Deseronto Public School

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June 17, 2016

100 years ago: Isabella Barnhart died

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1910s, babies, children, Deseronto Public School, health, World War I
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In April and May 1916 there was a measles epidemic in Deseronto. The 1916 report of the Medical Officer of Health was presented to the Town Council at a meeting on December 15th of that year and described the outbreak in the following way:

During April and May, an Epidemic of Measles passed through the town, a large number were attacked and there were two deaths from this disease. It was part of a general epidemic which swept through the Province of Ontario last winter and spring.

The first death was of Audrey Jean Whiting, daughter of Arthur Henry Whiting, the principal of Deseronto Public School, and Annie (née Leedham). Audrey was two years old. She died on May 16th.

Isabella Barnhart was the second child to die in the epidemic. She was the daughter of George Barnhart and Isabella (née Louis or Lewis), who were both Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. She was fifteen months old when she died on June 17th, 1916. She had been ill for three weeks.

June 5, 2014

After the War, before the Wall

Posted by Amanda Hill under 1950s, children, Deseronto Public School, Flickr, photographs, World War II
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Estella Burkett was a teacher at the Deseronto Public School. She was born in Maynooth, Ontario in 1913 to Agnes Shields and Patrick Burkett. The picture below shows her with her class of children in 1949, outside the old Public School building. Estella retired in 1974 and lived in Belleville until her death in 2010 at the age of 97.

Estella did a considerable amount of travelling in her vacations and she donated some of her photographic materials and notes about her excursions to the Deseronto Archives in 2004. These materials include some photographs taken on a trip to Berlin in 1955, ten years after the end of World War II and six years before the city was divided by the construction of the Berlin Wall. Estella took photographs of the monuments her tour group visited, including this image of a statue of Joseph Stalin, which was removed in 1961 and melted down.

She also photographed the Brandenburg Gate, which would be isolated by the Berlin Wall six years later and impassable until the Wall’s destruction in 1989. The damage caused to the Gate during the Second World War is visible in this image.

These photos are good examples of the way that small local collections can be unexpected sources of information about entirely different parts of the world. It’s not until we dig into the boxes and do the work of describing the materials, that it becomes possible for everyone else to see what is in them.

February 29, 2012

2012 Archives Competition winners

Posted by Amanda Hill under children, Deseronto Public School, events
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Well done to the winners of this year’s Archives Competition at Deseronto Public School:

First Prize: Hannah Rooney
Second Prize: Jarrett Moss
Third Prize: Cassidy Jackson
Honourable Mention: Ziah Silver-Lanuza

The Archives Board would like to thank Principal Heather Seres and her staff for their support of this annual competition. The standard of the entries is always very high and it is extremely difficult to choose winners!

This year the theme was ‘My Deseronto’ and the students described aspects of the town that are important to them. The Library featured fairly frequently, as did local restaurants, the parks and the children’s friends and family.

2012 Archives Competition winners

The prizewinners with Archives Board Chair, Paul Robertson with fellow Board members, Councillor Edgar Tumak and Archivist Amanda Hill. (I should probably mention that the school were having a Pyjama Day, too…)

February 22, 2012

Judging day

Posted by Amanda Hill under children, Deseronto Public School
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Today saw the Archives Board facing its annual task of choosing between the entries in our Deseronto Public School/Deseronto Archives competition.

Judges hard at work

As you can see from the photo, there was no shortage of entries this year and it was very hard to choose the winners. Thanks to Archives Board members Edgar Tumak and Sharon Sharpe for their invaluable help. The winners will be announced next week!

February 21, 2011

A tough act to follow

Posted by Amanda Hill under children, Deseronto Public School, Deseronto Town Council, events
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Last year’s family heritage competition, run by the Archives Board in conjunction with the staff and students of Deseronto Public School was such a great success that it didn’t seem possible that 2011’s competition could be as good.

Prize-giving

But it was! Thanks to all the children who entered – it was very difficult to judge, but Board members Reverend Betts and Sharon Sharpe chose four winners from the entries we received. Congratulations to Gabe Cook, Stevi Menard, Jakob Howald and Britney Wotherspoon.

The prizes were presented in the new Community Hall of the Deseronto Recreation Centre by Deputy Mayor, Clarence Zieman and Archives Board Chair, Paul Robertson, following on from a great show by magician Nigel Harrison, who escaped from a straight jacket immediately beforehand. Another tough act to follow!

Magician Nigel Harrison

All the entries received this year will be on display in Deseronto Public Library for the next week or two: please drop by and see the excellent standard of work by the children.

February 15, 2011

Heritage Day in Deseronto

Posted by Amanda Hill under Deseronto Public School, Deseronto Town Council, events
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At a meeting of the Council of the Town of Deseronto of February 8th, 2011, the following proclamation was made:

WHEREAS, the Heritage Canada Foundation has long promoted the recognition of the third Monday in February each year as Heritage Day as an opportunity to celebrate Canada’s rich heritage of collections, architecture, parks, and historic places; and

WHEREAS, Heritage Day is a time to reflect on the achievements of past generations and to accept responsibility for protecting our heritage; and

WHEREAS, our citizens should be encouraged to celebrate Deseronto’s uniqueness and to rejoice in their heritage and environment; and

WHEREAS, for many years the Town of Deseronto Archives has collected, preserved, and interpreted the town’s heritage documentary and photographic resources for the benefit of the town’s residents. The Archives sponsors an annual Heritage Day prize to encourage students to learn about and celebrate that heritage through special research projects; and

THEREFORE, I, Norm Clark, Mayor of the Town of Deseronto, do hereby proclaim 21 February 2011 as Heritage Day in the Town of Deseronto, and call upon all citizens to celebrate the richness of our past and the promise of our future.

As part of Heritage Day, the Archives Board will be presenting prizes to members of Deseronto Public School who have entered the annual Heritage Day competition. Prizes will be awarded on Heritage Day at 3pm in the Deseronto Community Recreation Centre at 51 Mechanic Street.

2011 Heritage Day competition entries

Thanks very much to the Archives Board members who have helped to promote this competition and the Heritage Day proclamation in Deseronto.

February 16, 2010

The winners!

Posted by Amanda Hill under children, Deseronto Public School, events, exhibitions
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On Family Day the prizes for the winning entries in our Family/Heritage Day competition were distributed to the winners as part of a day of activities in the town. Congratulations to Gabe Cook, Jeremy Martin, Leah Hill, Hannah Brinklow, Erica Fox and Levi Van Vlack for their achievements.

Winning entries

Thanks again for everyone who put so much hard work into this, particularly to The Rev. Canon Cyril Betts, a member of the Deseronto Archives Board, who came up with the idea in the first place and who announced the prize winners at yesterday’s event. Thanks are also due to Mr Launderville, the Principal of Deseronto Public School, for his enthusiastic support for the competition and to Noni McMeeken, Paul Robertson and Councillor Edgar Tumak, members of the Archives Board who were all highly instrumental in its organisation.

Leah receiving her prize from Paul Robertson, Chair of the Archives Board

Well done to all the children who put so much effort into their projects. All the entries will be on display in Deseronto Public Library for the remainder of this week; they are well worth a closer look!

February 10, 2010

The Smell of England

Posted by Amanda Hill under Deseronto Public School, events, exhibitions, featured item
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Some of the entries in the contest

The response from the students of Deseronto Public School to our Family/Heritage Day competition has been, well, ‘awesome’ as the children themselves would put it. It took the judges three hours to choose the winning entries. The winners will be announced on Monday, February 15th, at the Deseronto Community Centre, as part of a range of events that will be going on there that day.

The judges had a very hard job deciding on the winners: the quality of the entries was excellent. Some focused on the history of our town, while others looked at their family’s history. The range of backgrounds of the people of the town became apparent as we went through the entries: there are descendants of people from Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Great Britain and Italy represented among the children of the school. A number of students mentioned their Mohawk ancestry.

The Grade 2 class that visited the Archives two weeks ago had created haikus on the topic of their family or local heritage. As a recently-landed immigrant from England myself, this entry made me smile (and made me hungry!):

The Smell of England

Many of the entries are now on display in Deseronto Public Library and the winning six will be shown at the Community Centre on Monday, February 15, when the prizes will be awarded at 4.00pm. Please do stop by the library, if you are able to, to admire the tremendous amount of work that has gone into this contest.

January 27, 2010

Grade 2’s visit to the Archives

Posted by Amanda Hill under archives, children, Deseronto Public School
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In conjunction with the Family/Heritage Day competition, the Archives hosted a visit from a group of Grade 2 students from Deseronto Public School today. These children have visited the Library before, but this was the first time that a school group has visited the Archives.

I told them a little bit about writing through the ages and what an archivist does to take care of the things that people have recorded. They enjoyed looking at the Library’s 1920s borrowers’ register and the 1894 signature quilt from the Archives. I was wearing cotton gloves and explaining how precious these things were, but am not sure the message got through: one of the boys asked if he could slam the book shut and see whether a cloud of dust escaped. I said “Definitely not!”.

Matching captions to images

After that, we set them going on a matching exercise with a set of 25 Deseronto images which had lost their captions. I wasn’t quite sure how well this would work with this age group, but they seemed to have fun and several asked if they could take their particular picture home with them.

There was another activity set up with colouring materials to make an illuminated initial, but by the end of the matching exercise the children were more interested in choosing new library books to take home with them. Three or four girls came and looked at the print-outs of illuminated initials with me (I found the UK National Archives’ Flickr account a useful source of these) and took them home with them: perhaps this was too ambitious an activity for this age group.

It was a fun morning, if a little noisy and manic at times!

January 20, 2010

Family/Heritage Day Contest

Posted by Amanda Hill under Deseronto Public School, events, family history
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DESCHS-06-19 Unidentified Deseronto family

The Deseronto Archives Board is sponsoring a contest for the children of Deseronto Public School in time for the Family Day holiday on February 15.

Entrants are being invited to produce a piece of work on their family history or on the history of their community, in any format. Judging will take place in Deseronto Public Library and competition entries will be put on display in the Library from February 10th to 19th.

Prizes for the winners will be:

First: $50

Second: $25

Third: $15

Two consolation prizes: $5

The announcement of the prize winners (and a display of the winning entries) will be made at the Deseronto Community Recreation Centre on February 15 at 4pm. This will round off a whole day of family activities in the town.

Good luck to all entrants!

Deseronto Archives