Remembering little Hawk Junction's one-teacher schoolhouse

From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library:

In Northern Algoma lies a small community nestled off Highway 101, hidden among the trees of the Boreal forest. Hawk Junction, approximately 25 km North of Wawa, is a small, tight-knit community that boasts beautiful lakes, fishing, hunting and a plethora of outdoor activities sure to delight nature enthusiasts.

It also, until about 1999, laid claim to being one of the last functioning one-teacher schoolhouses in Ontario.

The idea of a one-teacher schoolhouse brings to mind children trudging miles and miles to reach a small log building, bonnets covering their heads and literal lunch pails in hand.

The reality is children with crimped hair, mullets and Mr. T lunch boxes attended just such a school in the 1980s. In fact, St. Mary’s, the small community school in Hawk Junction continued to educate children until the spring of 1999.

Hawk Junction is a railway town whose population has steadily diminished over the last three decades due to economic downturns. As its current population sits at 138, with only five school-age children, one can reasonably guess why the school is no longer operating.

St. Mary’s School opened as a school in September of 1960, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, teaching students in Kindergarten through Grade 8The school was operated by the Michipicoten District Separate School Board and was closely tied to the elementary schools in Wawa. Sister Mary Clare, who came from the Wawa convent, was the original principal and allowed the five children in grade 8 to name the school. They chose St. Mary’s.

In April of 1975, a fire claimed part of St. Mary’s causing approximately 50, 000 dollars in damages and the school was forced to close. The School Board considered closing the school at that point but ultimately decided to rebuild the burnt area and reopen. During the time the school was closed the children would make their way each day to the Hawk Junction Community Hall, known locally as ‘The Hall’, which was used as a makeshift school.

In 1971, St. Mary’s shrunk its school population to include students up to grade 5 only and over the next few years it was whittled down to kindergarten through grade 3. Older children would board a bus and make the thirty-minute trek to Wawa where they would attend one of two elementary schools.

By the school year 1985-86 Mrs. Jane West, with the help of a teacher’s aide, Fern Ellen Pantilla, was responsible for teaching 25 students ranging from Kindergarten through Grade 3. St. Mary’s School consisted of three rooms: a room for the Kindergarten students, a room for all the students in grades 1 through 3 and a third room, designated as the ‘gymnasium’, a rather loose use of the term to describe a room which had slightly higher ceilings than the other two classrooms.

The students were arranged in rows by grade and age in the main classroom and Mrs. West would teach a lesson, math for example, to the entire room. When she was done the lesson each child would receive their assignments based on grade and ability.

If Mrs. West was teaching something grade specific the other students would work independently at their desks. In speaking with Mrs. Pantilla, she feels this was of great benefit to the children, helping them learn to work well independently and be able to focus in a busy environment.

Mr. Ron Rody, the principal of St. Joseph’s elementary school in Wawa also served as the principal for St. Mary’s School. In a 1984 interview appearing in The Sault Star, Mr. Rody remarked that “the small school offered students the definite advantage of learning continuity”.

All grade levels would come together for lessons in areas like music and physical education and when possible outdoors for environmental studies, taking advantage of the natural bounty that surrounded them. The small school even hosted a mini-Olympics for the children in the 80s!

The students, however, did not receive daily instruction in French as a second language as their counterparts in Wawa did nor was there a library to speak of. This being the case Mr. Rody would make a weekly drive from Wawa to Hawk Junction bringing with him the school librarian from St. Joseph’s School. With her came a box full of books, different each week, for the students to peruse. It was a veritable travelling library, albeit a small one! Books were exchanged each week and the students were encouraged to share among themselves.

When speaking with Mrs. Pantilla and Mrs. Chartrand, the importance of organization was emphasized repeatedly. One could only imagine the heroic level of organization required to manage 25 children of different ages, grades and individual educational and social needs sharing two classrooms. By all accounts, Mrs. Jane West thrived at keeping the school organized and orderly.

St. Mary’s School would not have been able to function without the assistance of teacher’s aides such as Mrs. Pantilla, and later Mrs. Joanne Chartrand.

While the teacher taught in the main classroom the teacher’s aide would be assisting the children in the classroom for the kindergarten students and vice versa, as even the eminently capable teachers who took on the challenge of this one-teacher school could not be in two places at once.

Mrs. Chartrand, who began working at St. Mary’s School after Mrs. Pantilla left in 1986, remembers it as a wonderful system that allowed the children a broad scope of education while still receiving plenty of individual attention.

She fondly remembers the sense of community and family in the small school where even the students looked out for one other and were quick to help anyone having difficulty.

A prime example of this environment of community and family that both Mrs. Chartrand and Mrs. Pantilla speak of is the school quilt that was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the opening of St. Mary’s School. The families of each student were tasked with creating one square each that represented their family which was then sewn into a quilt by Mrs. Pantilla’s mother-in-law, Aune Pantilla. The quilt hung proudly near the ‘gym’ and later inside the kindergarten classroom until the school closed in 1999. At that time Mrs. Chartrand carefully removed the quilt and brought it home to be stored for safekeeping. When speaking to some of the former students of St. Mary’s, the making of the quilt remains one of their most fondly recalled memories.

As our interview was ending Mrs. Chartrand related one final reminiscence that wonderfully encapsulated the essence of the small Hawk Junction schoolhouse. Each year, all of the students in the school would gather and walk in procession to the Community Hall. There they would have lunch and visit with the Legionnaires from Wawa and Hawk Junction, both sides being regaled with stories.

The children would then follow the Veterans across the street to the Pine Grove Cemetery and watch solemnly as a wreath was laid at the Cenotaph. Mrs. Chartrand recalls how touched she was each year by the reverence and respect the children unfailingly displayed as they listened to the horns being played and they watched the wreath come to rest.

This sense of unity and communion that existed in the small Hawk Junction School House seems to have been its most essential attribute and perhaps the biggest loss when the school closed in 1999. While small in size the school was eminently large in heart.

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