School starts tomorrow, and today, we wrap up our look at schools in and around Timmins in the early days.
The first two English schools in the town of Timmins were on Third Ave., and the corner of Algonquin and Pine. Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann says they were one-room schools with 80 or 90 students each, and a teacher handling up to Grade 8.
“On the other side,” she goes on, “St. Eugène was the first French separate school here. That was up on Pine St., Pine and Fifth, where the big cross is beside St. Anthony’s Cathedral.”
If offered instruction in French and English.
High schools started appearing in 1920. Timmins High was upstairs at Marshall-Ecclestone, on the southeast corner of Pine Street and Third Avenue, says Bachmann.
“And they actually had a science lab up there and they had a couple of school rooms until they built Timmins High in 1924.”
South Porcupine High School also opened in 1924; Schumacher High in 1935; and O’Gorman in ’59.
École Secondaire Thériault is an amalgamation of four schools, and opened on its current site in 1972.
