Former students have shared some great new comments regarding 1950s and 1960s-era Cartierville and Elmgrove Schools in Montreal

Some of the students who attended Cartierville School and Elmgrove School many years ago subsequently attended Malcolm Campbell High School in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough in Montreal.

Click here for information about names of Montreal boroughs such as Ahuntsic-Cartierville >

We’ve recently had some new comments, at two previous blog posts, about each of these two elementary schools.

We owe thanks to all of the site visitors who have shared memories about these and other schools over the past decade or so.

Cartierville School

The following comment from Barry Wolfe is at a post entitled:

Cartierville School in Montreal.

Barry Wolfe, in the days he was a student at Cartierville School. Source: Barry Wolfe

Barry Wolfe
Aug. 24, 2023
thisiswilmot.ca

This site was a wonderful discovery! Here’s my contribution.

My family moved from Toronto to Roxboro in 1958 (My dad worked at Bell Canada on Beaver Hall Hill), but there was no elementary school “out in the sticks” then.

We kids all got on the brown city bus and travelled along Gouin Blvd. to the corner at Chemin Somerset in Cartierville for grade four in January of 1959.

I remember passing a long series of buildings on the north side, behind a stone fence, that looked like an ancient French mansion, but everyone passed the rumour that it was where they kept disgraced priests and nuns. Great fodder for a 9-year-old’s awakening imagination. (It’s still hidden behind a blind of trees to this day.)

My memories of Cartierville Elementary do not include anything about academics or teachers. That’s a blank. My strongest recollections are: playing tackle football in the snow using frozen apples and oranges that we hid every day after lunch to freeze for play the next day; soup once a week (I think) downstairs that was served by volunteer mothers; 16 mm (the big reels) movies on a flickering projector at the end of the day once a week or so; riding the city bus home to Roxboro afterwards with the boys swinging from the hand poles pretending to be the pirate heroes of that day’s movie.

I think I was only there for one year and they had Roxboro Elementary built by then, so it was to walk, not to ride the bus, to school. In those days the bus ride to Cartierville seemed to last hours and was another joyous time to play with your friends as the scenery rolled past.

There’s something about grade four that sticks in one’s memories.

P.S. In spite of my youthful disdain for academics and an emphasis on play, I eventually ended up with 30 years in education and as an elementary school principal in Ontario. I’m retired to an “adult” community in Foxboro Green, Wilmot, Ontario and there are 5 retired principals and a dozen retired teachers living here. Fortunately, the almost 200 others balance us out. It’s telling that most of our career anecdotes do not deal with academics, but with social and sports activities that we enjoyed with our students. Maybe the joyful exuberance of our youths, and the life lessons we learned on the playgrounds, like those at Cartierville, are the true foundations for contentment.

Cartierville School, May 2015. Scott Munro photo

Elmgrove School

The following comment from Tom ShawStiffel is from a post entitled:

Grade 7 photos from Elmgrove School – with thanks to MCHS grad Susan Holmes Nash

Tom ShawStiffel
Aug. 26, 2023

Also just stumbled on this site ! Such fond memories !! I was at Elmgrove from 1964 (Grade 2) thru 1969-70 (the first year of French Immersion) Btw I think it was the first such school in QC Well, a few memories … one day in grade 2 I befriended a fellow student (Joanna) after I walked her home in the rain as she had no umbrella 🙂 In 1968 (grade 5) Joanna & her family moved to South Africa & we’ve been in touch by snail-mail then email ever since, now 55 years & counting !! We also met up in person once in Toronto in 1990 Btw in grade 2 (1964) I recall the flag in our classroom was still the Union Jack as our “new” flag was only approved the following year 🙂 In grade 3 I had a little “crush” on Ms Mullins (our homeroom teacher); I felt she’d make a perfect match for Batman ! Then in grade 5 it was Ms Cohen … once I bumped into her at the A&W drive-thru on Decarie Blvd (the old-fashioned one where they served u in your car) … it was a bright sunny afternoon & she was in her Mustang convertible (wow !) Grade 7 French immersion was by far my fav esp thanks to Mlle Boiscard (sp ?) A few other memories … we kids would often play baseball at the back of the school I’d also watch the planes landing at Trudeau (Dorval in those days) as they were so low One fine day the “new” B-747 flew by on its maiden trip around the world ! Awesome sight !! Of course, I could go on & on but one last memory … I used to live on du Ruisseau Blvd & walk to / from Elmgrove each day One summer, since du Ruisseau was still an open creek, it was being converted to an underground tunnel It was so deep I thought “I’d seen China” as we’d say But the main prob for me was that I had to make a detour along O’Brien (the big scary street for an 8 year old 🙂