Teachers and board members from School District 6 gathered Thursday to celebrate the history of Paul Kane, St. Albert’s first Protestant high school.
Thursday’s open house provided an opportunity for current and retired staff members to visit and reminisce as they looked at the 50 years of photos and newspaper articles on display in the Heritage Centre in the Protestant School Board offices.
“We’re on our fifth filing system of collected historical photos and historical information,” said Protestant School Board Chair Joan Trettler, who sits on the volunteer committee that spent months sorting through old photos to arrange the data.
Displayed Gazette newspaper clippings show that the school was first housed in the structure now known as Lorne Akins School. Construction began in 1961 and the school actually opened Sept. 1, 1963. It cost $750,000 to build.
“It had a staff of 20 and an enrolment of 343 students from Grade 7 to 12,” Trettler said.
Now enrolment at Paul Kane is 1,059 and the Grade 12 class alone has 405 students. Presently there are 62 staff members.
Teacher Donna Chanasyk, who has taught at the school since 1978, provided most of the photos. The earliest shots show girls with bouffant hairdos. All of the girls wore skirts. Boys wore slacks, not jeans. Later photos show every student dressed in jeans. Many of them, of both sexes, sport green or purple hair or shaved heads.
Sadly no one took a photo of the day in 1973 when students walked across the field carrying their desks to the new Paul Kane School.
“The story goes that every child carried their own belongings, including their desks, across the field,” Trettler said.
One display that outlines Paul Kane’s sports history includes an article dated 1979 about a feasibility study to decide whether there should be a football team. It must have been a long study because, as the news clippings clearly show, Paul Kane didn’t get its own football squad until the fall of 2011.
The display is the third in a series begun two years ago as District 6 celebrated its 50th anniversary. The first two schools to be highlighted were Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Sir George Simpson.
“These photos reflect a love of what I’ve done over the years and the stacks of photos collected,” said Chanasyk. “Former staff members are there along with current staff and together we’ve built a very strong base and Paul Kane has continued to be a strong school.”
The Heritage Centre in the District 6 office is open to the public, but since the small museum doubles as a meeting room, it’s best to phone 780-460-3712 to see if access is possible.
