Concordia University’s new student residence a former convent – March 29, 2013 Globe and Mail

Stories related to what to do with historic church buildings appear frequently, given a variety of converging factors, as the Wesley Mimico redevelopment story illustrates.

For your interest, the following headline and opening paragraphs are from a March 29, 2013 Globe and Mail article about the adaptive-reuse of a convent in Montreal:

Concordia University’s new student residence a former convent

ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN

Concordia University’s newest student residence has big, light-filled rooms, a fabulous high-vaulted study hall and a plum address in downtown Montreal. It also has something found in no other college digs in the country: an open crypt in the basement, filled with the remains of long-ago nuns who lived and died in the former Grey Nuns mother house.

Concordia bought the century-old convent, which occupies an entire city block, six years ago for $18-million, with the caveat that some sisters would live in a portion of the building till 2022. But this week, on the eve of Good Friday, the last of the elderly nuns left the mother house forever, some to move from one hospice environment to another.

[To access the full text, click here.]