The Menota School District was established formally in November 1887, and a school building was erected on the northwest corner of 20-3-25 west of the Principal Meridian, in what is now the Municipality of Brenda-Waskada. It closed in June 1952, with remaining students going to Napinka Consolidated School No. 2369 or Medora Consolidated School No. 493. The district was dissolved in January 1959. The former school building sat alongside Highway 452, between Highway 3 and Waskada, until 2009 when it was moved to the Waskada Museum where it was renovated as a display.
Among the teachers of Menota School were Dussie Yeomans (1896), John Perrin (1898), Sarah Hunter, Emma Bambridge (six years, 1939), Mrs. Kes Edwards (1920), Mildred Spurrier (circa 1929), Jim Brown, Mary Fewings, Beryl Murray, Ruth Fallis, Bill Bolton, Mr. Sinclair, Percy Anderson, Helen Orr (1944-1945), Florence Clupp (1945-1946), Mary Thomas (1946-1947), J. Lloyd Van Dusen (1951), and Miss A. M. Vandendorpe (1952).
Menota School (no date) by George Hunter
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 80.
The former Menota School building (April 2009)
Source: Doug Brown, Ghost Towns of Canada.
The former Menota School building (April 2009)
Source: Doug Brown, Ghost Towns of Canada.
The former Menota School building at the Waskada Museum (May 2012)
Source: Ken Storie
The refurbished Menota School building at the Waskada Museum (April 2015)
Source: Ed Arndt
Former Menota School building at the Waskada Museum (October 2022)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N49.23579, W100.80487
denoted by symbol on the map above
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Union Bank Building / Waskada Museum (Railway Avenue, Waskada, Municipality of Brenda-Waskada)
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.
Bridging Brenda: The History of Brenda Municipality and Area, Volume 1 by Brenda History Committee, 1990, page 110.
We thank Doug Brown, Ken Storie, Ed Arndt, and Marcel Van Steelandt for providing photographs of the former Menota School building.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 29 October 2022
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