The wing that was reduced to a pile of rubble at E.G. Wahlstrom school in Slave Lake last week was practically brand new when a very young Dennis Woodard, phys ed teacher, began teaching at the school. The year was 1959, and at the time, classes had outgrown the confines of the building, he said.
“And I taught at the old Swanson Lumber cook shack on the west side of town” where the Chiles Homes mobile units stand on 2nd Ave. N.W.
But when he drove past the heaps of wood, shingles and gyproc Tuesday, Woodard – the former principal who’d retired 11 years earlier said there was no knot in his stomach. There was, however, a strange, unexplained feeling of nostalgia – and a certain sadness.
“The first time I saw them all knocked down, it wasn’t a knot, but a funny feeling.
“There’s so much of a guy’s life in those old rooms,” he said almost whimsically. “While they were the oldest (section of the school), it didn’t seem to matter — there was something great going on there.
“And just like a house doesn’t make a home, a room doesn’t make a class. But there were a lot of great things happening inside there.”
Strange draw pulled him back
Woodard left Slave Lake shortly after his first stint teaching at the cook shack. He later took up a post in McLennan before heading to the University of Alberta to begin his degree in administration, later moving back to Kinuso.
But there was a strange draw to the strange little town tucked into the forests of northern Alberta.
“During the first years, I always thought if the world needed an enema, this is where they needed to put it,” he says with quiet grin. But it wasn’t long before the Saskatchewan native found himself missing the little town he’d been so quick to label as ‘different’ and even undesirable
“It was different, but I missed it and came back.”
And what was the attraction to a town that had classrooms tucked into “every nook and cranny in the building” and only allowed the basketball team into the gymnasium once a week?
“Slave Lake has everything –the lake, the scenery, the nature, the wildlife – everything.” And in 1972, Woodard accepted the position of principal at the school.
That was just after High Prairie School Division opened Roland Michener high school – a time that’s one of the most indelible in his memory.
Asked to share his fondest memories of the school – and the wing that was demolished last week — he didn’t hesitate.
“One that stands out was after the junior high went over (to Michener). I’d spent so much time (dealing with) discipline and truancy before that. But suddenly had more time to spend in the classroom, observing teachers.
“I knew they were good, but I never realized just how good” until he found himself with time to do what principals are meant to do – monitor.
“I could have been having a down day, but all I needed to do was sit in the back of the room and watch them teach.” The mood lifted immediately, he said, because the teachers at Wahlstrom were truly in a ‘class’ all their own, he said.
“Any fool can make a good lesson, but it’s not any fool that can teach…And man, were they teaching. My only job was to recognize that and promote it.”
As well as having some of the best teachers in the division at his school, Woodard said a supportive school board and superintendent waiting on the sidelines, championing their cause, further enhanced their good works. Vern Evans was the superintendent at the time, said Woodard, and if teachers had good ideas and could prove they’d work, “we’d always be allowed to pursue it.
“High Prairie School Division has been very good to work with – very progressive in a lot of ways.”
And as he watched the giant loaders scoop up piles of lumber and load them onto waiting dump trucks, the former principal again felt a pang of nostalgia flooding over him.
“I miss the camaraderie — they were such a good bunch, and I looked forward to going in every day. You could be at ease with each and every one of them. They could joke and they could take one.”
And no matter how old the ‘north wing’ of the school became, there were always the memories, he said – rich in promises of good people and great times.
“It was teachers that made that building great,” the former principal said.
“Even though the building wasn’t something to be proud of, it was the school” and its many assets that made the structure shine.
“It’s nice to see the (sections) being replaced with a higher standard, but there are so many memories going down with them.”

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