Carol Roach

My family lived in the ghetto for as long as I can trace back my family history. Reginald Buckingham, my grandfather, came over from England with his parents in 1911, just before World War I. He was a child of six years old at the time and became acculturated into the Montreal society rather quickly. The only thing that remained British about him was his last name. He settled into the ghetto community known as the west end of Montreal. His parents were poor working folk.

Reggie, as he was called met and married Doris Webster, the girl next door. They carried out their lives first as a couple but later separated. Never did they venture out of the ghetto community either as a couple or afterward. They were both oblivious to the hustle and bustle of the middle class life outside of their imaginary ghetto walls.

Reggie and Doris had three children together. Then after the break-up Doris had another child. Later, when the children had grown up, I came to live with my grandmother. The unifying factor for all of us including my grandparents was the old elementary school that each and every one of us attended.

My grandmother would often tell me about how she lived across the street from the school. I used to love to hear about the Royal Arthur School days stories as it created a special bond between us. Once my father left our house to marry another woman who incidentally was not my mother, it became increasingly more important to hear about his Royal Arthur School days as well. As the years progressed and my father??™s visits became less and less frequent, it appeared that going to Royal Arthur School was the only thing that we still had in common.

No one in my family had as much as a high school education. Prior to the 1970??™s, it was not considered important for women to have a higher education. The role of a woman was to be a good wife and mother. The men in my family were raised to become unskilled labourers.

In those days, it was common for poor families to take their children out of school in order to work and bring home a much needed income. Going onto high school was virtually unheard of. As far as my family was concerned, education was afforded only to the rich and ???book learning never put food on your table, but strong hands and hard work did???.

Royal Arthur School; kindergarten through grade 7 become the only source of education that my family ever had. Royal Arthur School was instrumental in teaching the basic 3 R??™s, ???reading, writing, and rithmetic???. It was considered to be the only education necessary to become gainfully employed. Once you finished school, your childhood more or less ended and your adult life began.

By the 1970??™s new laws were enacted and children had to go to school until the age of 16. Therefore, I had become the first in my family to have a high school education. Since our community did not have a high school of its own, it was also the first time that I had ventured out of the ghetto community now known as Little Burgundy. A whole new world was opened up to me but I never forgot my roots and my Royal Arthur School Days.

When I married I left the ghetto thinking that I would be gone forever. But as life would have it when I divorced I came back.

In 1980, my son, Steven, became the last family member to grace the doors of Royal Arthur School. He was four years old at the time and started the new pre-kindergarten program for 4 year olds. I was so excited that he would be going to my old school. I was happy that the family tradition touched yet another generation. But sadly to say, that happiness was short-lived for Royal Arthur School closed its doors that very same year.

Montreal??™s English community was declining. The political situation in Quebec was suffering because of the new strict language laws favouring French over English in Quebec. As a result, families were moving to Ontario in droves. It is estimated that we lost over one hundred thousand English Montrealers back then. And we lost Royal Arthur School.

It was with a heavy heart that I attended that last school meeting to face the cruel facts. We were losing our school. There would be no more English schools in our neighbourhood. The children would have to be bussed to the City of Westmount, which just happened to be one of the richest cities on the Island of Montreal.

As parents we were all apprehensive. How would these rich people react to ghetto children, poor, and mostly black? By this time there were only a handful of white children left in the entire school. For the most part the parents of the children of Royal Arthur School were not well educated but they were ???street smart???. They knew that the transition would not be easy. The economic differences between the two communities were at the forefront of the heated discussion. What rich white doctor would want his child sitting beside a poor black kid from the ghetto?

It goes without saying that the issue of race surfaced. One parent in particular wanted to know what she could do to protect her child from vicious racial attacks. Nothing that the school administration could say at that meeting would make the parents feel at ease about this situation at all.

The school board won, the parents had fought a good battle but had to concede in the end. The numbers did not warrant keeping the school open. It just would not pay! We all left that evening with a heavy heart. Royal Arthur school was closing its doors.

Close to one hundred years of family history ended with the closing of that school on that solemn occasion. I am thankful that my son had had the opportunity to attend at least one year before it happened.

Carol Roach

winterose@videotron.ca

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more of my work please contact me at my email address: winterose@videotron.ca or you can join my newsletter storytime_tapestry-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Stay tuned for my book: Picking Up The Pieces: A Woman??™s Journey which will be out in bookstores, at www.publishamerica.com and www.amazon.com within the next month or two.  I like to thank all of you who have supported me all these years and encouraged me to write the book.  I will be eternally grateful.