troublemakers, but a girl who misbehaves might find herself at the front of the class with her pony-tail pegged to the wall. It’s all in fun but it does remind students that school life was rigid for children long ago.

In my previous article on one-room schools, I stated that Old Britannia was not as old as it may in fact be. Accounting ledgers uncovered during the restoration of the school suggest that it may have been built as early as 1852 and that there may even have been a smaller wood frame school on the same site dating back to 1833.

One date is certain and it’s that the last students graduated from here in 1959. After that, SS #12 was little more than a target for vandals. Students from Streetsville Secondary School formed the Britannia Restoration Club in 1971 and with the aid of a Wintario grant the building was restored in 1982. A year later, the school was reopened with James Potter as the first schoolmaster. Potter also donated many of the school’s artifacts.

The school was designated as an historic site in 1978 in response to fears that the school board was planning to sell the entire farm – schoolhouse and all – for a new sports stadium that was to be the main venue for the Canada Games. Mississauga didn’t win the bid to host the sports event, but financial pressure to sell the farm has prevailed ever since.

Budget restraints forced closure of the schoolhouse and the farm in 1993. Both the school and farm were reopened in 1994 but this turned out to be the farm’s last active year as an education centre – with the exception of the sugar bush at the “back end” of the property, which remained open for class visits.

Each new school season seemed to bring more budget cuts and each time, the idea was revived of bringing the farm back, to help finance the school, just as the school section’s original charter required.

In 1844, a board of trustees, including Colonel William Thompson, James Magrath (minister of St. Peter’s in Erindale) and area resident Joseph Gardner acquired Lot 3, Concession I W.H.S. on the condition that the rent from the farm (or sale of produce from it, if operated by the school) be used to pay the teacher and buy books.

Confronted with declining funds 150 years later, former teachers and students helped form the “Friends of the Old Britannia Schoolhouse” to raise money within the community to keep the historic school running.

Community effort built the Britannia schoolhouse, and community effort has helped to keep it open for the benefit of students from across Peel Region. The schoolhouse’s original trustees would be proud and grateful for all that the Friends have done to keep their little schoolhouse, and the 80 hectare farm round it, an important part of the modern community.