St Ann's Academy

PLACES

Chapel

Humboldt Gates

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Orchard

Ochard
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here were strict rules about students taking fruit from the orchards, even in the 1960s and 70s. One student was caught stealing apples as a child. The memory of that fruit stayed with her until she became an adult. Visiting with some old classmates, at a graduation reunion, she decided to return to the orchard to see if she could finally get some apples, after all those years. Just as she climbed the tree, a mounted police officer, patrolling the area, strolled down the path to see a grown woman stealing apples from a tree at St. Ann's Academy late at night! She thought she was about to get in trouble all over again! Although the trees in the orchard section of the grounds are now quite old, they still produce fruit so irresistible that people return after 20 years to try to taste it.

A baseball diamond was set up in the northeast corner of the orchard. Baseball was a game that the Sisters and students alike loved to play. Proof of how many girls ran out to play rests on a tree branch. "There was one apple tree near the top of the orchard, where there was a pathway ... and everybody who came through the pathway paused at the tree and swung on the branch -it was like a gymnastics bar. We wore the bark right off. It was smooth as a metal pole." (C. Graves (Manthorpe), student 1967-73)

The B.C. Fruit Testers Association undertook the documentation of these heritage fruit trees. Members have been acting as consultants to try to bring the trees back to health. Many in the orchard are 100 years old and still producing fruit when the commercial life span for fruit trees is somewhere around 20 years. They have begun to cultivate cuttings, so that they will be able to replace any of these rare heritage trees that die off, but there are no plans to extend the orchard rows, due to the different watering needs of old and young trees.

Laundry and Service Buildings, 1948
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In 1913, a greenhouse was placed within the orchard, perpendicular to the Convent section of the Academy building. This structure was given to the Sisters as a gift, in memory of a former student. Mr. Quagliotti presented the building and its contents to St. Ann's on behalf of his late wife, and it came to provide them with wonderful hot-house products. A laundry was located on the southeast perimeter. Designed in 1896, this brick building was the work of noted Victoria architect Samuel Maclure.

Contact St. Anns Academy at stanns.academy@gems2.gov.bc.ca
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