Bobcaygeon's Hillcroft
Mossom Boyd was an orphan who came to Bobcaygeon with the clothes he was wearing and the Bible, then found a way to become a multi-millionaire, the ‘Timber King of the Trent’ and proprietor of much of Bobcaygeon. Because of his success, his children and grandchildren had the benefit of a much more affluent upbringing. In 1888-89, as his sons Mossom Martin and W.T.C. were building a new office, they included a classroom in the east wing, hiring Oxford graduate Walter Comber to be private tutor to their children.
Having tutored the Boyd children, Walter Comber then founded a private school on the Fenelon Falls road, at the western edge of the village, called Hill Croft. Artfully constructed of cream and maroon coloured brick between 1908-09, its crest (a coronet above two crossed arrows on a field of purple and gold) was registered in the Imperial College of Heralds. It had a British Columbia cedar shingle roof that lasted over 55 years. Comber operated it as a private, residential, preparatory school for boys aged 8 to 15. The building included bedrooms, a sitting/common room and two classrooms. Though the term ‘residential school’ has taken on a pejorative meaning, in that era, wealthy families would send their children to a residential school. Boys came from as far away as New York, Chicago and St. Louis made the trip to Bobcaygeon to learn from Comber.
Comber’s School closed at Christmas 1918, because there was a lack of coal to heat the building, due to the Great War. Walter moved to St. Catherine’s where he taught at Ridley College until he died in 1929. That same year, his school was repurposed as Bobcaygeon’s public continuation school, which allowed students to continue their education beyond Grade 8. Grade 12 and 13 science and math courses were taught in alternate years, while Latin was a compulsory subject.
Around 1940, Hillcroft had three classrooms containing about forty desks each, plus a science laboratory. Lacking a gymnasium, students stood in the aisles between their desks to do aerobics for physical education, plus outdoor basketball and baseball. Secondary school students from as far away as Red Rock had to find their own way to get to the school—walking, jogging, or bringing horses, no matter the weather conditions. For many years, the roads were not plowed in winter. Students would put oats and hay under the seat of the cutter, and go out to the barn on school property to feed their animals at lunch time.
On January 1, 1951, the Victoria County School Board was founded, and immediately began amalgamating all of the northern secondary schools into Fenelon Falls High School. Hill Croft was again repurposed to accommodate grades 5-8 from the public school from 1953 to 1956, when the new Bobcaygeon Public School on Balaclava Street opened. In 1958, Mrs. Ernest Beatty and Mr. and Mrs. William Lorne Stewart turned it into Hillcroft Hospital (modern spelling), which accommodated 18 beds. After Bobcaygeon’s hospital closed, it became Hillcroft Haven, a long-term care facility. To accommodate residents, the building received additions which have since been removed.
