The original school site was provided by Robert Dunsmuir of Dunsmuir & Diggle Co to accommodate a public school for their new coal town of Wellington and the families working in the Wellington Colliery.

[1] In 1904, a few years after James Dunsmuir closed the Wellington mine[2] and moved his buildings to Ladysmith, the school was destroyed by fire.

At this time most of the children's fathers worked for another of Robert Dunsmuir's creations, the E&N Railway.

World War II created teacher shortages across British Columbia which was the catalyst[4] for the 1942 amalgamation of Wellington into the "Nanaimo-Ladysmith United Rural School District".

The Mountain itself was named after Doctor Alfred Benson,[9]: 48 [10] who was an Employee of the Hudson's Bay Company,[9] the first doctor in the area, a photographer,[10] a collier and a friend of Robert Dunsmuir, the founder of Wellington.