Sir James Douglas elementary will celebrate its 100th anniversary May 11 with the help of its namesakes great great-granddaughter.
"Its living history. Its wonderful for the kids," said Catherine Feniak, principal of the kindergarten to Grade 7 school on Victoria Drive in Victoria-Fraserview. "How rare to have a connection to the person that your school is named after."
Great great-granddaughter Cynthia Fleming attended Grade 7 at Sir James Douglas in 1951 and 1952.
As for attending the institution named for her ancestor, Fleming told the Courier: "I never even thought about it because it really never entered in anyones conversation."
The 73-year-old resident of Surrey only took an interest in the man that governed the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia from 1858 to 1864 after she received a book about him, Old Square-Toes and His Lady, as a retirement gift in 2002.
Fleming, nee Bushby Diaz, notes the book states "there are no descendants with the name Bushby left in British Columbia."
That inaccuracy impelled Fleming to contact its author and to read more about her great great-grandfather, who was born in British Guiana, now Guyana, in 1803, the son of a Scottish plantation owner and a Creole mother of mixed European and African ancestry. Educated in Britain, Douglas sailed to Canada to work in the fur trade, married a Cree-Irish woman, rose in the ranks of the Hudsons Bay Company and was made governor of the Crown colony of Vancouver Island.
"He seemed to be a lets get the job done person. He wasnt like the politicians now, they talk a lot and do nothing, and I think maybe he even got himself in a bit of trouble because of that," Fleming said. "He did things in that era, because of the [United] States, there was a lot of black people that came across, and he started an army for them in Victoria, things like that."
Tuesday afternoon, Grade 6 students Agam Gill and Harleen Toor asked Fleming questions generated by their class. They wanted to know what her experience at Douglas was like.
"I came from another country and that was a change in itself," said Fleming, who was born in and spent the first 10 years of her life in Chile. "And I can honestly say that I really never felt like an outsider, I enjoyed myself, I got in trouble, it was great."
Fleming recalled the days where children werent tethered to technology, played in the street and chalk was thrown by fearsome teacher Mr. MacIntosh.
Sir James Douglas elementary invites former students, parents, staff and teachers to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the school May 11 and to bid farewell to the old structure. Its community will move to the new school under construction behind the old school over the summer. The open house will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 7550 Victoria Dr.
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