Our Story
We are Kathy and Keith Warrington. Keith has farmed and ranched his entire life in this area. Our farm is located across the road from the schools and you can see our beautiful Speckled Park cattle grazing in a nearby field. Many of Keith's family members lived in the Merid community and attended Merid School many years ago. His family has a deep and beautiful pioneer history here. In 1989 Merid School was formally closed following a long life as a school, church and community centre. It fell into a state of disrepair and a decision had to be made whether to allow it to decay beyond repair or try to save what we could of it. In 2015 we purchased the Merid School and its 2.3 acres from Sun West School Division and began to dream of its restoration and how we could bring people back to it for future gatherings. We began restoring it on May 9, 2016.
Magna Bonum School was the first school to be built in the Rural Municipality of Milton No. 292 in 1911. Its name is latin. Magna translates to “great” and Bonum translates to “good”....it expresses “respect for goodness of all life”. We just love that as our goal is for all life to be celebrated at our schools. Magna was originally located north of Marengo, Saskatchewan and in the 1960’s was moved to become an extra classroom for a very busy Marengo School. Later in that decade it was purchased by Harold Schmalzbauer who donated it to the Marengo United church to become its hall.
After many years of use, the church was removed and this little school stood silent. In 2016, the new owners of the property wanted the school torn down but we offered to move it beside the Merid School and save it from demolition. Now we had two schools in desperate need of repair! We began slowly stripping back the layers of many decades to find anything original that we could salvage. Renovations were finally completed in 2021. Now these schools have been completely renovated and reimagined into the beautiful spaces they are today!
