Mount Royal High School
Class of 1964

In mid-July 2021, someone in Victoria, BC, listed “The Mount Royal High School Prospectus 1946–47” for sale on eBay for $18 (Canadian). The listing states that the booklet is for Mount Royal High School on Carlyle Avenue and for Dunrae Gardens School on Dumfries Avenue.

The Prospectus appears to be a discussion of the schools' rules and regulations that was published for parents. Many of us in the class of 1964 were born during the period covered by that prospectus.

The listing included three images. Click on the image of the cover above for a larger image. The type in the two images of interior pages would be too small to read if the images were inserted here. Here are links to legible size images of those pages:

Five members of the MRHS staff in 1946 were still teaching at MRHS when we attended MRHS from 1960 through 1964. William Fish and Alice Theobald had moved to MRHS from Carlyle and Dunrae, respectively. Doris Neale was still at Carlyle when the 1953–1954 school year began. It was her last class before retirement. The class moved from Carlyle to Algonquin mid-year 1953–1954 when Algonquin opened, and later became part of the MRHS class of 1964.

MRHS:
Gerald Hunter
Elizabeth Palmer (librarian when the class of 1964 entered MRHS in September 1960)
Donald Buchanan
James Logan
Jean Gwynne
Carlyle Elementary:
William Fish
Doris M. Neale (Retired in June 1954 after teaching Grade 1 at Carlyle/Algonquin to several members of the MRHS class of 1964)
Dunrae Gardens Elementary:
Alice Theobald

Canada's first subway long predated Metro. And it passed through TMR. It just wasn't called a subway. It was called the TMR train. But it was underground, and it was electric. Just like the Metro built much later.

Several copies of a book called “The Mount Royal Tunnel,” which describes its construction, are on sale on eBay as of July 16, 2021.

Click on the image of the front cover for a larger version and on this link for the back cover large enough to read the text (which regrettably is not very sharp):

An illustrated history of the electrified railway tunnel and station complex still serving Montreal.

This story had its start in the pre-World War I railway building boom, when Canadian Northern Railway set out to provide Canadians with competition to the Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk railways. Since those competitors had already established entries into Montreal from the east, west, and south, CNoR decided that entering downtown from the north, even though a four-mile tunnel through Mount Royal would be required.

The Mount Royal Tunnel describes the building of CNoR’s huge complex that became today’s Central Station, and the site for downtown Montreal’s massive complex: Place Ville Marie, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Place Bonaventure, CN headquarters, and other large office buildings. The clean-running electric locomotives hauled trainloads of commuters to the CNoR’s 'Model City' development and other suburbs to Montreal’s northwest, with change-overs made to steam locomotives (later diesels) to take inter-city trains to Ottawa, Toronto, and the western provinces.

Anthony Clegg’s book describes, in detail, how the tunnel was constructed and equipped for electrical powering of trains … what the trains that ran were like, and where they went … how the post-World War I period caused government takeover of CNoR, becoming Canadian National Railways … insights on how the increasing traffic led to new multiple-unit self-propelled commuter trains … the decline in inter-city traffic, and how that led to the line being completely reconstituted as a commuter line … with CNR finally exiting the commuter operations entirely, turning them over to the municipal AMT, who completely reengineered and modernized the line’s electrification, infrastructure, and power substation facilities.

Over 120 photos illustrate the construction of the tunnel, the line, and the Central Station complex. Locomotives and passenger cars, including various multiple-unit cars and trailers, as well as line cars, are featured. Maps and selected equipment diagrams are included.

The Montreal school authorities that now run the MRHS building have scraped “Mount Royal High School” off the face of the entryway!
Photo from Google Maps.

They also built a very ugly new extension to the east side of the building (adjacent to the CNR tracks).

Thanks to Barry Levine for the photos of the extension. Barry notes that Mr. Logan's ghost no longer occupies the easternmost point of the building.

We've listed everyone's contact information because the purpose of the site is to allow old friends to reconnect. However, please keep the website confidential among MRHS graduates. Do NOT post the address of the site anywhere on the Internet. If you give the address to any MRHS friends, please be sure to pass the admonition along to them too.

The webcrawlers will find this website—and everyone's contact information—if the site's address is posted anywhere on the Internet. That will result in everyone getting spammed. It will also result in people changing their email addresses to avoid the spam and we will lose touch with them again.

Now that the 50th reunion has come and gone, it is a good time for class members who have not yet sent a bio and some photos to do so. Those of you who have been kind enough to send bios and photos might want to take a look and see if you want to update yours.

Each class member can decide what goes on his or her page. The only rule is no nastiness.

Personal pages can be accessed by clicking on blue first names on the Classmate Contact Information page.

Please also send us your new contact information whenever it changes.

No-one knows if and when we will hold another class reunion, or who will be able to attend if one is held. However, this website will allow everyone to stay in touch and provide an easy means of communicating news to the others in the class if members of the class send us news and photos to post.

We have high quality reproductions of the 29 pages of Graduates from the 1964 Torch. An improvement over the original: the online pages are indexed, thanks to Veronica Hess Shelford, who spent countless hours preparing the index and links. Click on someone’s name in the alphabetic class list at the beginning of the file, and you will go directly to the Torch page on which that person appears. The index also indicates in which homeroom class the person is located to facilitate finding classmates if you print the pages.

As of December 2012, we have found more than 92% of the class!

However, we still have not found contact information for 21 classmates. Please take a couple of minutes to look through the list of lost classmates and see if you can help find at least some of them. Even partial information, such as profession, married name, last known city of residence, location of a sibling, etc., may help us find someone. Please also let us know if any of the contact information we have is incorrect or outdated. Let's be sure that everyone who might want to attend the reunion at least hears about it.

We want to include contact information for everyone who was part of the class, even if he or she left mrhs before graduation. Please let us know if we’ve missed anyone. Kindly send contact information to John Hoffman.

A group of people who grew up in TMR have organized what has become a very popular Facebook page.

The site includes many people who graduated from MRHS and MRCHS over a period of more than two decades. The discussion is eclectic, including discussions of school days, entertainment from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and much more. Take a look:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/exold.townies/

Please do not post the address of this website on the Facebook page or anywhere else on the Internet. Doing so may subject your classmates to spam, because everyone’s email address is listed on the Classmate Contact Information page.

We need contact information and personal pages for everyone we can find.

Sadly, several of our classmates have passed away. We will make pages in memory of deceased classmates if anyone sends us copies of obituaries or photos or other information about them. That is a much nicer tribute than just a “Deceased” entry in the Table.

We could also use some pictures from mini-reunions that have been held, or of anything else likely to be of interest to the class.

Please send information for the website to John Hoffman at: mrhs@johnehoffman.us

For hard copy material, please mail information to John at:

John Hoffman
4035 Robin Hill Road
La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011-3811, usa