Revised November 17, 2023.
Unless otherwise credited, the class photos and student names in this section were collected by who searched the collections of the Atikokan Centennial Museum and the Atikokan Progress, and scanned historic material for this website. She also put out a call for photos on Facebook, then posted them there to get student names. Not all class photos or names have been found yet, so your help is needed. Please contribute!
Formal classroom pictures for elementary schools were not taken between 1955 and 1973, and St. Patrick's Separate School didn't start until 1977. High school yearbooks were not issued every year either. If you have any photos taken at school or of school activities, we would love to have copies for this website! Please contact .
St. Patrick's School students. Posted on Facebook, October 29, 2021 – "Thank you to the community of Atikokan we collected a lot of food items for our local food bank. Thank you Mrs. Bowes for organizing this event and to all staff for going above and beyond!"
The following collection of research has been compiled by Susan Bryk, gleaned from the files and registers of the school systems as well as from back issues of the Atikokan Progress, and from many other sources. Questions and problems are noted along the way in these lists, so please feel free to with corrections, comments and suggestions.
Jessie Enge and Ann Maradyn
These two teachers were much loved by their students. Jessie Enge (left)
started her teaching career at Hemlock School in 1956,
teaching either Kindergarten or Grade 1 there in an unbroken run of 40 years, until her retirement in June, 1996.
Ann Maradyn taught at Rawn Road (1956-1961) and Hemlock School (1961-1983)
until her retirement in June, 1983.
This photo, sent to me by Susan Bryk, is thought to have been taken around 1980.
See a larger version of this photo.
Bolek (Bob) Marcinek (1922-1995)
Bob Marcinek taught at AHS from 1956 to 1963 (he is listed as "Bruno J. Marcinek" in his records). He taught history but his main love was mathematics,
and he would fill the blackboard with "magic numbers" which, when added together or multiplied with each other, did mysterious things.
I received an email in 2013 from Manfred Rassau, in Germany, asking me if Mr. Marcinek was still
alive and living in Atkokan, as he (Manfred) was writing an article about him. I heard nothing more for a year, then Manfred sent
me this remarkable story. It was well known that Mr. Marcinek had been in the Polish Army during World War 2, but
I don't think any of the details were known.
See "Escape from Sachsenhausen",
published in "Neues Deutschland", August 30, 2014.
John Leonard Penner (1929-2019)
John L. Penner taught physics and chemistry at AHS until 1958/9, after which, he married
Jean Shirley MacMillan, also a teacher at AHS, and
they moved to Fort William and Kapuskasing. It seems that his real career only started after he retired from teaching in 1964, and
persued a career in microbiology research. See the text of his obituary, and a photo of him with other
teachers at AHS.
Colin Alexander Smith (1890-1956)
Colin Smith started teaching in Atikokan in 1946, when there was a total of four classrooms in the town.
He died in a Hamilton, Ontario, hospital on July 18, 1956, after suffering a stroke while on a teachers' course. He had been
appointed supervisory principal for Atikokan's three-school public school
system, just prior to his death.
See articles from the Atikokan Progress.
See the Facebook group Atikokan Memories
These links will take you to the other sections of atikokanhistory.org.
Do you have photos of people and places in the Atikokan area?
We need them for this
website.
See Charlie Dobie's other websites:
Royal Canadian Navy |
Dobie Family genealogy |
Photos on Flickr |
Virginiatown & Kearns, Ontario |
Ontario Local Histories |
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