My Mother, My Teacher THE FIRST WOSS SCHOOL

In 1953, when I was five years old, my parents moved the family from Vancouver to teach in an isolated logging camp on Vancouver Island. Named after the river near which the outpost sat, Woss lay deep in the north-central wilds, part of the Mount Waddington Regional District of BC. These days, Woss is a hamlet, but it first existed as a tiny company settlement carved by Canadian Forest Products out of dense old-growth forest. CANFOR possessed harvesting rights for this part of the Island.

Woss was a wonderful place for children. I remember my life there as if it were yesterday, though it’s unrecognizable to me now, as so much of it changed after road access arrived in 1969. And, of course, I could never forget the unusual experience of having my mother as my first teacher.

My parents had been hired as the only teachers for Woss Lake School, grades one through twelve. A third teacher was added inexperience. On the other hand, my mother had a degree and nine years of teaching in Aldergrove and Vancouver. She would have been the logical choice for principal, but such was not the way of things in the 1950s.