Victoria, British Columbia

I didn’t set out to dig up the fleur-de-lis roots of Victoria’s Union-Jack image. But dig them up I did. A glitter had caught my eye. It came from a gold cross atop a building that shifted my sense of place from 2008 Protestant Victoria, British Columbia, to the French Catholic Canada of the 1800s — Montreal, St. Hyacinthe or Quebec City.

But I was in Victoria, wasn’t I? I looked about for clues: street signs, Quadra and Humboldt, a wrought iron gate, St. Ann’s Academy. Passing locals I quizzed knew naught. The information excavation was on.

Sure enough, the roots of St. Ann’s Academy lead back East — to Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City in 1759. From 1759 until 1846, education in Quebec had been sporadic at best. In fact, in 1836, Quebec cut off funding, denying education to 30,000 children. The Sisters of St. Ann, a teaching and nursing order, was borne of this crisis.

Before the Panama Canal was built, in 1914, and before British Columbia joined Canada, in 1871, Bishop Modeste Demers trekked back to French Canada, in 1857, to get help for his young diocese centered at the Hudson Bay Company’s trading post on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

Bishop Demers recruited four Sisters of St. Ann, their laywoman, three priests and two brothers. They sailed from Montreal for the Panama Isthmus, which was crossed by rail; they set sail on a second, up the Pacific Coast, anchoring at Victoria June 5, 1858.

But Victoria was no longer a French-speaking trading post. The 20 “bark-roofed” shacks the bishop had left behind were lost in “a sea of tents” and 200 new houses. The Cariboo Gold Rush of ’57 and ’58 had lured English-speaking miners, most from California’s spent gold fields.

Sister Valois served as the first superior of St. Ann’s Academy, then just a log cabin, and led her nuns through their first crisis. Although the convents forbade girls from attending dances and the theatre, three students accompanied their father, Governor Douglas, a Protestant and a close friend of the bishop, to a ball aboard a man o’ war. Governor Douglas asked Mother Superior to be lenient, but she expelled his daughters anyway. Eleven other young socialites left, too.

In 1859, English-speaking Irish immigrant Sister Mary Providence McTucker replaced Sister Valois.

Racism and class distinction tested Sister McTucker and Bishop Demers when she established a select school for those who could afford to pay fees and a free school for which minimal, if any, tuition was expected.

Black parents demanded that their children be enrolled in the select school, and Bishop Demers insisted that they be admitted. But when some whites protested, the bishop rescinded his integration order. And, much to the blacks’ sorrow, McTucker reverted to her original plan.

In 1861, Mother Superior began putting her students through public examinations. The press reported on them annually, adding that Victoria was lucky to have the sisters, their schools and their medical care.

‘Lack of Sisters’

By 1871, enrolment had outgrown the academy’s three temporary sites. One of Bishop Demers’ priests, Father Michaud, was an architect. He designed the first section of St. Ann’s as it stands today. (The 1886 addition mimicked it.) The year 1871 also saw Father Michaud move his wooden cathedral, built in 1858, across Humboldt Street, to the rear of St. Ann’s where a brick shell tied it to the Academy.

(Besides his projects in Victoria, Father Michaud is credited with having designed about 95 cathedrals, churches, chapels, colleges, markets and a store in Vermont, Ontario and Quebec between 1853 and 1902.)

In 1910, Thomas Hooper designed and built the third and final section, which includes the auditorium.

By 1973, a “lack of sisters,” a “lack of sufficient funds,” a “frequent turnover of lay teachers” and a “constant decrease in enrollment” closed St. Ann’s Academy.

The sisters sold the institution to the provincial government in 1974. The first plan to restore it was dropped the next year. Government agencies and charities rented space in it until 1985, when the fire marshal limited occupancy to 100, ordered the east wing abandoned, and demanded upgrading be complete by 1992.

Vandals had their kick at it, too. Graffitti disgraced its interior.

Academy Gardens, a private developer, won a lease allowing conversion of St. Ann’s to a licensed tourist attraction. Many protested, demanding that the gold cross be removed from the cupola: “It would be outrageous to have that cross on top of a building when 600 people are getting drunk below it.” The developer refused to take down the cross. “To put a development of this nature on this site,” another opponent argued, “is akin to putting an amusement park on the Plains of Abraham.”

Hope Shines

William Gibson, chancellor of the University of Victoria, wanted St. Ann’s for his junior students; others wanted it to be an arts center. The provincial government offered St. Ann’s to greater Victoria for $1; the city and its neighbors said “No, thanks.”

Catholic artist Gregory Hartnell got the press’ attention with tales of Emily Carr’s ghost having been seen stalking the Academy, “bewailing the historic building’s fate.” Carr, Victoria’s most lauded artist, was born the year St. Ann’s Academy was built. She’d sketched the area and the sisters had nursed her at St. Joseph’s hospital, just across the street.

Hartnell claimed that a white bird alit on the gold cross atop the cupola at dusk, and Emily Carr appeared, turning slowly in the cupola, looking at the panorama, her monkey Woo stroking “her face consolingly.”

Eventually, Academy Gardens’ $21 million scheme went broke. Some talked of demolishing St. Ann’s, but sanity prevailed. St. Ann’s re-opened in 1997 after a $16 million restoration.

Today it is a national heritage site that includes a French-Canadian chapel, `an interpretive center where visitors learn of the sisters’ work, and government office space.

If the rescue doesn’t delight the mother of the Mother of God — feast day July 26, along with her husband, Joachim — surely it gives her consolation. The place may not have reclaimed its original spiritual mission, but its cross-topped splendor radiates Christian hope like few other sites in its neighborhood.

Greg J. Edwards writes from

Tsawwassen, British Columbia.