A teacher comes to Avening
It was a day in early September, 1927. On board the train slowly making its way to Avening was Miss Audrey Thompson of Kincardine, age 19, a recent Teachers’ College graduate and newly hired by S.S. #14 (Avening) school board. She was tired, having been travelling since 5:30 a.m. As train conductors often did, they liked to tease young passengers. The conductor on Audrey’s train said, “Since Avening is so small a place, we just slow down. We throw off the mail and the baggage and you just hop off.” Of course, the train stopped.
Thus began the teaching career of Miss Thompson who in a few years married Wallace Timmons and for all her career was a highly regarded teacher.
Her school was the building you now see on the south-west corner of Airport Road and Sideroad 3-4. Built in 1880 it was newly renovated in 1924.
Originally, Avening’s first school was at the north side of the village on the west side. The building was eventually moved to make a sunny kitchen behind the store. The store is not operating now but as you pass it looks like a store.
Before 1900 as many as 80 attended the school at one time. They tried using two teachers in one room, and to help solve the difficulties, they added a small room at the back. Local girls undertook the teaching of the primary classes. This lasted only 15 years.
We turn again to 1927. Miss Thompson found room and board at the home of the Warren family. Her first classes had pupils from Grade 1-10. It was a lot of work. However, the building was a comfortable one with a furnace in the basement, a good well and sunny south windows.
We have the memories of Maurice Weatherall preserved for us by his daughter, Heather. He started school in 1933. He lived on the farm at the north end of the third line, west of the school. He and his brothers and sisters walked over the fields to S.S. #14. Sometimes his dad gave them a ride in the wagon or they rode their horse and sent it home on arriving at the school. Maurice often mentioned that today’s students might be better behaved if they had had to clean out two pigpens before school. They’d likely appreciate the chance to just sit.
Maurice liked to tell the story of one new ‘green’ teacher. This teacher played the bagpipes up and down the aisles and during the marches around the school. One day the boys cornered him in the boy’s cloakroom and snipped off every button of his suspenders telling him they didn’t like his music. Maurice remembers the superintendent of schools visited a number of families the following day by horse and buggy and that the young teacher got a new position quite quickly.
A big thank you to Dorothy (Timmons) Shropshire and Heather (Weatherall) Rowell for their generous sharing of memories.
Photo: Avening Public School, 1966 – Front: Diane Kerr, Bonnie Fisher, Debbie Emerson, Carol Ann Grant, Brent Weatherall, Rick Denison, Terry Grant, Allan Trott, Frank deBeer. Middle: Heather Weatherall, Sharon Grant, Darlene Denison, Maureen Weatherall, Donna Kerr, Gary Helmkay, Camiel de Beer, Robert McLaren, Mrs. Audrey Timmons, Steve Striegl. Back row: Dennis Middlebrook, Sharon Scott, Karen Fisher, Heidi Striegl, Bonnie Trott, Sandra Middlebrook, Caren Denison, Wayne Helmkay.
