Last chance to try and snag a brick or two before the 1911 Henry Hudson Elementary School in Kitsilano is just a distant memory. Demolition of the red brick building started Thursday.
The Namesake:
Since it’s out with the old, I’m wondering if a name change was considered for the new school? Henry Hudson, it turns out, was a 17th century English navigator and explorer who never visited Vancouver. He disappeared after a mutiny in 1611 and was presumed dead. Apart from his total lack of connection to the city—the closest he came to Vancouver was Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, roughly 4,700 km away—he’s not exactly the kind of role model I’d want for my kids.
According to Britannica: “As a commander, Hudson was more headstrong than courageous. He violated his agreement with the Dutch and failed to suppress the 1611 mutiny. He played favourites and let morale suffer.”
Rifle champions:
I couldn’t find out much about the history of Henry Hudson Elementary. Vancouver is Awesome wrote up an article in June 2012 when the school was celebrating its centennial. It said that during the First World War, Henry Hudson students earned the title of city rifle champions (1915 and 1916). The team included Nat Bailey who would go on to baseball and White Spot, and Hugh Matthews, the son of Vancouver’s first archivist Major Matthews.
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Babes in the Woods:
Derek and David D’Alton, the two little boys who were murdered in Stanley Park in the 1940s and identified as the Babes in the Woods in February 2022, attended Henry Hudson Elementary in the mid 1940s.
The Little Yellow School House:
Some of you will remember the little yellow school house that sat beside the soon-to-gone school building. It was built in 1912 as a Manual Training School. Google tells me that was a school that focussed on training in trades like carpentry and metal work.
Instead of being tossed in the landfill to make way for a new school, it is now part of the Chief Joe Mathias Centre on North Vancouver’s Capilano Road where children learn the Squamish Nation’s language Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim.
If you went to Henry Hudson Elementary I’d love to hear your stories!
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24 comments on “RIP Henry Hudson Elementary School”
Interesting! I love it when old buildings in great shape are repurposed! I love it when old schools are torn down, and seismically safe ones are built! I think ALL the old schools in Vancouver should be rebuilt into marvelous safe structures that will serve the future generations for years. I’m so very sad that Sir Guy Carleton School was vandalized by fire in 2016 and has been closed for 9 years now; nothing is being done about re-building a new one on the same land, and this area is being built up with large condo towers now. I wish someone would do something about it. I love old school buildings, but I love new ones for the future children too!
Carleton students scattered to 3 nearby schools.
I attended Henry Hudson from grades 1 through 5 in the late 50s and early 60s. I lived in a house with my parents on Creelman Ave. just a few blocks away, across from Kits Beach. My dad was a musical arranger and my mom was a homemaker, though she was also involved in opera and amateur theater.
I remember I enjoyed grades 1 and 2. After that it was mostly… not so enjoyable. I had a tough time learning long division in grade 3. Grade 4, my teacher was a real bitch on wheels (Ms. D’Andrea as I recall). After grade 5, in 1963, my family packed up and moved to Toronto, where my dad forged a successful career, working in the music biz with record producers Jack Richardson (The Guess Who, Bob Seger) and Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd).
Toronto was a real culture shock, and I didn’t adapt particularly well, so in the late 60s, I came back to Vancouver, and found friends within the counter culture community of 4th Ave. I was kind of back and forth between Vancouver and Toronto for some years, working as a musician, among other gigs. Eventually I settled on Vancouver, moving back here in 2005.
As for Henry Hudson Elementary, as George Harrison wrote… All Things Must Pass. I’m sure the old red brick school house must’ve been getting long in the tooth. Will there be a new school on the same property?
Thanks for adding to the story Bruce! Sorry about your grade 4 teacher, I had one like that as well. And, yes the old building needed a lot of very expensive seismic upgrades and remodelling, and has been replaced by a new school on the property
Kindergarten in 1949 and Grade 7 finally arrived in 1957. I think of myself still as a lifer.
A few observations… kids moved on. Looking at my class photos (thanks mum), there’s so many kids I didn’t recognize or remember. I think the Kitsilano neighbourhood attracted newcomers for a year, dad found a job and then the family moved to a house in a new neighbourhood. Hmm, then there were the kids I knew who never got to Kitsilano High. Where did they go?
Teachers were mostly alright. Many unmarried women and it took me years to understand why… The Great War substantially reduced the prospective husband pool, even for women born in the early years of the century. Fortunately there were jobs as teachers so these women were able to earn a living rather be spinsters living out their lives with their parents.
A few kids were bullies, some other kids were racist with words they didn’t understand, some kids were smart and other kids weren’t, some were good at sports while others were klutzes. Some were confident with outgoing personalities while others were shy and quiet. Misbehaving kids were strapped. Psychologists? What are they?
Boys and girls were segregated from each other outside of class. Boys and girls had separate basements with the furnace separating them. Girls played in the front of the school and boys played in the back. It wasn’t until we were “graduating” that I saw a boy being nice to a girl and I thought “what’s happening here?”
“If you hear sirens going off and there’s a bright light outside, don’t look at the windows and get underneath your desk.”
Lining up to get a polio shot. No one thought to say NO!
Wow! That’s fascinating. When my kids started about 15 years ago, the school still had a Girls’ Basement and a Boys’ Basement. The first time I was called to the Boys’ Basement, I was very confused. Both were now general purpose. Later, they renovated the rooms for kindergarten expansion.
I’d forgotten that the boys were separated from the girls at recess; girls in the front, boys in the back. Now that I think about it,
I don’t remember seeing any girls at recess. Lol. There was certainly a lot more space for the boys to get into trouble at the back side of the school.
Remember it well. Friends lived across from it. Heard from others the school was good so when a neighbour in an other part of the city was looking for a school which would be better for her child, I suggested Henry Hudson. The child attended for the rest of elementary school Like the old building. Do hope they don’t sell the land.
Nope, a spanking new, fully seismic approved school is taking its place.
I drive by there frequently. Much of the old building is still standing, I’m not sure what is going on with it. The new building is so box-like and sterile. Sic transit gloria!
Alan Patola Moosmann and I did a lot of the historical research for the Centennial. A lot of that info made it into the article from VIA. Rob Ford was PAC chair and a lot of other parents were involved in bringing forth history. The Hudson daycare was the first out of school care, formed by 1970s moms who got jobs after Molson lost a case. The City’s first hot lunch program was at Hudson, after women in the area were called to work for the war. I think it also had the first City-funded community playground, recognizing the needs of inner city kids (around 1980). The school was always very multicultural and had a wide socioeconomic profile. Many of the dock and mill workers lived in the area. The school was built on a former marsh, pond and creek and, to my understanding, was very important to the First Nations people in the area, including those forced on to a barge and left adrift in the harbour. Compare this to how gently their descendants treated the little yellow school house. The little yellow school house was the first manual training centre. These were schools created to demonstrate that people with what we now call intellectual and/or developmental disabilities can be taught skills so they can work. There are a lot of difficulties with how that looked but it was the first launch into education for students with support needs.
This is fascinating, thanks so much for taking the time to add to the story!
We happened to drive by Henry Hudson Elementary just earlier today. There’s not too much left of the old school now. I didn’t realize the history of the name Henry Hudson until reading your post here. I’m thinking maybe it might be a wise idea to rename the school to a more appropriate name that has a real attachment to Vancouver or the area. Either way, it’s sad to see the old brick-and-mortar schools disappearing.
I was the second generation in my family that used to go to Tecumseh Elementary in the 1960’s. Another old brick school that opened in about 1910. Mr. Lightbody was the Principal and he was also there when my Mom went to the school years before. My Dad and all my aunt’s and uncles and siblings also went to Tecumseh. As someone else mentioned in a post here, we also had separate girls and boys basements, with a furnace room in between. That was also the room where the machine was where we’d take the erasers to and clean the chock off them. Boy did we get in trouble if we’d try and sneak over to the boys basement area. Mrs. Cruikshank would tan our hides! Those were the days of the strap or wooden stick on the hand. There was also a dentist and nurse that came to the school on a regular basis. Something they should never have got rid of because that was great for families to have for their kids. A few times a year there would be an air raid siren drill. The siren was on the school roof and I remember how loud it was. At Easter the school would have an Easter Hat Parade and the students would works so hard decorating their fancy hats. It didn’t matter what religion or beliefs you had, it was just plan fun for the kids!
Thank you for posting your story. It makes you realize and remember how great it was to have been born and raised in Vancouver and to be a proud Canadian!
Renaming the school would dishonour the heritage of those who attended it for over 100 years. Please stop, already.
A beautiful heritage building like Cecil Rhodes Elementary was. The only issue when they started the Rhodes demolition was the garbage they added on the lower area of the building as they did withal the VSB brick schools in the mid to late 1970s. to earth quake proof them. What a joke that was. Rhodes was thick concrete and brick walls under that. But of course that was kept from the media as it wouldn’t look good for the VSB at the time. They’d pulled oarents their way but not all, nor the alumni.
The VSB and city neglected to move these beautiful bar bell heritage schools to the A list when the city reorganized the heritage building lists. This has given an opportunity for many of the Boards over the years to neglect these schools to save money during their term and eventually they are torn down.
Hudson was unique in that it was a test site for a rediculous rubberized paint that was being tried in the USA at the time. So if you notice from many pics posted since Thursday, they are uncovering the actual 2 colors of bricks which made Hudson unique. They’d been hiding behind the red rubber paint material that had stopped the ability for the building to breathe and it rotted from the inside out. Some walls were mush inside
I was involved in the Hudson Centennial. This school.has amazing history and the list of well known grads who attended Hudson to go on to Kits or King Ed then stay and build our city with their businesses etc is amazing.
This is another we have a great deal of history on Eve even just the photo archives alone.
So interesting, and I’m intrigued by the rubberized paint. Any idea what decade this would have been?
I attended Henry Hudson School for kindergarten and grades 1 and 2, 1952-1955. We lived at 1827 Whyte Avenue on Kits Point. Strong memories include watching the older boys playing marbles in circles on the playground, watching films projected onto a large screen in the gym, and seeing a firemen’s demonstration of their very long ladder placed on the south exterior wall of the school.
HHS had an academic award system called HH Topper – I won an HH Topper badge in grades 1 and 2, the same years my brother Norm won it in grades 4 and 5.
I attended the 75th anniversary at the school in 1986 and met a couple of old classmates and one teacher. I think Norm went to Cubs meetings in the old yellow trades building.
I remember driving past HHS around 2000 with a friend who said the school had made a huge mistake by painting over the original bricks.
I was at the 1986 reunion-in fact I won a pair of Vancouver Canucks tickets in some sort of draw or raffle. I sure agree about that plastic paint. It was like botox on an 80 year old. It looked-and still does look-terrible.
I think that Major Matthews would be a suitable name for the school. He lived not far away in Kits and saved so much history for us to enjoy today.
I attended Henry Hudson in grade 1 for the school year 1960-61. I had a deep crush on a cute little blonde called Wendy. I was shy to talk to her, but resolved to do so the next year. That summer, to my surprise and sorrow, we moved out of town. I never saw her again.
[…] historian and author Eve Lazarus recently reflected on the school’s history in a blog post, highlighting its legacy and questioning whether the new school should have […]
I attended Henry Hudson from the start of kindergarten in 1965 to the end of grade 7 in 1972. At the start we had wooden desks in rows, the strap, and daily fingernail inspections. By the end we were wearing tie-died t-shirts and celebrating Earth Day! We had daily hot lunches cooked by volunteer mothers, visits by the dentist, and visits by the nurse to check us for lice. Yes, there was a girls’ basement and a boys’ basement for rainy day play. At Christmas we had a huge Christmas tree centred in the C-shaped main central staircase, and whoever wanted could gather around at lunch time to sing Christmas carols. The most beloved teacher was Miss Burt (later she became Mrs. Perdue). She organized huge musical extravaganzas for us – we put on Oliver and the Wizard of Oz, amongst others. She taught us a weird little jingle to do percentages that I use to this day! In grade seven we were taught grammar by the strict librarian – we hated those classes, but she taught us so well that never again, even into university, did I ever have to pay any attention to any more grammar lessons! My best friend was Brigitte; every day we walked to school together. Her mother was one of the volunteer cooks; a very special person!
Today I walked by the site of the school, and nothing was left but a pile of bricks. I asked a construction worker if he could bring me a brick, and he very sweetly obliged. It’s a bit misshapen and cracked, and still has some mortar from 1911.
Hopefully the children in the new school will one day have their own happy memories of the new building.
I taught at Henry Hudson from Sept 1969 to June 1976. I taught Music and Grades 4 – 7. My best years of teaching – most memorable in many ways, were at Hudson. Every year we put on a school music event – Oliver, Wizard of Oz, Music Through the Decades. All grades were involved, the parents were very supportive of their child’s participation, and the staff were enthusiastic.
I am sad to see the building go — somehow bricks and mortar supply the needed ‘grounding’ for an elementary education. Memories and photos live on, thank goodness. Miss Burt/Mrs. Perdue, now Kathy Anderson
[…] week, I wrote a blog about the demise of Henry Hudson Elementary – the 1911 red brick building that housed generations of Vancouver school children. I asked […]