On Aug. 16, the Choiceland Historical Museum unveiled a granite plaque honouring rural schoolteachers who taught in Choiceland’s country schools from 1928 to 1959.
The plaque is dedicated to Elizabeth Leslie Hidlebaugh, one of the district’s early teachers, and was unveiled during Choiceland Museum Day. It displays the names of eight rural schools, 120 teachers, and their teaching dates.
Murray Hidlebaugh, the project coordinator and Elizabeth’s son, said the people involved in the project hope it will preserve a part of the regions rich historical record. They hope it will also preserve the experiences of students and teachers during the formative years of rural education.
“Even in hard times, the collaboration the way communities can come together nowadays from around the world, is pretty interesting,” Hidlebaugh said.
Hidlebaugh now lives in Saskatoon but is originally from Choiceland. He said the Choiceland Museum is an excellent facility and an ideal spot for the plaque.
“It’s really in a nice location,” he said. “Of course, every small town has got its (merits), but they ended up with a really nice location.”
Hidlebaugh said the country school district started in the late 1920s and was populated with rural schools. His mother was among several Hidlebaugh’s who taught in rural schools in the area, and received many accolades for her efforts.
Murray said the plaque installation was a team effort by current and former Choiceland residents. Barb Yardy commissioned the plaque, while Diana Scott and Margaret McTaggart carefully researched and verified the school names, locations, and spellings of teachers’ names.
Yardy is considered a Hidlebaugh family historian and the people connected all have an affinity for Choiceland. He said that Yardy, McTaggart and Scott were all neighbours and rode on the same school buses.
The information from this project will serve as a valuable resource for Janet McLean’s initiative, which involves interviewing former students and teachers to capture their memories of those early days. Hidelbaugh explained that the teachers and students from that time are all now in their 80s and 90s. His mother passed away when she was 107.
“My mother, … she came up as an 18-year-old to teach in the rural schools,” Murray said. “It’s sort of an interesting work, but I think it has a fairly valuable historical perspective because that information is being lost.”
Ray Wilburn donated his time, tools to install the concrete pad to attach the frame. Jon Wadden, Wadden Welding, and his wife Christine donated time, and equipment and covered the cost of the metal for the frame and its painting.
He said that everyone who put in their time and effort did a fantastic job.
“They just donated their time and their equipment, like the state-of-the-art equipment, welders and guys that really knew what they’re doing. In fact, the cement work is A1 and it was all donated,” he said.
Hidlebaugh said the pride of the work showed from their side but he saw it in when it was unveiled.
“I was standing by it and people were coming and telling their kids and grandkids, ‘oh, this is a school I went to. Oh yeah, I remember these teachers.’” he explained.
“Most of them had Mom for a teacher over the years and they would talk about her being one of their favourite teachers.”
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
