Library system’s 50th a chance to celebrate Valois School
Anniversary event will include talk and photos about building’s history
Lesley Cotton fondly remembers her last year of elementary school in a two-storey red brick building on the corner of Prince Edward and Belmont Aves. in Pointe-Claire’s Valois neighbourhood.
Valois Protestant School was one of the first Protestant elementary schools built in the West Island in 1923.
As a small child, Cotton lived in a house a few doors away on Prince Edward Ave. She liked to climb the maple tree in front of her house and to watch the “big kids” playing in the schoolyard that was then “off-limits” to her.
That was one of the reasons, she said, it was very special when she finally got to go to the school in 1960. That, plus the fact, she said, she wasn’t supposed to go to the school.
She explained she was born in 1948. When it was time for her to start Grade 1, she was sent to Valois Park School, then the big new elementary school built on nearby Belmont Ave. to accommodate the postwar baby boom.
But by the time she reached Grade 7, she said, Valois Park School had run out of classroom space and the old Valois School had to be partially reopened to students.
“For me and my girlfriends, it really was a rite of passage,” said Cotton. “We really felt like big kids coming here from Valois Park, which was bursting at the seams,” she said. “It was a great place to be before heading off to John Rennie High School.”
Now 67 years old, Cotton is on a mission to keep the memory of her old school alive.
Bygone school days can provide a glimpse of the way life used to be, she said.
“This is a school that contributed to the Valois community, a school that contributed to the Pointe-Claire community,” she said. “There was a great deal of pride when it was built.”
Although the Valois Protestant School closed more than 50 years ago, the old school building remains in use as the Valois branch of the Pointe-Claire Public Library.
This fall when the Pointe-Claire Public Library system marks its 50th anniversary with a special event Oct. 7 at the Valois branch, there will also be an opportunity to celebrate Valois School.
Cotton is helping to organize the school part of the event that will feature a talk by a representative from the Valois Protestant School as well as historical pictures from the Pointe-Claire city archives and from private collections.
“It will be a trip down memory lane,” she said. “The building has never been brought up to today’s standards. The windows are old ... it’s kind of musty ... that’s the most magical part about it.”
She said her plan is to pair up younger seniors with older seniors who may need a ride or someone to accompany them to the event.
“What a golden opportunity to go back to school,” she said.
At the same time, she added, she hopes to collect stories about the school.
To that end, she has launched a Facebook page called Earth to Planet Valois. This spring, she said, she started contacting West Island seniors’ residences looking for former students of the school.
“I attended school in the little four-room school on Prince Edward Ave. at Belmont,” wrote 90-year-old Marguerite Tulett, recounting her days at the school in a seven-page letter to Cotton.
Cotton said she is talking about it all now — three months before the actual Oct. 7 event — in order to spread the word.
“If I get the message out to people in their 40s and 50s, the adult sons and daughters of former students, they can say, ‘Mom, you went to that school. Give her a call.’ ”
For information or to share a story about Valois Protestant School, contact Lesley Cotton at 514-6316944.
We really felt like big kids coming here from Valois Park, which was bursting at the seams.
LESLEY COTTON