(an excerpt from the writings of Bill Ashworth for the years 1914-1918)
Our parents decided it was time to organize a Savary school. The Anderson family contributed their five children, the Mace family two with three more nearing school age, Keefers two, and Spilsburys, McKillops, and Ashworths one each. We went to school barefoot from the time the weather got warm enough in April until the end of October.
According to the provincial formula, a teacher’s salary was paid by the government, which also supplied the books, materials, and a monthly inspector. The local school board paid the rent on Frank McFarland’s summer cottage, which came to be called the School House. Being a summer cottage it was fairly hard to heat, so members of the local school board cut the wood for heat. George Ashworth, as secretary, went to the Granville House School for Girls, one of the best private schools in Vancouver at the time. He convinced Miss Frances Stevens to come to Savary.
Miss Stevens, a recent immigrant from Scotland, could not be employed by the Vancouver School Board because she had no B.C. teacher’s certificate, whereas the Savary Island school board could hire whom it liked. She was an exceptionally competent teacher with a Scottish classical education, and a strict disciplinarian. She wore pince-nez spectacles, and her hair in a bun at the back of her neck. She boarded with the Spilsbury family, which she found congenial, and stayed at Savary throughout the war.
We were not averse to playing tricks on Miss Stevens. We discovered she disliked the smell of eucalyptus oil; we got a rag saturated with the stuff and hid it in a knot-hole in the wall beside the teacher’s desk, thinking she would pull a tantrum, but she said nothing, only avoided sitting at her desk that morning.
Despite the odd prank we were really very admiring of Miss Stevens, so when Frankie Keefer mustered the dozen of us to go picking wild-flowers on May Day, we did so enthusiastically. Frankie then arranged a charming bouquet of tiger-lilies, bluebells, dog-tooth violets, flowering currants, and honeysuckle for the teacher’s desk.
At recess on fine days Frankie, who was the eldest, read to us “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Emerald City” outside in the sun by the school woodpile.
If the weather was good and there was no school that day, we would take a rowboat and row over to the mainland coast to explore between Hurtado Point and the little off-shore rock island called Dinner Rock. There were caves in the rocky cliffs along the mainland shore, about the level of high tide, where some miners had investigated a showing of copper ore. Naturally, we wrote our names there.
When, in 1919, the war was over, its passing having been celebrated at Savary by a great bonfire on Armistice Night, Jim Spilsbury and I wrote the high-school entrance exam at Powell River. Bucking a south-east gale, we travelled early in the morning with the Lund candidates in the gasoline launch, Empress of Lund. Everyone was seasick over the side of the boat; which was very good: we felt wonderful as soon as we put our feet ashore on the dock at Powell River. We were half an hour late for the arithmetic exam, but we had empty stomachs and clear heads and all passed with flying colours.
Before long, the school at Savary was closed for lack of pupils. Miss Stevens, her mission accomplished and armed with my father’s glowing recommendation, was taken on as a teacher at Crofton House School in Vancouver. Frankie Keefer had already gone back east to school, later developing into a talented artist, studying in Europe and Mexico. She always returned to the family home at Savary in summer. Jim completed an International Correspondence School course in electronics and radio, later going on to find great achievement in transportation and communications. Following high school in Vancouver, Lex and I continued our education, graduating from university.”
Editors note: The Ashworth family built and operated the Royal Savary Hotel from 1927 to 1972
Published 2025
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