Henry Cyril Avery

H. C. Avery was born in the Point Douglas area of Winnipeg, on November 13, 1883. Both of his parents died when he was young and he and his siblings were put into a church-run orphanage. To earn his keep in the orphanage H. C. Avery was sent to work on a nearby farm.  Mr. Avery worked on the same farm until he was 21, becoming lifelong friends with the farmer and his family.

In 1904 Mr. Avery came to Winnipeg to work on the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a car man. He met and married Sara Smyth in 1905 and had 7 children.

Realizing that to improve his lot in life he needed more education, he studied to be an electrician with the Canadian National Railway. In 1910 he moved his family to West Kildonan and lived the remainder of his life in this area. Thinking that he could improve many lives by having a better education system, he successfully ran for a position on the school board of West Kildonan School District #8 which subsequently became Seven Oaks School Division #10. He was chairman of the school board for many years. Mr. Avery was also a successful City Councillor when West Kildonan was a city of its own.

H.C. Avery passed away on January 24, 1945. Our school was named after him, after a young child suggested his name in an essay contest she submitted to name the new school. Mr. Avery would have been overwhelmed that a school and a street would be named after him for doing what he thought of as his civic responsibility and duty.

H. C. Avery School was constructed in 1956. It was originally a ten room elementary school, designed by Winnipeg architecture firm Kurnarsky & Weinberg. The school was built by the firm John Miller and Son at a cost of $95,599. In the 1980's, it became a French Immersion elementary school, and then a Middle Years School in the 1990's. A major addition was added in 2001, raising the number of classrooms to 17.