Picture Butte High School 50th Anniversary and Homecoming Vol. 12

Publication celebrating 50th anniversary and homecoming of Picture Butte High School (Volume XII; Staff)pdfa. i i u u ^Picture Putte ^tgf) ii>cf)ool 50tl) anti omciomtng August 18 Sc 19, 2000 p _q j Volume 3Cll: ^taff L u uPICTURE BUTTE HIGH SCHOOL 50th anniversary and HOMECOMING AUGUST 18-19, 2000 Volume XII: Staff Front and back covers compliments of TransAlta.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Organizing the 50th Anniversary of Picture Butte High School began in April 1999. A member of the Picture Butte High School staff called upon Charmaine (Karren) Sucher and Jeanene (Pilling) Casson encouraging us to co chair a school anniversary. We brain stormed and started to organize a committee with the first meeting of the group being held September 23, 1999. A steering committee of 11 was soon together. It was decided that the school anniversary would not be complete without inviting the teachers, office and janitorial staff, and bus drivers. A class rep was chosen for each year from 1949 to 1999 as well as a rep for the teaching and auxiliary staff. The search for names and addresses was launched with a deadline of November 30. Picture Butte High School students as far back as 1930 approached the committee indicating that they too would like to be involved. The committee welcomed the idea and the word Homecoming was added to the event. Seven volunteers offered to enter into their home computers, on a Reunion Planner Program, the data gathered. A target date for the first mailout was January 26, 2000 at which time 55 eager, enthusiastic volunteers arrived at the Community Centre to stuff envelopes. Approximately 2500 invitations and questionnaires were mailed to all parts of the world the next day and over the next few months approximately another 1050 questionnaires were disbursed. Shortly after the mailout, the word was out and everyone was talking about the anniversary and homecoming. As replies started to come back, now ten computer volunteers began entering responses into the program in order to prepare the anniversary books for printing. Response to the questionnaire was remarkable with approximately 1500 replying. Countless hours were spent entering information, preparing the year book pictures, checking and rechecking to make sure that the books were ready. The deadline to have the books to press was May 23, 2000. A big “Hooray!” could be heard the day everything went to the printers. Meanwhile all the other committees were busy: organizing the caterer, bartenders, band, tables and chairs, entertainment, souvenirs, you name it. Each meeting a new deadline was set and met in due course. We recognize and thank the steering committee for their special skills and dedication to ensuring the success of this event. Historian - Don Becklund (Principal/Teacher at PBHS from 1970-1981)— Countless hours went into interviewing people, gathering photos, organizing computer volunteers and getting the book ready to the publisher. Invitations and Sundry Duties - Cliff Casson (Class of 1961) - Lots of running around obtaining quotes and attending to the details. Banquet - Anne (Boras) Gibbons (Class of 1951) - Working very closely with the Caterer to make sure that the meal will be perfect. What a job to get the tables and chairs organized.Entertainment - Fonda (Nalder) Hanna (Class of 1953) - Spending time on the phone organizing the jam session on Saturday afternoon and making sure we had a good sound system and an excellent band for the dance. Publicity - Mary Oikawa (Teacher at PBHS from 1960 to 1990) - Working closely with the newspapers, television and radio to make sure the news was out. Souvenirs - Rita (Gill) Tolley (Class of 1965-66) - Searching out and obtaining the best souvenirs to make this a memorable occasion. Finance - Harry Fischer (Class of 1962) - Canvassing for enough cash to get us started with the mailout. Secretary - Wendy (Casson) Ensign (Class of 1972) - Keeping the minutes up to date, sending out letters to the service clubs requesting donations, and acknowledging donations received. Treasurer - Arnold Sucher (Accountant) - And what a fine job of accounting he did for us keeping the ledgers all by hand. We express our sincere gratitude to all the volunteers who have contributed time and talents toward this successful event. Without everyone’s energy and enthusiasm, an event such as this could not happen. We also acknowledge those who gave initial donations without which we could not have started and with the subsequent donations we were able to add a few extra details to make the event even better. We wish to thank all who replied to the questionnaire. Your memories, anecdotes and stories are priceless. Our sincere desire is that all will take the time to reminisce, enjoy each others’ company, renew old friendships and make new ones. We have enjoyed being co chairs of this special Millennium event, “Thanks for the Memories” //Jeanene (Pilling) Charmaine (Karren) Sucher Class of 1952 Co Chair / Class of 1966 Co ChairHistorian’s Note: “...Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely COMMITS oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way...” (W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition) The COMMITMENTS of Jeaneue Pllling-Casson 666 and Charmaime Karren-Sueher 652 made this event happen! Starting from “scratch” in October 1999, approximately 100 volunteers searched the globe to establish a name/address data base of about 3600 classmates and staffers. The 1500 questionnaire responses and 120 remembrances/anecdotes statements were keyboarded for booklet publication by 11 “midnight oilers”. We tried our very best to collect the names and addresses of ALL PBHS staffers and classmates, and to produce accurate booklets. We hope you will be tolerant and recognize our limitations in this endeavor. Where we have fallen short, we assure you that it was not intentional. Don BecklundPICTURES OF THE PAST The two most common questions asked by friends and acquaintances, who are not familiar with the local area, of the approximate 4000 students that have attended PBHS from 1926 to 2000 are as follows: “Where is the Butte?” “What is Picturesque?” The local history book, “Coyote Flats Volume II”, offers the following insights: “The dictionary description of a butte is ‘a conspicuous hill with steep sides and fairly uniform in circumference’. The Indian word for a butte is “ist - sanatshimek - ay’. In English the translation means ‘that beautiful hill that can be seen from afar’. Whether the name Picture Butte came from the concept of the beautiful hill or from the rock designs or pictures that the Indians placed near the summit is only conjecture. It is certainly a logical conclusion that in years gone by the Indians in search of buffalo or the cowboys in search of cattle must have used the butte as a lookout on many occasions. However, they would now search in vain for the beautiful hill because it no longer exists. Much of the soil has been used to improve the streets of Picture Butte or the highway leading north of the town.” For decades, southern Alberta proved a secure home for the Blackfoot as the dark-humped buffalo grazed the plains in great abundance. By the mid 1870s, the buffalo was gone—it, and the meat that was eaten, the clothes that were worn, the hides that were sold, and the homes in which wives and children slept. The constant need by the Canadian fur trade for pemmican, along with the need for buffalo hides and robes by the Missouri River market, accounted in large part for the unsustainable level of harvest that reduced the Canadian herds to nil. Famine was reported everywhere, and in 1876 and 1877 came Treaties 6 and 7, ceding to the Canadian government the whole of Alberta and Saskatchewan south of the North Saskatchewan River. The Blackfoot had to give up their ancestral hunting grounds and move onto reserves. In the year 1900, men such as Sir Roderick Cameron and the Conrad brothers had major portions of their vast cattle empires located here. Other ranchers were in the area, but their operations were on a much smaller scale. Prairie fires, barbed wire fences and the terrible winter of 1906- 1907 dealt the ranchers staggering cattle losses from which they never fully recovered. The barbed wire fence made its appearance when the homesteaders began to arrive. Whereas, previously, cattle would drift with a storm, the barbed wire fence prevented them from reaching the shelter afforded by the coulees. Fences also curtailed grazing and in some instances prevented cattle from reaching a water supply. In the early 1900's, the area was declared open to homesteaders. Families came from Ontario and all parts of the United States. As the homesteaders sod shacks dotted the landscape, the grades one to eight country schools soon followed. Schools opened between 1906 and 1912 included: Huntsville(1906), Barrhill(1908), Turin West(1909), Sundial( 1910), Circle( 1911), Battersea( 1911), Gold Ridge( 1912) and Bulmer( 1912). The homesteaders were lured by the prospects of land but ended up having to face loneliness, long winters, dust and drought. Coal mine tipples also broke the prairie expanse at Diamond City, Commerce and 1. Shaughnessy. Schools were built at Diamond City in 1908, at Commerce in 1913 and at Shaughnessy(Wallace School) in 1929. Diamond City was the first community in the area to go “on line” with the outside world. In 1910, Alberta Government Telephones inaugurated long distance telephone service to Lethbridge and the rest of the province. Diamond City, with a population of 800 people, became the first incorporated town in the district in 1912. In the years that followed 1916, rainfall was scant and the area became a dust bowl. The dry land farmers were in desperate straits. The Alberta Government set up studies of their plight, and instituted relief for farmers. Banks were told to stop foreclosures. More was needed to support agriculture and the Government studies emphasized the need for irrigation on the fertile, bench land north of Lethbridge, across the Oldman River. The official sod breaking ceremony for the Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District took place on a June afternoon in 1921. The first full season of operation for the LNID was in 1924 when water flowed to the Coalhurst, Monarch, Diamond City, Shaughnessy, Picture Butte, Barrhill, Iron Springs and Turin areas. With water in the canals and the completion of the Canadian Pacific rail link from Diamond City to Turin in 1925, a new era began with an influx of settlers from dry areas. Farmers and their families from the drought stricken areas around Medicine Hat, Bow Island and Foremost converged on the district. Many new names were added to the school registers and three new schools opened: Turin Village(1926), Picture Butte(1926) and Granite Falls(1927). School started in Picture Butte in the spring of 1926 in Koepke’s hall and post office. The twelve students in the first class were housed in a comer of the hall and were separated from the post office by a curtain. The first school, a one room building, was erected behind the present post office. Thirty pupils answered the call of the first bell in the spring of 1927. Sunshine and blue skies greeted the children when they left for school on December 6, 1927. About 11:00 a.m. the mother/father of all blizzards struck the community. The raging blizzard rendered visibility to about five metres(fifteen feet). Howard Finley arrived at the Picture Butte School with two saddle horses and a long rope. By holding to the rope strung between the two saddle horses, the children traveled less than a block to find safety in Gibbons’ store. The Gibbons family provided food and lodging for twenty one unexpected guests. Some slept on mattresses, some on bed springs and some on the floor. New settlers continued to pour into the community. In 1928 the high school room was added to the original Picture Butte School building and bulging enrollments required a third classroom to be held in the old pool hall. By 1930 sugar beets were an established crop in the LNID. Sugar beets posed problems for the individual farmer and necessitated an increase in the farm labour force. This was solved with the arrival of hundreds of east European immigrants who left political oppression and economic hardship to work the sugar beet fields of southern Alberta. Uncertain as to what the future would hold, often the husband emigrated leaving the wife and children in the “old country”. The onset of the “great depression” in 1929 cast a very uncertain future for the immigrants who were already beset by problems of a new language and new customs. Their determination and 2. perseverance eventually paid off, but it sometimes took five and even 10 years of saving before families were reunited and down payments were made on a piece of land they could call home. School enrollments continued to swell in the 1930s. Grade twelve was added for the 1933-34 term. In 1935, the two room Picture Butte School was raised about two metres(eight feet) above ground level and then supported at that height by rail ties borrowed from the Canadian Pacific Railway. The area underneath the school was then excavated, a cement foundation was poured and the school now had two additional classrooms and a lumace room in the new basement. Although the basement classrooms helped alleviate some of the crowding, small high school classes were held in any odd nook which could be found—even in the furnace room. On occasion, the lumace room also became a home room. Offices and board rooms are uninspiring spaces where deals are usually formalized but seldom created. Coffee shops, bars, and games such as poker and golf seem to be far more fertile settings for hatching innovative schemes and motivating people to momentous actions. Maurice Gibbons PBHS ‘34 related the following story which took place in the early 1930s: “Jim Pollock, Howard Finley, C. G. Nimmons and my Dad(J. M. Gibbons) were playing bridge on a table in the store(Gibbons’ Store). They had finished hauling beets that were shipped to Raymond for processing. I think it was about the 22nd or 23rd of December. Jim Pollock said, ‘This is no damn good, we should get a factory here5. They called a meeting of the Beet Growers and everybody thought that would be a good idea. They were made a committee. So they went and saw the ‘head honchos’ in Raymond. Well, the crops had been pretty good here so they said they would take it to the head bosses and find out.” A bridge game conversation sparked the lobbying that made Picture Butte the boom town of southern Alberta in the middle 1930's. The first sod was turned for the sugar factory in May 1935, and the factory was ready for the first campaign in September 1936. At the peak of construction some three hundred men were employed at the factory while some one hundred were working on a new reservoir north of town. When the Picture Butte factory opened it employed seventy-five men on a full-time basis. A booming economy, thanks to the sugar factory, and centralization of schools brought additional school buildings to Picture Butte in 1936. The rural Circle School and two Becker Lumber office buildings were hauled to the site of the Picture Butte School. The entire district stood behind the new sugar processing industry, but this was definitely not the case for centralization of schools. Excerpts from articles in “Coyote Flats 1905-1965" by Leonard Haney PBHS ‘30 and wife, Velva, provide valuable insights into the feelings surrounding the thorny centralization issue. “In 1936 the small school districts were centralized under one administration known as ‘The Lethbridge School Division No. T which . . . stretched from Carmangay to Warner. R. W. Clow was the first divisional trustee for this vicinity and to him fell the task of closing the small one-room schools, and starting a 3. system of vans to bring the students together in Iron Springs, Turin, Picture Butte and Barrhill. There was severe criticism by some of the people living in the small districts but this resentment passed with time. .. . ” ( Leonard Haney PBHS ‘30) “Perhaps the centralization of schools, more than any other change that has been necessitated by progress in the last sixty years, has dealt the most distressing blow emotionally to the members of a rural community. ...” ( Yelva Haney) Prior to centralization, most students walked, rode horse, or travelled via a horse drawn-cart, wagon or buggy no more than five miles to their local one room school. With centralization, the distances to the school were often far greater than five miles and so the school bus made its debut in 1936. One of the first school buses was a 1935 Ford half ton complete with a wooden box that was about four feet high. School bus accessories included a plywood roof over the box, a hinged door at the back of the box and seating for ten on two wooden benches inside the box. As block heaters and heated garages were non-existent, when an Arctic front moved in, the bus was left to idle all night to insure that it would run in the morning. In the early days of centralization, farmers were required to take turns driving the school bus that served their route. Rumor has it that one farmer-driver would drop his passengers at the Picture Butte School in the morning and then spend the balance of the morning and the early afternoon in Shaughnessy. Did the fact that Picture Butte was “dry” and Shaughnessy was “wet” have any bearing on the side trips to Shaughnessy? In April, 1942, the 22,000 Japanese Canadians living in the coastal area of British Columbia were given three days’ evacuation notice. For 218 families, the Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District was their forced destination. They arrived in a completely unfamiliar province with only the shirts on their backs. In British Columbia, they had been fruit farmers, commercial fishermen, or employed in the pulp industry or canneries. The sugar beet fields were completely new to them. Although they did not have to live in sod shacks like the early homesteaders, the beet labour shacks were a far cry from the comfortable homes they left behind. Roy Kunimoto PBHS ‘46 was an evacuee to the LNID. The following are his thoughts: “I arrived At Picture Butte High School in mid November 1942 after the completion of the sugar beet harvest. It was the year our life in B.C. made a traumatic turn when all Canadians of Japanese origin were forced from their homes, and either confined in detention camps or forced to scatter east of the Rockies. All our real and personal property was confiscated and sold off at bargain prices. It was the culmination of years and years of racial slurs, discriminatory actions and prejudice against us which began in the late nineteenth century, and reached its shameful climax during the Second World War. The foregoing was not to make accusations or to arouse bad memories but rather to briefly show how the unhappy events in our history had molded us to be cautious and apprehensive, wondering how we would be treated. Despite some minor 4. negative incidents, southern Albertans accepted us into the same race—the human race. Thank you!” When Picture Butte School opened in September 1942 the classes were “filled to the rafters”. With the recent arrival of the Japanese Canadian families, the school population swelled and accommodation was not available for all that wished to attend. At that point, Mr. Ingwall Sundal donated the present PBHS property to the School Division, and four closed, one-room schools were hauled to the site. In October 1942, the principal and the two high school teachers moved “across the coulee” to the “colony” at the present high school location. From 1942 to 1949, board walks were the connectors between the grade ten building, the grade eleven building, the grade twelve building and the Home Economics/Shop building. In the mid 1940's a fifth closed, one-room school was hauled to the high school yard when grade nine was added to the “colony”. “The often despised sugar beet, with its back-breaking long hours of work, was instrumental in bringing thousands of families from Europe since the middle twenties . .. The Dutch, although mostly in the post-war movement, have found their place among this number. ...” (by Bernard Nieboer, “Coyote Flats 1905-1965") Bernard Nieboer served as an immigration fieldman for hundreds of Dutch families—a number with ten to fifteen children—who came to the Iron Springs-Picture Butte area after World War II. Once again, war, oppression and economic hardship had brought people to the sugar beet fields. Once again, school registrations soared. Planning started in 1947 for a new high school building that would finally provide some proper instructional facilities and help alleviate the severe numbers congestion. The new Picture Butte High building was open for instruction in October 1949. Centralization continued in 1950 with all senior high bused from Huntsville School. PBHS expansion continued with the addition of four class rooms at the west end of the building in 1951. School opening in 1954 included all senior high students from Diamond City. Turin twelves came in 1958, and the tens and elevens followed in 1961. In 1960, all senior high students from Barrhill were transferred to PBHS. For sixteen years(1942-1958), the Home Economics and Shop(Industrial Arts) classes