Fanny Cohen touched many lives in nearly five decades of teaching LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post November 03, 2008 The remarkable Fanny Cohen had a connection in 1929 with the Port Morien area. When her one-year teaching assignment west of Antigonish ended she obtained a position teaching in a one-room school in Homeville, three miles from Morien, near the Ferguson homestead. In that area, she boarded with a brother and sister, Allan and Sarah Ferguson. The food was exemplary, her treatment superb. "I ate lobster, quahogs, halibut, wild duck," she said. Of her students, she recalled in particular the Shepards, the Fergusons and the Spencers. "My, the Spencer's were bright," she said. She mentioned Aubrey Ferguson, a pilot shot down in 1942 over Germany. He spent three years in Stalag Luft 3, the setting for the movie "The Great Escape." He later married an English girl and eventually went to England to live. Aubrey said after the war that Fanny was the best teacher he ever had. Every Friday John Ferguson rowed her across the bay to Port Morien and her father came in his horse and wagon and took her home. On Sunday morning early, they set out from Glace Bay for the boarding house. To the delight of her father she sang the hits of the 1930s all the way to Homeville. "They were songs, then," she said. "I don't know what they are singing today." She recalled a visit to Homeville by the inspector of schools, a Dr. Creelman. He came in horse and buggy and sat in her room all day. At the end of the day, his first question to her was, "What are you doing here? You should be teaching in a town or a city school." She was taken aback. "You know, LeRoy," she said, "if he could have done anything to make me so angry he couldn't have said anything worse." She explained to him that she had no choice. But she went on to chastise him by saying, "What makes you think that the children here don't need a teacher like me?" She went on to say, "Don't you realize how isolated their lives are? If they have a Bible and T. Eaton's catalogue in their homes they are lucky I will give these children everything I have." She added, "Oh, was I angry at him." For the next two years, she had to substitute in Glace Bay because only her sister could teach in the system. When her sister left for New York to live, Fanny secured a position in New Aberdeen teaching a double grade of 56 students. "You had to be young," she said. "They were in their early teens." Discipline was her first concen. She had to keep control and unfortunately she had to use the strap quite frequently to do so. During the war years, she supplemented her income by working in a department store as a cashier. One night a miner came in, his face blackened, his piece can under his arm. He said to her gratefully, "Miss Cohen, you taught me how to read and write." Up to Grade 6 he couldn't read. There were so many kids in those days that they had to place them in the next grade. Fanny taught for 47 years. Her legacy lives on in all the lives that she touched in that span. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post 03/11/08