From the Vaults
by Dan Mullins and Legal & Archives Services
On the advent of the 25th anniversary of the school board, we dug up some objects and documents that have stood the test of time.
An embossing press which has been in continual use since the founding of the board, and several artifacts from the intervening years are currently on display in the main hall of the Head Office on Brookdale Avenue.
You can also find copies of the minutes from the first meetings of the Lester B. Pearson School Board’s Council of Commissioners in the Summer and Fall of 1998. We have reproduced these below, and provided an interactive abridged and annotated version of the minutes from the very first meeting. We hope you will enjoy seeing some familiar faces and reading some of the things we discovered.
Hover over or press a blue plus (+) for more information,
or press on a blue circle (•) to view an image. Photos are contemporaneous.
Click here to view the unabridged minutes of the first meeting.
The Brookdale location in Dorval had not yet been finished. This location, the former head office of the Lakeshore School Board, is now the Place Cartier Adult Centre Satellite Campus.
Marcus Tabachnick was elected the first ever Chairman of the Lester B. Pearson School Board by his peers.
After a change to the process, the position of school board chairperson was elected by universal suffrage in time for the elections of Nov. 2, 2014.
Ann Cumyn was elected the first ever Vice-Chair of the Lester B. Pearson School Board by her peers.
The Council of Commissioners of the LBPSB came into existence at this meeting. The council had to agree to accept the minutes of its predecessor body, the Provisional Council, at its next meeting. The Provisional Council was a transitional assembly that facilitated the change to new school board structure.
In subsequent meetings, the Chair and Director General's Reports would appear in the Pearson News (see below).
In subsequent meetings, the Chair and Director General's Reports would appear in the Pearson News (see below).
These changes would culminate when Moral and Religious Education was replaced in the Quebec curriculum by the Ethics and Religious Culture course. The current government has recently announced its intention to to abolish or revamp 'E.R.C.'
None of the eight schools whose Governing Board compositions were amended at the first meeting of the LBPSB's Council of Commissioners exist today.
The first meeting of the Lester B. Pearson School Board was adjourned at nine minutes before midnight on August 24th, 1998 and signed by the new Chairman of the Board, Marcus Tabachnick, and its Secretary General, William Stockwell.
From the second meeting of the Lester B. Pearson School Board’s Council of Commissioners, held on August 24th, 1998:
The first time the Chair and Director General's Reports to Council were recorded in the Pearson News was during the second meeting of the Lester B. Pearson's Council of Commissioners.
The first time the Chair and Director General's Reports to Council were recorded in the Pearson News was during the second meeting of the Lester B. Pearson's Council of Commissioners.
