Villa Sainte-Marcelline is a private French school located in Westmount, Quebec

Westmount, Quebec

Westmount is a city on the Island of Montreal, an enclave of the city of Montreal, in southwestern Quebec, Canada; pop. 20,494; area 4.02 km²; population density of 5,092.56 inhabitants/km²....

. It is an all-girl school from kindergarten

Kindergarten

A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

 up to grade 11. There is also a cegep

Cégep

CEGEP is an acronym for , which is literally translated as "College of General and Vocational Education" but commonly called "General and Vocational College" in circles not influenced by Quebec English. It refers to the public post-secondary education collegiate institutions exclusive to the...

, named CIM, for girls and boys.

History

In September 1959, the Marcelline nuns opened the doors of the school to 66 students in the "Aimé Geoffrion" mansion on Upper Belmont Avenue in Westmount. Six years later, the school bought the next door house but it would only be in 1988 that the school would experience its first big constructions. These works made it possible to join both houses to create a bigger school. The students now had a new gym,auditorium and science labs. With the expansion of the school, the school accepted more girls. It became a first choice school for french families and also for English families trying to get their kids to be bilingual.

Nowadays the school is known to be the only french private school in Westmount and the one located at the very top of the Hill. Often, VSM is used to replace the full name of the school.

Since a few years ago, the school has a new building which contains a gym, the cafeteria, the computer lab, the library and the cegep.
The school is also one of the few in Montreal that offers a trilingual program (English, French, Spanish) throughout the whole secondary.