Marking Raoul Wallenberg Centennial

The Consulate General of the State of Israel, in conjunction with the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, the Riva and Thomas O. Hecht Scholarship Program, Teaching of the Holocaust for Educators, the City of Côte Saint-Luc, the English Montreal School Board and the Office of Mount Royal Liberal Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler,will announce plans to mark the centennial of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg. This will take place on Friday, May 11 at Bialik High School (6500 Kildare Road) in Côte Saint-Luc and include some distinguished speakers.

Raoul Wallenberg was the Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. While serving as Swedish envoy in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, from July 1944, Wallenberg gave Jews Swedish travel documents and set up safe houses for them. He is also credited with dissuading German officers from massacring the 70,000 inhabitants of the city’s ghetto.

Ron Meisel, a Holocaust survivor who was among the Jews saved by Wallenberg, will be in attendance. His video testimonial will be shown on the big screen.

The Nazis, who occupied Hungary in early 1944, launched mass deportations of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps such as Auschwitz with the collaboration of local authorities. Wallenberg disappeared after being arrested in Hungary by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. The Russians have said he was executed on July 17, 1947, but unverified witness accounts and newly uncovered evidence suggest he may have lived beyond that date.

Israel Consul General for Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces, Joel Lion, will formally announce plans for a Raoul Wallenberg Legacy Competition Project. Students from Bialik will be joined in the audience by their counterparts from a number of other local schools, including Marymount Academy in N.D.G., LaurenHill Academy in St. Laurent and Westmount High School.

Plans call for this to be an interactive project in which students from Montreal area high schools will seek to explain to their fellow peers in a three to four minute video how Raoul Wallenberg’s legacy and message is still relevant in their own lifetime. Students will have complete access to video files from different Holocaust-related websites.

Winners of the competition will receive a special certificate and be honoured at a breakfast hosted by the Consul General of Israel in December 2012 followed by a visit to the Montreal Holocaust Museum. All of the videos will be posted on the EMSB Vimeo site and made available to school teachers as resource teachers.

The legacy of Raoul Wallenberg will also be marked by the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre during their Holocaust Education Series next fall. On May 23 (5:30 p.m.) the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation of Montreal will hold a commemoration at the Monument at Raoul Wallenberg Square (600 de Maisonneuve).

The EMSB will work with The Riva and Thomas O. Hecht Scholarship Program, Teaching of the Holocaust for Educators, to solicit participation from English and French public and private schools in the Montreal area. Each year the The Riva and Thomas O. Hecht Scholarship Program, Teaching of the Holocaust for Educators, sponsors teachers to attend a Summer Session of the International Seminar for Educators at Yad Vashem. Past winners represent a natural connection to bring the Wallenberg story into the classrooms.

Côte Saint-Luc Mayor Anthony Housefather, working with City Councillors Mike Cohen and Allan J. Levine, proposed a local launch of the Wallenberg commemoration in their city for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Côte Saint-Luc is the home to a large Jewish community per capita in the world. As well, Wallenberg was inducted to the city’s Human Rights Walkway at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Park a number of years ago.

Speakers will include Consul General Lion, Côte Saint-Luc Mayor Housefather, Professor Irwin Cotler, Liberal MNA for D’Arcy McGee MNA Lawrence Bergman, EMSB Commissioner Syd Wise, Thomas O. Hecht, Bialik Principal Ken Scott and students Allix Caron and Tori Perlman. Peter Rona from the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation will also be on hand.

Wise takes aim at bringing high school to CSL by 2013

Click article to enlarge for easy reading:

Free Press, Jan. 31, 2012

Wise’s “win-win” for NDG & CSL

2012-01-18 Suburban RVHS (Suburban Newspaper, Jan. 18, 2012)

EMSB votes to consider a new high school in Cote Saint-Luc, Royal Vale stays in NDG

This evening, EMSB commissioner Dr. Syd Wise proposed to keep Royal Vale High School in NDG and for the school board to open a new high school in Cote Saint-Luc at the former Wagar High School on Parkhaven Road.

While some commissioners immediately viewed the proposal as a win-win, commissioners Feldman and Barbieri challenged the proposal and asked for it to be deferred to a later meeting. However, the proposal was ultimately accepted by Chairman Angela Mancini with the modification that the proposed high school would be studied by a task force until May 2012 for final decision by the EMSB.  All commissioners voted in favour with the exception of Liz Leaman.

The task force will be struck with EMSB commissioners and representatives from Cote Saint-Luc City Council to iron out details to potentially establish a new high school for September 2013.

This is good news indeed for Cote Saint-Luc, NDG, RVHS parents and all West End residents as well as the English-speaking community at large.

A mainstream English public high school has long been sought after by Cote Saint-Luc City Council.  Mayor Anthony Housefather made an impassioned and eloquent presentation to the EMSB last month which surely helped to convince the commissioners of the merits of the Cote Saint-Luc position.

Thank you Dr. Wise and EMSB commissioners for your consideration.  Thank you Mayor Housefather for your leadership and vision.

While the final decision is now a few months away, prospects have not looked better in several years.

Read more in the Montreal Gazette.

CTV News report.

CBC News – Montreal – Parents have new hope for return of Wagar High

CBC News – Montreal – Parents have new hope for return of Wagar High.

EMSB considering new high school in Cote St. Luc

Wed Oct. 06 2010 11:24:17 PM

ctvmontreal.ca

COTE ST. LUC — The English Montreal School Board commissioners were in Cote St. Luc Wednesday night asking parents if there’s enough support to open a new high school next year.

The public school would be housed in the former Wagar building at 5785 Parkhaven Ave.

The new approach to the dwindling numbers crisis in the Anglophone sector is designed for parents tired of busing their children to schools all over town.

“To have the opportunity to stay in Cote St. Luc would be beneficial,” said parent Tammy McEwen.

The board’s long-range planning committee will analyze the results of the meeting and an online survey to soon be made available on their website, and make a recommendation for a new school in 2012 or perhaps sooner if parents’ interest is strong enough.

Cote St. Luc Mayor Anthony Housefather said he thinks the time is right for a new school on the Wagar grounds.

“I want my residents today and in the future to have that option. A community is not viable without a public school,” said Housefather.

The EMSB said it is seeking the help of parents willing to assist in developing a program they would choose over a private school.

“I’d like to reverse the trend (of dropping enrolment) and maybe open up some new locations,” said EMSB commissioner Syd Wise.

Watch the CTV News report

You can also click here for the questionnaire

CSL EMSB meet attracts overflow crowd, The Suburban

West End Times

Board studies reviving Wagar High

English board studies possibility of reopening Cote St. Luc school, closed in 2005, with an approach that would let parents help determine its educational focus.

Public meeting Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 7:30pm at Cote Saint-Luc City Hall.

Read more: Board studies reviving Wagar High.

EMSB to hold info meeting about new high school for CSL

EMSB to hold info meeting about new high school for CSL

By Joel Goldenberg, The Suburban, September 23, 2010

The English Montreal School Board is holding an information meeting 7:30 p.m. Wednesday Oct. 6 at Côte St. Luc city hall, to discuss a potential “unique” public high school in that city.

The EMSB is “calling upon parents of children presently in elementary schools — both public and private — to attend this meeting and provide their thoughts of the type of high school they would like to see for their youngsters.”

Wagar High School closed in 2005. The Wagar building on Parkhaven was renamed the Giovanni Palatucci Facility, and currently contains the Marymount Adult Education Centre, the John Grant special needs high school and the EMSB Book Processing Centre.

“This meeting in Côte St. Luc will provide an opportunity for parents of future high school students in the West End to provide their input into what kind of secondary institution they would like to see,” EMSB chairman Angela Mancini said in a prepared statement.

The EMSB also announced that commissioner Syd Wise, a former Wagar principal, has been appointed chairman of a special committee looking at establishing schools with a particular focus.

“Initial feedback has indicated there is interest in a school with a heritage-academic program, as well as interest in a school with a sports concentration program,” said Wise.

The EMSB announcement points out that Côte St. Luc mayor Anthony Housefather has called for a new public school in his city, and he asked councillor Allan Levine, a former Wagar teacher, to be Côte St. Luc’s liaison with the EMSB. Hampstead councillor Bonnie Feigenbaum will be at the Oct. 6 meeting as well as her town’s representative.

The EMSB Long Range Planning Committee is “expected to make recommendations next March for major school change,” the board says.

According to a 2008 Côte St. Luc brief presented to the EMSB, “census information suggests that there are approximately 8,613 children aged 0 to 14 who are eligible to attend English-language school in Côte St. Luc and surrounding areas. This does not include the 15 to 17-year-olds. A large number of these students could be attracted to a new public high school of the English Montreal School Board at the location of the old Wagar High School building. Given the outstanding municipal sports facilities, libraries, parks and other community buildings in Côte St. Luc, a new high school would benefit from the existing infrastructure and resources.”

And, as the EMSB release points out, a new school on the Wagar site would be across the street from the existing Côte St. Luc gymnasium and an upcoming intergenerational aquatic centre.

Côte St. Luc seeks to reopen Wagar with Jewish program

Côte St. Luc seeks to reopen Wagar with Jewish program

By JANICE ARNOLD, Staff Reporter, Canadian Jewish News

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

The City of Côte St. Luc wants a public high school, ideally with a Jewish heritage program, to open on its territory, most likely in the former Wagar High School.

The city will host an English Montreal School Board (EMSB) public information meeting Oct. 6 at city hall at 7:30 p.m. Mayor Anthony Housefather believes many residents of Côte St. Luc and neighbouring Hampstead would like to see a public high school that has cultural Jewish programming.

The city has proposed to the EMSB that such a school offer elective classes that would provide “foundational knowledge of Jewish history, ethics and language within the context of a standard high school curriculum.”

It also suggests similar programming in the Italian heritage might be offered to Côte St. Luc’s second-largest ethnic community, as well as a sports-focused stream for students who want to combine their studies with athletics.

“We believe that such a heritage program will attract more Jewish students to the public education system. The EMSB would be able to increase its registration numbers and the City of Côte St. Luc would become even more attractive to young families,” the city states in its brief to the board.

Although a Jewish heritage program has been offered at Royal Vale elementary school, now located in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, for more than 20 years, the EMSB currently has no such program at the high school level.

The last mainstream public high school in Côte St. Luc, Wagar on Parkhaven Avenue, closed in 2005, due to declining enrolment stemming mostly from the trend toward private schools and the decline of the anglophone population. Today, it’s called the Giovanni Palatucci Facility, in honour of the Italian diplomat credited with saving the lives of 5,000 Jews during World War II, and houses the Marymount Adult Education Centre, John Grant special-needs high school and the EMSB book-processing centre.

The issue of such a heritage school first came up in 2008, when the EMSB held public hearings on the desirability of establishing a mainstream, English-language high school in Côte St. Luc.

With the declining numbers of children eligible for English education, the likely source of students for any such public school would likely be the Jewish and other private schools. According to the Canadian census, there are more than 8,000 children under age 15 eligible for an English education living in Côte St. Luc and surrounding areas, the city says.

The issue appears to be gaining momentum. EMSB chair Angela Mancini has appointed commissioner Syd Wise as chair of a special committee to look into the possibility. Wise was once principal of Wagar.

Mancini said she is looking for input from West End parents of future high school students on what kind of secondary institution they’d like to see. Even if approved, the earliest the new high school would open is the 2012-2013 school year.

Meanwhile, Housefather, who is personally advocating for the new high school, has named councillor Allan Levine, a retired school teacher, as liaison with the EMSB to push the file along.

The Town of Hampstead has also become involved in the project, and councillor Bonnie Feigenbaum is the point person on the file. The EMSB said it expects to make recommendations next March regarding this issue.