It is every teenager’s nightmare – getting stuck in high school forever. But Lorianne Bertrand made a career of it. 

When the Fort-Coulonge native started at John Paul II High School in Campbell’s Bay in September 1982, she had no idea she would be spending the better part of her life in that same building, and that those same floors would carry her through to her retirement from her role as principal there, over four decades later. 

Of course, the building at 10 rue Leslie didn’t always house the same school. It was built as an anglophone Catholic high school, with its elementary counterpart, St. John’s, just down the road. In 2004, St. John’s moved into the high school’s building and two years later, the high school closed, merging with Pontiac High School in Shawville. Not long after that, the French elementary school École L’Envolée moved in, where it remains today. 

Bertrand, who got her first teaching job at St. John’s in 1991, was there for all of it.  She has taught her high school classmates’ children, and as principal, shepherded their grandchildren through the earliest years of their education. 

Last week was her last walking the school’s hallways. This summer she made the decision to retire, leaving the job not because she’s tired of it, or finally worn down by the education system, but because she still loves the work, and wants to go out on a high. 

“I’m leaving when I still have a passion for it. I love being here. I’m going to miss the kids,” she told
THE EQUITY one rainy July morning, seated behind the same desk that her own high school principal used when the school opened in 1982. She was surrounded by half-packed boxes, evidence of her imminent departure from what had become her second home. 

“I’m very present in the school. I’m there in the morning welcoming all the students off the bus. I walk around the cafeteria, I’m in the hallways. I’ll race a kid down a hallway, even if we’re not allowed to run.” 

After graduating high school, Bertrand first returned to St. John’s as a supply teacher in 1991 while she was still in college. She then moved to Quebec City to complete her teaching degree, and returned to the Pontiac ready to launch her career, landing her first full-time teaching position at St. John’s in 1996. 

“The principal that hired me was actually one of my teachers when I was a high school student here,” she laughed. “I worked alongside a lot of the teachers that I had actually had as a student when I was a teenager.”

Bertrand moved around, teaching various subjects until she found her groove in Grade 3. She took a maternity leave in 2005, and upon her return a year later, the high school had closed, and she began taking on more administrative responsibilities at the elementary school. In 2007, she stepped into her job as principal, where she stayed for nearly 20 years. 

Bertrand said she made this shift into administration because she wanted to make a difference in the school’s learning culture. 

“I felt really strongly that individual success is more important than just looking at data,” she said. “Sometimes we concentrate too much on academics, but we also have to look at what kind of person they are. How are they being successful?”

Bertrand’s mission to help every student feel valued and understand their own strengths was not one she kept private. It has defined her career.

“She has an affinity for reaching the underdog,” said Jennifer Dubeau, director of education at the Western Quebec School Board, and also a longtime teaching colleague and former high school classmate of Bertrand’s. 

“She knows students so personally, she knows what their potential is, and if they’re making progress towards their potential. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a social level, emotional level or an academic level, she knows and celebrates that success with the students.” 

Bertrand said one of the ways she widened the framework of what was considered to be “success” at St. John’s was by asking the students to share what they considered to be their own accomplishments every year.  

“Every year, they have to write me a note, or the younger ones draw, and they have to say how they were successful at something,” she said, noting she now has binders filled with these personal reflections.

“They’ll say something like, ‘I was really successful this year at accepting other people to join my game’ or ‘ I was able to read more books’, ‘ I was able to help out more people’, ‘I was able to be kind’, that is all part of what education is.”

St. John’s teacher Tina Dagenais experienced Bertrand’s care first hand, both when she was a young student at the school, and now as a staff member. 

“She had a remarkable ability to connect with children in a way that left a lasting impression,” Dagenais recalled. 

“She worked tirelessly to make the school a place where children felt safe, valued and excited to learn. [ . . . ] She inspired me to follow my dream of one day becoming a teacher.” 

‘Like a mother hen’

Dubeau said as far as she’s seen in her many years working as a teacher, a principal, and now a director with the school board, it’s rare for a principal to have such deep roots in the community of the school they lead. 

“She lives in the community, so she knows it from a personal perspective as well as a professional perspective. That gives her that unique sense of moral duty to make her own community better,” Dubeau said. 

“Just like we would ensure our family is safe and secure and feels a sense of belonging, so does Lorianne do for her students, staff and families. She’s almost like a mother hen to all those kids who are there.”

The advantages that come with this kind of connection to the students and staff at the school aren’t lost on Bertrand.

“There’s definitely a buy-in. They believe in me. They know I’m sincere and that I want the best for the people in my community, because I am one of them. [ . . . ] And I think the kids always knew I believed in them.”

Bertrand organized countless spirit days, school-wide rock-paper-scissors tournaments, and special outings, all in an effort to ensure life at school was fun, for both students and staff. 

Longtime Onslow Elementary School principal Cathy Nugent could see this work, all the way from Quyon.

“She understood that schools are built on relationships, and she invested in those relationships every day,” Nugent said. 

“Whether she was supporting students, encouraging staff, or bringing people together through moments of laughter, she created environments where people felt they belonged. That is the legacy of a truly great educator and school leader.”

Core to Bertrand’s mission of creating a safe and supportive learning environment was a message that sat on her desk,  engraved on a glass plaque, for most of her tenure at St. John’s.  “Be kind or be quiet,” it read. At the Grade 6 graduation this year, Bertrand reminded students of this important guiding principle. 

“I told the students, ‘When you leave for high school, if you can remember a few things from Ms. Bertrand, it is that if you can’t be kind . . . ’ And they finished it, ‘Be quiet’. So they know that.”

Bertrand’s commitment to kindness as core to building a healthy learning environment is matched by her insistence on perseverance. In 1998, when she was the school’s head teacher, her end-of-year address to the graduating students highlighted this. 

“Always remember that an important key to success is never, never quit,” she wrote.

While Bertrand is officially stepping back from any full-time position at the school, she said she has a feeling she won’t be leaving the field altogether.

“I could be supply teaching, or working on different committees on something for education. I’m definitely not going home to sit there and do nothing. Education will always be a big part of my heart.”