École Secondaire Victoria High School, commonly referred to as Vic High, is a high school located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It is the oldest public high school west of Winnipeg, Manitoba and north of San Francisco, California.
History
The high school opened on August 7, 1876, in a log cabin with two classrooms on the school reserve between Yates Street and Fort Street bounded by Fernwood Road, the grounds of the current Central Middle School building. This same cabin had been the first common (or public) school in British Columbia when it was used as a primary school starting in 1853. In 1882, the high school moved to a new wing of a brick building that had been built in 1875–1876 and had been used exclusively as the primary school until occupied by the high school. By 1882 the high school included 80 students and was situated between the primary girls' school in the east wing and the primary boys' school in the west wing. The high school remained pressed between the boys' and girls' central schools until 1903. Victoria's growing population in the 1890s led to Victoria High School being described as "one of the most inadequate school buildings in the Province" by the principal Edward Paul. In 1902, a third Victoria High School was opened, which was also quickly outstripped by Victoria's burgeoning population. This facility was designed by Francis Mawson Rattenbury, architect of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and The Empress Hotel (or Fairmont Empress Hotel).
The current Victoria High School, the fourth to bear its name, was opened on May 1, 1914, on of land, donated by the City of Victoria, on Grant Street between Fernwood and Camosun Streets. Designed by C. Elwood Watkins, School Architect for the Victoria Board of Education, the school cost slightly more than $460,000. The high school's first principal was S. J. Willis.
The Rattenbury-designed school was demolished in 1953 and in 1954 a new Central Junior High School building was constructed. The school was later known as Central Junior Secondary (grades 7 and 8) and currently as a middle school offering French immersion (grades 6–8).
Peter L. Smith, himself a graduate of Victoria High School and son of Henry Lawson Smith, longtime principal of Vic High (1934–1955), wrote a history of the school to mark its centennial celebrations in 1976: Come Give a Cheer: One Hundred Years of Victoria High School.
When the province renamed all its high schools "secondary school", Victoria High School, Oak Bay High School, and Esquimalt High School were the only schools to retain "high school" as part of their names.
Victoria College
In 1903, Victoria College (the precursor to the University of Victoria) started as an annex to the high school on the Fort Street site. During 1914–15 Victoria College was located on the top floor of the new Grant Street building. When the University of British Columbia opened in 1915, Victoria College suspended operation until 1920 when it reopened at nearby Craigdarroch Castle.
Facilities
Architecture
The current school building, which was designed in 1911 and opened in 1914, has been listed on the City of Victoria's Heritage Registry since 1982.
The foundations of the school are made of impressively heavy 4-foot-square blocks of granite. The building has two ornate facades, including some very large windows which offer prime views of downtown Victoria and the Fernwood neighbourhood. The building is U-shaped, with a large auditorium inside the U. Additions to the school have turned the spaces between the auditorium and the rest of the building into inaccessible courtyards.
The school has two gymnasiums, one of which is from 1914 and is notable for having a wooden running track suspended 20 feet above its floor. There is a rifle range in the attic, and there is an old tradition that the graduating students sign their names there. There are three large underground floors for storage and boiler rooms.
There are two war memorials in the school's main entrance, one for the First World War and another for the Second World War. After the Second World War a large flag (four stories high) was commissioned. It had blue and red maple leaves on it, each representing a student or staff member who died in the war, respectively. It was then lost until 2005, when it was found in the school's basement. For Remembrance Day it was hung from the school's fourth floor.