The Petrel School District was established formally in January 1884, and a school building was erected in the northeast corner of 36-11-15 west of the Principal Meridian in the Municipality of North Cypress-Langford. The school closed in September 1967 and its remaining students went to Carberry Consolidated School No. 2404.
Among the teachers of Petrel School were Robert M. Brown (1892), C. McKinnon (1893), B. Mawhinney (1894), A. Abbott (1895), C Ferguson (1897), M. Bemister (1897), R. Garland (1897), J. Conklin (1899), Edith Carwell (1900), M. Baldwin (1902), E. Oxeham (1904), G. Collins (1905), J. Freed (1909), E. McKim (1910), A. McLean (1911), Ada Dingle (1911), B. Drummond (1912), K. Heffleman (1912), H. Brautigan (1913), M. McKinnon (1915), B. Harkness (1915, 1917), Effie McCaskill (1916), J. Chisholm (1919, 1950), L. Simpson (1923), B. Robinson (1924), M. Hunter (1924), A. Mcintosh (1929), V. Black (1932), M. Moffatt (1933), E. Nicol (1935, 1939), C. Johnston (1938), H. Kolesar (1939), L. Martin (1940), D. Fallis (1943), D. Baillie (1943), F. Gendeaus (1943), A. Gietz (1943), I. Soderstrom (1944), M. Sedgewick (1945), W. Leask (1946), M. Penner (1947), P. McCully (1948), M. McIntosh (1948), F. Rasmussen (1952), P. Witherspoon (1953), P. Porter (1957), and L. Perrett (1958).
In 1900, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church was built in the southeast corner of 1-12-15W and it became Petrel United Church in 1925 with the amalgamation of the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational faiths in Canada. The last service in the church occurred on 26 June 1966. Its pulpit and organ were donated to the Carberry Plains Museum, where they are housed as part of a Petrel Chapel display.
A fieldstone monument at the former church site, now a small park on the Trans-Canada Trail, commemorates Petrel School and Petrel United Church. A nearby sign commemorates Petrel district pioneers Joe and Daisy Switzer and their children John, Harry, Louise, Bob, and Emory.
Petrel School (no date) by J. B. Morrison
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 8.
Commemorative monument for Petrel United Church and Petrel School (December 2011)
Source: Gordon Goldsborough
Commemorative monument for Petrel United Church and Petrel School (June 2020)
Source: Rose Kuzina
Commemorative monument for Petrel United Church and Petrel School (March 2021)
Source: George PennerSite Coordinates (lat/long): N49.97541, W99.38547
denoted by symbol on the map above
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Carberry Plains Museum (520 Fourth Avenue, Carberry)
The Carberry Plains: 75 Years of Progress. [Manitoba Legislative Library, F5648.C36 Car]
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.
We thank Nathan Kramer, Rose Kuzina, and George Penner for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 27 December 2022
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