ca. 1930s
RCMP Centennial Celebration Museum
This is a merchant jug from the Reliance Ink Company Ltd. Of Winnipeg, Manitoba. This crock jug was used to fill smaller ink wells at the school. The name comes from its use to advertise the merchant since it was big enough to have the company’s name and address on them. School districts were established throughout the region, and no child was to be further than four miles from a school. Of course the reality was limitations in transportation, sparse population and difficulty in retaining teachers meant that rural schools did not function continually or always at a high standard. Some families preferred to send their children to religious run boarding schools, where they felt the education was of higher quality and the schools more reliable. The one-room schools were eventually absorbed by larger centralized school divisions which in turn created many of the centralized schools in our communities today.