SCHOOL DAYS IN DORREEN
By BRIAN GREGG
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Dorreen School House |
Elaine Gregg Teacher 1951-1954 |
I was born in Vernon, BC in 1948 while the Gregg family lived on an
orchard farm in Cold Stream. I completed the family roster, which also included
my father, George, b-1905; my mother, Elaine, b-1908; and, my two brothers, Robert,
b-1938, and Sean, b-1942.
While serving as a cook in the army in World War II, Dad slipped on the
tarmac in England when the men were to be flown to mainland Europe. Dad fell
and broke several disks in his back. Needless to say he didn’t make the flight,
which vanished with all souls aboard and was never heard of again.
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George Gregg |
An orchard was the last thing Dad should have been working in. Mom did a
lot of the work and when she could she substituted at schools around the area. Eventually
it got too much for Mom to handle with a disabled husband and three growing
boys so she decided it was time to sell the farm and go.
Mother had been a “professional” student at UBC when she was
single. The cutting edge of science in her youth was chemistry, which attracted
her, but the only jobs for women in the late 1920s were librarian work,
teaching, and secretarial. These three made up the primary vocations for women,
according to an old magazine Mom saved from 1929. So Mom took solace at UBC
earning degrees in history, drama, and, begrudgingly, education. Teaching was
the last thing she wanted to do because it was so stereotypical –
although she was well suited to the field.
Mom worked her way through university by taking a year or two off to
teach. That’s what she was doing when she met Dad on the ferry to
Gibson’s Landing where he worked in logging. While chatting with her he
invited her to a dance and she accepted. After they married they lived in a
variety of places until WW2 when Mom, Robert and Sean lived in Vancouver while
Dad was overseas.
Having decided to sell the orchard Mom and Dad quickly rejected the idea
of moving back to Vancouver. The northwestern part of the province in the early
1950s was opening up with the promise of the Kemano dam, which was to power the
Alcan smelter at Kitimat. Prior to Kemano the region we call Greater Vancouver
today was mostly underwater during the spring runoffs. Both the Fraser and
Thompson rivers contributed to the flooding; but Kemano regulated the outflow
from the Fraser’s watershed relieving the Vancouver area.
Robert pieced this information from memory. Spring runoffs always meant
floods in Vancouver prior to Kemano; but after the dam was completed such
reports ceased. Experts today verify Robert’s recollections in spite of
environmental hysteria about the Kemano II completion.
Kemano was the prime reason my folks had for moving north. Vancouver was
in a flood plain, which held no attraction for them. The future of BC was in
the northwest and my parents caught the vision. When Mom applied to School
District 88 the only posting was at Dorreen so in December 1951 they sold the
farm and packed their trunks for the trip north.
On the section between Kamloops and Jasper, Robert remembers seeing
wounded soldiers from the Korean War (1950-53) on the train heading back to the
Prairies. He and Sean (spelled, “Shaun”, in those days before he
had it legally changed) were fascinated to see these real live war heroes but
Dad decided he didn’t want them pestering them and ordered the boys to
bed. In their conversation the soldiers learned Dad’s WW2 regiment and
invited him back to talk, which they did all night.
We arrived in Dorreen after a heavy snowfall. Robert recalls the white
stuff standing about seven inches on the fence posts when we arrived but it was
all gone the next morning. Welcome to Skeena, folks. If you don’t like
the weather wait a while and it will completely change.
All of our furniture and stuff were still en-route from Vernon. We spent
two nights at the bed and breakfast run by Bill and Florence Horwill who owned
the General Store.
(SEE DENIS HORWILL’S ACCOUNTS OF EARLY DAYS IN DORREEN ELSEWHERE
ON THIS SITE.)
The Horwill’s arrived at Dorreen in 1924, a year before the
schoolhouse was built. They ran the store for ten years before buying it. One
always got the impression that Mr. Horwill was the unofficial mayor of the
settlement, which made sense since the store was the hub of the community.
Neither the train station nor the schoolhouse ever served their customers in
housecoats during late night or early morning emergencies, which is what made
the store the primary center in Dorreen.
When I once mentioned Dorreen was a thriving gold mining settlement at
one time, Denis Horwill laughed at the word, “thriving”.
Let’s just say the mine had its problems, which came to an end when it
closed down in 1953.
I remember when I discovered iron pyrite. It was shortly after we moved
there. I was walking on the road by the school and I caught the glitter of fool’s
gold. I rushed home to present it to my parents. “I’ve saved the
town,” I exclaimed. “I’ve found gold! The miner can continue
to work, they just have to move the mine by the school!” Well, it seemed
like a good idea at the time.
The declining population is why Mom was instructed by Ted Wells at the
Board offices in Terrace to have no less than 13 students in order to keep the
school open. As mine workers left so did their families and the parents who
remained were unhappy campers. Mr. Wells, an ex-British army Major who was part
of the liberation of Berlin where he met his wife, was secretary-treasurer of
School District 88 and a strong ally of Mom during her teaching years in
Terrace.
Her posting was the one-room schoolhouse with a wood stove in the back
corner by the door. It looked different in those days than it does in recent
photos. The building was much higher then with steps leading up to a porch
landing before entering the school. The steps and porch had their own railings.
Today the doorway is at ground level.
The school was grades 1-8 and students included Jack and Molly Scully,
Howard Neighbors, June Spechak, four Stanga kids (whose father, Steve, was
Stationmaster), the three Blair kids, plus Robert and Sean. Mom did her
arithmetic and realized with only two kids at elementary level – and with
Robert just a year away from Grade 9, which he would take at the school through
correspondence as a non-registered student of the school – the future of
the school was tenuous at best. So with me in tow at the age of three, I was
“enrolled” in the register as a student in name only. Such fudging
was common in early-days one-room schools. Teachers even enrolled their pets to
keep their schools open.
It seemed only appropriate. Mom had been told when she arrived to meet
with Mr. Wells that the only reason she got the posting was because she had
three kids of her own and they would be needed to keep the school open. She
never told Mr. Wells I was only three so he didn’t think anything of it
when he saw my name on the register.
Well sir, it all came to an end in the early spring of 1952. Mom had an
appointment with Mr. Wells, the three boys and Dad needed haircuts and it was
time to do our grocery shopping in the big smoke of Terrace. I decided I wanted
to grow my hair long like the Beatles would do about ten years later. Dad took
Sean and Robert to the barbers and Mom was forced to take me with her to the
School Board offices where I was told to sit and not move until she finished
her meeting with Mr. Wells.
Having gotten my way by not having my haircut I obeyed her orders and
was very good, as the receptionist reported when Mom and Mr. Wells came out.
They were talking at the counter when Mr. Wells looked over at me and asked Mom
how old I was. She said I was five. Mr. Wells was surprised. Only five, eh?
Well, it was possible that Mrs. Gregg’s son could be in school at that
age, Mr. Wells reckoned. “Brian must be a really precocious kid,”
he said. Mom inclined her head and looked puzzled. Mr. Wells then said,
“You’ve had him registered since you took over the Dorreen School.
That would make him three when you enrolled him. Grade 2 is very advanced for a
5-year-old.”
Oooppppps! Mom gulped and she and Mr. Wells went back to his office.
Just moments before things couldn’t have been better, now things
couldn’t have been worse.
Mother was beside herself in agony over the school closing. She felt she
had let the parents down. She had assured them she would do everything possible
to keep it open and now, because I wouldn’t go with Dad for a haircut, it
was closing. I could never win.
And that was THE END of an era.
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Steven, Sean, Seanna-Marie, Elaine Gregg |
Robert Gregg |
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Robert’s Daughter Kate |
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George with Seanna-Marie and Steven |
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Mrs. Gregg the next generation with husband Steve |
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