Monklands High School closed in 1979. Approximately 1000 former graduates turned up for the official closing ceremonies. It was a nice but sad send off for the school. Before leaving that evening I made my way backstage in the Auditorium. The westside of the stage was where the percussion equipment was always stored; the old Gretch snare drum with real gut snares; the 'marching band' base drum with the Monklands High School name on the outer skin; the two antique kettle drums (the tymps) that had to be tuned the old fashioned way; the hand held crash symbols with the sheep skin hand grips; and, numerous music stands, but that night all the old musical equipment was gone and the room was empty. Beside this storeage room was the winding stair case. I climbed up one flight to the catwalk that ran high above the stage. I had been up there once before in 1961 when a few members of the band and I decided to explore this forbidden territory. I'm sure we all tempted a possible suspension if we had been seen in such a dangerous location! We had not, however, been the first ones up there. The grafitti on the walls attested to this fact! The markings of previous student adventurers went back to the 1950's and 1940's. Now in 1979 (without the fear of a possible suspension) I took out my car keys and scratched my own initials into the plaster wall...C.M 1958-62. It felt soooo goood. Mission accomplished! I had finally joined the club of a small number of graduates who had left their 'special' mark on the school. Very few outside those who were stage crew bothered with the catwalk. Cast members of school productions were aware of the dressing rooms on either side of the stage and the winding stairs that connected them with the boys gym below the auditorium. Not many ventured upward and out onto the catwalk...it was scarey looking through the grating down to the stage flooring a long...long...way below!
After closing in 1979 Monklands HS was converted into a seniors residence. The outside still looks the same from the Benny Street sidewalk as does the south side old main entrance when approached from West Hill Avenue. It is from this street that the newly constructed school drew its name in 1918. West Hill High School located at 4400 West Hill avenue opened for the first time in 1919 to staff and pupils as an English language Protestant school. The building was transferred to the Protstant School Board in 1921 and was given the numerical designation of School 0467. Over the next thirty years it passed through two (1926, 1931) renovation/ extensions. The 1926 extensions were most likely the east (girls) and west (boys) ends of the original building. The 1931 project was the addition of the Auditorium (pic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) on the northside of the school. As we can all remember the auditorium floor was not sloped. All the seats (except for the balcony) were on the same level. Unlike present school construction where the auditorium is normally located inside the building and windowless the 1931 auditorium had ample windows. Here are photos of the boys art room, the chemistry and physics labs.
After WW2 the only English Protestant high schools in the area bordered by Decarie (east) to Westminister (west), and from Upper Lachine Rd. (south) to Cotes St. Luc Rd. (north) were West Hill HS and Montreal West High School. The start of the post war baby boom was more than likely the final impetus for the school board to create a larger and better designed/equipped and 'modern' school in the area to service the increasing high school population. The decision was to build a new school to be located at the corner of Somerled and Draper avenues in NDG. Would the name of the new school follow past traditions and take the name of the street (Somerled High School?...Draper High School!?) or the name of any past school board member (Wagar High school opened in 1963/64 and was named after Roy Wagar a commissioner with the PSBGM who suffered a heart attack shortly after giving a commencement speach at the 1962 Monklands High School graduation exercises). None of these naming options was followed. Instead, tradition has it that, the graduates of the original West Hill High School had a strong lobby and the new school would be called West Hill High School! The name would be transferred from the old school building to the new. The old school would be renamed Westward High School. Westward (I believe) was to become a transitional type middle school servicing grades 8 and 9. All the major trophies won by the original West Hill students were to be transferred to the new building! Over the summer of 1951 the original West Hill High School was stripped of its 30 year history . In September 1951 a transitional high school called Westward opened its doors for the first time at 4400 West Hill Avenue. That same month a few blocks away on Somerled and Draper a modern high school with a swimming pool opened its doors with an instant 30 year history and all the tophies to prove it. The new West Hill High School was born. However, the seeds of an intense rivaly between the original West Hill and the new West Hill were sown.
I would suspect that the high school student population in NDG by mid decade (1955) was greater than anticipated at the begining of the 1950s. Cote St. Luc was expanding rapidly along with western NDG and these all fed students into Westward High School. The Protestant School Board decided to create more secondary school places in NDG. Westward high school evolved into a 4 year (grades 8 to 11) school and in 1956 was renamed Monklands after the road that West Hill Avenue intersected just to the south of the school. Monklands High School was created. Additional renovations/extensions were undertaken in 1956, 57 and 58. These would have been the girls gym on the north east side of the school, and a new western wing on the Benny Avenue entrance. By 1958 Monklands had its final familiar look. There was a healthy and spirited dislike of the 'new' West Hill High School by Monklands for obvious reasons. They were seen as robbing the original West Hill of its history and trophies. There was always a deep feeling of satisfaction when any Monkland school team bettered a new West Hill High team. For me it was always knowing that the Monklands High School band performed better than the Westhill Band. The Ottawa Music Festival of 1959 was such a sweet success for us knowing that we had out performed West Hill!!
Chris Milligan (Monklands 1958-1962)
