The Building
45 School Street is a modest example of the academy style “palace schools” which were built across the Maritimes during the late Victorian and early Edwardian period as sites for school consolidation and as symbols of civic pride. Although smaller than the brick or stone structures built in urban areas, the Mahone Bay Academy features the generous spaces and natural light which were considered to be requirements for the health and morale of the students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
Clara Quinlan was one of the most striking, interesting, and controversial personalities in the early days of the old school. Born into a well-to-do Mahone Bay family (whose home was the current Suttles and Seawinds building), she was hired to teach in the Mahone Bay school in 1917. Following several disputes with the school board, including over school curriculum, she resigned in 1922, and taught elsewhere until 1950. She was highly respected by her students.
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Hope Hyson was eleven when the school opened in 1914, and after normal school came back to teach from 1924 to 1927. She remembered being strapped as a student, but as a teacher, she felt so bad about strapping Philip Lohnes that she never used the strap again, “ever!” Hope was Guest of Honour at the 2000 school reunion, and lived to 103 in 2006.
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Location45 School Street, Box 489
Mahone Bay NS B0J 2E0 902-624-0890 Centre: 7am – 10pm daily Office: 10am – 5pm Monday to Thursday/10am to 3pm Friday
Mahone Bay Centre Society Charitable Organization Number: 89122 8017 RR0001
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