Our Lady of Victories Church School,

Fantome Island

1931 – 1973

In 1931 a contingent of Sisters of Our Lady Help of Christians arrived on Fantome Island to serve and tend to the sick at the local hospital established there in 1928. In 1939 the island also became home to a leprosarium. The community almost entirely consisted of First Nations Peoples who were being treated and quarantined on the island. A rudimentary Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church was built on the site by 1934, and a new Church of Mary Immaculate was completed around 1947. The sisters began teaching the children on the island for an hour each morning, but were teaching classes in both the morning and afternoon by August 1940. There were around six children at the little school. In 1945 sisters from the Order of Franciscan Missionaries of Mary took charge of the leprosarium, which was closed in 1973.