When Gordon Jackson and his committee put the first school history together in 1948, Greensville School was a small rural school celebrating an event which had happened a hundred years before. There were still people around who had attended the original one room wooden schoolhouse. The committee gathered up everything that was made available to them and presented it to the community as a commemorative book. Our thanks go to those people for having had the foresight to create the commemorative history as a gift to the community. Their efforts have made our task that much easier.
Twenty years ago a group of us sat down and again using a lot of manual labour, we revised the first book with new information, photographs and stories.
Today, with the help of computers, the second edition is once again being updated and revised. Unfortunately, we still havent found a photograph of the first schoolhouse and maybe we never will, but it has always been a dream of the committee to obtain one.
It is difficult for us to imagine what things were like back in 1848. A lot of things that we take for granted, such as zippers, radio, television, nylon, peanut butter, telephones and electricity, were very much in the future. It was an interesting year historically. Europe was full of revolution and uprisings. A group of students in Paris barricaded themselves in order to protest the conditions of the day. The events inspired Victor Hugo to write a book, which later became one of the most popular musicals of the late twentieth century, Les Miserables. It was a time of a young Queen Victoria, of Charles Dickens and of a British colony called Upper Canada. Life was simpler and slower, news was slow to spread and communities were more closely knit as travel was limited by long working hours and few holidays.
By the time the school celebrated its centennial, it had seen its graduates go off to two world wars. It was a time to celebrate the pride of the people of Greensville in their school and in their community. Gordon Jackson and his committee did their job well.
The 130th anniversary in 1978 was a celebration of the rediscovery of our history. It was a time before computers and specialty channels on television. Greensville was part of the larger Wentworth County Board of Education. It was also the year we said good-bye to the grade six classes and became a kindergarten to grade five school.
Today, Greensville School finds itself part of the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board. Its graduates have done well for themselves. We have provided two ministers of education, Chris Ward and Dave Johnson. Our present Member of Parliament, John Bryden also attended Greensville School, as did Tony Skarica, the local member of the Provincial Legislature, and Mark Shurvin, our Local Councillor.
The one word, that has united the history of Greensville School has been change. It has occurred in many ways and, as we head into the twenty-first century, it will continue to do so. Greensville has managed to adapt to change and move forward with the times.
We hope that those of you who read this book in the future will cherish the history of Greensville School and make certain that it is never lost again.
- J. Crozier - February, 1998 -
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