<!-- comment out deleted image thumb|'Monklands', the central building of Villa Maria, built in 1804 for [[James Monk|Sir James Monk]] -->Villa Maria is a subsidized private Catholic co-educational high school located in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, offering both francophone and anglophone streams. Founded in 1854 as a boarding school for girls, it stopped boarding students in 1966 and opened, in August 2016, to boys in the seventh grade. Today, there are roughly 950 students in the French sector and 800 students in the English sector with an average class size of 34 students. Current tuition as of the 2024–2025 school year is $4,900 with $2,330 in extra mandatory fees. It ranked among the top 50 best high schools in Montreal, and is one of the largest private high schools on the Island.

The central part of the Villa Maria school is known as the Monklands Mansion and was the home of the governor general of Canada from 1844 to 1849. It is a National Historic Site of Canada. In 2023, the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal announced that the estate on which the school lies will be sold off, leaving the future of the school uncertain. The current lease ends in 2030, and the Congregation intends to put the land on sale the following year.

Monklands

In 1795, James Monk, Chief Justice of Lower Canada, purchased an estate in Montreal that had previously belonged to the Décarie family. The first Monk residence, built in 1803, was the central section of the present-day Villa Maria.

Sir James Monk willed the property known as ‘Monklands’ to his niece, Elizabeth Ann Monk. In 1844, the family leased Monklands to the Crown as a residence for the Governor General of Canada. Modifications were made to create a more imposing residence.

Three Governors General—Sir Charles Metcalfe, Lord Cathcart, and Lord Elgin—resided at Monklands. When Elgin occupied the house, British extremists threatened to burn the structure down after Elgin signed a bill that helped those of the French whose homes had been burnt down during British raids by granting them money to reestablish themselves. However, because Lady Elgin was pregnant at the time, the rebels decided to burn down the parliament building in Montreal, instead. Soon, Lady Elgin gave birth to a son, Victor Bruce, the future Viceroy of India, in a second floor room. While Montreal was serving as the capital of the Province of Canada (1844-49), Sebastien Compain turned Monklands into a country hotel. This change was speculated to be a means of boosting enrollment, due to decreased numbers of eligible students entering the anglophone stream.

The Villa-Maria station of the Montreal Metro is named after the school.

Notable students

thumb|Students and nuns of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal on the doorsteps of Villa Maria (1946)

  • Pauline Fréchette (1889–1943; graduated, 1908), poet, dramatist, journalist, nun
  • Veronica Lake, American actress
  • Maybelle Stephens Mitchell, American suffragist
  • Jessica Paré, actress
  • Anna T. Sadlier (1854–1932), writer
  • Celie Ellis Turner, American actress and playwright
  • Françoise David, politician

References

  • Villa Maria's home page

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