Audio
Isabella Point School - Kathleen Rathwell
Interviewer: Mary Davidson

TRANSCRIPTION by Usha Rautenbach

Kathleen Rathwell (KR): well I was I wasn’t quite six. I remember I was 6 on the 12th [1922] and I guess it was Labour Day or the day after (inaudible - possibly “Is that working?”).

EARLY READING
KR: I was there, and I remember the first thing I was given was a box full of letters, and a book to follow the words, and I couldn’t find these letters, they were so elusive, they were only little things. I think it was the first book in Grade One, “Little Red Hen had some chicks”, that sort of thing.

Mary Davidson (MD): Who was your teacher in that first year?

KR: Miss Grop. G-R-O-P, I don’t know if it had two P’s or not. but anyway.
[Usha: it did - Miss E. Gropp taught at Isabella Point School from Fall 1926 - 1929 Summer.]

MD: Was she young? just a young woman?

KR: Not particularly, as far as I can remember. In those days they were like aunts and uncles, but we didn’t have aunts and uncles, because all my Mama’s relatives were in England and I never got to see them. We never had grandmothers and grandfathers or anything; we were all brought up by Mum and Dad, and all the neighbours.

MD: So when you started school Mary would be there already.
Yes, she was at school first, yes, a couple of years ahead of me, I guess. Anyway, she was there.

ENROLMENT
MD: How many kids would be in the school at that time?

KR: Good Heavens... That’s when that big crowd of them was there, 27 or something. We had a lot of people at school in those days.

MD: Oh, really?

KR: Yes, yes. The desks were all full. And we had double desks, we was two of us sitting at a desk, big ones. [? - inaudible word - one along the front and - inaudible phrase]

SCHOOLROOM
MD: And did you have a lot of blackboard space?

KR: Not in those days. We had one blackboard as far as I remember. And a big picture of a Viking ship on the top of it, and a framework. Viking ship; I always thought of that picture, I can still see it.

MD: And a picture of the royalty, king or queen? or...

KR: I don’t think we had... I don’t know if we had, King George the Fifth, wasn’t it? It could have been there, I don’t remember too much about that.

MD: Did the teacher put up a lot of pictures in the classroom?

KR: I guess in due course she did. All kinds of things she used to do. After some time we had a table, a sand table, and we used to do graphs, and pictures of maps - atlases, and water-flowing systems, on the sand table, anyway, that’s all I can remember, it was at the back of the (school)house.

MA: Did you have a globe and a map?

KR: Oh, yes, we had a globe, and the maps might have been on the wall. We had maps. Oh, we used to learn quite a bit, we had one little cupboard that had all this stuff in it that I can remember; and the teacher had a desk that had a couple of drawers in it, that’s all, and a chair. Then the floor was so oiled, boy (inaudible remark). One stove in the middle. And then we had a screen on it so the heat didn’t just sit there, it had to go out and around.

CLOAKROOM: pail, dipper, basins, soap eaten by mice
KR: And we had a wall where the cloakroom was all fastened to the school, at first, and then we got a building put on the end of the school, on the side I suppose it is, and when you come in the front door, you came in a room, and then there was a bench on that, with a water-bucket. You had to go and get water up the road, up the back fence, dip it in and bring it down. There wasn’t any fences in those days, it wasn’t fenced then.

MD: Did you all have your own cups, and had a dipper in the pail?

KR: I can’t remember if we did or not. The dipper in the pail maybe, but I - basins. And the mice used to eat all the carbolic soap, Lifebuoy soap. It didn’t matter what it was made of, it sure got chewed away. If we didn’t put it under the basin, we didn’t have any soap.

MD: Oh, for goodness sakes!

KR: Put the basin upside down, and that kept it there. We had mousetraps and stuff too, in the winter.

SCHOOLHOUSE LIGHTING
MD: In the winter, was it warm enough?

KR: I guess it was. Dark, though. We didn’t have any lamps. No lamps, it was just the one side of the school was light (from) the windows, see? (showing the photograph of the school), there was four or five of them, and they opened, half a way open (in the photograph), the whole thing opened. See, this is the cloakroom, here, and then we went in there - but that wasn’t there when we first started (earlier photograph). And that was a very small space for 27 kids.

MD: So in the winter time you had no electric light -

KR: - no lamps (no oil lamps either)

MD: - so you just had to work from whatever came in the window?

KR: Yes.

MD: And did they close school down?
KR: No. No, no, no. it never gets closed as I can remember. You walked to school, and you walked home, and it was open at 9 o’clock and then closed at 3.30, 3 o’clock was it? 3 o’clock in the winter time, it was half an hour, at least, earlier.

SCHOOL LUNCH
MD: Did you carry a lunch?

KR: Oh, yeah, you always carried a lunch. It was too far to go down all that way. It was half a mile that was downhill. You didn’t have any time to do anything else, if you were just climbing up and down.

MD: Oh, right.

CHRISTMAS PERFORMANCES; MUSIC
MD: You were saying when you had a concert, you started off in the school, and then you went down to the hall?
KR: That was at Christmas, that was at Christmas only. We had parties, and we had sort of performances and Show things, and after a long time we had music. Bea Hamilton used to come and play, teach us some music, singing. We had a little organ, a little organ, Mrs. Pierce had it at first, I think, and then we had it. It was up there at the school, and we played it. And she brought the accordion too, she was able to play that. That was a BIG accordion! It was her brother’s, you see, the one that Gerald, one he got; when he was gone, she had it. She used to play that.
MD: So you had a good music teaching.
KR: Well, we did, when we had it, yeah. I don’t remember the teachers - I think Mr. Smith, when he was there, only a short time, though. He was only there from September to January, Christmas time. He got lost in the sailing, the sailing episode, he and Mr. Knight.

TEACHERS
KR: Mr. Knight was the teacher at Burgoyne and Mr. Smith was our teacher at (Isabella Point). That was after, let’s see, we had Miss Vye for 3 or 4 years, for 6 years or something, and then we had Mr. Margison, Cliff Margison, he’s a relative of the Grants in Hawaii; and we had Mr. Smith, after Mr. Margison. I was May Queen, in that time, when Mr. Margison was there. He had one leg, (that is) he had polio at one time, and his one leg didn’t mature, and he had a big platform on one foot, something like another friend’s, I have. And then Miss Pottinger came, and filled in for Mr. Smith. She was living in Salmon Arm or some place, after she left us, she was married, she got married. Then who did we have? We had Mrs. Brenton; she was one of the - the first time she ever came to anything, she started at Isabella Point, Mrs. Brenton did, and then she left, the last classes of hers were at Isabella Point; so she had a rotary work time, and she came and left at Isabella Point.
MD: But she taught at quite a few of the schools on Salt Spring, I think.
KR: Yeah, I think so, but those were the days when she was beginning and ending. Anyway, after her, we had Miss Grimly? I guess. [I. A. Bings]
MD: Sometime along there you must have had Mrs. Hepburn.
KR: Oh yeah. Mrs. Hepburn, that’s right. She was there when I was doing Correspondence. But she managed to teach Edward and Harold mathematics. [Kathleen’s younger brothers] They weren’t allowed afterwards. They found out that she was doing this; she wasn’t supposed to do it. But when she came to us, she came from the High School, and she was quite different to what she was when she left. She matured, quite a long way. She wasn’t so strict, and she wasn’t so hard-nosed. She used to stop and have tea with Mum and Dad, and then she had babies, and then she had children and Mum and Dad used to look after the kids [laughter}, and they grew up at (inaudible) looking after them. Anyway, I can’t remember too much about that.

[INSET]
Isabella Point School
Isabella Point School students 1931 with longterm teacher Miss Vye  <http://saltspringarchives.com/roots/schools/isabella/pages/999164503.htm>http://saltspringarchives.com/roots/schools/isabella/pages/999164503.htm
Isabella Point School teacher 1927-28 E. Gropp (26-7, 27-8. 28-9)
Isabella Point School teacher 1929-30 I. Vye (to teach here six years 29-30, 30-31, 31-2, 32-3, 33-4, 34-5) (A.L.Vye had been teaching at the Divide School since 27-8)
Isabella Point School teacher 1930-31 Miss I.Vye - 16 students: 10 boys, 6 girls
Isabella Point School teacher 1935-36 C.R.Morgison (35-6, 36-7)
Isabella Point School teacher 1937-38 G.Smith  [Mr. Smith died in a sailing accident, so was replaced for the remainder of that year with a stand-in teacher]
Isabella Point School teacher 1938-39 I. A. Bings (38-39, 39-40)
After 1940 Isabella Point School had 15-16 students and closed in 1951

GAMES PLAYED
KR: And we had ball games, and we played Anti-I-Over, and we played Four Corners, and Pussy-in-the-Corner when it was wet. We sleigh-rided all the way down School Hill, all the way down to Ruby’s place.

ISABELLA POINT SCHOOLHOUSE
MD: There’s a picture of Isabella Point, with a lot of the Hawaiian people, and a teacher, and one of the boys is receiving a certificate?

KR: Oh yeah, she may have been (giving) final certificates.

MD: So you’ve seen that.

KR: No, I can’t say I have.

MD: I just wondered if there was a school there before the one that you went to.

KR: No, no, no, this is original. This is the only one there was.

MD: But before you started there.

KR: No, no, there wasn’t anything between us. Well, they started in 1910 or something? I think the first school was in 1904 or 1910, or something of that distance.

MD: I think it opened in 1905, actually. [1904: Usha]

KR: Oh. Well, it could have. Well, I figure it was the same school. Same old one-room school. That’s quite a while, I was there for a while. Well, if it lasted 40 years, it wasn’t too bad.

MD: No. Actually, that’s very good.

KR: Yes.

“In 1904 Isabella Point School opened on land donated by John Palua, about 1.5km beyond the junction of Roland Road and Isabella Point Road. Initially the school often had to enrol children below the school age to meet the minimum enrolment for government grants. The school had one classroom and a cloakroom but no plumbing or electricity. A woodstove provided heat. Each school day students were responsible for chopping wood, keeping the stove going, bringing in water from a well nearby, and raising the flag. The school closed in 1951, and the building no longer exists.” (The school board donated the property for a park which is still used)
Salt Spring: Story of an Island, by Charles Kahn: page 161

SCHOOL TRIPS
MD: And you must have had some good times. Did you have a school picnic every year?

KR: School picnic, hmm. I guess we went different places. We went on nature walks, and we went way up, I can remember going some place or other, it was a cliff side, down like that, but there was wild lilies, and trilliums and stuff, on the left hand side, before you get to the Point, we went up the hill. Then they used to have logging, people logging around the school grounds, and we used to go and talk to the loggers for lunch. When they were at lunch, we had lunch too, and carried our lunch with us. We went up the fence line past the school, towards our place, our place used to go as far as the school. And we went, we got over the fence and took the cows home, when we were small. But we didn’t have cows forever. We started with goats in 1930, ‘31 or something, so when Ruby was little we had goats. Goats and sheep, we ended up with.

MD: So, when you had the cows though, you herded them home on your way home from school.

KR: Yes, because they were up there in the back woods, you know, you could hear the bell ringing, and then it’s time to go home, when school was over. By the time we got ‘em home, otherwise it was a long way to come, from all the way home.

FIREWOOD
MD: So, did you enjoy going to school?

KR: Well. I suppose we did, I don’t know, really. I don’t know what we would have done if we’d stayed at home. You know, we’d go “Oh, school,” and then when we went home we used to have to get wood for the stoves, the kitchen stove and we used to go down the ravine and bend all the trees that had died off, the long tall stock, they weren’t very big; we’d take them up, drag ‘em up to the house as poles, and then whack ‘em on a block until they broke in the right places. Dad used to be down there, we used to do that, until we got bigger loads. We got lots of wood. We went up in the woods at home, lots of times. Mum used to bring the lunch up to us, and we used to go first with Dad, and make fires to clean up the rubbish, you know, make stumps, burn the stumps, and we used to have them like big candlesticks, they used to burn and you could see them from out on the water. And we used to pile up this trees and all that stuff, clearing it up, making pastureland for the sheep, and cows. Well, they logged, they logged on our place several times, and so it was cleared, and we used to go berry picking in summer time, where the wild berries are, but they don’t happen to be now compared to how they used to be. There’s no logging done, nobody wants any logging done.

MD: We used to have pails and pails of, um...

KR: - blackberries, blackcaps.

MD: -and it had all been logged, and there’d be all these wild blackberries, no comparison to what you find now.

KR: Night and day. Well, we had them, and we had picnics on the beach, we had picnics out on the waterfront, and wade around Monk’s way, and we used to go to Beaver Point, and fish, row over there and fish. We didn’t always have launch engines. After a while we did, we’d get towed there then, and you could fish all day.

TRANSPORTATION
MD: So you were saying, when they closed down the school, then they burned it down?

KR: Or they cleared it up, anyway, I don’t know what they did. I wasn’t here.

MD: Oh. No, you’d have been away in the war, and then -

KR: ’43 I went away. And I didn’t come back from the force until, well I was here when Margaret was ten months old. I can remember walking up and down in Vancouver, ‘cause I got there in the morning, not expecting to be there until night. Mother came over on the old Steveson ferry? From Sidney? It was the last trip, on the way home. And I remember feeding my daughter puréed pear in the can, and she never had any more, because she wouldn’t eat it. After that, they, that was on the last boat. I can remember being on the train from Victoria to Sidney.

MD: Oh, you rode on that train, did you?

KR: Yeah, pretty near the last one. I was six. Mum took us to town, and we got hats. We had hats, new hats.

MD: So how did you get over to Sidney? On the Iroquois?

KR: Oh, no. No, no. No, we had a little launch.

MD: Oh, Lassiter’s launch.

KR: It was Lassiter’s for a while, and then it was Pollocks'. Pollocks had the last one, that was running.

MD: I believe that when Mom came to teach at Beaver Point, she came in a launch, and that would be, 1929.

KR: Yes, I was in those days [those days were within my era]. And we went to Sidney.

MD: So, you went over there, and then you got the train into town?

KR: And back again, I guess. I don’t remember anything but getting off it, that’s all I can say.

MD: You just remember the train.

KR: Just getting off the train at Sidney. That’s all I can think. And I think it was the last trip. Seemed to me the last trip with the ferry, and the last trip with that. Yeah, I don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. It seemed to me that it was. And I was about six when that was happening. See, that would mean ’28. And that would make me 6. (Born in) ‘22, to ’28.

MD: I don’t know how Mom got out to Sidney, I just know that she came in a launch, in 1928.

KR: Yes, well, if, the boat used to go out in the morning, and come back at night. We used to anchor the rowboat out, so it didn’t have to go all the way to the wharf to get off the boat, you’d be picked up there, on the way out. And at the rock too, we used to stop at the rock, that's where Patter(son's? - inaudible) it would depend on the tide.

MD: Yes, well Mum would come in to Beaver Point to dock.

KR: Yes, well that's a different place. That must've been a different ferry.

MD: It wasn't a ferry, it was a launch.

KR: No, I mean a launch. Well, you could've come all the way from Fulford all the way round in somebody else's launch, 'cause they went running all over the place.

MD: Oh, there were several of them?

KR: Well there might have been, I don't know, everybody had boats in those days because you travelled in boats, could be just a private launch, it might have belonged to somebody over at Beaver Point.

MD: Yes, she could never remember to tell me the name of the people that were running it, she just knows it was a launch.

COMMUNITY PICNICS and POLLOCKS
KR: Ah, well we used to go places with Pollocks', they used to take us (on) trips. And we went to Bedwell Harbour, I can remember going through the Pass there, boy that old tide, it used to be a ripper. And that's when we used to have picnics over there (MD: in Bedwell? KR: Yes). Mrs. Bryant and the people up the Valley, I guess the Townsend girls, was it Townsend? and then the Mollets, and I don't know, Hamiltons, some of the Hamiltons, there was quite a bunch of us used to go, Mum and Dad and the kids. (MD: Oh, that's super!) Oh we used to go all over, the Pollocks used to have us go.

KR: We used to go over to Pollocks' and play tennis, on Sundays.

MD: They're the ones over there, where Joan Ingrams lives now.

KR: Yeah, that's the originators [?].

MD: And Lotus used to work for them.

KR: Well, they used to have the cottages, the little campers. They used to have quite a lot of people go there, and then they had tennis court, they had three, three tennis courts.

MD: So, a lot of the young people on Salt Spring went there.

KR: Well, if you were special, the special people on the Sundays, I don't know, I think they used to come down from Ganges and they played there too. I know we were allowed to play there, when we got big enough.

MD: So they were fairly reasonable about, it didn't matter who you were; if you behaved yourself you could go?

KR: Oh yeah. They used to have a kitchen up there, and we used to have food, in the pavilion. Oh, it was quite a place.

CHURCH PICNICS?
MD: Now, did the church, St. Mary's Church, have big picnics and social events?

KR: I can't remember, I can't remember any. Once in a while they have a picnic now, but not very often.

MD: But when you were a kid you don't remember having picnics?

KR: No, I don't remember anything but going to church. And then Mother started playing the organ. She used to play.

MD: Your mum?

KR: Oh yeah, she and Mrs. Palmer, alternated. That was afternoons.

MD: Now, Mrs. Palmer, is that, um…

KR: She used to be in Ganges.

MD: Irene Palmer?

KR: Yes. She was a teacher at Beaver Point, for a good many few years, yes, Mrs. Patterson used to tell me about her.

MD: Yes, I've got quite a few pictures of Beaver Point, you know, (KR: groups?) teachers.

KR: I don't know if they had picnics or not. We had picnics all over the place, all different times, and Mum used to have people for picnics.

MD: I think I have a picture, I don't have it here, Frank's got it, but there's a picture of a church picnic, because the Reverend Wilson's in the picture.

KR: Oh, that'll be up at Ganges.

MD: No, no, this is St Mary's.

KR: Oh? - used to come down to St. Mary's, St. Mark's and St. Mary's were the only ones. And I don't know (about) St. Paul's, how early it started.

MD: It would be 1911, it burned down.

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, GANGES; BADMINTON at BEAVER POINT; BARN FIRES; MAKING HAY
KR: Oh, it couldn't've been. It couldn't've been. Because I was there and I seen it. I seen that St. Paul's, unless they built another one. Not then. It didn't burn down until I was, oh, in 1930-something.

MD: Maybe it was built in 1911.

KR: Yeah, that('s) more like it.

MD: I've got a picture with 1911 on it, so I guess it was maybe built then.

KR: Yeah, originally, (when it) started. I was in hospital up there, and I remember the church being there, and I remember its piping. I don't know whether I went into it to see it, but long-winded pipes that the stoves used to have, strung along like this, and this is what we figured started the fire in it, got too hot, like most of them do [laughter]; like the Beaver Point School. That Beaver Point Hall, we played badminton in it, it was as polished as, the floor was as slick as, I don't know what you call it, a polished floor, and it was devilish hard to stand up on it, and the short ceiling wasn't much higher than this room, and playing badminton when you had to keep the bird down low, and chase after it, well fast, you know, when it was low…

MD: And this was Beaver Point Hall?

KR: Yeah, and we played badminton in it. And it was after that, that it burned. The funny thing was that, that cement work at Hepburns', they didn't know how it happened to disappear, you know, why it burned. It burned because there was too green a grass in it, that's what burned it down. It was a barn. I can remember seeing it goin'. They had just brought in the hay, and it was too green. I suppose maybe they were just rushing it in because it was goin' to rain.

MD: Yeah, probably. This has caused many, many barn fires.

KR: Boy, we used to have to go up in the hayloft in our own place, and Dad used to put his arm down in it to see how hot it was, and we'd move it all, shift it all, shift it back and forth, before it got on to the heat, salt it all down so it didn't burn; there's quite a bit of knack in it, cleaning' and fixing hay. Done it so long.

MD: Yeah, I don't know if people know all these things. Because, when I was in Surrey there were usually several barn fires, every year.

KR: Yeah, yeah; well I can see it. We used to put 'em out in haystacks. I still make hay if I get a chance, because I hate to lose the good hay; the only thing is I haven't found anybody that wants to keep it. You know, I'd give it to them, to take it away - come and get it, that's what I wish.

MD: Well there must be somebody with horses that would love to have it.

KR: Yeah, well there isn't very much, you see, that's why. I used to cut it, and; Ruby used to come up; I had a job to get her to come up, and with her machine, and then she could cut it. She and Gary came and cut it for me, and then I'd make it, and then we'd come up, and Mrs. King used to come, Jean King'd come up with the truck, little truck, and we'd fill it up more than once. And Harvey used to come and take it down to Ruby's.

MD: She'd use it for the sheep.

KR: And the goats, yeah. We used to use it for the goats. I took it to Toni Luton's place when she was doing hay there, if she's still doing hay. I haven't got there very often to take it to her. I stuffed it in bags and took it to the man down, Mr, what's his name down the road, Lakewarner, something like that his name is, he's got quite a rhododendron bunch of things there now - and he didn't bother with it. Well I think it's time to quit, it's five after five.

MD: OK.