Mount Benson Elementary School 1.82

Mount Benson Elementary was a public elementary school located in the Wellington neighbourhood of Nanaimo, British Columbia and was part of School District 68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith. It was closed in 2008.Opened on the historic Wellington Public School Site, Mount Benson Elementary was the oldest operating school site in British Columbia.HistoryThe original school site was provided by Robert Dunsmuir of Dunsmuir & Diggle Co to accommodate a public school for their new coal town of Wellington and the families working in the Wellington Colliery. The first official public school on this site was called "Wellington Public School" and opened on May 20, 1875 as part of the Wellington School District which had been created a year earlier. In 1904, a few years after James Dunsmuir closed the Wellington mine and moved his buildings to Ladysmith, the school was destroyed by fire. A new one room school was completed in 1906 and was later expanded into a two room school. At this time most of the children's fathers worked for another of Robert Dunsmuir's creations, the E&N Railway. Wellington was the main works yard and the school was located adjacent to both the main station and the roundhouse. World War II created teacher shortages across British Columbia which was the catalyst for the 1942 amalgamation of Wellington into the "Nanaimo-Ladysmith United Rural School District". The second school was destroyed by fire shortly after 1944 while the community was in the process of creating a neighourhood athletic centre in the school building. In 1945 Wellington's new school district split into "Nanaimo United", and "Ladysmith United", both of which eventually amalgamated into what is the current "Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District".