The Wanda School has undergone a complete facelift after the school was transported onto its new foundation this past December.
With a whole new exterior, including new windows, siding, and roofing, along with a companion public bathroom building, and interior renovations, the school is ready to start receiving visitors later this month.
The decorative work isn’t finished inside, as they would like to find a coal fired or potbelly stove to set up.
The school’s finished basement could be used for a number of things, for now the focus is on the old one-room school upstairs.
Blaise Young, who is with the Forestburg Community Development and Promotion Society (FCDPS), the group who started this project, says the school will be ready for its first visitors later this month, with a soft opening planned for Monday, April 14, to June 13, to be open each afternoon Monday through Friday.
Young says the group wants to hear from the public, and especially to former students of the school. He says, “As we get closer to opening the school to the public, we would like to hear and see the stories of the Wanda School.”
The group has planned an event, on Monday, April 14, at Forestburg’s Council Chambers, for anyone with any memorabilia or stories to come and share, not just from school, but even from when the school was still being used as a community gathering place.”
Right now the school is fairly empty, and they are looking for old wooden student desks with the side drawers under the seats. They have a couple of them, plus a chalkboard from Galahad School.
Young says the FCDPS has also had a horse-drawn school bus made available to them, through the Jack Kirschman estate, that will also be on display eventually at the school.
Apparently back in the day, he says, horses were a valuable commodity, much too much to be left at the school all day, so there was no hitching post at the original school site. “Although we will be building one just for display purposes.”
Young says there were at one time around 8,000 one-room school houses in Alberta. The Province didn’t supply schools to settlers at first, so they built their own, with a variety of different styles and layouts.
He says the present school wasn’t original, this one was built in 1941 and closed in 1951 due to consolidation of school districts.
By that time, Young says that the Province had standardized plans for rural school houses, like 11’ ceilings and separate entrances for boys and girls.
A lot of the old school houses were repurposed, some into dwellings, some as farm buildings, some demolished, and some just left to deteriorate.
The Wanda School was used for a few years as a community gathering spot, before being boarded up. Young says the building was in really good shape. He says when the contractor checked the building before moving it, it was still square, even in the window openings.
Young says, “People scoffed at the idea of moving it, but it was made of good strong fir, and made the move extremely well.”
He says local contractor Randy Maertz has taken on the project as a labour of love.
The school is part of a new tourism development by the FCDPS, the centrepiece of the new Jeanne Lougheed Historic Park. The project received provincial grant funding of $275,000 from the Ministry of Culture and Status of Women’s Community Facility Enhancement Program.
The park will honour the legacy of Jeanne Lougheed, wife of Premier Peter Lougheed, and former resident of the Village of Forestburg, where her father was the Doctor.
Young says the committee is working on many displays for the school’s interior once it’s open to the public, that’s where having photos and stories from the public will help.
There will be a grand opening at the site at a later date, one he hopes the Lougheed family will attend (Jeanne passed away in 2020).
He’s also hoping to attract one of the school’s teacher, Mrs. Kroetsch, who he says taught during the war years at the school.
Landscaping is next for the project, although fundraising continues to be a challenge for the FCDPS.
Young also has big plans for a phase two to the park, which will include a lot of ATCO Power and coal mining history, celebrating 100 years of mining in Forestburg.
The second phase will include a bronze statue, and various murals, along with a giant bucket from the coal mine, and even some fossils and a life-sized dinosaur. You have to go back millions of years to get to the ancient plant matter that eventually formed the coal which became such an important part of Forestburg’s history.
Other phases, far in the future, could include Anthony Henday’s journey across the prairies, and then later, the Devonian Sea, along with another bronze statue, this one depicting a Dunkleosteus, a prehistoric fish.
The committee has a vision for a large-scale historic park that will bring future visitors to Forestburg, and to Flagstaff County.
Leslie Cholowsky
Editor
