Mile End - Dollard School

At 5941-5945 rue Saint-Urbain stood the first Lambert-Closse School from 1910 to the end of the 1960s. Until 1931, it was called École Dollard. It was demolished following its expropriation in 1968 by the city of Montreal for the construction of the tunnel allowing the connection of Clark Street to Saint-Urbain Street under the railway tracks.

In 1910, the Saint-Georges parish factory, which covers an area between the Canadian Pacific Railway to the north, Saint-Viateur Street to the south, Hutchison Street to the west and Henri-Julien Street to the west. is, open a school of boys, the Dollard School. The parish already has a girls' school, the Académie Saint-Georges. Plans for the new school are due to architects Joseph-Elgide-Césaire Daoust and Louis-Zephirin Gauthier, who specialized in the construction of religious and school buildings. The factory entrusted them with the drawing up of the plans of all the buildings of the parish: the Saint-Georges Academy and its chapel (1909) at the corner of the Bernard and Waverly streets, the Saint-Georges church (1913) at the corner of Bernard and Saint-Urbain streets and the patronage building Jean-Léon Le Prevost (Patro Le Prévost, 1913), St. Dominique Street. All these buildings have disappeared today.

Until 1959, the school was run by the Marist Brothers, a congregation from France who arrived in Quebec in 1885. It was named École Dollard to respond to the wishes of Archbishop Paul Bruchési of Montreal, who wished to see the commission Catholic School of Montreal commemorate the heroism that Dollard des Ormeaux would have demonstrated during the battle of Long-Sault, by baptizing one of his schools with his name. In 1931, the school was renamed École Lambert-Closse by the Commission des écoles catholiques de Montréal.

The Dollard School is what is then called a model school of commercial instruction. The school's enrollment is growing rapidly, in line with the population growth in Saint-Georges parish. At its opening, it has 120 students for 3 classes and reached 315 students in 1916 for 8 classes. In 1918, the school was enlarged: one floor was added to the north wing, where the brothers' quarters were, to accommodate an extra class. In 1949, the school loses the complementary level (7th and 8th years)

The Marist Brothers intend to provide education that is at once moral, intellectual and physical. The school has a well-known choir of sports teams, including a hockey team (the school sets up an ice rink in the winter) and religious societies such as the Phalange of the Sanctuary's Children. Cadets of the Sacred Heart.

On September 27, 1968, the school building and the land it occupied were expropriated by the city of Montreal to connect Clark Street, north of the roadway right of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Saint-Urbain Street, south of Van Horne Avenue, a connection that is part of the larger project to build the Rosemont-Van Horne viaduct. A new Lambert-Closse school is built on the grounds of the factory occupied by the Académie Saint-Georges and the Saint-Georges church and its presbytery.