ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – When old Lloyd George school finally succumbed

Tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, at 10 a.m., a rally will be held in front of Stuart Wood school in support of preventing the iconic old building from being torn down. City council recently approved a motion by Coun. Margot Middleton to include the Stuart Wood site in consideration for a new RCMP detachment building. The following column was published in the Kamloops Daily News on Aug. 30, 1997 after the demolition of Lloyd George elementary in favour of a new building.

THE WOMAN, with a half dozen children in tow, crossed the street from what only a few hours ago had been the original Lloyd George elementary school. In her arms, she carried five bricks.

She had, by the looks of it, taken a break from her daycare duties and taken the kids for a walk over to the pile of rubble so she could collect her prize.

Were those bricks some sort of trophy, to be put on display as a conversation piece? Perhaps a souvenir. Or maybe something more practical, to be used in patching a rough spot on a garden walkway.

Others, of course, will buy up a greater supply to use in their fireplaces. That’s what we do with heritage buildings in Kamloops.

I get tired of writing about lost heritage buildings, and about brick fireplaces, but I suppose I’ll be doing it till the day I die. The 75-year-old Lloyd George school today is all broken lath and bricks. The wreckers did their work this week, after salvagers and scavengers stripped it of its plumbing and lighting fixtures and other valuable details.

Next week, or the week after, or sometime soon, it’ll be done to some other worthy building.

The sad thing about Lloyd George is that nobody cares. The toothless Heritage Commission registered a weak objection but, as is usually the case, hadn’t the clout to do anything significant. The small voice that would preserve heritage in our city was easily drowned out by the loud complaints and protests from parents in the area who want a shiny new building in which their kids can begin their education.

Not one of those parents, to my knowledge, suggested fixing Lloyd George instead of knocking it down. We are an expedient community at times. Why go to the bother of repairing something when we can throw it away and start over? That’s the way the world is going.

Ironically, the school was going to be included in this year’s Heritage Homes Tour sponsored by the Kamloops Museum Association. But the crews moved in too soon, and the gutting process was underway by the time last weekend’s tour was held. The museum folks had wanted to allow people one last look at the school before it disappeared forever. Even that chance was denied.

Lloyd George isn’t the first old school to bite the dust. The original Kamloops High School (opened in 1904), which later become Allan Matthews elementary, was knocked down in 1990 to make way for the new police station. Good pile of bricks in that one, too.

It was a nice old building but few cared much about it. You can still look at it in pictures. There’s a picture in the book One Years of Community of the demolition.

Books are our way of preserving heritage. Lloyd George will doubtless be the subject of an article and some pictures in the next local history book.

A few years ago, Susan Cross of the museum wrote an article about Lloyd George and described it as “a handsome, eight room, brick and stone structure, with Romanesque features throughout. At the south end, was a classic Greek stoa with doric columns. Fine-dressed ashlar blocks are evident throughout the structure. The peaked roof once sported dormer windows and the popular cupola.”

Cross noted the deterioration of the building over the years through lack of care. Unlike Stuart Wood school, but like Allan Matthews, Lloyd George was never given heritage protection.

Prophetically, she wrote, “Now, once again facing a shortage of classroom space, it remains to be seen if the original school can somehow be incorporated into a large facility or if, like so many other Kamloops heritage buildings, it will face the wrecker’s ball.”

But surely, you might say, we’re better off with brand new buildings than with old wrecks. I guess it’s a matter of opinion, but I think there’s value in preserving what our fathers and grandfathers built. Lloyd George was added to twice. The unattractive, incongruous additions remain, while the original building is gone. What’s good about that?

Sometimes, we don’t even justify the officially sanctioned vandalism we perpetrate on heritage structures with a new building to replace the old. Two stately old brick houses — rich in local history — at the corner of Third and Lorne were destroyed in our centennial summer of 1993.

The developer-owner insisted they needed to be cleared out of there to make way for his glorious new commercial edifice. Today, the land on which those houses sat remains vacant, used as parking space. Some people write songs about paying paradise to put up parking lots — we live it.