Mahone Bay Old School_A Life and Times_Bob Sayer

Home and School Association Formed: 1945
In the spring of 1945, the Mahone Bay Home and School Association was formed, and the
Board gave permission for the executive to meet in the principal’s office and membership
to meet in a classroom. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship. The prime
mover was Mrs.[W.H.G.] Merna Hirtle.
The Star Weekly, Toronto, September 15 1962
‘Loud Speaker System’ Installed: December-January 1946-7
One of the early major Home and School projects was to pay for a public
address system for the school. Office and classroom could now make contact.
“Announcements” arrived. The Association was also busy improving the school
grounds, setting up a book exchange, and adding books and new shelves to the
library.
Principal’s Phone and Back-Stop
• In April 1942 a phone was placed in the principal’s office.
• In April 1945 a back stop for ball games was erected on the school field
The Faces of Progress are Numerous!
Adult Education Classes Started: Pottery Craze Hits Town, Alice
Hagen
The first steps to support adult education classes were taken during the war. In March
1940, Mr. E. D. Ford who had been with the N.S. Technical College and was then
with the Department of Education met with the Board, telling them of successful
pottery classes that had taken place in the town the last two summers.
He pointed out they could only continue if the Board subsidized provincial
grants [from the Technical Education Branch]. The Board would have to budget $200
and that would cover a summer course and “Night Classes in Pottery” from October
to April 1940-41.
The summer class worked but the night school did not have sufficient registration, but
it did for 1942-3. after the Board had been petitioned by fourteen ladies in October. The
following winter the class contributed $60 to costs.
Demonstrations were given to students and students were allowed to use the clay. For a
year different classes went to the school basement to practice pottery.
Even in the early 1950s, Agnes Croft [Whynott] remembered taking students to the
basement to use left over clay. For several years in the 1940s there was a blossoming
of interest and activity in pottery in Mahone Bay. The inspiration was Alice Hagen.
She was an award and medal winning potter with a national and international
reputation for her work and studies.
Mrs. Hagen and her husband had lived in Mahone Bay since 1930. In Dr. Mitchener’s
old stone house on Clairmont, Bob Douglas’s present home, she built a studio. She
attracted the attention of the Department of Education in 1938 and classes were
sponsored throughout the province in the following years. Samples of her work and
her students can be seen at Mahone Bay’s Settlers Museum.
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