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Our Proud History and Heritage
The Limerick School began as a one room rural school
house, Holdsworth School #2686, erected one mile north of town. It
opened in 1911 with enrollment of 13 students. In 1913, the Holdsworth
School was moved into the village and renamed Limerick School.
In 1917 a two-room brick building was erected and ten years later two more rooms were added to accommodate the growing population.
Limerick School Division became part of the Assiniboia School Division in 1948. In 1966 a new two room high school and a gymnasium were built a short distance from the existing school. For the next twenty years children and teachers worked between those two facilities until in 1986-87 when six more classrooms, offices and workrooms were added to the high school and gymnasium and the older brick building was demolished.
At a school homecoming in 1983 over 1000 former students returned to visit the school and their educational roots.
Norm Rogers, a former principal of Limerick School once stated, “Eighty to ninety percent of all our graduates have gone on to some other training. This is a community of high achievers. They see the value of education”.
Against that background it is easy to see why the community found the forced closure of Limerick School in August 2007 a very painful event. The closure followed quickly on the heels of the 2005 reorganization that saw Limerick school included in the larger Prairie South School Division.
Now after a year of grieving and searching for a new purpose the community has come together around the idea of a Centre dedicated to opportunity, education and enterprise. Up from the figurative ashes of the Limerick School has risen the new Limerick Opportunity Centre.
(With thanks to Ann Mehain and her writings on the school in the history Echoes of the RM of Stonehenge)
Follow our continuing discussion of the Limerick School and the history
of the village, in our Limerick Discussion boards
here...