Under Fr. Ryan’s pastorate, Holy Family flourished despite the worldwide turmoil.
In a 1940 letter to the Montreal Catholic School Commission, the pastor noted that English-speaking boys in Holy Family School comprised only half of the student enrolment. Italian boys accounted for 28% and French-Canadian boys, 20%. Such was the cultural make-up of the school a full decade before the large-scale immigration from Italy would occur in the 1950s.
Lois McCaffery, who attended Holy Family School in the 1940s, said the vast majority of the girls in her classes were Italian, some of whom remain her closest friends today.
Joe Civitarese also attended Holy Family School in the 1940s but he was the second generation to do so. His father, Giuseppe, was among the first students to attend Holy Family School in the late 1920s before the Lajeunesse building opened in 1930. The Civitareses had lived in Villeray since the mid-20s, when the family moved from Mile End to build their home on St-Dominique Street, between Villeray and Gounod streets.
Diane Gabriel’s family followed a similar route. Her father, Nicolas, grew up in the 1930s on St-Dominique Street, where her grandfather had built his home and construction business. Although Nicolas had attended the local French school, his Italian wife, Margherita, was from Goose Village and had attended the English-language St. Ann’s School. He sent his children to Holy Family School in the late 1950s because his wife, not he, would be checking the homework.
Raynald Murphy and his brother, Richard, were raised on Berri Street and attended Holy Family School in the late 1940s. The Irish-surnamed brothers, however, spoke French at home because both parents were French-speaking. Hector hailed from New Richmond, QC, and Adeline from Charlo, NB. However, Adeline liked Holy Family Parish, and the family chose to go there and later, sent the boys to the school.
In that era, Catholic students were prepared to receive the Sacraments of Initiation at the school and made their First Communion and Confirmation in the parish. Although coming from various cultural backgrounds – Irish, Scottish, English, Italian, French etc. – these children and their families had two things in common: their faith, lived and expressed in the English language. Holy Family’s cultural diversity is rooted in its earliest days.