Jasper Place High School
8950 163rd Street
Architect: John McIntosh
Constructed: 1960-61, 1962, 1969
For better or for worse, the Town of Jasper Place dreamt big and there’s perhaps no better embodiment of that than Jasper Place High School.
From the beginning the West Jasper Place School District wanted a show-stopper. Although Chairman James Young “stated that the school was strictly functional with no frills,” nothing was further from the truth. When J.P.H. opened in 1962 it was “the largest school between Vancouver and the Great Lakes.” It was the Edmonton-area’s first all-pre-cast concrete school building and featured eighty-four instructional areas, including sixty classrooms. In time, it was to include two gymnasiums, a vocational training wing, an automotive shop, library, sports stadium, and tennis court.
For its design local architect John McIntosh devised a unique plan. From above the building resembles an asterisk, with ‘spurs’ — containing the classrooms — branching off a central gymnasium. The rationale was genius. In doing this, V-shaped courtyards are created allowing every class to have an outside view. Compared to a conventional layout it also created “two extra rooms on each wing, providing teachers with lunch rooms and lounges on each floor instead of one crowded main lounge.” Others were allocated for Students’ Union usage and storage space.
An hour-long ceremony opened J.P.H. on Friday, January 26th. Of the 1,000 in attendance was the entirety of the W.J.P.S.D. Board of Trustees, Education Minister A.O. Aalborg, Deputy Education Minister Dr. W.H. Swift, and W.P. Wagner, Dr. John Andrews and Mrs. Edith Rogers of Edmonton Public Schools. A musical selection was provided by Auxiliary 18 Wing Band of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the school’s glee club, reciting a song entitled Now thank we all our God. Tours followed.
Their grand building brought the town national recognition — it also brought debt. As historian Lawrence Herzog explains, “Jasper Place was backing itself into a corner.” It was on the verge of bankruptcy and millions were owed to the banks. Funding had been committed to spur the development of Meadowlark Shopping Park. A dozen other schools, Public and Separate, had just been completed. A $430,000 sports complex was approved. And then came Jasper Place High, a sixty room behemoth at $2,418,549. Another $360,000 was needed for its equipment. “With precious little industrial tax base, phenomenal growth and an ever-increasing debt load, Premier Ernest Manning saw the writing on the wall and refused to grant the town extra funds.”
Ultimately, Jasper Place’s “38,000 people, $8,177,000 in debt, and ‘the damnedest mud in the world’,” formally amalgamated with the City of Edmonton on August 17th, 1964. “Our cultural activities, our sports and recreation facilities, our parks and playground development, our industrial expansion and our planned residential areas now extend beyond the dividing line of 149th Street to the far western boundaries of Jasper Place,” Edmonton Mayor William Hawrelak wrote. “I invite you to share with us the many facilities the City has to offer [including] improved public transportation, water, sewer, paving and traffic engineering services.”
With the Town and City’s marriage, the West Jasper Place School District and Edmonton Public School Board were too amalgamated. One would think that in the shuffle, Jasper Place High would lose the proud sense of self it had in its small community. On the contrary, it soon established itself as “a dynasty in the Edmonton High School Athletic Association” and had even managed to hold onto its national significance — it has been continually recognized as one of Canada’s best performing high schools.
Image Gallery:
Sources:
“Technical Training Suggested For Town,” Edmonton Journal, May 17th, 1961.
“School To Open With 50 Rooms In Fall,” Edmonton Journal, August 2nd, 1961.
John Keeping, “Jasper Place High Biggest On Prairies,” Edmonton Journal, December 1st, 1961.
“West’s Largest School Opened In Jasper Place,” Edmonton Journal, January 27th, 1962.
Gordon Aalborg, “Jasper Place,” Edmonton Journal, August 17th, 1964.
William Hawrelak, “Welcome to the City of Edmonton,” Edmonton Journal, August 17th, 1964.
Terry Jones, “Wrestling Headed by Jasper Place,” Edmonton Journal, March 24th, 1969.
Lawrence Herzog, “When Jasper Place Joined Edmonton,” Real Estate Weekly, October 3, 2003,
