Transcona Collegiate

More Information

In 1960, the opening of Transcona Collegiate, the first dedicated high school in the community symbolized the coming of age of Transcona. The community hit a population of 14,000 and became the City of Transcona the very next year. So rapid was the growth there in the 1960s, that although the new collegiate had 24 rooms, an additional six classrooms were built two years later. Soon after, on the large site were added John W. Gunn Junior High and Radisson elementary which shared facilities and sports grounds.

Transcona Collegiate is a large three-story building roughly in a T-shape, with the original long crossbar as the most public face. It stretches east along the street with the less symmetrical sections typically running to the rear. The red brick building is finished in a spare design, with a dropped entrance link near the centre and a library and auditorium/gym wing on the north end. The auditorium and gym, one of two known from Waisman and Ross Architects (the other at Murdoch MacKay) is a rare design that features a barrel-vault roofline and external concrete buttresses Glass block filled in the upper portion of the arch to light the interior. This wing has been allowed to deteriorate, with some work undertaken in 2009.