Excerpt
School Days
The Colson district had a small schoolhouse situated in the corner
of a farmer’s field, one and a half miles northwest of the Fielding
farm. When it was built in 1920 the children of the district almost
filled the thirty seats in the one-room learning establishment.
According to the registers stored at the Department of Education in
the capital city of Regina, Benjamin Fielding attended school there
up to the end of the seventh grade. Had anyone investigated those
old records, they may have noted that it was not uncommon for
the formal education of a boy from the districts to terminate anywhere
after grade seven. Seldom did a boy’s name appear beyond
the ninth grade.
The McNeill brothers were the exception. Their grandfather, Andrew
McNeill, had a healthy respect for education, a characteristic
he passed down to his son and thence to his grandsons. And although
Dave, being the eldest, did not have the advantages of his
younger brother, he did manage to complete the tenth grade with
excellent marks, before his services were required full time on the
farm. Alan, on the other hand, was one of the few country boys
who went on to high school in Bradshaw, graduating in 1939, only
months before the onset of the Second World War.
Dave, like his father and grandfather before him, was committed
to procuring the best possible education for any offspring he might
produce. So, even before his son was born, Dave began to take an
active interest in the Colson school district. Two years after arriving
home from overseas he became a trustee on the school board
which, since 1947, had been chaired by Arnold Johnson.
Sarah had been inside Colson School only once, shortly before…
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