Baron Byng High School

Baron Byng High School was an English-language public high school on Saint Urbain Street in Montreal, Quebec, opened by Governor General of Canada Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy in 1921. The school was attended largely by working-class Jewish Montrealers from its establishment until the 1960s. Baron Byng High School's alumni include many accomplished academics, artists, businesspeople and politicians. Baron Byng has been immortalized in many books, including in Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, St. Urbain's Horseman, and Joshua Then and Now as Fletcher's Field High School. History At the beginning of the 20th century, Quebec's confessional school system prohibited Jews from attending French-language Catholic schools, relegating them to Protestant schools. By 1916, Jews made up 44% of the total enrolment in Montreal's English-language Protestant schools. Jewish participation, however, was forbidden on school committees and at the Protestant School Board, and Jewish teachers were discriminated against in terms of employment opportunities. Throughout the period of mass Jewish migration to Montreal, the Board enforced a policy of segregation in its schools.