A lot of cherished memories are packed into the old one-room school house in Lorne Valley, P.E.I.
Susan Shaw, a long-time resident of the Kings County community, has many herself. "Probably my favourite memory is just being a little girl and my father asking me to dance with him at the square dances and going around dancing and pretending you were so mature," she said. Laverne MacInnis remembers taking her father, Elmer, dancing in the last years of his life.
Elmer helped build the school in 1938. "My dad lived to be almost 97, and he laid that dance floor and he danced there the last time at 95," MacInnis said. "So there's a lot of history there for many of us.
" That history is now safely in the hands of the community. The schoolhouse was built in 1938 after the original school needed to be replaced. (PARO) Shaw and MacInnis are part of a group that formed the non-profit company Old Lorne Valley School Inc.
and officially bought it a couple weeks ago from the Town of Three Rivers for $1. Three Rivers had taken over operation of the building when Lorne Valley joined the amalgamated town in 2018. "That was disappointing for a lot of us because then it became a part of a much larger organization and we all had to step back," MacInnis said.
"We didn't even have a key to it. We had to go through Three Rivers to schedule any events and it lost that ..
. it was the heart of the community and the heart was gone once it was absorbed into amalgamation." The non-profit organization The .
