Doreen Lindsay
The survival through fire, expropriation, and the forced moving in and out of eight Mother Homes was thoroughly and expertly explained to the 34 members and visitors who assembled in the Westmount Room. The move from the STABLE SCHOOL to the BIG HOUSE on St. Paul Street in 1670 ended in fire in 1683. The third Mother House north of St. Paul Street was also consumed by flames in 1769. The Congrégation rebuilt and expanded this home but it was expropriated by the City in 1911, and destroyed in 1912.
Westmount the site of the next three homes.In 1880 the sisters built a large stone building high up on the Westmount side of the mountain near Villa Maria. It too was consumed by fire in 1893. The sixth Mother House, and perhaps the best known, was designed by J. Omar Marchand for the huge block of land at the corner of Sherbrooke at Atwater (now Dawson College). In this building, the Congrégation de Notre-Dame founded a bilingual institution of higher learning for women in Quebec. L’Ecole d’enseignement supérieure was called Notre-Dame Ladies College in English. At first the Bachelor of Arts degree was conferred by Université Laval but by 1922 it was transferred to the newly founded Université de Montréal.
“The commercial section of Notre Dame Ladies College remained in the Mother House west of Atwater Avenue on Sherbrooke Street, where it took the name Notre Dame Secretarial School," Sister Roberts explained. "When it moved across Atwater in 1972, and introduced the CEGEP program it was officially called Notre Dame Secretarial College but was always, from 1909 until it closed in 1997, known in the business world as The Mother House,” she added.
They taught book keeping, business practice, banking, business correspondence, penmanship, commercial geography, stenograph, typewriting by touch, indexing, letterpress, copying, manifold and mimeographing and letter filing. The 33 women students were assured of employment because of their excellent training. By 1916 there were 86 enrolled and Montreal businesses hired them as stenographers, typists and bookkeepers.
In 1926, the Arts and Science sections, both French and English, of Notre-Dame Ladies College moved to their new yellow brick building on Westmount Avenue, corner of Claremont, and renamed themselves Collège Marguerite-Bourgeoys after the founder of the order. By 1943, this building was over-crowded and the BA programs of English and French sections were diverging. The English section left in 1944 and became Marianopolis College in other locations. The French section continued to grow until 1968 when the BA program ended and the College program began. The francophone Collège Marguerite-Bourgeoys had to close in 1985. Marianopolis became co-educational and the only English private CEGEP.
When 3440 Sherbrooke Street was sold to Dawson College, the Mother House moved up to Westmount Avenue (1985-2005) then back down to 2330 Sherbrooke on the East side of Atwater.
The Westmount Historical Association next greets Sally Nelson, an English teacher of 40 years at Dawson College, to speak of the latter's history on November 20 at 7 p.m. at the Westmount Public Library.
