Harls and I went to the same school in Killarney Manitoba, but a generation apart so it will be interesting to hear his comments on the place.
My years were a lot of transition for the school and the region.
When I started school in the fall of 1966, the High School was fairly new and on the outskirts of town. The elementary schools were the remainder of the two ancient school and a newer "White School" (called that because it was painted white you animals!) plus a four "huts" for the overflow. In grade 5 (1971) we moved the 4-8's to the new addition to the high-school. It had the "Open Air Classroom" foisted on us at the time. What a fucking stupid idea that was and in later years the province paid a lot of money to retrofit the schools for individual classrooms.
Our schools in the area of Manitoba had enough kids to field 12 man football teams and our school was well regarded in the Province for high level teams in many varsity sports.
The student body was mostly farm kids with the town kids being the minority but not by much. There was the usual bullying (which I was a short term victim of and of course reciprocated when the opportunity came). A good portion of the male student body quit school when they reached Grade 10 to join the work force (mostly construction and the oil rigs in AB).
A comment on the bullying. Fist fights were commen and as long as they took place in the parking lot, the staff was fine with letting us farm boys duke it out. That usually settled things. Also during the fall hunting season there was likely more firepower in the gun racks of the parking lot pickups than at the local RCMP det but there was never any move from anyone being bullied to shoot up the school. That never crossed anyone's mind as far as I knew.
The thing that really affected the school was rural depopulation and the end of us baby boom kids. My class had just over 100 kids graduate. The next year was 55 and it just got less and less over the years. My school bus when I started school was a big and full of kids and 12 years later the bus was small with only 2 or 3 kids in it.
Killarney Schools from the 1910's
The elementary school complex in 1967 (white school in background, and the portables (aka "The Huts") to the left)
Killarney High School today
