The Springbank School District was formally organized in November 1880, named for a natural spring located nearby, and a school house was constructed on the southwest corner of 16-1-4 east of the Principal Meridian, in what is now the Municipality of Emerson-Franklin. Student enrollment through the years ranged from a low of 16 (in 1888) to a high of 41 (in 1900). With the school consolidation movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the school trustees decided to join with Ridgeville School No. 102 and Emerado School No. 1237 in forming Ridgeville Consolidated School No. 2359 in the nearby community of Ridgeville, and the last class was held at this site in 1958. A monument at the former school site was erected on 5 July 1980 to commemorate the pioneers who farmed this area and provided a school for the education of their children.
Among the teachers who worked at Springbank School were Dorothy Rose Fry (1917-1918), E. W. French (1919-1920), Myrtle V. McArthur (1925-1926), Florence McLachlan (1930-1931), Garnet Milton Morrison (1937-1938), Gwendoline Mary “Gwen” Buchanan (1938), Jessie Evelyn Wiechman (1939-1940), Jennie Elizabeth Graham (1940-1941), Lyall M. Robertson (1942-1945), Katie Friesen (1945-1946), Fern Banting (1946-1947), William Walter Puyda (1947-1950), Emily Inkster (1950), Viola Reimer (1951), Tina Penner (1951-1952), Jean Kubas (1952-1954), Christine Yaremko (1954-1955), Helen M. Kozachenko (1955-1956), John W. Cesmystruk (1956-1957), and Yvonne Copeland (1957-1958).
Springbank School commemorative monument (May 2011)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N49.03018, W97.00477
denoted by symbol on the map above
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.
“700 attend old school reunion,” Steinbach Carillon, 12 July 1972, page 31.
Manitoba School Records Collection, Springbank No. 104 Daily Registers, GR2088, Archives of Manitoba.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough and Nathan Kramer.
Page revised: 27 January 2021
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