Log School House

62°27′07″N 114°22′36″W / 62.45194°N 114.37667°W / 62.45194; -114.37667

A small one-story square brown building of logs with the ends unfinished at the corners. It has a peaked roof with brown shingles and yellow trim on top. In front are flower beds; it has a yellow sign with fancy text headed "Yellowknife's Original School" at left and a wooden door of vertical boards in the middle. Behind it is a tree and part of two larger modern buildings.
Original Yellowknife School House, 2015

The first building used as a school in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, is currently located on Franklin (50th) Avenue at the south end of New Town, the city's downtown section. It is a small log cabin dating to the mid-1930s. It was designated a City of Yellowknife Heritage Site in 1998,[1] and listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places in 2004.[2]

Originally built by a local gold mining company, it was repurposed as a school in 1938, as the city's population had grown rapidly enough to require a school. Yellowknife Education District No. 1 was created to manage the school; its school board was the first democratically elected government body in the territory.[3] Even with a 20-member student body, it was small enough that classes had to be held in two sessions; they were often interrupted by passing miners gawking or mistaking the building for a bar.

After two years, the new district moved to larger quarters to accommodate a growing population, and eventually the district was able to build its own school. the log cabin then became a laundry and private residence in later years before being offered to the city as a historical site.[4] In 1987, the building was moved from its original location in Old Town to its present location on Mildred Hall elementary school property where it has since been restored to provide tours of early education in Yellowknife. It is currently closed to the public; eventual plans are to use it as a museum of Yellowknife's early educational history.[5]

  1. ^ "Log Cabin School" (PDF). City of Yellowknife. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  2. ^ "Old Log School House". Canadian Register of Historic Places. Archived from the original on September 28, 2015. Retrieved September 22, 2015.
  3. ^ Silke, Ryan (September 2014). "Yellowknife Education District No. 1: A History of Public Schooling" (PDF). Yellowknife Education District No. 1. p. 5. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 4, 2021. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  4. ^ Thomson, Candace (February 5, 2014). "75 years of schools in Yellowknife". Northern News Services. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  5. ^ Morgan, Ben (November 3, 2008). "Little schoolhouse in the city". Northern News Services. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved September 21, 2015.