Regina's Historic Buildings and Precincts - Education and Culture - Historic Schools

Historic Schools

At one time Regina had six private high schools associated with religion—three Roman Catholic, one Methodist, one Anglican, one Lutheran—as well as public secondary and junior college education both Roman Catholic and non-sectarian.

The Regina College Building together with Darke Hall and the old Girls' Residence now constitute the "Old Campus" on College Avenue. As successive faculties have been removed to the New Campus, including the Department of Music which provided intellectual, artistic and facility support to the Regina Conservatory of Music, the Old Campus seeks a new raison d'être and the Conservatory somewhat flounders. Connaught School, on Elphinstone Street at 13th Avenue, is one of the few remaining primary school buildings of that era. It was named after the Duke of Connaught, then the Governor General.

St Chad's Anglican Diocesan School was operated by the Anglican Sisters of St John the Divine on the then-Anglican diocesan property immediately to the east of Regina College on College Avenue until it closed for financial reasons in 1970. (See below, "Germantown and the East End.") The Anglican diocese confronted the realities of its demographic marginality in the 1970s and sold its property to the provincial Crown: the City of Regina is now confronted with the problem of responsibly developing the former Anglican diocesan property. (See below).

The Roman Catholic Jesuit Order operated Campion College, originally a high school with junior college accreditation with the University of Saskatchewan like Regina College, on 23rd Avenue; the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions operated Sacred Heart College, later Marian High School, to the south of Campion College on Albert Street and Sacred Heart Academy in the West End immediately adjacent to Holy Rosary Cathedral. Historically the Academy was not only a private Roman Catholic girls' high school -- Jacqueline Shumiatcher was once a classroom teacher there, Sister Joan Millar a piano teacher before obtaining her PhD and joining the faculty as a music professor at Brandon University; Erika Ritter, a Toronto "playwright, radio dramatist, novelist, humourist, short fiction writer and radio broadcasterand broadcaster," is from Regina and went to Sacred Heart for high school, as did a current a justice of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench both a music and school student there. All are now closed, though the Campion and Sacred Heart Academy buildings survive with new uses: Campion as a conservative Evangelical Protestant religious school; Sacred Heart Academy as residential condominiums.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada's Luther College, on the site of the original Government House next to the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, is the one remaining historic private school in Regina. Campion College no longer operates a high school, though its original building is now used as a private school run by another denomination; Campion College is now a federated college at the University of Regina, as is Luther College.