École du Y (Y School)

On Wednesday, April 4, 2007, I went to a workshop, run by YMCA Montreal, called École du Y. (Y School) This workshop was a three-hour session about YMCA Montreal, its centres, what they do, what sort of programs they have, and its involvement at the international level.

What I found most interesting about this workshop was the history behind the YMCA. The first YMCA (the YMCA movement) was founded in 1844 in London, England. In 1851, the first YMCA was founded in North America, which happens to be founded in Montreal. Boston also founded a YMCA in 1851, but we beat them by about a month. The person who founded the YMCA in Montreal was Sir George Williams, who coincidentally has a campus named after him at Concordia! (Since Concordia was created in 1973 when Loyola College and Sir George Williams College were fused together) It’s amazing how small of a world this is. I stumbled into Concordia, because they were the only university that offered Teaching of Mathematics as a graduate program, and then now I stumble into working at the YMCA, where it was founded by someone who played such an integral part in the history of my university!

I also learned that two sports were invented at the YMCA. Basketball was invented by James Naismith, a fellow Canadian, in December 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts, while he was at the YMCA Training school. Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan, on February 9, 1895 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he was a YMCA physical education director.

I found out that there were ten centres in Montreal for the YMCA. They are: Centre-ville, Guy-Favreau, Westmount, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Pointe-St. Charles, Ville St. Laurent, du Parc, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, l’Ouest de l’île and Kanawana. Of course, these are not written in the order that they were opened in, they were just written in the order that came to my mind. However, here is a list of dates in chronological order when they were opened:

Centre-ville – 1851 (if we count the first, first first building)

Westmount – 1912

Du Parc – 1912 (grand re-opening in 1994)

Southwest (Verdun) – 1930  this centre is no longer open

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – 1940

Hochelaga-Maisonneuve – 1980

Pointe-St. Charles – 1981

Guy-Favreau – 1986

L’ouest de l’île – 1988

(I don’t recall when Kanawana opened)

The YMCA also offers many, many programs for people of all ages. There are many, many programs, and it would take too much time to list them all here. This information was interesting too, and I don’t want to give the idea that they are not important, or less interesting, it’s just that I really found the history interesting, and I wanted to get the word out there regarding the history of the YMCA, because not a lot of people are familiar with it.

The YMCA is also very involved in international affairs. There are over 130 countries in the world where there are YMCA centres, and the ones in Montreal work closely with YMCAs of Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti and Mexico City for this work. Again, I will not write too much in this area, because there is a lot of information about this, and it is important, but I don’t want to write a five-page blog posting, because I will start to feel like I’m writing a research paper.

Anyway, all in all, this training that I went to was very educational, and I enjoyed it a lot… I especially enjoyed learning about the historical aspects of YMCA, and I never realized how Sir George Williams was related to the history of the YMCA! (and I guess I can even say vice-versa)