110 It Happened in Iona

to indicate inches. A tiny office gave the whole thing an official air. It was enjoyable work in its own right but doubly so since it was for pay and happened during a period which normally should have been school time. Lewes was a back country district of not morethan a half dozen houses which made for much peace and quiet despite the noise of the machinery. The company’s motto was a triangle within which were implanted five Cs standing for County Construction ‘ Company Contractors Charlottetown. Frank Curtis and Harry Whitehead were the company’s chief bosses with Louis Quinn, Big 110 Thompson, Jimmy Murphy and Big Joe Kelly as main-stay employees. All too soon the month was up with the reopening of schools that brought an end to my first working-out experience.

Soon after finishing grade eleven at St. Dunstan’s, Dad casually remarked one evening that the teaching profession was not a bad one and that it paid a dollar an hour, a generous rate of pay for 1947. So off I went that fall to Prince of Wales for teacher training, receiving a second—class license the next spring. It was an interesting year with practice teaching carried out under watchful eyes in the four-room model school there in which the very capable teachers were Catherine Fraser, Cecelia Keizer, Leona Ross and Mildred Harrington. It was particularly pleasing that year to encounter once more our former school inspector, W.A. MacPhee, who was now head of the teacher training department and whose classes we thoroughly enjoyed. We also had what was for me the first introduction to music with regular classes devoted to theory and choral singing all under the direction of Royston‘ Mugford, a British-trained musician and outstanding city organist.

The first school was Orwell, the same building that later would become part of the Orwell Corner historical complex. There twenty-five pupils were enrolled covering all ten grades, but I managed to survive the year quite well travelling to and from Iona by train, bicycle, horse and roadcart or sleigh and for the last two months in my very first car, the 1938 Plymouth coupe. During the summer of 1949 not much effort was made in looking for a school. In early September school inspector Angus Gilmore came to the house to say that Sturgeon was looking for a principal. I agreed to go and had charge of the “big room” with grades five to ten numbering a couple of dozen pupils. Claire Delorey taught in the “small room” and together we managed to keep the school together fairly well. I enjoyed the people and the year very much and worked quite hard at the task, boarding