A Guy

Monday was a beautiful  sunny day here and I went walking along Kingsway, looking for old buildings that I had addresses to. A lot of them weren't there any longer, having been replaced by newer, less interesting structures but this one was there.

This is the Sir Guy Carleton Elementary School, more commonly known as Carleton. It is located on Kingsway and Joyce Streets and is part of School District 39 in Vancouver.

This Collingwood district school has a long history.

This schoolhouse has been central to Collingwood since its completion in 1896. It was originally named Vancouver East School but was renamed Collingwood Heights in 1908 and the Sir Guy Carleton in 1911.

Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester was born September 3, 1734 in Strabana Co. Tyrone, Ireland and died November 10, 1808 in Stubbings, Maidenhead, Berskshire. He was an Irish-British soldier who twice served as Governor of the Province of Quebec from 1768 to 1778 then he concurrently served as Governor General of British North America from 1785 to 1795.

Carleton has grown from the one room schoolhouse it was originally into what you are seeing today. It now houses nineteen classes from kindergarten to Grade 7 and educates about 420 students a year. Students are of a diverse population, much like Vancouver itself. After Grade 7 students from Carleton will go on to Killarney Secondary School or Windermere Secondary School.

This is known as Vancouver's oldest school.

In March of 2008 kindergarten classes had to be temporarily relocated due to damage caused when the schoolhouse was set on fire.

Just over a year later, on April 9, 2009, a student - who had been dropped off at 7:30am - spotted a corpse on the schoolyard. Classes were cancelled for the day and according to the report I read, police haven't identified a suspect in that suspicious case.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill, Vancouver, Sir Guy Carlton., Collingwood, corpse, Vancouver East, British Columbia