It's a tiny community, easily missed on the road from Baddeck to Margaree Valley in Cape Breton. Without the sign that proudly declares its founding in 1806, you would likely drive through without even being aware that this was more than just a few houses and a firehall.

Gas pumps ripped out

Middle River school students

Middle River may be on the Cabot Trail, but it's no tourist destination. For the people who live here, though, it's a community worth saving. And right now, it's under threat.

The Middle River Consolidated school may disappear, joining the store, post office and even the gas pumps that were ripped out earlier this year.

The Cape Breton-Victoria regional school board wants to shut the school and bus the 17 elementary pupils over the mountain to Baddeck. The board sees this as a financial decision in the face of dwindling enrolment, but many local residents think there's much more at stake.

The residents see this as a fight to preserve a way of life that's disappearing all over Nova Scotia as the rural population bleeds away to Halifax and other urban centres. It's been a long, slow decline in Middle River, from a population high of more than 1,000 in 1871 to fewer than 400 today.

Six-year-old Linnaea Oland
and Kate Oland

One of the 17 students at Middle River school is six-year-old Linnaea Oland. Her parents, Kate and Brooke, made a conscious decision to bring up their three young children in the same community where Brooke grew up. Kate is now front and centre in the fight to save the school.

"It's vital. If it's not here, I don't think we're going to be here as a community for that much longer," Kate says.

That's a fear shared by Gail MacRae, whose family has roots stretching back to Middle River's four founding Scottish families.

MacRae was a primary student when the Middle River Consolidated School opened its doors in 1964. As its name implies, the school was itself the creation of an earlier round of centralization, incorporating four small rural schools. There were 86 children when it opened. The school hasn't changed much since. The picture of the Queen donated on opening day still hangs in the small hallway. What's missing is the children.

Gail MacRae then

Gail MacRae Now

MacRae worries that if the school goes, so will the people.

"I think we should be fighting tooth and nail to keep the school because we want our community, because we're going to lose our community. If we lose our school, we're going to lose our community because young people just aren't going to stay here. Because there's nothing for them,” she says.

MacRae has some very strong personal reasons for feeling that way. Her four children also went through Middle River school and they've already begun to drift away, seeking work and opportunities down the road. Without the school, she can't see how young families can be attracted to the community.

It's a concern shared by local employers. Peter Christiano, founder of Finewood Flooring, estimates that 80 cents of every dollar his firm spends stays in the community. The family-run business uses local and imported wood to create hardwood flooring that's shipped across Canada and around the world, employing 17 people directly and helping to create work for many more in the local sawmill and through using local contractors.

Christiano says it's already hard to attract skilled workers. "When you go out to look for an employee, there's not a lot of people, you know, in this area anymore.”

And Christiano says that losing the school will make it even harder.

Peter Christiano

"As you withdraw services from rural areas it becomes a disincentive for people who live here now to stay or for people who might want to move here. It's a disincentive. It's a good reason not to move here. So we can look at it as the province will save some money by closing a school, but how much do you lose when all of a sudden your rural economies start slowly fading away from lack of services?"

The Oland family knows how hard it is to make a living in Middle River. Their rambling house is at the centre of a small farm where they raise a herd of Highland cattle, small, hairy, horned beasts that thrive in the harsh winters without needing much care. Kate Oland says that people need to be creative to survive, working at several jobs to make ends meet. But she's determined to raise her family in Middle River.

"It's a safe place. It's a quiet place. It's a place where you're not caught in the rat race. You have time for family here," she says, while her two youngest children play around her.

Kate hopes that they will be able to join their sister on the bus to Middle River school, and says that closing it teaches the children a very bad lesson.

Kate Oland

"Especially in Cape Breton. Especially here where everyone is so concerned about youth retention and keeping young people on the island, to start a five-year-old out in life by saying, 'welcome to our school. In order to get an education you have to go down the road.' You know, you're teaching our children from day one that you can't get what you need or have what you want in your own community. You have to go away to get it."

If the school is closed, Linnaea Oland and her classmates will face a much longer journey home; children as young as five on a bus for two-and-a-half hours a day.

2006 will be a big year for Middle River. As well as celebrating 200 years since its founding, it will find out if its school will survive.