The Reach Gallery Museum is seeking memorabilia that anyone has to share from either Philip Sheffield high school or elementary.
The Reach, school alumni, Abbotsford Virtual School and University of the Fraser Valley have joined forces to collect and record the personal memories of students and collect memorabilia to develop an online history and exhibition of the school.
When Philip Sheffield closed in 2007, the closing ceremony was attended by hundreds of former students and teachers who shared fond memories of their time there.
When the school opened, the individual school districts of Abbotsford, Sumas and Matsqui had just become the first amalgamated school district in the province of B.C.
Philip Sheffield was hired to administer the merger and pave the way for future development, improvements to school facilities and reorganization of curriculum and teaching staffs.
At the same time, Sheffield had taken on improvements to the existing Sumas-Abbotsford Consolidated High School: the construction of a new community auditorium and state-of-the-art trades facility funded jointly by the province and the community.
Built adjacent to the high school, the 800-seat auditorium provided a venue for local community events and the trades wing housed manual training and home economics rooms.
Sheffield did not live to see the completion of his vision for Abbotsford education, but when the auditorium was dedicated in December 1936, the school was renamed the Philip Sheffield Memorial High School in the devoted board administrator’s honour.
It was replaced by Abbotsford Senior Secondary in 1955 and shifted its mandate to the education of elementary students in conjunction with Abbotsford Elementary, which housed primary grades.
Abbotsford Elementary closed in 2005 but the building housed a new educational direction, the Abbotsford Virtual School.
Once bursting at the seams with students – two to a desk and attending class in storage areas at times – declining inner city enrollment forced the school district to close Philip Sheffield in 2007.
Sheffield did not live to see the completion of his vision for Abbotsford education, but when the auditorium was dedicated in December 1936, the school was renamed the Philip Sheffield Memorial High School in the devoted board administrator’s honour. It was replaced by Abbotsford Senior Secondary in 1955 and is now Abbotsford Virtual School.
Anyone with memorabilia to share is asked to contact Kris Foulds at kfoulds@thereach.ca or 604-864-8087 (ext. 122).