new demands for services and amenities that could only be imagined by earlier generations. The increase in population was reflected in a surge in housing starts. The Murphy home on Riverview Drive, once surrounded by fields, was now surrounded by new subdivisions which transformed the nature of the area.

The growing number of students attending city schools brought to the surface their shortcomings and outdated and narrow curriculum. More than 90 percent of those attending city schools in the 1950s did not progress beyond high school, and only one—third completed grade 10. The city schools were divided along religious lines. The schools both reflected and perpetuated the religious differences that practically segregated Protestants and Roman Catholics in the life of the city. A school inspector’s report noted that the religious split in the schools engendered “mistrust, skepticism and even prejudice” among school staff.

The existing schools were substandard and overcrowded, and the growing number of students led to demands for new facilities. In the 1950s, three new elementary schools, Prince Street, St. Jeans and West Kent, were built to replace the antiquated buildings students previously attended. The Spring Park school came later, after the area was amalgamated with the city. The 1950s also saw the construction of two new high schools, Queen Charlotte and Birchwood, serving students from grades seven to 10. Although these were gleaming new facilities, students of different religious persuasions continued to trudge across town to attend classes with teachers and fellow students of the same faith. Birchwood was regarded as the Catholic school, Queen Charlotte the Protestant one.

(As a sign that time is marching on, Spring Park School which opened in 1957 and which all of Kathleen’s children and many of her grandchildren attended, was demolished in the summer of 201 1.)

That practice of segregating students because of their religious backgrounds finally ended with the construction of Colonel Grey High School in 1966 to serve Grade 11 and 12 students who had previously attended Prince of Wales College and Saint Dunstans University, and Grade 10 students who would have gone to Birchwood and Queen

168 KATHLEEN MURPHY, MAITRIARC