CORNER STONE FOR NEW ROSS SCHOOL LAID BY DAVID ROSS

Ceremony Performed by Chairman of School Board, After Whom Building is Named

LARGE GATHERING

City School Children Will be Entertained When Building is Formally Opened

[The Welland Tribune and Telegraph, 15 June 1926]

              In the presence of a large and representative gathering the corner stone of the new Ross School in the North Ward was laid Monday afternoon. The honor of performing the ceremony fell to David Ross, chairman of the Public School Board, after whom the school is named, and the silver trowel with which he executed the deed was afterwards presented to him.

             Owing to the inclement weather, the school children of the city did not attend the proceedings as planned but Mr. Ross explained that they would be the guests of the School Board when the school was formerly opened. The new building, erected at a cost of $100,000, will be a beautiful structure and a credit to the city.

             Prayer was offered by Rev. J.D. Cunningham, D.D., after which addresses were given by Mr. Ross, H.M. McCuaig, former principal of the Welland High School, City Solicitor J.F. Gross, Mark Vaughn, M.P.P., Inspector John Flower and Rev. Father McCaffrey.

             The customary steel tube was buried under the corner stone after it had been placed by Mr. Ross. It contained copies of the Tribune and Telegraph, Toronto papers, coins of the realm and an inscription giving the history of the new school, members of the Board and officials.

             The silver trowel presented to Mr. Ross was engraved as follows: -“Presented to David Ross, Esq., on the occasion of his laying the cornerstone of the Ross school, Welland, Ont., June 14^th, 1926.”

             The address for the occasion was given by Louis Blake Duff. Mr. Duff said:
             “We, citizens of Welland, are assembled here on the afternoon of June 14, 1926, to witness the laying of the cornerstone of the Ross Public School on North Main Street. These foundations beneath us and these iron girders above us, the bones of a new building, when the summer has ended, will be seen no more, for their nakedness will be clothed in bricks and tile, and with the beginning of the autumn term, hall doors will be thrown open and an army of children will enter their new educational home. The school is for the children of Welland; its cost is being paid by the people of Welland and for these reasons it is particularly appropriate, and indeed, gratifying to know that it has been designed by a Welland architect, Norman A. Kearns, and is being built by Welland contractors, W.J. Hickey and John H. Crow.

             Neither architect nor builders, however, can give this ward an adequate, substantial and permanent building if the corner-stone is not well and truly laid, and it is to make assurance doubly sure that we are gathered this afternoon from the homes, the mills, and factories, the shops and offices of Welland to witness the craftsmanship of David Ross who has been chosen by the Public School Board to wield the silver trowel, to spread the mortar, and put the stone in its bed- a bed where we hope it may lie these many scores of years. Mr. Ross has many qualifications that fit him for the task that is his. He has been a member of Welland’s business fraternity longer than any other. I venture to say he can look over this audience and tell each one what day he first entered our city gates, for we all came after him. But years are not his only or even his chief credentials. It is rather this: Throughout the long period of his residence here, he has devoted himself without stint to the public welfare. There was never in that period a movement for the good of Welland that did not summon his heartiest cooperation and his unfailing energy. A dozen enterprises of which this is true might be cited, but his most enduring love has been for the public schools. His ‘prentice hand he tried there nearly two-score years ago, and he is still going strong, in the present year of grace being chairman of the Board, an honour he has borne in many preceding years. He has been a true friend of the schools, pupils and staff, and now he is to have his monument in this fine new school which has been named for him. No incident has better fitted the story of education in this city.

             It is quite in the order of things that such a service to education should come from a Scot. If there is any land on earth where learning is held in absolute reverence, it is in Scotland. If you had pointed out a millionaire in Duntochety, nobody would have turned his head, but James Soutar would have run up a hill to see the back of a scholar disappearing in the distance. One man, James Knox, is responsible for this fact about Scotland. It was he who in his capacity as a political and social reformer laid down the principle-that if a nation is to succeed, it must be educated. It was he who nearly four centuries ago devised a system of education in which every parish should have its school and every boy should attend that school. He took the ladder of education and put its I west round at the doorsill of the shepherd’s cottage and the highest at the door of the university. And the fruits ye know: Every Scot today, the round world over, knows where the balance lies, how much it is and to whom it belongs.

             Advantage may properly be taken of this occasion to express appreciation of the faithful and unselfish work of the School Board in the years that are past. A score of years ago, Welland was no more than a village with but one school. Today, we have four very fine buildings and by September the number will be five, and David Ross has had his share in building each one of them. The school population has increased six times over, and where eight teachers were ample for our needs, now we find forty-five not enough. To keep abreast of these ever-growing demands has been no light task, but it has been well accomplished and the city of today and tomorrow owes much to the men who have so efficiently planned and so honestly carried those plans for the educational structure.

             The capacity of the Board has been nowhere better reflected, I think, than in the quality and character of the staff of our public schools. Hon. Richard Harcourt once said that a good school master was worth more to his community than the largest in industry. That is true enough and because it is true we have the worth of many industries at the teachers’ desk in our public schools. The staff is composed of men and women of highest ideals and with a deep love of their mission. Their worth cannot well be computed in terms of industries.

             Our public school, as we know it, would not recognize its ancestor in the Upper Canada of a century ago. The log school with its blazing fire, the rude desks reaching almost from wall to wall, and benches, without backs, so high that little feet never touched the floor; every day a school day except Sunday, and the long hours running from morning until night; the teacher, often as not, an incapacitated soldier with just enough knowledge of the three R’s to let him through the gauntlet of a not very exacting Board.

             A few dollars and willing hands built a school then and now the cost, as in this case, runs to one hundred thousand dollars. Science settles the whole scheme of seating, heating, ventilation, lighting. Money, planning and care have made the road to learning if not royal at least royal as maybe, and yet one wonders if the lad and lass who step down at the school gates from a modern motor car have not lost something that the boys and girls gained in walking four miles through the snow to the log school. It is at any rate true that the log school and its successor, the little red school house, produced a fine type of sturdy, self-reliant men and women, strong enough to build a country.

             But we are not here to rake embers from the ashes of the past, but rather to dedicate this school to the youth of Welland, whose faces are set toward tomorrow.  

             May they pass out from it, year by year, in steady streams, noble companies of little men and women of such noble education that they will make a better Canada than they found.”

             David Ross, Chairman of the Public School Board, had as his guests at the Rotary Club luncheon, Monday noon, members of the Board, Inspectors Flower, Marshall and McNiece, Hon. R. Harcourt, J.F. Gross and D.D. Gross, city solicitors. Following the luncheon, Mr. Harcourt gave a most eloquent and most interesting address on education in which he paid high tribute to great work that has been done by the primary and secondary schools of Welland.