On June 1, 1923 Hume School in Nelson opened its doors for the first time and has been educating members of the community for generations since.
Over the weekend staff and students both past and present gathered at the school to reminisce and share stories of their time at the school.
For many, the school brings a sense of community, and the centennial celebration brought them all back together once again.
Mary Defeo was a student at Hume School in the 1970s, she sent her children to the school in the early 2000s, and she says the shared experience among alumni over the last 100 years is unique. “The support that we have for each other here and the shared experience is really special. People that went here in the 1940s and me in 1970s and then my kids in the 2000s all have the shared experience of being Hume School students, and that’s a pretty cool thing.”
Defeo also noted quite a few things have changed about the school since her time as a student.
“One thing that’s different is that they used to go to Grade 7, and now it only goes to Grade 5. People don’t go home for lunch anymore. Most kids used to go home for lunch just walking.”
Defeo also said that there are a lot of things you would have seen inside the school years ago that are not there anymore.
“Blackboards used to be in every classroom which they don’t have any-more and the technology is something we would not have seen back when I was a student. People have smart boards, teachers have projectors,” said Defeo.
“When we were kids, we were excited if there was a film strip. We certainly got excited when there there’d be a little bit of audiovisual stuff and gosh, if they brought a television in, we’d go crazy.”
Dorothy Wayling, who went by Dorothy Foster when she was a student at Hume back in 1943, said the celebration over the weekend was very exciting for her and brought back a lot of good memories.
“I love being here today. I have great memories here. I remember when the custodian befriended us and he would collect marbles from the boys, or that the boys lost on the playground because marbles was such a popular game back then, and he’d give them to the girls. So we’d play marbles,” said Wayling.
“It’s really great to think that kids today are kind of making their own similar stories to what I did. They were good years. Really good years.”
