Betty Dales. Phyllis Beamish. Kay Morrison. Pauli Nasmith. Fifty years ago they pioneered pre-school child care in Mississauga.
Long before anyone had heard of Dr. Fraser Mustard or Success by Six and long before anyone had done research to figure out that certain brain pathways can only be opened and fertilized in those critical formative years, these women instinctively knew what they were doing.
In 1955, a couple of women got together in a kitchen in the brand spanking new subdivision of Applewood Acres and hatched a plan. Some of their children's friends were heading off to kindergarten but the younger ones were left at home alone. There was no nursery school in the new area.
So the women decided to start their own program where they would take turns hosting the kids on different days. When they found out that there was a qualified nursery school instructor, a Mrs. Tanaka, living in nearby Orchard Heights, they were thrilled.
She was hired to teach the children and thus was born the Applewood Co-operative Nursery School, which is definitely the oldest of its kind in the GTA, and in all likelihood, the oldest of its kind in Ontario and Canada.
The school started out in St. John's Anglican Church at Dundas and Cawthra but moved to Applewood United after it opened. It's been there ever since.
The minutes of the first meeting dated Sept. 14, 1955 have been lovingly reproduced on a piece of Bristol board that will be on display Saturday when the school and the community celebrate a half-century of sweat equity by parents.
What sets the co-op pre-schools apart is their insistence that parents actively participate in the educational process, by volunteering in the class to keep the teaching ratio at five students per instructor, to serve on the board and to fund-raise for the special trips and extras that are always required.
While the motivation originally may have been to save money and keep fees down, the result has been a transforming experience for both children and parents.
When children see their own parents interacting with older kids and parents see how their children socialize with other students and react to other adults, their perspective is changed, and they understand each other better, says Anita Bratsberg, one of the school's three instructors.
Anita has seen the school, as a mother of three children who went through Applewood, as a "duty day" participant, as president of the board and now as a teacher.
One of the other instructors is Jo Anne Boni, a 15-year participant in Girl Guides whose youngest went to Applewood when the family moved here. As a parent, she found duty days afforded a chance to talk to others experiencing the same parental issues and to swap survival strategies, says Boni.
Inevitably, the school hears that its "graduates" are doing very well adjusting to JK-SK.
Although there have always been ups and downs with enrolment as demographics change in the surrounding neighbourhoods, life is getting tougher for programs like Applewood. Both parents now must usually work to survive economically. Unless someone has flex hours or works shifts, it's difficult to perform duty days.
In the name of survival, compromise has been made to allow parents to join, pay a higher fee and dispense with the classroom volunteering.
There's lots of competition from Montessori schools and Froebel schools and the publicly-funded JK-SK programs.
Bratsberg concedes that, yes, Applewood with its vintage toys from 30 years ago still sitting at the back of the cupboard, is "a bit of a dinosaur."
She's asked if the fate of the co-op programs and the school, may be the same as that of the dinosaurs.
"I don't think so," she replies. "It's one of the few places where parents can really become involved hands-on." As a parent, she knows how invaluable the experience was for her and her children. "It's such a short period in a child's life and it's gone in the blink of an eye."
When parents and children from the five decades of Applewood's existence return for a celebration Saturday from 11:30 a.m.- 2 p.m., the Duplo, the Fisher-Price airplane, the room filled with giant building blocks and the Brio railway will remind them of just how well spent that precious time was.