Figure 1.-- Here we have a portrait from St. John's Anglican School in 1899. It was a boys' school located in Montreal. The boys are dressed quite formally but wear a variety of outfits. Two boys at the left wears a sailor suit. Only one has the striped detailing. Several boys wear suits with Eton collar. Image courtesy of the McCord Musuem in Montreal. Click on the image to see the rest of the students and the staff.

Here we have a portrait from St. John's Anglican School in Montreal. While it is located in Montreal, we believe it was an English-language school. The photograph shows a group of boys from the Anglican School for boys during 1899. There were significant class connotations to the Anglican church in both Canada and Ameeica. Many of the well to do upper-class families were Anglicans. Much of the working class on the other hand were Catholic, from both French Canadian and immigrant families. . You can see a few of the faculty members at the rear right including a white-bearded priest in his black cassock (possibly the headmaster) plus another priest wearing a suit and clerical collar. There are quite a range of ages. Thius suggests that the school was quite small. This may be the entire school at the time. It is hard to know whether the young men standing at the back older students or young members of the faculty. We think they are students, but at least one may be a faculty member. The younger boys look to me like 7th or 8th graders, which would make them about 11 or 12 years old. The boys standing at the rear of the photograph seem to be almost junior highschool age, perhaps 13 or 14, so this school may have combined primary grades with secondary school levels, not an unusual situation for church-related schools at the end of the 19th century in Canada. The boys are dressed quite formally but wear a variety of outfits. Two boys at the left wears a sailor suit. Only one has the striped detailing. Several boys wear suits with Eton collar. Several Eton collars, in fact, are in evidence. Most of the boys wear suits with jackets and ties, but a few boys have no jackets, wearing only their shirts and ties. Some boys have bow ties while others have long ties. All the boys of course wear knee pants with long black stockings, standard wear for the period. Notice the interesting hats perched on the knees of the two boys in the front row at the extreme right. One boy has a tweed cap with a bill on his knee while the boy next to him has a straw boater with a ribbon.

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Created: 11:19 PM 4/8/2005
Last updated: 11:19 PM 4/8/2005