Sinclair School District #4370 fonds. — 1928-1940, [ca. 1970]. — 2 cm of textual records.
Agency History
Organization of the Sinclair Lake School District was initiated in 1928, and school opened in a borrowed building in the spring of 1929. Sinclair Lake School was built that summer on NE 1-74-12-6 and opened in September 1929; soon a barn was added to the site. Although financing the school throughout the depression was difficult and School Board meetings were marked by strife and dissention, somehow they kept the school open. Sometimes the teacher moved from home to home as taxpayers provided room and board to pay off taxes, and at one point the teacher was a farmer in the district paying off his taxes through teaching so they didn’t have to pay a salary. The Sinclair Lake School Board dissolved itself in 1940 after the formation of Grande Prairie School Division #14. The school itself remained open until consolidation in 1951, when both the students and the school building were moved to Goodfare Centre. Some of the teachers at Sinclair Lake School were Norma Grover, R.A. Hill, Mrs. Leitch, Roy Berlet, and Miss Hines.
Custodial History
Records were passed on to the County of Grande Prairie No. 1, who transferred them to South Peace Regional Archives in 2013.
Scope and Content
The fonds consists of one minute book detailing the decisions made by the Sinclair Lake School District for the years 1938-1940, as well as accounts, debentures, bylaws, list of library books received, letters from the School Division, and later historical notes, presumably written by Olive Stickney, and biographical questionnaires filled out by Mrs. Madge Borden Lambert, Dave and Alta Juneau, and Knute Boness.
Notes
Title based on the contents of the fonds.
Related records: fonds 063, County of Grande Prairie School Division No. 14 minutes (063.01) and correspondence (063.02).
Source of historical note: Pioneer Round-up, Volume II, A Grande Education
Accession No. 2013.06