Memories of the old Whaletown Schoolhouse

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - After more than a decade of service, the Oyster Bay schoolhouse was barged over to Whaletown in 1950. There it opened its doors to the children of a new community.

Brigid Weiler started attending the Whaletown School in 1959. 

Her earliest memories are in that area.

“My dad Ottie Weiler was the postmaster in Whaletown for many, many years.  My mom, Mary Weiler, was from New Westminster. My dad was from Victoria. They were essentially urban visionaries, if you will.” 

“They met during the war. My mom was a nurse, and  nursed through the London Blitz. My dad was an officer. When the officers would come up to London, they'd hire a hall, and requisition  a busload of nurses to come down and dance with them. That's how my mom and dad met. They were married there. Things happened after that, and then they finally got to come home and be together. They chartered a boat, and  came up the coast looking for a place where they could live a happy, romantic, bohemian life.”

“They didn't know anything about living in the wilderness at all. They saw the house half built on Whaletown Bay and bought it. It's still there. It's a blue house, you see it when you go out on the ferry.  Five acres of waterfront for $1,500. They were so happy. They had just a wonderful romantic, bohemian life and four daughters.” 

Thanks to Mary Weiler, the schoolhouse was a community arts centre more than 50 years before its rebirth as the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery.

BW: “My mother taught art classes here, from the late 40s until she left. There's a photo there of her students squished into the little kid's desk. This is Mr. McDevitt, who was our teacher and his wife Lottie, Bernard Woodward, Edie Huck, with all the easels. She did that for many, many years, so it was always an art teaching place.”

Mary Weiler painted one of the pieces currently hanging in the gallery after she moved here in 1947.

BW: “This is an early piece of hers, after that she was a watercolorist.She was an art teacher and an artist. She also taught first aid classes here.”

“The community club used the building in those days as well. They had the Santa Claus parties here sometimes, and other things. When they opened the road to Mansons around 1960, there was a big party. There was actually quite a bit that went on in the field. It was the place where people would celebrate. We'd had community picnics.”

Brigid was living just a short walk away when she started school. 

BW: “I came here from grade one to grade six.”

“My teacher was Don McDevitt. He and his wife lived on the corner of Cemetery Road and he would catch the school bus over here every morning to go to school.”

CC: Can I get you to name some of the students?

BW: “David Robertson still lives here and he had several siblings who were also in attendance - Alan, Alice and Bernie - and then that family moved away. There was Jeannie, Cheryl, and Rick Matthews. The Matthews family still own property, and come here for holidays. There were the Riddell kids, Marilyn and Noreen and Louise. There were two Waring families and the Bergman kids, Gail, Lynn, and Phillip. I'm still in touch with one of that family, Lynn. They ran the Whaletown store for 30 odd years, so they were a very well known presence here in Cortes.  My best friends were in those families.”

“We had an oil stove for heat at the very back of the building. We also had Vic the dog, who lay by the oil stove and steamed away and made the whole place smell like wet dog in the wintertime. There were gas lights, propane, which were almost never used.  On the very darkest mornings when it was blowing a heavy southeaster, pretty much pitch dark, Mr. McDevitt would climb up a tall step ladder and light the lights. Other than that, we didn't have that, just the windows. By nine o'clock you could see. it was probably pretty dark in here, but I came from a house with no electricity. We were used to it.”