Canisbay Primary School Memories
Recorded 1 year ago
About this recording
The ‘new’ Canisbay Primary School opened in September 1974 and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
At an open day on 14th June 2025 many former pupils shared their school memories.
John MacBeath is currently Head of Science at Wick High School and in this recording, he talks about his memories of attending Canisbay School from 1998 until 2005.
Transcript
Canisbay Primary School - Memories
Before I attended the Primary School in Canisbay, I went to the nursery (or playgroup as it was called then). We were very well looked after by Elaine Hughes and Marchael Dunnet and I look back on those days very fondly. As my report card said, “John is a happy boy who likes to giggle.” Looking back at the photos at the recent Open Day, I was taken aback at quite how much we managed to fit in. There were trips to the bowling alley, trips to Wick to the bakery in Safeways (which felt like visiting a multinational factory), going on the train, amongst others. One memory that stands out from this time, and is still referred to by my family, was our trip to the Coastguards in Wick. We were in their rescue station building being shown pieces of equipment and how they worked by a team that included Norman Macleod, a great man who served with the Coastguards for many, many years. For some reason, which I am still unsure of to this day, I felt the need to turn to my Mum (who was helping out on the trip) and say to her, “See at manny ere, he’s a dipstick.” I had never called someone a dipstick before, and I haven’t since. I still don’t know what came over me - I was able to spend time with Norman in later years when bowling, thankfully he knew the story by then and did take it very well. Sorry, Norman…
We started in Canisbay Primary School in 1998 as a class of 12, an uncharacteristically large class for the school and I believe I’m right in saying their 2nd biggest class ever although I could be wrong. We were welcomed into Anne Mowat’s classroom as if we were her own children. I remember being given tins full of small word cards to take home and learn how to say and spell, sitting on the Magic Carpet and going to Letterland - what a way to get kids excited for reading and stories. My Mum tells a story of my returning from school one day and her finding a small slip of paper with Rognvald (R-o-g-n-v-a-l-d) written on it, in Anne’s clear, curved hand-writing, in my schoolbag. She asked me why I’d needed the slip and I told her that Mrs Mowat had asked us to write a story about our best friend and I needed to get the spelling of mine right. Rognvald was Rognvald Taylor, who worked with my Dad at the time. I’m delighted to say that 25 years or more later, we’re still best mates. My fondest memory from Mrs Mowat’s class was certainly entering the Music Festival for the first time. We entered in the action song category and our song was called ‘The Hammers Bang on My Machine’, I can still remember some of it. We won our category and based on how we’d reacted, you’d have sworn we won Eurovision. I remember making a deal with one of my closest friends Andrew who was sitting next to me in the Assembly Rooms crowd that if our school won, we were going up to collect the trophy. We were announced as winners, and before Mrs Mowat could (as would have been correct) choose pupils to go up, Andrew and I were off. We held that trophy aloft like young musical pioneers. Progressing through the school, the Music Festival was always an important event that provided many memories. Either of working together as a class for a performance or for solo performances. Any time a class song or performance called for a minister, that role was given to me.. Make of that, what you will..
As I’ve matured through teenage years and into adulthood, one of my main memories of Mrs Mowat’s room was generally just how you felt. You felt important, loved and cared for. I remember that she brought in a football programme from a match that her son had attended which had the team I support playing in it, just to give to me. Many years later when I was fortunate enough to be awarded Dux at Wick High School, one of the first congratulations cards through the door was from Anne Mowat. What more could you ask for, really?
Music will feature a bit later as well but I’d like to take a moment to mention the efforts of the music teachers during my time at Canisbay. Jennifer Ferguson was a passionate and enthusiastic teacher who made clear to us the importance of creativity and expression in music as well as working together in groups for choirs and group songs. She also must be due a medal of some sort for listening to the less than pleasant ‘attempts’ of early beginner recorder players for so many years. The other that I must mention is Ian Sinclair, who we unfortunately lost in 2023. Ian, or Mr Sinclair, was the strings tutor and he did a truly remarkable job. Regardless of your skill, personality or approach to the violin (or others), Ian would find a way to connect with you and get your best. At his retirement concert in Thurso, Ian made a point of how productive Canisbay School had been for him in nurturing young musicians, I’m sure he said there were more performers there that night from Canisbay than from any other school. I was fortunate enough to be asked by him to perform, with my brother Stuart, sister Donna as well as cousin Sarah (we sound like the von Trapps), on the 25 Years of Caithness Junior Fiddlers album. I was the youngest performer asked (aged 10), which gave me a great boost in knowing the faith he had in me. He really was just incredible, a memory I have with him in particular was from 2003, where Scotland had optimistically defeated Holland at home and were due for the return leg in Holland in November. In true Scottish style (at the time), we had our hopes up a bit which resulted inevitably in a 6-0 drubbing. On the music stand in the violin lesson the next day? ‘Scotland the Brave’. Mr Sinclair took his pencil and wrote “Ha Ha!” alongside it. Maybe not so brave, in that match anyways.
In Primary 3 I moved into Mrs Brown’s classroom. I hope that Linda won’t mind me saying this, but she had a bit of a reputation for being a good piece more strict than Mrs Mowat. As Christine Shearer said recently though, I think this came from her role in preparing her classes to move to Primary 5, 6 and 7. She wanted to make sure everyone was up to scratch. Mrs Brown was another excellent teacher and I really enjoyed my time in her class. She was incredibly conscientious and wanted to ensure that each pupil in our class had nailed the basics, like knowing our times tables as well as how to write interesting stories with correct grammar and punctuation. I have a couple of memories from Mrs Brown’s room, the main one being our project on the Victorian years. We had done a lot of work over many weeks on this project, completing a variety of tasks and learning what life was like back then. This culminated in a trip to Miller Academy to their Victorian Classroom to work for the day. I remember being given slates to write on and how tricky this was in comparison to our normal pencil and paper. Of course, learning like a Victorian was one thing but for the experience to be fully immersive, you had to dress like a Victorian too. So you can imagine a mixture of boys looking like Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins or any other chimney sweep you can think of with flat caps, waistcoats and trousers and the girls with headscarves and long dresses on. The pictures are quite something, I can assure you.
My other memory from this time was the development of break and lunchtime football matches. We’d have ‘the middle room’ (Mrs Brown’s room) against ‘the big room’ (Mrs Shearer’s room). The middle room had players like myself, Andrew Shearer, Adam and Iain Green, Craig Sutherland, Liam Brims, John Green and I think Marc MacGregor amongst others against the ‘Big Room’ who had players like my brother Stuart, Jordan Shearer, John Dunnet, Kevin MacGregor and a few others. There are professional football cup finals that are taken less seriously than we took these matches, and they were daily. I remember one day our team won 7-2 and we graciously celebrated by covering every whiteboard within the shared middle area of the school with 7-2. Needless to say, we lost the next match and didn’t receive the opposition’s similar celebrations particularly well.
Reflecting back, it was clear to see how much work Mrs Brown put into each and every pupil. She simply wanted you to be the best that you could be by the time that you finished your time in her room. For me, exactly what was needed at that stage as the transition was made to P5 and Mrs Shearer’s room.
Mrs Shearer, or Andrew’s Granny Christine as I had known her up until Primary School, was the headteacher at Canisbay and also taught the senior classes. These are self-evidently tricky years as by Primary 7 each pupil is then the ‘biggest fish’ in the small pond that was Canisbay Primary, and there are also the lingering dramas of teenage years knocking on the door at the same time. As I’ve moved into teaching myself and learned of curriculum principles and so on, one of these is the importance of relevance. A memory from Mrs Shearer’s classroom was our class working on the book ‘The Desperate Journey’ by Kathleen Fidler about a twin siblings who are forced out of their home during the Highland Clearances and emigrate to Canada - clearly very relevant where we were as we could relate to the locations mentioned. Working on that book, and more specifically how Christine brought it to life , has sparked a lifelong interest in the Highland Clearances that I still hold today.
As I continue to drone on I’ll come to two more memories for now, both from my time in Mrs Shearer’s room. One is the sporting achievement of my life, and, as penance for boasting about it, I’ll mention the opposite end of the scale. Mainly because I can already hear folk like my Uncle James saying to me, “Ayyyye, but you didn’t mention the Music Cup.” if I don’t mention it. Some context. At the Music Festival Concert in Canisbay Hall at the end of each year, a Primary 7 pupil was awarded the Music Cup. This award was given to the pupil who had shown the most Musical Skill on the day we each performed for the wonderful Jennifer Ferguson, our music teacher. This was completed ahead of the Concert, not at the concert itself. To provide additional context, while my surname is MacBeath my Mum’s side of the family are Shearers. And, yes, we are everywhere. As a proud Shearer, I’m a fairly competent musician and, when it became my year to compete for the Music Cup, there had been a chain of who knows how many years where the winner of the Music Cup had been a Shearer. I don’t know the number of years, but it was long enough to be thought of as a ‘Streak’. To my great shame, when the time came in Primary 7 I buckled under the pressure, made some mistakes and the Music Cup went to Adam Green, breaking the ‘Streak’. I have never lived it down. Never, ever.
Now to sports. To give you an idea, I messaged my mate Andrew about doing this beforehand and asked him what he thought I should mention. His reply? “I’d probably start with talking about Winning hillhead. Then after that a few points about winning hillhead. Maybe then mention the time we won hillhead. Then wrap things up nicely by going over the time we won hillhead.” So, Hillhead…
Hillhead Football Tournament was, as you might imagine, a football tournament held in Hillhead Primary School in Wick. There were two groups, one of rural schools and one of town teams, each of which represented the houses of the Hillhead Primary School. Then, in the final, the winner of each group would play each other. In 2004-5, our Primary 7 year, we entered a team that we knew was strong (rurally speaking), we’d won such illustrious tournaments as the Canisbay Show and the Rural Schools Competition. Our team was (yes, I’m going to make you listen to me list them all, they all deserve the glory) Andrew Shearer, Liam Brims, Marc MacGregor, Liza Sinclair (now Maxwell), Adam Green, John Green and myself. Our final, against a team containing Alan McGee and Lewis Manson who went onto become pals in High School and beyond, went to extra-time, Golden Goal. Liam Brims cemented his name into Canisbay Primary School Sporting History by scoring the winning goal. Imagine a nation winning the World Cup, then amplify it by 100 to envisage the level of our celebrations. Canisbay had won Hillhead during my early years at the school which I think is where we got the idea of how important it was. The great Aly Budge, headteacher at Hillhead at the time, gave us a glorious write-up for the paper and even phoned the house to ask my brother (who was on work experience at Hillhead at the time) what my name was - he wanted to specifically mention a save I’d made in the final in his report. Glorious. Glorious.
I still have the medal…… probably.
Our P7 year coincided with Christine’s retirement from teaching and so, as we prepared for the transition to High School, we were also fortunate enough to attend events held locally which made clear to everyone the impact that Christine had made upon the school and community as a whole, as well as what high regard she was, and is, held in. As headteacher, whatever stage of the school you were in, Christine always took a keen interest in whatever you were doing and clearly worked hard to allow her pupils to experience a wide variety of learning and creative opportunities. Her pride in the school always shone through whether celebrating musical, sporting, or just everyday achievements of her pupils. I feel safe in saying that, as pupils, we were every bit as proud of her as she was of us.
I’m coming towards the end.. I promise.. There are so many other memories I could mention, I could talk about my cousin James breaking the Post Office window with a football, seeing Mrs Shearer looking across the fence lined with pupils over the ‘demilitarised zone’ of the road while Charlie and Jean from the Post Office stood beside their now shattered window frame. I could talk about the day the school was struck by lightning, with walls flashing black and white and a sound so loud as to be difficult to describe, or I could talk about another very dear friend, Cara Banks (now Shearer) visiting the school as part of the KIDD Crew which, of course, stood for Keiss is Defending Dolphins. While I and my fellow pupils were mesmerised by their song and dance routine, I’m sure I’m not the only one who was questioning internally why Dolphins must have been much more of an issue in Keiss than they were in Canisbay..
When I saw the opportunity to record this arise, there was really one driving purpose in volunteering to do so. That was to hopefully make plain the immense gratitude that I, and I’m sure many other pupils, feel towards Canisbay School and more specifically its ‘Dream Team’ of Anne Mowat, Linda Brown and Christine Shearer. For generations of children from Canisbay and its surrounding areas, each of them played an absolutely vital role in setting us up for, frankly, the rest of our lives. Hopefully, I’ve made clear how each of their skillsets blended with and complimented each other perfectly. For me, what tells its own story is the incredible variety of professions and locations that have all started in that small Canisbay school. We have marine biologists in Australia, heads of communication and marketing in Thailand, oil rig technicians in France and Brazil, Community Leaders in Texas, welders in Oman, teachers in Caithness and further afield, physiotherapists in Edinburgh, filmmakers in Sheffield and Turbine Specialists travelling who knows where next (Andrew…) amongst a plethora of unmentioned careers and locations. All of this from little Canisbay Primary School.
As I’ve mentioned, I was lucky enough in 2010 to be awarded Dux of Wick High School and amongst the many different emotions this brought on, was immense pride. Pride to have achieved this award, but just as much if not more, pride in achieving it as a pupil of Canisbay Primary School. In closing, I hope that I have made clear that while Canisbay Primary and its surrounding catchment area may be small, its impact and the resulting ripples have been truly exceptional. Moving forward, we can only hope that its next 50 years and beyond will build upon and cement further its incredible, long-lasting legacy.
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