Description of Historic Place

The Sluice Point School and Community Centre is a one-and-a-half storey building of wood construction located on a small lot of land on Chemin de l'Anse des Bourques in the centre of the village of Sluice Point, Nova Scotia. Vernacular in style with Greek Revival elements, its construction dates from circa 1866. The designation applies to the building and surrounding property.

Heritage Value

The Sluice Point School and Community Centre is valued for its age, for having served as a place of learning to generations of schoolchildren, and for having educated a number of well-known Nova Scotians.

The school was built around 1866 and was the first school building to be constructed in the community of Sluice Point. Prior to this time all the students of this small Acadian village would have had to walk several miles to nearby Amirault’s Hill to attend school. This school, like many other village schools, was originally a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher in charge of all grades, from the youngest to the oldest. In 1901 the Argyle Municipal School Board expanded the institution to two rooms and the people of the community built on the ell, which forms the rear of the building today.

The school continued to operate until the time of consolidation of schools throughout Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 1960s. In January of 1956, the junior and senior high school students started attending school in the recently expanded Amirault’s Hill School although the students from the lower grades continued to attend the Sluice Point School for a few years. 1959 was the last year school was held in the Sluice Point building. In 1961, the Municipality of Argyle deeded the building to a community group that has maintained it as a community hall.

The school is also noteworthy for having provided the educational basis which launched the careers of many prominent Nova Scotians. One of its most well-known scholars was Austin Burke. Burke was ordained to the priesthood in 1950, became the Bishop of the Diocese of Yarmouth in 1968 and the Archbishop of Halifax in 1991.

Source: Argyle Municipal Heritage Files, file #011

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of the Sluice Point School and Community Centre include:

- one-and-a-half storey wood construction;
- steeply pitched gable roof;
- smaller one-and-a-half storey extension from rear;
- large pediment on gable end;
- Romanesque window centered in pediment on façade;
- double windows centrally located on eastern ridge wall of main building;
- eastern ridge wall of extension consists of an off-centre doorway and two double off-centre windows;
- decorative cornerboards that are pilasters with capitals on main building.