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ALBERT
COOK WEST came from Nova Scotia to take his Normal school training in
Regina and teach in the west. In 1910 he became principal of Hartney
school and became a powerful force in the lives of his pupils and
fellow citizens.
A square-built compact made of average height, A.C. West had black
hair, kindly gray eyes under heavy, bushy, black eye-brows, a large
nose that had been broken in his youth so that it bent downward and
rested almost on his upper lip. His mobile mouth could smile easily or
be drawn into a grim, straight line as occasion warranted. Because of
his broken nose he had a perpetual sniff that tended on first
acquaintance to annoy his listeners, but when his personality shone
through his appearance, the sniff was forgotten. The secret of his
influence in school and community was his genuine interest in people as
individuals, whose possibilities he could assess in a realistic
common-sense manner. Starting with the personality he found in each of
his students, he built upon it, and brought out of each individual in
his classes the potentialities he recognized within him.
A.C. West was keenly alive to the relation that should exist between
home and school and endeavoured to make the parents aware of their part
in their children’s development. To this end he wrote letters and
articles to the Hartney Star explaining what the school aimed to
accomplish and urging that the parents to support the teacher’s efforts.
In one letter he dealt with school gardens which were begun as a
project under the department of education in 1914, to acquaint Manitoba
citizens with the soil of the province. He explained the value of
working, each with his own plot, watching plant growth and the result,
in sound vegetables, and of good gardening methods.
Mr. West was a believer in healthy bodies to house healthy minds, and
emphasized physical drill, marching and organized games. When he found
no musical instruments in the school he approached the school board and
persuaded them to advance the money to purchase a piano which he
promised the school would pay for by entertainment in the following
three years.
The first of these concerts was in March, 1911 and consisted of drills,
marches, choruses and a few individual items such as a violin trio by
Grade 7 and 8 girls. At that time the school colours of purple and gold
were adopted and with a talk from Mr. West on “espirt d corps,” a real
school spirit of co-operation for the corporate good began to pervade
the classes and fire the individuals. After three such concerts the
piano was paid for.
With the piano secured, singing and drills became part of the training
of all students. Mr. West had himself attended cadet training classes
in his holidays and was prepared to teach what he had learned there.
Before long, lines of marching children were placed under the command
of older boys and girls who learned to march, heads up and shoulders
squared, in single file and two, and fours at the commands of their
student leaders for half an hour’s exercise before starting classes.
With the co-operation of Miss Ella Finch, teacher of Grades 6-8, Mr.
West secured an exhibition of art for display at a school fair. He and
Miss Finch discussed the pictures and the artists and enabled the
school children to catch a glimpse of the beauty of the old masters.
Before he had been in the town a year, Mr West had organized three
patrols of Boy Scouts and enlisted the support of the men of the town.
He thought the scout law and regulations so valuable that he applied
their principles to the whole school and brought a wholesome spirit to
bear on girls as well as boys.
The vacant room at the school became a gymnasium, when the scout
leaders dragged parallel and horizontal bars and a trapeze from a
storage corner where they had lain for years, and made them fit for use
again.
During the years of Mr. West’s principalship, courses in elementary
science required the students of Grade IX to observe and record the
growth of six plants and the habits of six birds. Under his leadership
his pupils of successive Grade IX’s wandered through the woods along
the river bank, learned to step softly, to observe closely, and to know
the joy that the woods hold for the observant.
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