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Canada School in news for last time
Canada School made the news this week for what may be the
last time in its 53-year history ... the four-classroom brick building will be demolished any day now.
The one-story, red brick building symbolized opportunity for all of Canada when it opened in 1951 to 91 students consolidated from Charleys Creek, Rock Bridge, Sols Creek, Tanasee Gap and Wolf Creek schools.
Located almost at the intersection of Charleys Creek Road and N.C. 281, the Canada School made the national news when the nation's First Lady visited almost exactly 37 years ago on March 14, 1967.
Lady Bird Johnson, wife of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, spent the morning in class at Canada Elementary.
At that time President Johnson, the architect of the Great Society, was fighting what he termed the War on Poverty. His wife came to Jackson County for a first-hand look at the newly-formed National Teacher Corps, organized to speed teacher training and put more teachers into the classrooms of the nation's underprivileged schools.
The First Lady sat in tiny chairs with first-graders as Teacher Corps interns - including former Jackson County Commissioner Franz Whitmire - conducted reading sessions with the children.
"Like the curious bear in the rhyme, I've come over the mountain to see what I can see - to see how dedicated teachers are working to brighten the hope of Canada - and our whole country," Johnson said.
"The real story of today is not that a great many reporters and officials from Washington came to visit Canada, for we can only stay for an hour or two," the First Lady said. "The real story is that these dedicated teachers have come to Canada - and they can stay for many hours, days and weeks. Their work is helping to change this community and this whole country."
Later that day, as she addressed some 5,000 people who packed Western Carolina University's Reid Gym, Johnson described the Teacher Corps interns as the "cutting edge of the educational process."
Western at that time was one of only 53 colleges in the nation and the only one in North Carolina serving as a Teacher Corps training center.
Another Teacher Corps-trained educator, Sue Nations, is now superintendent of Jackson County Schools.
Fifteen years later, Canada School was a big story again due to a decision by the Jackson County Board of Education to consolidate the 31-year-old school with Camp Laboratory (now Cullowhee Valley) on the WCU campus. Parental objections centered around the additional 30 minutes their children would spend riding the bus to and from school.
That was a story I covered early in my journalism career. I remember a crowded Saturday night meeting at the Canada School where residents organized what turned out to be a seven-day school boycott in protest of the board's decision, which was reported in the July 1, 1982, edition of this newspaper.
By the time board members voted to close Canada School, its enrollment had diminished to 38. Just three students - Rhonda Burrell, Janis Hoxit and Delane Owen - comprised the 1982 eighth-grade class - the last class to graduate from Canada School.
Canada students and parents gathered at the school at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 23, vowing to continue keeping their children home until school board members reversed their decision.
Plans were made to open a school for community children at Dodgen Ridge Baptist Church, an idea that was dropped a week later.
Community members engaged a lawyer, the late Jack Shuford of Sylva, but ended the boycott when school board members agreed to hold a meeting with Canada residents to discuss the community's grievances.
The protest made headlines in three editions of The Sylva Herald. The Aug. 12 newspaper reported parents' plans to keep their children home; the Aug. 19 issue chronicled the first three days of the boycott; and the Aug. 19 edition reported the children were enrolled at Camp Lab.
The half-century-old school building, no longer needed by the community, will be torn down to make way for a recreation area on its 4.5-acre site. A commemorative plaque will mark the spot where several generations learned their reading, writing and arithmetic.
While the marker can provide the dates the building was opened, closed and destroyed, the school's real history can only be told through the lives of those who learned there.
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