[Halifax] St. Pat's Crossing (6067 Quinpool) | ? m | 4x28 fl | U/C

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

The other piece of that puzzle is that the archive is not easily accessible to the public at present, not just due to the location, but in an operational sense. You cannot just walk in and browse or ask questions. It is a warehouse. Unless you were to staff up heavily and build displays it would make no sense having it on SGR. The demand for such a thing is highly questionable to me. Plus of course it would soon become another HRM money sink costing many millions every year to keep the doors open, even aside from the massive reno and rehab cost for the building.

I’m a little confused. Are you for or against repurposing the old library building?

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I’m a little confused. Are you for or against repurposing the old library building?

I said earlier what I thought the best use would be.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I said earlier what I thought the best use would be.

Sorry, got confused as you reverted to the massive cost bit that accompanies every discussion about old buildings. There will be costs no matter what is done with it. The costs I would like to see avoided are the ones associated with razing another local landmark due to lack of vision of the City. The costs that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

I’m glad we both agree!

[Dmajackson]

HalifaxDevelopments.ca (Photo by David Jackson)

[Keith P.]

Went past this today and the digging of the pit is well underway. A bunch of big chunks of concrete from the old high school building have been pulled out of the ground and are in a pile awaiting removal.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Went past this today and the digging of the pit is well underway. A bunch of big chunks of concrete from the old high school building have been pulled out of the ground and are in a pile awaiting removal.

Didn't you say at one point you went to St. Pat's "back in the day"? How do you feel seeing it gone and now a bunch of soulless condos being built in its place?

[mleblanc]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

How do you feel seeing it gone and now a bunch of soulless condos being built in its place?

What would be preferable on a site like this?

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

Didn't you say at one point you went to St. Pat's "back in the day"? How do you feel seeing it gone and now a bunch of soulless condos being built in its place?

I did indeed, was there for 3 years. Maybe because my time there was relatively short, I don’t have any great nostalgic memories of the place. It wasn’t that great in all truth and felt somewhat run-down, so it was probably long overdue for replacement by the time it happened. The cafeteria was mostly a place to eat a lunch you brought with you because I only remember them offering French fries and vending machine food, nothing good. The only part I enjoyed was the library.

My jury is out on what will be built on the site. It seems they are jamming quite a bit in there.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by mleblanc

What would be preferable on a site like this?

I would have preferred the site stay vacant (temporarily) and kept as a green space but the zoning remain for institutional use. The Peninsula has lost a lot of school sites in the past 2 decades due to population decline to the suburbs but now that is reversing considerably in recent years. Bloomfield site is soon to be built up, same with St. Pat's-Alexandra, but the time will come soon enough that they'll need to build another school perhaps even a 'trades campus' for Citadel HS and there simply is no other space left for growth. It's a great location for density + commercial don't get me wrong but good luck finding a new site somewhere nearby to make up the difference. Once the site is gone it's not coming back. The QEH site has already become consumed by the hospital expansion.

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I did indeed, was there for 3 years. Maybe because my time there was relatively short, I don’t have any great nostalgic memories of the place. It wasn’t that great in all truth and felt somewhat run-down, so it was probably long overdue for replacement by the time it happened. The cafeteria was mostly a place to eat a lunch you brought with you because I only remember them offering French fries and vending machine food, nothing good. The only part I enjoyed was the library.

My jury is out on what will be built on the site. It seems they are jamming quite a bit in there.

I was always curious, when St. Pat's and QEH were still around was the Peninsula "districted" in a sense i.e., if you lived in the South End/Downtown you went to QEH or if you lived in the North/West End you went to St. Pats? Or did everyone get to chose? I knew some friends who went to St. Pats during its final years and I guess the enrollment there dropped so much in the final years they basically closed off entire sections of the school to save on maintenance. It was basically an old dump at that point but it was their dump. The football team was pretty good too despite the lower enrollment.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

I would have preferred the site stay vacant (temporarily) and kept as a green space but the zoning remain for institutional use. The Peninsula has lost a lot of school sites in the past 2 decades due to population decline to the suburbs but now that is reversing considerably in recent years. Bloomfield site is soon to be built up, same with St. Pat's-Alexandra, but the time will come soon enough that they'll need to build another school perhaps even a 'trades campus' for Citadel HS and there simply is no other space left for growth. It's a great location for density + commercial don't get me wrong but good luck finding a new site somewhere nearby to make up the difference. Once the site is gone it's not coming back. The QEH site has already become consumed by the hospital expansion.



I was always curious, when St. Pat's and QEH were still around was the Peninsula "districted" in a sense i.e., if you lived in the South End/Downtown you went to QEH or if you lived in the North/West End you went to St. Pats? Or did everyone get to chose? I knew some friends who went to St. Pats during its final years and I guess the enrollment there dropped so much in the final years they basically closed off entire sections of the school to save on maintenance. It was basically an old dump at that point but it was their dump. The football team was pretty good too despite the lower enrollment.

The answer is in the names of the Schools. St Pats is where the Catholics went and the Protestants went to Her Majesty's institution.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

The answer is in the names of the Schools. St Pats is where the Catholics went and the Protestants went to Her Majesty's institution.

That sounds like an early to mid 20th century iteration, though. I don’t believe that schools were split up by religion after that, at least by the time the 1970s rolled around.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

That sounds like an early to mid 20th century iteration, though. I don’t believe that schools were split up by religion after that, at least by the time the 1970s rolled around.

When both Schools were initially opened the religious segregation was most definitely planned. My Dad went to St Pats and it was definitely a Catholic school in the 40-60's. It did change in the 70's, but alot of society did as well.
The University's exploded in the 70's as well.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

When both Schools were initially opened the religious segregation was most definitely planned. My Dad went to St Pats and it was definitely a Catholic school in the 40-60's. It did change in the 70's, but alot of society did as well.
The University's exploded in the 70's as well.

That's what I was saying, actually. There were a lot of schools in Halifax/Dartmouth that started out with religious affiliations, but by the 1970s were just treated as public schools with no connection to any specific religion.

The previous poster was asking if attendance was districted when the schools were still around (I take that as meaning recently). I can't answer his question about these (Halifax) schools exactly, but I do believe that it worked that way in Dartmouth, at least in the 1970s, after some of the schools had switched from religious-based (well, Catholic anyways) to public school configuration. I also knew people who switched schools after getting permission from the school board to do so. Otherwise, you went to the schools that you were told to go to, based upon where you lived.

I'm not sure exactly when the transition occurred, but I know my Junior High school was Catholic with nuns as teachers in the 1960s and before, and just a regular public school with teachers and students of all backgrounds by the late 1970s. My Elementary school wasn't Catholic when I attended, but still had separate girls and boys sides of the playground that were adhered to in the 1970s (a spillover from Catholic schools, I believe), so the transition wasn't necessarily abrupt in all aspects. The Principal still used the strap as punishment then as well. My classes had students of all backgrounds and religions, which was a good thing as we all got to know people from backgrounds different than our own. I would have to say that my experience in school was much better than the folks older than me who had gone through the Catholic system and endured the physical and mental abuse dished out by the nuns at the time - I can say that some of them were changed by it in a negative way, but that's getting off topic.

It's not the same in all provinces either, as I see that Ontario still has Catholic schools. It probably exists in other provinces as well, it's just not something that I pay a lot of attention to (because I don't really think that it's good for society to segregate schools for any reason - just look at all the violence and strife happening in the world because of religious intolerance to this very day).

Anyway... I've beaten that topic to death. Time to move on.

[Keith P.]

I was at St Pat's in the early '70s and graduated in '73. It was still Catholic at the time. It was good in one sense in that all of my Catholic-school junior high friends joined me there so I knew a lot of my classmates. With 2000 kids enrolled there at the time it would have been challenging to have most of them being strangers. The place was packed. There were still a few nuns teaching at the time.

I had an older brother who went there years earlier who said it was very strict back when he was there. Classes were segregated male vs female and he claimed even the halls were kept separate with lanes where males walked and had lockers on one side and females opposite. I didn't see any evidence of that when I was there so I don't know if it is true. It was certainly a different time.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I was at St Pat's in the early '70s and graduated in '73. It was still Catholic at the time. It was good in one sense in that all of my Catholic-school junior high friends joined me there so I knew a lot of my classmates. With 2000 kids enrolled there at the time it would have been challenging to have most of them being strangers. The place was packed. There were still a few nuns teaching at the time.

I had an older brother who went there years earlier who said it was very strict back when he was there. Classes were segregated male vs female and he claimed even the halls were kept separate with lanes where males walked and had lockers on one side and females opposite. I didn't see any evidence of that when I was there so I don't know if it is true. It was certainly a different time.

I was curious so I went to dig a bit deeper and found this directory:
https://www.ednet.ns.ca/directory-schools-historical
It lists Nova Scotia schools, enrollments, feeders schools etc. going back to the late 1950s(!) In 1972-73 St. Pat's had an enrollment of 1,905 students (Grades 10-12 only) and Queen Elizabeth HS had 1,629 enrollment. That'd be like Citadel HS having over 3,500+ students today, that's insane.

There were some other things I didn't know, one being a school called Sidney Stephen High in Bedford (predated C.P. Allen?) and another called Graham Creighton High (predated Cole Harbour/Auburn High?). I'm guessing around that time they built Sackville High and moved all the Bedford kids over to Lower Sackville which must have just been starting to develop into what it is today, then it got over crowed really fast so they built C.P. Allen and split the two (then added Millwoods later in the 1980s).

There were also Vocational High Schools which I had heard about but those were phased out by the time I started public school and NSCC was created. I do recall the old Bell Road school building, where Citadel HS is located now but I'm sure it was closed as a vocational/community college by that point and left vacant.

You'd be around my parent's age Keith, they would have graduated in the early/mid 70s. Even up in Antigonish they had a Catholic/Protestant-Secular system when they went to school, although I think they reformed that somewhat mostly by the early 1960s. They had split the districts from Catholic/Protestant to Town/County but still had Wednesday morning mass at the school gymnasiums as a compromise. My eldest brother started public school in the late 1980s and they still did 1st period Wednesday mass in the gyms and he had to go with 95% of his classmates; some teachers were still old nuns even then.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

I was curious so I went to dig a bit deeper and found this directory:
https://www.ednet.ns.ca/directory-schools-historical
It lists Nova Scotia schools, enrollments, feeders schools etc. going back to the late 1950s(!) In 1972-73 St. Pat's had an enrollment of 1,905 students (Grades 10-12 only) and Queen Elizabeth HS had 1,629 enrollment. That'd be like Citadel HS having over 3,500+ students today, that's insane.

There were some other things I didn't know, one being a school called Sidney Stephen High in Bedford (predated C.P. Allen?) and another called Graham Creighton High (predated Cole Harbour/Auburn High?). I'm guessing around that time they built Sackville High and moved all the Bedford kids over to Lower Sackville which must have just been starting to develop into what it is today, then it got over crowed really fast so they built C.P. Allen and split the two (then added Millwoods later in the 1980s).

There were also Vocational High Schools which I had heard about but those were phased out by the time I started public school and NSCC was created. I do recall the old Bell Road school building, where Citadel HS is located now but I'm sure it was closed as a vocational/community college by that point and left vacant.

You'd be around my parent's age Keith, they would have graduated in the early/mid 70s. Even up in Antigonish they had a Catholic/Protestant-Secular system when they went to school, although I think they reformed that somewhat mostly by the early 1960s. They had split the districts from Catholic/Protestant to Town/County but still had Wednesday morning mass at the school gymnasiums as a compromise. My eldest brother started public school in the late 1980s and they still did 1st period Wednesday mass in the gyms and he had to go with 95% of his classmates; some teachers were still old nuns even then.

I am a graduate of the last High School class of Graham Creighton High.
The Schools population in 1979 was almost exactly 50/50 White and Black as the Schools proximity to Both North and East Preston just made things easier.
All of us White kids were the original Colby Village/Forest Hills generation and were bussed to Creighton. Still friends with a lot of those Knuckleheads.

[JET]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I was at St Pat's in the early '70s and graduated in '73. It was still Catholic at the time. It was good in one sense in that all of my Catholic-school junior high friends joined me there so I knew a lot of my classmates. With 2000 kids enrolled there at the time it would have been challenging to have most of them being strangers. The place was packed. There were still a few nuns teaching at the time.

I had an older brother who went there years earlier who said it was very strict back when he was there. Classes were segregated male vs female and he claimed even the halls were kept separate with lanes where males walked and had lockers on one side and females opposite. I didn't see any evidence of that when I was there so I don't know if it is true. It was certainly a different time.

I took a 1/2 credit course at the Mount in 1991, the instructor was a nun in a full habit.

[ArchAficionado]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

I was curious so I went to dig a bit deeper and found this directory:
https://www.ednet.ns.ca/directory-schools-historical
It lists Nova Scotia schools, enrollments, feeders schools etc. going back to the late 1950s(!) In 1972-73 St. Pat's had an enrollment of 1,905 students (Grades 10-12 only) and Queen Elizabeth HS had 1,629 enrollment. That'd be like Citadel HS having over 3,500+ students today, that's insane.

There were some other things I didn't know, one being a school called Sidney Stephen High in Bedford (predated C.P. Allen?) and another called Graham Creighton High (predated Cole Harbour/Auburn High?). I'm guessing around that time they built Sackville High and moved all the Bedford kids over to Lower Sackville which must have just been starting to develop into what it is today, then it got over crowed really fast so they built C.P. Allen and split the two (then added Millwoods later in the 1980s).

There were also Vocational High Schools which I had heard about but those were phased out by the time I started public school and NSCC was created. I do recall the old Bell Road school building, where Citadel HS is located now but I'm sure it was closed as a vocational/community college by that point and left vacant.

You'd be around my parent's age Keith, they would have graduated in the early/mid 70s. Even up in Antigonish they had a Catholic/Protestant-Secular system when they went to school, although I think they reformed that somewhat mostly by the early 1960s. They had split the districts from Catholic/Protestant to Town/County but still had Wednesday morning mass at the school gymnasiums as a compromise. My eldest brother started public school in the late 1980s and they still did 1st period Wednesday mass in the gyms and he had to go with 95% of his classmates; some teachers were still old nuns even then.

What's surprising to me is that in this decade despite our fast growing population there seems to be little demand to build new schools / develop school infrstructure beyond replacement of the aging buildings for those same schools that the boomer generation came in.

Baby boom was no joke! All those huge schools bursting at the seems is wild to me. Must have been more teenagers at that time despite having 1/4 the total population. Now all those teenagers are old and complaining about their property taxes increasing to the market rate

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by ArchAficionado

What's surprising to me is that in this decade despite our fast growing population there seems to be little demand to build new schools / develop school infrstructure beyond replacement of the aging buildings for those same schools that the boomer generation came in.

Baby boom was no joke! All those huge schools bursting at the seems is wild to me. Must have been more teenagers at that time despite having 1/4 the total population. Now all those teenagers are old and complaining about their property taxes increasing to the market rate

Your post seemed promising in that it brings about a situation that I’ve been wondering about. It seems like the government has just finished the process of purging old school sites to be turned into housing because of a population boom, but it seems that nobody connected the dots to realize that record populations are going to need more schools in their neighbourhoods. Especially given the recent (mislabelled) “lack of fertility” media reports saying that Canadians are not having as many children because of choices, costs, etc, but adding the subtext at the end that immigrant families statistically tend to have more children than families who originate from Canada. Well it would seem that our extremely large increase in population logically (and anecdotally) must be due mostly to immigration… so maybe we will need more schools? But… they have systematically removed those prime school sites from public ownership, so they will never be schools again. I think it’s a topic worth discussing.

Then you lost me by turning your post into a comment laced with boomophobia…

[someone123]

Land will be needed for public buildings and schools on the peninsula but the province and city don't need to build according to a typical suburban space-inefficient plan. An elementary school or public library for example can be integrated into a mixed-use development with a tower above.