Mount Benson Elementary was a public

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

located in the

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

neighbourhood of

Nanaimo, British Columbia Nanaimo ( ) is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. As of the 2021 census, it had a population of 99,863, and it is known as "The Harbour City." The city was previously known as the "Hub City," which was ...

and was part of

School District 68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District 68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith is a school district on central Vancouver Island in British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky M ...

. It was closed in 2008. Opened on the historic Wellington Public School Site, Mount Benson Elementary was the oldest operating school site in British Columbia.

History

The original school site was provided by

Robert Dunsmuir Robert Dunsmuir (August 31, 1825April 12, 1889) was a Scottish-Canadian coal mine developer, owner and operator, railway developer, industrialist and politician in British Columbia. He was recognized as a National Historic Person by the governm ...

of Dunsmuir & Diggle Co to accommodate a public school for their new

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

town of

and the families working in the Wellington

Colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

. The first official public school on this site was called "Wellington Public School" and opened on May 20, 1875 as part of the Wellington School District which had been created a year earlier."Wellington Public School 1875–1944, Mount Benson School 1950–1990 By Carol Jepson. Nanaimo Community Archives In 1904, a few years after

James Dunsmuir James Dunsmuir (July 8, 1851 – June 6, 1920) was a Canadian industrialist and politician in British Columbia. He served as the 14th premier of British Columbia from 1900 to 1902 and the eighth lieutenant governor of British Columbia from 19 ...

closed the Wellington mine and moved his buildings to

Ladysmith Ladysmith may refer to: * Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa * Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada * Ladysmith, Wisconsin, United States * Ladysmith, New South Wales, Australia * Ladysmith, Virginia, United States * Ladysmith Island, Queenslan ...

, the school was destroyed by fire. A new one room school was completed in 1906 and was later expanded into a two-room school. At this time most of the children's fathers worked for another of Robert Dunsmuir's creations, the E&N Railway. Wellington was the main works yard and the school was located adjacent to both the main station and the roundhouse. World War II created teacher shortages across British Columbia which was the catalyst for the 1942 amalgamation of Wellington into the "Nanaimo-Ladysmith United Rural School District". The second school was destroyed by fire shortly after 1944 while the community was in the process of creating a neighbourhood athletic centre in the school building. In 1945 Wellington's new school district split into "Nanaimo United", and "Ladysmith United", both of which eventually amalgamated into what is the current " Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District". In 1950 the school was rebuilt as a 3 classroom school, at which point it received a name change and became Mount Benson Elementary School. The school continued to expand and currently has 10 classrooms. Mount Benson School closed in June 2008, as a result of provincial funding cuts and policy changes legislated by bill 34 which resulted in 50% of neighbourhood students attending out of catchment. During 2008 and 2009 the Wellington community and School District have been working towards creating a community centre at the school.

Name

Mount Benson Elementary got its name from Mount Benson, which the school has an excellent view of, and because it was the public school for children who lived on the north-east slope of the Mountain. The Mountain itself was named after Doctor Alfred Benson, who was an Employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, the first doctor in the area, a photographer, a collier and a friend of Robert Dunsmuir, the founder of Wellington. The name of "Wellington" was moved to the junior high school level with the opening of a Wellington Junior High School in 1967.

References

{{reflist

External links

Mount Benson School Website
Elementary schools in British Columbia Education in Nanaimo