The Great Canadian "What High School did you go to?" thread

[MolsonExport]

Well, the thread title is self explanatory. Show your pics and share your stories.

I went to BHS, aka Beaconsfield High School, aka the Big Hunk of Shit. Beaconsfield, Quebec (West Island of Montreal).

This place was the most 1980s of all 1980s High Schools in the world. The cliques: jocks/cheerleaders, headbangers/metal-heads ["The Madman Bites the Bat!" t-shirt], punks, hippies, stoners, horse-faced girls, quasi-nerds (usually hanging out at the library), and full-force nerds (always hanging out in the computer room). The smoking area (courtyard). The Caf. Everybody (and I mean, everybody) wearing Sony Walkmans. Eighties music everywhere. Shitty Adidas bags. 3-4 girls getting knocked up in grade 9-10-11. A tragic suicide.

Fast Times at the Big Hunk of Shit.

This is what it looked like when I attended (82-87, yes, I am getting old fast):


Part of the school dates from the late 1950s (South and West wings). Extra wings (North and East) were tacked on in the early 1970s.

In all it's present glory, from Highway 20: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4305...n-US&entry=ttu

[MonctonRad]

I went to Colonel Gray High School in Charlottetown from 1972-75.



Colonel Gray was named for John Hamilton Gray, a Father of Confederation from PEI (not the other John Hamilton Gray from NB, also a Father of Confederation).

Charlottetown was small and bucolic at the time and CGHS was the "big city high school." The other city high school was Charlottetown Rural High School, and a lot of their student body came from surrounding farm country, hence Gray students always felt polished and urbane compared to the rubes from "the Rural".

I remember in Grade 12, we played a football game against Souris Regional High School from eastern PEI (about as far away physically and psychologically as you can get from Charlottetown on PEI). We won the game 108-0. Our morally superior student body took it upon themselves to cheer for the opposing team. I remember the chant we came up with - "Go, go, go, Go milk a cow!!". Pretty shameful in retruspect.

I was a wallflower in high school, and a mediocre student. In grade 12 though, I started watching a British sitcom on TV called "Doctor in the House" which made medical school seem like a lot of fun, so I picked up my bootstraps and ended the year with a near 90% average. I won the award that year for "most improved student" at the graduation ceremony. I was never qite sure how to take that.....

[Innsertnamehere]

I'm a fair bit younger than you two - I went to "Uxbridge Secondary School" in the late 2000's:


The school is a hodge-podge of additions which have occurred over a century - the original school building still exists and dates from 1923:



I remember loving my math classes in the 2003 addition since it had A/C - the rest of the building, built in the 1920's, 1950's, and 1970's, didn't. The worst was geography classes, which although I loved the topic, were in the basement of the 1923 building colloquially known as "the dungeon". The "windows" for the classrooms were the little ones in the photo above just above the ground.

They added another, 4th addition, after I graduated in the early 2010's as well.



The school was featured in Schitt's Creek as the local Community College, from what I recall.

[SFUVancouver]

Source

In the latter half of the 90s I went to the 'original' University Hill Secondary in Vancouver (Electoral District A, technically, as it is located on the UBC Endowment Lands). The school was part of the Vancouver School Board but was not actually located in the City of Vancouver. It was a small (300-350 students) school, we called the teachers by their first names, and it was surrounded (at the time) on three sides by forest. Our gym classes included doing 'the Milk Run', a 1.5k run on trails through the UBC Endowment Lands forests. I got into running in high school and spent a lot of hours running around the UBC forests alone and during team practices.

It was a great place to go to high school. It was small enough that it just wasn't really possible to have exclusionary cliques. There were certainly lots of social groups, but everyone knew everyone and there was plenty of overlap in groups. I did theatre and improv, so I was part of the theatre kids crowd, but I was also on the track and cross country teams and was friends with the athletes, and I was also into computers and gaming, so I was friends with a bunch of pretty nerdy guys. I wasn't part of the popular crowd, but was still invited to some of their parties and welcomed when I occasionally showed up. Anyway, I liked high school and I'm still close friends with some of my friend group from that time.

Recently-ish, the U-Hill Secondary school moved into a former National Research Council complex on the main campus of UBC and the school was repurposed to be the new home of Norma Rose Park Elementary School.

[Djeffery]

Clarke Road SS in London Ont, 83-87. Affectionately called Dirt Road. Grade 9, our senior athletes won the triple crown, football, hockey and basketball. The school won 9 athletic championships that year. I wasn't so much a nerd, but I wasn't a jock either. I was in the band, 3rd Trombone in junior lol.

I still end up in there a couple times a year for work. Not much is the same as it was. Used to have a big courtyard in the middle that is now the gyms. The frontage looks like it did, but the rest has been severaly renovated. The old cafeteria, where we gathered at 7am to play Euchre is gone, as is the old technical wing. First time I walked in, I went to where the office used to be, and then realized they moved it to the front where the science wing used to be. Then I went for a flu shot in the cafeteria, which was when I realized the new caf is on the other side of the school now.

A lot of the things Molson says about his school applied at ours, as it was the same time. Rockers, nerds, jocks, the hot chick groups. I couldn't wait to get out of there, but as they say, it was still the best time of my life. Still have some FB friends from then that I stayed in touch with. One is a neuro surgeon, another is a captain at Air Canada, one guy was Snowbird 1 several years back. A paramedic, a contractor, one guy last I seen was running the kitchen at the Old Course at St Andrews. Had 3 friends killed on car accidents the last 2 year there.

Found a picture online that summed the place up pretty good lol.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Source

In the latter half of the 90s I went to the 'original' University Hill Secondary in Vancouver (Electoral District A, technically, as it is located on the UBC Endowment Lands). The school was part of the Vancouver School Board but was not actually located in the City of Vancouver. It was a small (300-350 students) school, we called the teachers by their first names, and it was surrounded (at the time) on three sides by forest. Our gym classes included doing 'the Milk Run', a 1.5k run on trails through the UBC Endowment Lands forests. I got into running in high school and spent a lot of hours running around the UBC forests alone and during team practices.

It was a great place to go to high school. It was small enough that it just wasn't really possible to have exclusionary cliques. There were certainly lots of social groups, but everyone knew everyone and there was plenty of overlap in groups. I did theatre and improv, so I was part of the theatre kids crowd, but I was also on the track and cross country teams and was friends with the athletes, and I was also into computers and gaming, so I was friends with a bunch of pretty nerdy guys. I wasn't part of the popular crowd, but was still invited to their parties and welcomed when I occasionally showed up. Anyway, I liked high school and I'm still close friends with some of my friend group from that time.

Recently-ish, the U-Hill Secondary school moved into a former National Research Council complex on the main campus of UBC and the school was repurposed to be the new home of University Hill Elementary School.

Rich kid. I was keepin’ it real on the mean streets of Killarney.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by logan5

Rich kid. I was keepin’ it real on the mean streets of Killarney.

I wish. Half the school, myself included, was out-of-catchment. But I appreciate how hard it must have been to be killed as a teenager attending such a rough school as Killarney.

[Airboy]

Arch Bishop MacDonald HS in Edmonton. I believe it was the smallest HS in Edmonton. total pop was about 600 but the grad class was about 100. 72-76 for me with some classes at St Joes. (High School of Robert Goulet). My Junior hs 7-9 class split up between 3 schools.

Had a football team that actually went the the Provincial champs my Freshman year. No team now as they have gone mostly high academics.

I played football my senior year but was more a middle distance runner on the track team. Made the provincials all 3 years. After school I only saw one friend for about a year then dropped all contact with anyone. Went to my 10th but realised I did not like most. Funny enough years later I was sitting with my wife for drinks and some of her coworkers and sitting across from me was one of the hot girls from the class. We looked at each other for about 20 min before we remembered who each other were. She listed all the girls that had a crush on me. ----if I had only known. My wife snuggled in a little closer that day.

Currently on my project list is one of the biggest HS in Alberta. I believe it is designed for 3500 students but will be way over that next year.

[zahav]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Source

In the latter half of the 90s I went to the 'original' University Hill Secondary in Vancouver (Electoral District A, technically, as it is located on the UBC Endowment Lands). The school was part of the Vancouver School Board but was not actually located in the City of Vancouver. It was a small (300-350 students) school, we called the teachers by their first names, and it was surrounded (at the time) on three sides by forest. Our gym classes included doing 'the Milk Run', a 1.5k run on trails through the UBC Endowment Lands forests. I got into running in high school and spent a lot of hours running around the UBC forests alone and during team practices.

It was a great place to go to high school. It was small enough that it just wasn't really possible to have exclusionary cliques. There were certainly lots of social groups, but everyone knew everyone and there was plenty of overlap in groups. I did theatre and improv, so I was part of the theatre kids crowd, but I was also on the track and cross country teams and was friends with the athletes, and I was also into computers and gaming, so I was friends with a bunch of pretty nerdy guys. I wasn't part of the popular crowd, but was still invited to their parties and welcomed when I occasionally showed up. Anyway, I liked high school and I'm still close friends with some of my friend group from that time.

Recently-ish, the U-Hill Secondary school moved into a former National Research Council complex on the main campus of UBC and the school was repurposed to be the new home of University Hill Elementary School.

Nice, I always thought U-Hill was a cool spot for a high school, but the smallness and old building didn't seem like a high school to me. But I could see how it could be special to have such a close knit school.

Small correction, the old U-Hill secondary turned into a new elementary school, Norma Rose Point. U-Hill Elementary School is a separate school on part of the UBC campus further north, which existed before and is still there. Basically the U-Hill high school got way over capacity, so they too over the NRC building but also massively expanded it into a functional school. The the old U-Hill was modernized and hugely expanded to be a new school, Norma Rose Point. An interesting musical chairs of schools lol, but needed due to the massive growth in the area. There's at least one more elementary school imminent on campus, in Wesbrook Place.

[urbandreamer]

SFU, My mother attended University Hill SS in the mid 1950s for one year I believe while her mother got her teaching degree at UBC. Then three years at an American boarding school she hated. IIRC, the original U Hill school was part of the ww2 military complex - mom lived in an old barracks TH. The arched school building possibly was a hangar?

Because I was severely bullied throughout grade/high school, I'm not comfortable mentioning the schools I attended. I still believe the popular kids, now very successful, ought to apologize for their treatment towards a select few that were different, whether from being born to a different race, physical disability or autistic etc.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by zahav

Nice, I always thought U-Hill was a cool spot for a high school, but the smallness and old building didn't seem like a high school to me. But I could see how it could be special to have such a close knit school.

Small correction, the old U-Hill secondary turned into a new elementary school, Norma Rose Point. U-Hill Elementary School is a separate school on part of the UBC campus further north, which existed before and is still there. Basically the U-Hill high school got way over capacity, so they too over the NRC building but also massively expanded it into a functional school. The the old U-Hill was modernized and hugely expanded to be a new school, Norma Rose Point. An interesting musical chairs of schools lol, but needed due to the massive growth in the area. There's at least one more elementary school imminent on campus, in Wesbrook Place.

Thanks for that info on Norma Rose Point. I had no idea.

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

SFU, My mother attended University Hill SS in the late 1950s for one year I believe while her mother got her teaching degree at UBC. Then three years at an American boarding school she hated.

Because I was severely bullied throughout grade/high school, I'm not comfortable mentioning the schools I attended. I still believe the popular kids, now very successful, ought to apologize for their treatment towards a select few that were different, whether from being born to a different race, physical disability or autistic etc.

I'm sorry to hear that, urbandreamer. Completely understandable to not doxx yourself.

That's neat that your mother went to U-Hill. Out of sheer curiosity, do you happen to know what her locker number was, and which room was her homeroom? I ask because absolutely nothing had been changed in that school in anyone's memory when I went there, short for adding four portables in the early 90s. So the basic layout of two classroom hallways, library/admin hallway, gym/auditorium hallway, and breezeway connecting to the shop class building, and, I'm sure, the lockers would likely have been the same for her four decades before me.

[urbandreamer]

^Unfortunately, my mother passed away a few months ago from pancreatic cancer and I never got the details. I do know she hated it, saying it was full of (jocks.) She was a shy creative type. Last summer I did explore Ridgeway Elementary (North Vancouver) with her, although except for the facade and steps its been mostly rebuilt. I'm so thankful I took three months off to drive across Canada with her, spending 7 weeks on her beloved West Coast. At the time we had no idea she was so sick, and simply were being super careful about catching Covid19.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

^Unfortunately, my mother passed away a few months ago from pancreatic cancer and I never got the details. I do know she hated it, saying it was full of (jocks.) She was a shy creative type. Last summer I did explore Ridgeway Elementary (North Vancouver) with her, although except for the facade and steps its been mostly rebuilt. I'm so thankful I took three months off to drive across Canada with her, spending 7 weeks on her beloved West Coast. At the time we had no idea she was so sick, and simply were being super careful about catching Covid19.

I'm sorry for your loss, urbandreamer. My condolences.

[GeneralLeeTPHLS]

I'm younger than pretty much every poster here, but I graduated from the Woodlands Secondary School (Mississauga) a few years ago.
Woodlands by Draulerin Photographics, on Flickr
It's not a massive school, but with about 6-800 students at the time, and now over 1,000 from my understanding, it's accommodated a growing immigrant population as Mississauga has grown.
That being said, I think the graduating class was only 100 or so every year, it's probably much higher now.
An elevator was added to the school in 2016, which is the ugly addition in the front, and front lobby area was given brighter lights and a new ceiling.
They've recently renovated the outdoor fields a bunch, adding a tennis court to the badminton courts, re-landscaping the baseball field, and finally fixing up the woodland patch by the school with more natural flora....although the homeless/drug problem in that wooded area have been a problem since the school opened in 1970.

I didnt have a great experience in that school, but that's partly attributed to a suicide that occured halfway through my 4 years there, and another suicide that occured two months before graduation. Those events made me shy away from some people, but I never felt very connected with any group in that school anyway. That being said, I have a few friends left over from there whom I speak with regularly.

[urbandreamer]

Thanks.

I'm going to look through the thousands of photos she took as a teenager to see if she documented this unique high school.

Btw, if you think U hill is small, one of the private elementary schools I attended had less than 60 students.

[zahav]

My high school is in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. The area grew rapidly, so by the time I entered Grade 8 in the 90s (high school is grades 8-12 in Richmond), we faced a double-whammy. The existing school was crumbling in disrepair, but moreso it was heavily overcrowded. At its peak, we had 53 portables. The new school was built in phases, as there was no way to build the new school while the older one was there, plus with the portables everywhere (there were two "pods" of 12 portables each, with their own hallway between, and then 29 portables running along the side, along the back in the field, and in front). It made getting from class to class very challenging to say the least, especially in coastal BC rainstorms all winter.

The school was about 75% visible minority, but since that time is probably closer to 90%. But a good school, nice location, good teachers, honestly nothing to complain about even being openly gay in the 90s. Some idiot guys of course, but nothing severe and the school itself was well functioning once it was rebuilt. I am still not sure how to do the photo hosting very well, so will try this:

Original school:


Phase 1 was building a portion of the new school directly behind the existing school. So then the sections of the old school that moved into Phase 1 of the new building would get demolished while phase two was starting. Green is new school phase 1, red is old school getting demolished, orange are clusters of portables:



And finally the all new school:

[logan5]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

SFU, My mother attended University Hill SS in the mid 1950s for one year I believe while her mother got her teaching degree at UBC. Then three years at an American boarding school she hated. IIRC, the original U Hill school was part of the ww2 military complex - mom lived in an old barracks TH. The arched school building possibly was a hangar?

Because I was severely bullied throughout grade/high school, I'm not comfortable mentioning the schools I attended. I still believe the popular kids, now very successful, ought to apologize for their treatment towards a select few that were different, whether from being born to a different race, physical disability or autistic etc.

Maybe this will make you feel better, but there was one kid in the elementary school I went to who was clearly gay. Myself and others of course gave him a hard time. Anyways, years later at the reunion I had the opportunity to apologize. He was like “oh well, that was so long ago”, but I could tell it still affected him, and the apology meant something. Pretty sure those people that harassed you are very apologetic in their adulthood.

[manny_santos]

St. Thomas Aquinas in London.

At the time that I went, it was the newest and most modern high school in London, opening in 1994. However it was seriously overcrowded, with 21 portables and a satellite campus downtown (the old St. Peter's School across from Victoria Park). Reportedly it had the second highest number of portables in Ontario. The overcrowding was later eased by the construction of three other Catholic high schools in the London area.

Every classroom had cable TV with a VCR, and there was Internet access throughout the school. My elementary school didn't have Internet and we didn't have home Internet yet, so this was a novelty for me.

The biggest story in my time there was when the principal's house got firebombed over the summer. Over two decades later, that crime has never been solved.

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Well, the thread title is self explanatory. Show your pics and share your stories.

I went to BHS, aka Beaconsfield High School, aka the Big Hunk of Shit. Beaconsfield, Quebec (West Island of Montreal).

This place was the most 1980s of all 1980s High Schools in the world. The cliques: jocks/cheerleaders, headbangers/metal-heads ["The Madman Bites the Bat!" t-shirt], punks, hippies, stoners, horse-faced girls, quasi-nerds (usually hanging out at the library), and full-force nerds (always hanging out in the computer room). The smoking area (courtyard). The Caf. Everybody (and I mean, everybody) wearing Sony Walkmans. Eighties music everywhere. Shitty Adidas bags. 3-4 girls getting knocked up in grade 9-10-11. A tragic suicide.

Sounds like Degrassi High.

[urbandreamer]

My HS does sound like Molsons,although it was an Ontario location about a decade later.

[casper]

In my case it is Windermere Secondary in Vancouver.

It was a school built in the 60s. Modern architecture with a court yard in the middle. Around 2,000 students back then.

I was a student there in the early 90s. That part of East Vancouver was very ethnically diverse with a lot of immigrant families from both Europe and Asia.

Source: Wikipedia