The Kirkella School District was established in February 1904 and a one-room schoolhouse operated in the village of Kirkella (SE22-12-29W) in the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth. In June 1965, the school closed. The district was dissolved and its area became part of the Elkhorn Consolidated School District and later the Fort La Bosse School Division. The former school building was sold and was renovated with a new roof and lowered side walls to make a private residence.
The teachers of Kirkella School were Ernest M. Passmore (1904-1905), Mr. R. W. Huston (1905-1906), Herbert S. Cooper (1906-1907), Annie Campbell (1908-1911), Lauretta McEwan (1912-1913), Carrie M. Treffry (1913-1915), Gwendoline Jones (1915), May Borley (1916), Elizabeth C. Wallace (1916), Effie Halliday (1917), Daisy Dennier (1917-1918), Helen Jaffray (1918-1920), W. Markie Pecover (1920-1921), Ione Weaver (1922-1923), Robert Holloway (1923-1924), Otto A. Perlett (1924-1931), Frank I. Tindall (1931-1933), Margaret E. McGilvray (1933-1936), Warda C. Duxbury (1936-1940), Alice I. Dumbleton (1940), Henry B. Bees (1940-1941), Lorine D. McDonald (1941-1943), Adelaid Johnston (1941), Mary E. Gardiner (1941-1944), Margaret L. Frazer (1944-1947), N. Frances Blair (1947-1948), F. Keith Amos (1948-1949), Mary Sobol (1949-1950), Daisy B. Switzer (1950-1952), Clara Beswitherick (1952-1953), Florence Manns (1953-1954), Myrna Sinclair (1954-1955), Lorine Cooledge (1955-1956), Margaret L. Chandler (1956-1958), Jean Fordyce (1958-1962), and Margaret Bowles (1962-1965).
Kirkella School (no date) by W. R. Beveridge
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-2, page 89.
Former Kirkella School building (circa 1986)
Source: Historic Resources Branch, Public School Buildings Inventory, slide 1418.Site Coordinates (lat/long): N50.02264, W101.36499
denoted by symbol on the map above
Miniota West topographic map, 62K/3 West, Edition 1, Series A743 [Archives of Manitoba].
One Hundred Years in the History of the Rural Schools of Manitoba: Their Formation, Reorganization and Dissolution (1871-1971) by Mary B. Perfect, MEd thesis, University of Manitoba, April 1978.
Kirkella, Wagon Trails to Hardtop, 1881-1979 by Kirkella History Committee, 1979, page 19.
A Study of Public School Buildings in Manitoba by David Butterfield, Historic Resources Branch, Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism, 1994, 230 pages.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 21 June 2020
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