[Pnyx 1960]
The widow of Louis S. Haney of Fenwick, Edith B, Haney, who died in 1959, left in her will the sum of twenty thousand dollars for student scholarships and for help in buying books for the Pelham District High School. The trust fund is to be administered by the School Trustees. The interest each year is to be divided into five parts: four of these are to be given as scholarships to such members(not exceeding four) of the graduating class who have excelled in their school work and who may be in need of assistance to study in an institution of higher learning; the fifth part is to be used to buy new books for the school library.
Mrs. Haney and her husband were natives of the district. The daughter of Thomas Robinson, she as born just across the Chippawa near Beckett’s Bridge, Lou Haney was born in Fenwick in the house where theHerrs now live next door to Mr. Crossley. His father Johnson Haney was a thresher.
Lou Haney started out as a carpenter and, in partnership with William Ryan, ran a planing mill. They built the store where the Newstead Hardware is now. There, Mr. Haney went into the hardware business. When power pumps were introduced he sold them to farmers to take the place of the old hand pumps. He would leave a pump with a farmer to try out and the man, finding the machine so much more efficient on a bleak fall morning than endlessly pumping troughs full of water for thirsty cows and horses, would buy it. Mr. Haney was a good salesman. Later when radios were coming into common use, he sold them.too, throughout the district. He built up a successful business.
Lou Haney, a devout man, joined the Church of God. It is interesting to know that he was baptized in Garner’s pond. Both he and Mrs. Haney were faithful members of the Fonthill Church of God as long as they lived.
He had married Edith Robinson and they built a house on Maple Avenue where they had a garden. On week-ends and holidays she would make up a picnic lunch and they would drive around the peninsula picking up rocks and stones from Stoney Creek to Queenston and from the shore of Lake Erie for their rock garden. They collected garden ornaments and pieces of statuary. The garden was their hobby and they were proud of it, it is still a show place.
In the early nineteen-thirties Mr. Haney became ill. He went up north for his health but failed to recover and died shortly after returning to Fenwick.
Mrs. Haney as left alone with her house and garden. She had not been able to carry on the business during her husband’s illness and it was sold. After his death, acting on the advice of the late Arthur Armbrust and others, Mrs. Haney invested her money wisely. It was a time when stocks and other securities were low in price. She was able to hold her investments till the more than doubled in value. Unfortunately her health failed and she had to give up her activities.
Mrs. Haney had been an active worker in the village and church organizations. She was interested in Women’s Institute and until her last illness was a member of the Maple Acre Library Board and, for many years, its secretary.
The school has been fortunate in having had so many public spirited citizens in the vicinity and who have supported its work in different ways. We are apt to forget those who have gone before us. Mrs. Haney and her husband will be remembered by name. The awards of scholarships will be known as the Louis S. And Edith B. Haney Scholarships. Let us hope their generosity will long be appreciated.
[Pnyx 1960]
On the fifteenth of September, 1926, the Honourable Richard Harcourt laid the cornerstone. And the building was ready for use in September, 1927. The first day in the new school there were present seventy-two pupils and three teachers, F.H. Hicks, Principal, Miss J. Bell and Miss Metler. Of the seventy-two pupils several asked for Upper School subjects. The Board at once engaged another teacher, Miss E.M.de la Mater, whose valued career with the school continued until her retirement in 1948.
The school consisted of, what is now the old gymnasium, the four classrooms around it on the ground floor , a balcony across the front end of the gymnasium, and the stage at the other end.The Formal Opening, with te Hon. Wm. Finlayson, Minister of Lands and Forests, speaking to a large crowd, took place on Dec. 16, 1927.
At first the curriculum was purely academic with no frills, but in 1928 Percy Becket began the training of a school orchestra after school hours. He worked for nine years with such enthusiasm and drive that this first extra-curricular activity was highly successful. The orchestra played at garden parties and social events in the vicinity, spreading goof will for the school in the community.
In 1929 W.G. Spencer succeeded Mr. Hicks as Principal. He added a commercial department for which the balcony was enclosed as a classroom, an unusual classroom. The next year a course in agricculture was introduced and in 1931 a fifth teacher was needed. That same year Walter La Rose, the first in a line of outstanding students, won a University Scholarship.
Mr. E.L. Crossley succeeded Mr. Spencee as Principal in 1932. He had ambition for the school but those first years were depression years and no one in the government thought that the slump could be broken by spending money on schools. The Board tried to keep expenses to a minimum without impairing the standard of the school. The principal, with his limited budget, was working for a school that would help the students in other ways besides the academic. He stressed the Agricultural Course; the Pnyx was started in 1933; the Junior Girls’ Basketball Team won the Provincial Championship in 1934. Meanwhile registration had climbed to 125.
The school survived the Depression and the war with little change. In 1939 the boys formed a corps of Army Cadets, many of whom saw service before the war ended. In the evenings the classrooms were open for Short Courses in Agriiculture, for Junior Farmers meetings and Homemaking Clubs as well as for social evens. Evening classes were held in Agricultural Current Events, Typing and English. The janitors during this period , Archie Beamer and later Jake Rinker, had all they could do to clean the rooms between day classes and night classes.
In 1941 the Board added the upper rooms around the old gymnasium and opened them for use in 1944. when the balcony was torn down to make way for the stairs. The Commercial Class had a regular classroom. At the same time a Shop and Home Economics addition was built at the rear and there was a room in the new basement for an Agricultural Shop.
By R.V. Howard
[Pnyx 1960]
Pelham Continuation School opened in 1922, thirty-eight years ago, with an enrollment of seven pupils and one teacher, Miss Margaret Bonis, Miss Bonis taught Lower school subjects in one room of the old Fenwick Public School where E.W. Farr was the Principal. The School Trustees of S.S. #9 Pelham at the time were George Kappler, Merrelle Stirtzinger and Norman Swayze. They had been supported in the plan to have high school subjects taught in Fenwick by two well known residents, Fred Morgan and Arthur Armbrust. And by others whose children had to go back and forth to Smithville High School on the train where their conduct was not commendable.
The new school crew rapidly,. In 1924 a second teacher Miss Margaret Metler, joined the staff; another room was opened in the I.O.O.F. Hall, and Middle school subjects were taught. As there were forty-eight pupils by the spring of 1926, the Department of Education, in March, declared that the temporary quarters could no longer be approved.
Accordingly between March and September of that year the ratepayers held many meetings to debate the question of S.S.#9 Pelham taking on the responsibility of supporting, by itself a secondary school. As usual in such debates there was opposition because of the cost. But a school had to be built somewhere in the district. The pressure of increased school population was forcing similar action throughout the province.
One factor in the increase was that the Ontario Legislature, because of heightened appreciation of the value of education after the First World War, had passed the Attendance Act of 1921 raising provision for increased grants to the secondary schools from the province and from the county.
The feeling of the majority of the voters in S.S.#9 was shown by the election to the school board of two men who favored building a school in Fenwick. These were Mr. William Julian, who began a twenty-five year term of office in 1925, and Mr. W.E. Boyes, who came on the board in 1926 to serve, as a trustee for twenty-one years.
A point of historical interest in connection with the finances of the district is that the public schools of the Township of Pelham had a revenue, which still amounts to $800 a year, from the interest on investments made with the money received from the sale of Clergy Reserves.
But much greater sums than $800 were needed from the province, the county and other municipalities to carry on high school work and to build a school. The ratepayers argued these points back and forth until they finally decided to build a school.
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