Gordon Bell rings in a century West Broadway institution has been a diverse and welcoming place for newcomers right from Day 1 By: Maggie Macintosh Posted: 12:48 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

Mischka Valencia had gotten used to the hum of heavy machinery at Gordon Bell High School.

“Ever since I’ve been here, it’s all been under construction,” the Grade 12 student said, standing on the sidelines of the brightly painted revamped outdoor basketball court. “I had no idea this was a court.”

The Filipina teenager landed in Winnipeg several months after the inner-city campus had transformed into a construction site.

It was the fall of 2023 and Mischka’s priorities were fitting in, befriending classmates and learning a third language via first-period French.

“I made friends, also newcomers, almost immediately and adjusted to the new environment really fast because my friends were so accommodating and included me like I’ve been there for a while,” she said, adding that all her teachers were “really welcoming and friendly.”

That’s how Mischka — who is now fluent in Tagalog and English, as well as familiar with French — remembers her introduction to Gordon Bell.

Roughly half of the students enrolled in the grades 7 to 12 school speak a language other than English at home.

Tigrinya, a language native to Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was the most common mother tongue, aside from either of Canada’s official languages, at Gordon Bell last year. Ukrainian, Cree and Arabic are also commonly heard in the West Broadway institution’s hallways.

English-language learners make up a significantly larger percentage of the population compared to the wider Winnipeg School Division.

Four in 10 Gordon Bell students, compared to three in 10 in the division, identify as First Nations, Métis or Inuit.

“The school has always been at the forefront, whether it’s for newcomers or Indigenous students arriving to the city, in being there for people who arrive,” said Vinh Huynh, a now-retired principal.

“I made friends, also newcomers, almost immediately and adjusted to the new environment really fast because my friends were so accommodating and included me like I’ve been there for a while.”

Huynh oversaw the start of the renovations at the site he first visited in 1987 as a summer student, then a young refugee from Vietnam, and returned to as an early-career teacher.

Motivated to make its design better match the school’s “come as you are” culture, he welcomed a proposal to fix, among many things, poor temperature control. But the school leader said he had one condition for the project-management team.

“Everything has to be done and gifted, wrapped in a bow, for the 100th anniversary,” he said, recalling his remarks at the outset of the renovations.

The final touches on the $25-million, multi-year makeover were finished in time — two weeks, to be exact, ahead of the centennial celebrations planned for Oct. 8-10.

Huynh said he was frank with staff that modernizing the building and making it more energy-efficient would be “demanding and disruptive.”

Classrooms would be temporarily shuttered and the outdoor sports surface was off-limits for roughly three years while crews installed a new mechanical system and building envelope.

Huynh’s advice at the outset? “We have to look forward to the fact that the outside of the school will be an authentic reflection of the inside.”

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A century ago, the first group of inner-city students in Winnipeg enrolled in a building named after Dr. Gordon Bell (1863-1923).

Bell, a physician-turned-eye doctor-turned-provincial bacteriologist, racked up a resumé filled with first-of-its-kind achievements.

He was one of the first six professors hired at the University of Manitoba at the start of the 20th century. Around the same time, Bell co-founded the Scientific Club of Winnipeg, further cementing his place in Manitoba’s medical, public health and educational communities.

Shortly after he died at age 60, Manitoba’s largest school division marked 750 Wolseley Ave. — a corner-lot campus at the intersection of Wolseley Avenue and Maryland Street — with his name.

Gordon Bell Junior High School expanded to offer all upper grades within the decade. The grade 7-12 school was relocated to its current site, at 3 Borrowman Pl., roughly three blocks north of what’s now known as Mulvey School, in 1956.

In a nod to this origin story, the centennial planning committee is organizing tours inside Mulvey and two other nearby feeder schools, Laura Secord and Little Bluestem.

Morning open houses, which will end with respective parades to Gordon Bell’s renovated complex, are scheduled for the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend.

They will kick off the third and final day of anniversary celebrations, many of which are tailored for former students, staff and anyone else who, as one teacher put it, “drinks the purple Kool-Aid.”

“This is not a reunion. This is for everybody who has ever been touched by, included in, connected to Gordon Bell,” said Kelsey Shiaro, a guidance counsellor who’s played a key role in planning a packed itinerary.

As the daughter of a longtime teacher, Shiaro grew up drinking the closest thing available to a magic potion that produces Panther pride — water from the fountains at Gordon Bell. Panthers is the school’s longtime athletic nickname.

Her affinity for the school, her workplace for the last 17 years, began “before I was born,” she said.

Outfitted in the school’s purple-and-gold colours, Shiaro recently gave the Free Press a tour of its new indoor and outdoor upgrades.

The final stop was a library storage room filled with yearbooks, memorabilia and a whiteboard mapping out the milestone celebrations.

On the schedule is the grand opening of a 1960 time capsule, a trivia contest between alumni and students and a “community-themed” performance by a new alumni choir. Under the direction of Shiaro, former students are preparing a setlist with Homeward Bound, Hymn to Freedom and other popular choral tunes.

“It isn’t just a school,” said Erika Lengsavath, a 2025 graduate and former choir participant who is in charge of organizing “decade displays.”

“Gordon Bell is, really, a living archive of everyone who’s turned challenges into breakthroughs and has come through so many walks of life and found their community, their people.”

There are no shortage of examples in the 19-year-old’s network — let alone her immediate family.

Much of her high school career was complicated by the construction. Her older sister graduated Grade 12 remotely in 2020, not long after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions altered the educational journey for thousands of Manitoba students. Their Laotian-born mother, who became a Panther long before the pandemic, navigated the halls as a newcomer to Canada.

Lengsavath said she learned a lot about resilience by simply showing up at school and meeting people from all over the world.

Asked about why the school is a beloved institution for many Manitobans, she and other current and former pupils point to its size, diversity and dedicated staff.

Compared to other high schools in Winnipeg, Gordon Bell is relatively small. Annual enrolment, encompassing all students from grades 7-12, hovers around 700, with a steady stream of newcomers registering at the main office on a year-round basis.

Shiaro, who is on the student-services team, said the diversity of experiences fosters intercultural learning, friendships and the regular celebration of multiculturalism.

The school’s catchment encompasses numerous settlement, First Nations and other community-service agencies and apartment buildings in the downtown core and surrounding neighbourhoods.

Nearly 29 per cent of the student population — compared to 19 per cent of all attendees in the division — were studying English as an additional language in 2025-26.

Indigenous students accounted for 40 per cent of all attendees at Gordon Bell, nearly 12 points more than the divisional average.

“Teaching is the vehicle for relationship-building here and there’s lots of students in this community that are seeking (mentors),” said Shiaro, who taught choir before taking on a role that involves supporting students who are navigating everything from culture shock to foster care, in addition to academics.

One mentor, the late Mike Gaston or “legendary Mr. G,” regularly reported to work on weekends so students could access the gym between the early 1960s and ’90s.

The home court of the Panthers’ basketball program is being renamed during the centennial celebrations to honour the dedicated coach who had one of the longest teaching careers in Gordon Bell history.

Citing Gaston’s life-changing advice, a former student returned to his alma mater in 2009 to donate a $100,000-scholarship endowment to pay the educator’s generosity forward.

“There will be thunderous applause when we salute the teachers at the end of the day on Saturday — thunderous,” said Paul Moist, a member of the class of ‘74.

Gordon Bell doesn’t have an alumni association, but Moist has been inadvertently laying the groundwork for one since the defensive tackle reconnected with old teammates in 2023 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of winning the Winnipeg High School Football League title.

The retired labour leader said he wanted to put his organizing skills to further use to boost morale and recognize Gordon Bell’s often-overlooked legacy of academic excellence, arts and music programming, and competitive sports.

Former Manitoba Lt-Gov. Janice Filmon, Ojibwa actor Adam Beach and the late Olympian Carl Ridd, a basketball player, religious studies scholar and human rights activist, are all former students.

The anniversary is an opportunity for intergenerational celebration of the accomplishments of past and current Panthers, some of whom travelled to Paris in June to compete and secure the top prize in an international culinary contest, Moist said.

Students and staff are all too familiar with negative stereotypes about the school and anecdotes about parents plotting to send their children to out-of-catchment schools, such as Kelvin High School, in neighbourhoods where poverty and addiction isn’t as visible.

“This is a great school. So is Kelvin High School,” Moist said.

When he was a student in the early 1970s, team teaching was popular and “ungrading” was the latest fad at Gordon Bell. He never wrote an exam and didn’t receive traditional grades on his report cards during the experimental era.

Gordon Bell was designated an “experimental school” — an initiative described as “a bold new experiment” in provincial documents — from 1968 to 1973 to pilot ways classes could be made more flexible to respond to individual student interests and progress.

More recently, in the early aughts, it hosted a popular flexible-learning program that sought to provide students with an alternative, holistic and tailor-made version of the mainstream curriculum.

Although neither of the initiatives remain in place today, their underpinning philosophy has been adopted across the Winnipeg School Division. The senior administration team actively encourages student-led inquiry projects and interdisciplinary lessons.

As far as Moist is concerned, Gordon Bell doesn’t get enough praise for its unique achievements.

The mascot may be a wild cat, but community members view themselves as underdogs by virtue of being connected to the school.

“I feel a sense of pride and (drive to) prove people wrong,” said Lengsavath.

Being affiliated with the inner-city school also means having “a strong sense of community,” she said, adding that it was “an easy yes” when she was approached to take on a leadership role in centennial event-planning.

Lengsavath, who is studying biology at U of M, wrote an inspirational quote on the whiteboard she’s been using at Gordon Bell to track the committee’s progress to motivate volunteers.

“Yes, this work is tedious, but it is important to remember what an honour it is to be asked to curate these banners of the last 100 years, and a way for us to give back to the community,” she wrote.

In response to concerns about discarded needles and open drug use outside Gordon Bell, senior administration partnered with the Indigenous-led non-profit Zoongizi Ode this fall to have “community safety hosts” on-site. These front-line workers, who are trained in harm-reduction and de-escalation tactics, greet visitors and do wellness checks.

Divisional kookum Marsha Missyabit said the initiative is “exactly what’s needed” to make everyone feel safe and welcome in the neighbourhood where she attended high school in the ’80s.

The collaboration represents a massive shift in how Gordon Bell is both teaching Canadian history and responding to “the results of colonialism, racism, injustice,” Missyabit said.

The Métis and Ojibwa leader’s portrait is part of a 1985 class composite. Others belong to Indigenous classmates whom she — using her knowledge as a Winnipegger who also regularly visited relatives in Vogart and Lake Manitoba First Nation — taught to navigate public transit and city life.

Missyabit said it was emotional to see Gordon Bell’s “huge transformation,” including its freshly painted basketball and pickleball courts.

While she has maintained lifelong friendships with peers who hailed from Norway House, Berens River and other communities, she said she often felt unsupported at school.

“With the vibrant colours, it’s so inviting now,” said the mother of five, one of whom attended Gordon Bell, and 15 grandchildren.

“This new community space is going to bring, not only students together, but staff and community members to enjoy a beautiful space in the core of the city. It’s needed, greatly.”

Huynh, who now works in the North End as the executive director of the Community Education Development Association, left the principal’s office before the community-safety hosts were introduced and renovations were complete.

The career educator said he’s incredibly pleased with all the hard work that’s taken place with future Gordon Bell generations in mind.

“Winnipeg is the heart of Turtle Island. Gordon Bell is the heart of Winnipeg. There’s something cool about that,” he said.

Huynh said he hopes the overhaul will instil in community members a renewed sense of pride and passion to support the next seven generations of students.

For him, this next phase is about fundraising to provide more Panthers with financial support before their senior year.

”So many good people come and just want to do awards for the Grade 12s. There’s lots there for Grade 12s but … when students come in, they should be recognized and encouraged in so many different ways,” Huynh said.

The Gordon Bell High School Alumni Fund, in collaboration with the Winnipeg Foundation, is collecting donations to establish an endowment fund.

Organizers have set a target of $100,000 to generate awards, starting after the centennial school year, for students in grades 7-11.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca