Overcoming rivalry first step towards new English school

Depending on your sensibility, being in a crowd of about 100 loud (but remarkably well-behaved) grade school students can be either a terrifying or edifying experience. What is perhaps even more enlightening is these youngsters were all speaking English, boisterous, French-influenced English.

That was the scene last week at a compact theatre in Quebec City that used to be a synagogue. It's only a block or two away from St. Patrick's High School, whose Senior Drama Profile group staged a spirited production of the popular musical Hairspray.

St. Pat's, you can conclude, does not have a modern auditorium equipped with the facilities to put on a standard theatrical production, so the school has to rent proper space off-campus.

One wonders if the dozens of elementary students watching the wonder of live theatre will take into account such limited educational resources when it comes time for them, and their parents, to decide on which high school to attend once they are ready to move on from Grade Six.

That is the dilemma and challenge facing the Central Quebec School Board as it takes on the mission entrusted to it by a joint committee of parents and alumnae from St. Patrick's and Quebec High School. It's called The Project, which has a certain mysterious air to it, but its goal is unambiguous: Make the English high school experience competitive with the French schools.

The urgency of the situation driven by the steady loss of potential students to the French system, has compelled the two school governing boards to act on what would have been unthinkable a few years ago. The plan is to merge the two schools into one institution housed in a brand new and efficient building, equipped with modern facilities - full size gym, auditorium, adequate parking, synthetic sports field - that are pretty much standard equipment in high schools under the French language boards.

It is one of those oddities of Quebec City that there are two English high schools within a five minute's drive of each other in the central Montcalm district. For outsiders arriving here, the fact there is even one English secondary school in such a homogeneously francophone city comes as a surprise. Two? How can that be? (Three actually, if you include Dollard des Ormeaux School up by the Valcartier military base.)

Of course the answer lies in history and what was once a much larger English-speaking population in the provincial capital, as well as a French-speaking population that was legally entitled to attend English schools. Catholic kids went to English Catholic schools under the French Catholic board; Protestants, Jews and others went to schools under the Greater Quebec School Board.

The abolition of religious school boards in favour of linguistic ones in 2000 provoked the inevitable question of what to do with two aging, antiquated high schools now both managed by the English board, in the face of competition from the French secondary system.

Several years back an idea circulated to rationalize the use of QHS and St. Pat's, by consolidating grades, secondary I and II in one school, for example, and secondary III, IV and V in another. The idea went nowhere, blocked largely by a powerful force not to be taken lightly: rivalry.

There are decades' worth of tradition in the city, probably unlike anywhere in the French system, whereby the Fighting Irish and the Blazers have battled it out over the years in sports and academics. The trophy cases in each school are witness to that rivalry.

Now, though, supporters of a a new merged school recognize the time has come to put aside traditional differences, which, quite frankly, are not as intense as years past.

The public discussion has just begun on what could well be a prolonged process. The Quebec government might not be in a hurry to spend millions on a new English school, and schools don't come cheap. The education minister last August announced two new 800-student high schools for the Gatineau region, each of which will cost $36 million.

At least, though, it seems the Irish are no longer fighting and QHS no longer ablaze, as the two schools ponder uniting for a brighter and sustainable future for English language education in Quebec.