Tyler Sadler remembers the good old days when he was a student at École Father Jan. It was the 1960s: the days of blackboards and transparency projectors, hand-cranked pencil sharpeners and the strap, and school principals who wandered into classrooms with stubby cigars hanging from their lips.
Those were also the days when Seven Hills had seven actual hills, making it a popular place for sledding, Sadler recalled.
“It was the best, man! You remember crazy carpets? You went down on the third hill out of seven and you were in the air already!”
Sadler was one of about 150 past and present Father Jan staff, students, and parents who were at their old school May 18 as part of the Farewell to École Father Jan: One last look celebration. Featuring food trucks and music from a live band, the event saw guests explore the school’s halls, leaf through yearbooks, and share memories of the place before it closed its doors for good on June 30.
It’s a bittersweet occasion, as Father Jan has been more than just a school to many, principal Evan Holstein told the crowd during the formal portion of the event.
“It’s been a community, a family, a place of learning, a place of growth,” he said, where students, staff, and parents came together to share experiences.
“We may be saying goodbye to the physical space of École Father Jan, but we will carry its legacy always.”
Storied halls
According to The Black Robe’s Vision, Father Jan is the second oldest school in operation in St. Albert, having started out in 1948 in what is now called The Little White School on Mission Hill. (St. Albert’s oldest operating school is St. Albert Catholic High, which started in 1909 as one room in the now-demolished Brick School.) The current Father Jan building was constructed in 1956.
Father Jan was the first French Immersion school in St. Albert, having started said program in 1977, noted former St. Albert MLA and Father Jan parent Mary O’Neill. The program started just a few years after bilingualism became official in Canada, and provoked controversy from some Anglophone parents.
“They accused us of stealing students,” O’Neill said, as it was (incorrectly) assumed only the smartest students could handle two languages at once.
Father Jan went through many transformations over the years, Black Robe’s Vision reports. It was a high school in the 1950s, complete with home economics, industrial arts, typing, and chemistry labs. It turned into an elementary school in 1966 following the construction of St. Albert Catholic High, was a junior high from 1971 to 1975, and switched back to elementary thereafter.
1981 saw Father Jan designated as a “community school,” which meant it would share its facilities with the local neighbourhood, O’Neill said. Parents, staff, and students came together in a shared spirit of bilingualism, and developed traditions such as the school’s winter Carnaval and tourtière dinners.
“We weren’t a huge, huge, huge school, but we were a very close school,” O’Neill said.
Barbara Milmine, a graduate of the first French Immersion class at Father Jan, said the school itself doesn’t appear to have changed much from her days in elementary, apart from the removal of the stage in the gym. She shared fond memories of the school’s old playground, which had one of those giant black tire swings that got scorching hot in the sun (amongst other hazardous design flaws).
“I got a major concussion crazy-carpeting on Seven Hills,” she recalled.
“It was a lot of fun that wouldn’t be allowed today.”
O’Neill said Father Jan has many famous graduates, including astronaut candidate Nathalie Sleno and Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s first ambassador for women, peace, and security.
New name
Greater St. Albert Catholic trustees voted last January to close Father Jan on June 30 due to its aging infrastructure and low utilization rates. Its students will merge with those of École Marie Poburan this fall.
Following a community consultation earlier this year and a vote on May 8, the Greater St. Albert Catholic board has decided that Poburan will be renamed École Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart) when it merges with Father Jan this fall, said GSACRD board chair Joe Becigneul. The school’s library will be named after Marie Poburan, its chapel after Father Alphonse Jan, and its garden after St. Francis of Assisi (patron saint of Father Jan school).
Becigneul said the board has no plans to use the old Father Jan building once it closed, and is not in a rush to demolish it. School staffers are still thinking about what elements of it to salvage and what to do with the time capsule placed at the school back in the 1980s.
O’Neill said she was sad to see Father Jan closed, but hoped its spirit would carry on at École Sacré-Coeur.
