The Vista School District was organized formally in March 1899 and a one-room school building was erected the following year at SW20-25-21W in what is now the Municipality of Gilbert Plains. The school closed in 1966 and the district was dissolved the following year with remaining students going to Brickburn Consolidated School. The school building was present in 2006 but could not be found at the time of a visit in 2012. A stone monument commemorates it.
Among the teachers of Vista School were Miss Annie Glass (1899), F. R. Young (1915), and Myrtle M. Christie (1916).
Vista School (no date) by H. L. Albright
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-2, page 41.
The former Vista School building (circa 1986)
Source: Historic Resources Branch, Public School Buildings Inventory, slide 442.
Vista School commemorative monument (May 2012)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N51.17315, W100.39146
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.
A Study of Public School Buildings in Manitoba by David Butterfield, Historic Resources Branch, Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism, 1994, 230 pages.
Country Schools of Gilbert Plains by Barry Randell, 2006.
We thank Ed Arndt and the Gilbert Plains Museum for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 28 January 2021
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