WEYBURN - With celebrations coming up for Weyburn’s 110th anniversary as a city, one area that has seen tremendous growth, change and development over that time has been our schools.
The first teacher in Weyburn was Frank Moffat, and he owned Moffat House, a large home on the South Hill.
There were one-room schoolhouses dotting the countryside as the land was settled by farm families, and these schoolhouses were later consolidated to schools in larger towns, like Colfax, Goodwater, Radville, Oungre, Tribune, Creelman and Fillmore, Khedive and Pangman, Yellow Grass and Lang, to name a few. Then those schools were consolidated to more central schools yet, and Weyburn ended up with Queen Elizabeth School for rural residents, Souris School on the South Hill (built in 1910), Haig School, and Assiniboia School.
The Weyburn Collegiate was built in 1913, the year Weyburn became a city. Later, more changes came as Assiniboia School was demolished and the Co-op food store now stands in its location.
The Weyburn Junior High was built in the 60s, and now it’s gone, along with the Collegiate, Haig, Souris and QE. Elgin served for a time as an elementary school but it was sold and now has a number of tenants in its walls, including a day care.
Assiniboia Park was built up on Fifth Avenue, the Collegiate was replaced by the Weyburn Comprehensive, which underwent a major renovation and construction upgrade to its current form as a Grades 7-12 school, along with the campus of Southeast College.
Lastly, Legacy Park Elementary was built, and it is ready to soon open its doors (along with APES and WCS) for a new school year.
Through all of these changes, generations of children have been educated, and in turn their children and grandchildren have been or are being educated in our schools.
Many students have very fond memories of the schools that are now gone, including WJH, Haig, Souris and QE – but a new generation of students have begun making memories at LPES and WCS along with APES, and will continue going on into the future.
My own kids all attended Souris and have many good memories of classtime in that building, as well as the junior high and the Comp.
There are many new challenges for students that former classes never had to worry about, like the advent of technology and the need to be computer and soclal media-literate. New ideas are being formulated, and new ways of learning are being developed that former generations could only ever dream of. The basics will always be important, of course, to have reading and writing skills, math skills, and learning in the sciences. Let’s wish students the very best as they set out on their classroom journey this year.
