Salt Spring Island Archives

The Toynbee Collection - Schools

Isabella Point School (c1905) (Ed Lumley)

Can you help me? In compiling a biographical geneaogy for my family I am at present focusing on my great aunt Susan Adelaide Steinberg Bailey who taught school at one time at Fulford Harbour. I don't know when Addie, as she was called, taught on Saltspring. In her own words, she was the "first certificated public school teacher in Hope, Lytton, Bonaparte, Fort Steele and Fulford Harbour".

I have record of her teaching at Hope 1875/76, Yale 1878/80, Lytton 1880/84, Principal Girl's School, Nanaimo 1884/85, Bonaparte 1886, Clinton 1892 and Fort Steele 1894 to 1913 her retirement. In 1905 she married John Fingal Smith, formerly a school teacher at Victoria, Clinton, Ashcroft, Gabriola Island and Fort Steele.

I am hoping to learn the date she was teaching at Fulford Harbour to fit this, of her many experiences, into her biography.

I will be most grateful for anything you can tell me.

Yours truly,

Virginia Bell (nee Bailey)

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Dear Virginia,
Easier than I expected.
"Adelina" Bailey is recorded as the first schoolteacher assigned to the newly opened Isabella Point school, in September 1904. (Isabella Point is on the shores of Fulford Harbour, but a different community from the Fulford community, at the head of the harbour. Fulford is now a small village, and a ferry terminal.)

In November 1904 we know there were 14 students enrolled (according to Rev. Wilson, in his December 1904 monthly parish newsletter).

The photograph was taken at the end of that first school year in 1905, on the occasion of the awarding of a Roll of Honour to one of her Hawaiian community students, Willie Palua (Kanaka people, the Hawaiians called themselves). Willie's father Johnny Palua (also spelled Pallua) was one of the school's three Trustees. The photograph was submitted to the 1978 book Snapshots of Early Saltspring by another Isabella Point School Trustee, Edward Lumley, whose children also attended the school. (This book is still in print - the photo is on page 65)

Adelina Bailet is standing on the left side of the photo, wearing a white blouse.

Isabella Point School had a different teacher in its second year, so "Adelina" Bailey taught there for the school year 1904-1905. With her certification she was quite a coup for the Trustees...

Thank you so much for the added detail you have provided, regarding this teacher.
Usha Rautenbach.