Mahone Bay Old School_A Life and Times_Bob Sayer

Girls Teams for First Time: Softball and Basketball became well established
• The Mahone High Light of December 1933, page 5 recorded, ‘The M.H.S. girls never
had the experience of playing games in competition with other schools ...
Through a very bright idea of Mr. Corkum, who furnished a bat and ball, the girls of
1933 formed a softball league with Bridgewater and Chester….The first game was
at home with Bridgewater…..when we saw Nellie [Skipper] Daurie, our star 3rd
baseman, peg the ball to first and hit the ball to the pines, we were encouraged. The
game resulted in a 11-8 win for Mahone.’
• The team only lost one game that season. It was coached by Gilbert Ritcey and the
manager was Mr. Corkum.
• Freda Zwicker was the short-stop on that team and was able to provide this
historic photo.
A Sporting Footnote: Hockey Champions, 1931
The December, 1933 High Light talks admiringly of the boys Mahone High School
team of 1931: ‘This team won the South Shore School Championship and went to
Halifax to play off for the Halifax Herald and Mail Trophy. They played against the
St. Pats’s hockey team which won the league in Halifax. Mahone High lost by a very
slight margin. The team was coached by Murray [Happy] Freeman and our principal,
Mr. Corkum, was manager. Extensive research by this writer has been unable to
discover further information about this team.
J. Albert Daurie: The School Janitor, An Institution
Janitors can become institutions. One such was Albert Daurie. Teachers came and
went, but he stayed. He became indispensable and a legend. He was janitor when
the school opened in 1914 and had the job until his death in December 1933. Born
in 1860, he was venerable Victorian in 1914. One of the first things the hundred year
old Hope Hyson told this writer was a jingle made up and repeated by students in the
1920s.
He’s a nice little man, Mr. Daurie
Always a Grit, never a Tory
When the furnaces work
Roasts us out like a Turk
But he’s working for us
So why worry!
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• In 1933 an interdenominational softball league, with Dr. Skinner as president, was
formed to include church and school teams, boys and girls.
• In 1934 the girls were South Shore School Champions.
• Basketball teams for boys and girls followed with the church halls, including the old
Methodist Church Hall on Fairmont, being used. The girls were South Shore Champs
in 1936.
The South Shore Record of March 18th, 1937, noted, ‘On Tuesday night, …two
interesting games of basketball were witnessed in the United Church Hall, when the
Baptist teams played the High School teams. The High School girls carried off a
crushing victory…while the Baptist boys reversed the boys’ game.’
• Girls hockey was started. The December 1933 High Light, page 6, recorded,
‘Through the interest of our principal, Mr. Corkum, the girls of Mahone High started
hockey and they formed teams with Upper and Lower Town and played a great many
hotly-contested and exciting games.’
• Then came badminton as a school club with inter-school and club games. Added to the
existing tennis [the school court was maintained throughout the 1930s and early ‘40s], a full
athletics program gave equity to both boys and girls.
And he would dress up as Santa at Christmas and take treats to the classrooms!
The old family house, (above) still in fine condition, owned presently by Tom and
Roxanne Lindsay