Villa Sainte-Marcelline

Villa Sainte-Marcelline is a private French school located in Westmount, Quebec. It is an all-girl school from kindergarten up to grade 11.

History

In September 1959, the Marcelline nuns opened the doors of the school to 66 students in the "Aimé Geoffrion" mansion on Upper Belmont Avenue in Westmount. Six years later, the school bought the next door house but it would only be in 1988 that the school would experience its first big constructions. These works made it possible to join both houses to create a bigger school. The students now benefitted from a new gym, auditorium and several science labs. With the expansion of the school, it increased its student population and diversified its extracurriculars. It became a first choice school for elite French families and for wealthy English families wanting to integrate their children in a French environment to improve their command of the French language.

Nowadays the school is known to be the only French private school in Westmount and the one located at the very top of the Hill. Often, the acronym 'VSM' is used to replace the school's full name.

In 2005, the school expanded yet again, building an adjacent building containing a gym, a new cafeteria, a computer lab, a library and class spaces for the cegep. Unfortunately, it closed down last April 2020 due to the lack of students.

Over the past century, the Villa has been known as one of the only schools in Montreal that had nuns living in the school and teaching the students. Nuns that lived at the Villa were dedicated to educating the women of the future. Some nuns taught religion, french and even mathematics. In 2019, sixty years after the arrival of the Marcelline nuns, the majority decided to retire and go back to Milan in Italy. Nuns that were born and raised in Quebec moved outside the school and come for monthly visits.

The school is also one of the few in Montreal that offers a trilingual program (English, French, Spanish) throughout the whole secondary.

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