Log School House

The first building used as a school in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, is currently located on Franklin (50th) Avenue at the south end of New Town, the city's downtown section.

[3] Even with a 20-member student body, it was small enough that classes had to be held in two sessions; they were often interrupted by passing miners gawking or mistaking the building for a bar.

[5] The building is located on the west side of Franklin (50th) Avenue opposite 54th Street, at the south end of downtown Yellowknife, known locally as New Town.

[6] To the north along Franklin is the city's main business district, with more modern high-rise buildings including several of Yellowknife's tallest.

[2] The main entrance is in the centre of the east (front) facade; it is set with a door of untreated vertical board and padlocked.

On the south facade there is a horizontal double-hung sliding sash window with six square panes on the west and four on the east set in a plain wooden surround.

A provisional school board was established, and CDN$1,000 ($20,400 today) raised from a combination of local contributions and a federal government grant.

The former, a log cabin built by two local men the year before for use as a bunkhouse and kitchen, was rented from its owner, the Mining Corporation of Canada, as classes began.

At the end of February 1939, Davies was replaced by Mildred Hall, a teacher certified in Alberta who had expressed interest in the position when the school was established but had been prevented from travelling north to Yellowknife from her Fitzgerald home due to the winter conditions until then.

To keep it warm in temperatures as cold as −50 °F (−46 °C) it was necessary to keep all the windows and doors closed; letting in fresh air invariably chilled the building and its occupants.

Its location, on what is now Pilots Lane,[4] next to paths to Glamour Alley, as Yellowknife's bar district was known at the time,[1] meant that drunken miners and prospectors would often gawk through the windows as they passed by, interrupting classes.

Older students, who had often foregone a year or two of schooling since their families moved to Yellowknife, had to be brought up to the appropriate grade level, despite the lack of textbooks.

In 1987 it was sold[4] to the city government, realizing its importance, decided to make efforts to preserve it, and move it from Old Town to the Abe Miller Centre on 53rd Street.

[1] In 1998 the city designated it a Heritage Building; two years later it was moved to its present location in front of the elementary school named after Hall and the district offices.