History
During the period of 1860, the site of the school was a public cemetery where most of the prominent citizens of New Westminster were buried. Afterwards, the remains were transferred to the Fraser Cemetery in the 1870s. During 1940, the corner of 10th Avenue and 8th was leased to the Federal Government. It served as soldiers' barracks to train soldiers during World War II. After World War II, the barracks were moved to the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the rest of the cemetery was demolished. Finally, in 1948 The Public Works Yard was moved and the site was transferred to the New Westminster School Board for the construction of offices and high schools. The site was checked for burial remains before construction, but many areas were missed.
In September 1949, Vincent Massey Junior High was unofficially opened by Premier Bryan I. Johnson. On December 16, 1949, the school was officially opened. The school was named after the Right Honourable Vincent Massey, the eighteenth Governor General of Canada.
Read more about this topic: New Westminster Secondary School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)