The Steel Bridge School District was established formally in August 1927, named for a bridge over the Whitemud River that had been built in 1908 by the Algoma Steel Bridge Company. The first school building was located at NW30-14-10W in what is now the Municipality of WestLake-Gladstone. It was replaced at the same location by a new two-room school building, built in 1949 and funded via a $3,000 debenture. This district, which records suggest was renamed Steele Bridge during the summer of 1957, operated until the summer of 1968. In July 1967, the district was dissolved and its catchment area became part of the Pine Creek School Division. The former schoolhouse is no longer present at the site but a monument unveiled in 1993 commemorates it.
Among the teachers at Steel Bridge / Steele Bridge School were Roy Arthur Warner (Fall 1949 - Spring 1952, Fall 1953 - Spring 1954, August-November 1954), Jean Patricia Gusdal (Fall 1952 - Spring 1953), Dorothy Myrtle Blair (November 1954 - June 1955, Fall 1961 - Spring 1964, Fall 1965 - Spring 1968), Rosaline Chastko (Fall 1955 - Spring 1957), Janet Isabelle Adams (Fall 1957 - Spring 1959), Muriel Florence Lock (Fall 1959 - Spring 1961), and Betty Isabel Lorraine Foxon (Fall 1964 - Spring 1965).
The first Steel Bridge School (circa 1929) by C. K. Rogers
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-3, page 108.
The former Steel Bridge School building (circa 1990)
Source: Historic Resources Branch, Public School Buildings Inventory, slide 547.
Steel Bridge School commemorative monument (August 2012)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N50.22579, W98.82502
denoted by symbol on the map above
See also:
Manitoba Business: Algoma Steel Bridge Company
School division half-yearly attendance reports (E 0757), Archives of Manitoba.
Manitoba School Records Collection, Steel [Steele] Bridge School District No. 2171 - Daily Registers, GR3152, Archives of Manitoba.
Municipal borrowing files (MA 0039), Steel Bridge School District #2171, GR1799, 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.
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 and Nathan Kramer.
Page revised: 19 May 2024
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