LISTEN: School Cars: how trains brought classrooms to childr

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LISTEN: School Cars: how trains brought classrooms to children in remote communities

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For 40 years, Canada's trains brought schooling to children of railway workers, trappers, loggers and hunters

Alisa Siegel · Posted: Jan 09, 2023 12:55 PM CST | Last Updated: September 15

(PHOTO: A black and white image of teacher Fred Sloman with his students, 9 children with the youngest at the front.
In 1926, the Ontario government launched an experiment, converting two railway cars into schools that departed from Toronto to isolated parts of Northern Ontario. Fred Sloman (left) was the first of two teachers in the program, shown here with his students outside School Car No. 1 in 1927. (CNR #4437/Archives of Ontario/OISE Library, University of Toronto))

School trains.

They were also known as school cars and schools on wheels.

The steam locomotives chugged and chuffed along the tracks of Northern Ontario, blowing their whistles and bringing schooling to children in isolated communities. Children of railway workers, trappers, loggers and hunters. Children of the bush.

Children who had no other way of accessing a physical school building.

It was a novel six-month experiment that lasted 40 years, from 1926 to 1967.

The program was an unprecedented collaboration between Ontario's then Ministry of Education and the railways: Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. It combined what we'd now call remote education, homeschooling and nation-building. . . .

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