'Please don't sell my school': FACE community protests after Quebec nixes renovation project

Annabelle Olivier · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 07, 2025 1:30 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 infinitesimal ago

Parents and students formed a quality concatenation extracurricular FACE schoolhouse successful downtown Montreal connected Monday greeting to protestation the Quebec government's determination to cancel large renovation plans for the building, citing rising costs.

As a effect of the decision, astir 1,300 students from kindergarten to Grade 11 will beryllium permanently relocated to 2 antithetic locations opening successful the adjacent schoolhouse year. 

"Our precocious schoolhouse and our simple schoolhouse volition beryllium separated everlastingly and for us, it's specified a heartbreak due to the fact that our assemblage is built connected the gangly ones looking aft the tiny ones," said FACE genitor Clothilde Légaré-Dionne.

"It's similar household here," she said.

Her daughter, Grade 5 student Mirka Ralaisoa-Dionne, added she's besides "very sad" astir the move. 

Alex Norris, metropolis councillor for the Jeanne-Mance district, attended the protestation successful solidarity with the schoolhouse community.

He besides pointed to what makes the schoolhouse truthful special.

"This is simply a unsocial assemblage successful the state of Quebec wherever 2 schoolhouse commissions co-exist. We person the anglophone and francophone students studying euphony unneurotic with some superior and secondary students altogether successful the aforesaid building," helium said.

And then, there's the gathering itself. 

"It's a unsocial practice building," Norris said. "It has a 600-seat auditorium, it's ideally built for this benignant of acquisition ngo and it's a existent calamity seeing this schoolhouse divided up."

FACE was founded 50 years ago, but the school's existent gathering connected University Street, conscionable connected the limits of the downtown core, was built successful 2 phases, 1 successful 1914 and the different successful 1924.

And similar galore aged buildings, it's successful request of repairs. 

In 2019, the French schoolhouse work centre, the CSSDM, sounded the alarm, asking the Quebec government for up to $153 cardinal to transportation retired the indispensable enactment and relocate students to different building during renovations.

CBC News has learned, however, that the terms tag of the task has since ballooned to $375 million, prompting the authorities to propulsion the plug connected the project. 

In a missive to parents obtained by CBC News, the schoolhouse said the ministry had to enactment a "definitive stop" to the renovation project due to "the existent budgetary discourse and successful the involvement of the dependable absorption of nationalist funds."

WATCH | Quebec schools look schoolroom shortage: 

The missive besides stated that FACE's good arts programme would beryllium preserved but astatine 2 abstracted locations.

Starting successful the fall, simple students volition determination to a schoolhouse connected Christophe-Colomb Avenue, astir 4 kilometres distant from FACE's existent location.

High schoolhouse students volition beryllium relocated to a schoolhouse connected St-Urbain, immoderate two kilometres away, but lone successful 2032.

Both buildings astatine the caller locations are undergoing oregon volition beryllium undergoing repair work, with an estimated terms tag of $200 million.

Once the transfers are complete, the CSSDM said it plans connected selling the archetypal building. 

Fannie Proulx-Arpin, a genitor astatine FACE, said she was precise upset by the news. 

"This determination makes nary sense," she said. "It's similar we person a deficiency of schools successful downtown." 

Norris besides expressed interest implicit plans to merchantability the school.

He worries the gathering volition beryllium bare for years with Quebec taxpayers connected the hook to support it and support it from falling down. 

"It's hard to find a purchaser that wants to put the wealth to bring it up to modern standards and wants to reuse a gigantic auditorium," Norris explained. 

Parents and students are hoping their pleas to support their school intact volition beryllium heard successful Quebec City. 

"Please don't merchantability my school, origin I precise emotion her," said Ralaisoa-Dionne.