FROM •
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. . capilano .

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Press Release

FOR IM-'!EDIATE RELEASE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From the high school basement to ..•.
This fall's registration will bring to over 27,000 the number of students
who have attended Capilano College.
From after-hours classes in West Vancouver High School serving a few
hundred students, the college has grown to a campus serving over 3500.
The history of Capilano Colle.ge began in the 1960' s when it became obvious
that facilities were needed on the North Shore to give local students career
training opportunities after high school and an alternative to the distant
big universities.

The fight to get that community college involved educators,

businessmen, politicians and residents in a four year struggle to convince the
B.C. government that a college was urgently required.
In September of 1968 the first registration for Capilano College took
place at West Van High.

The college had optimistically expected 400 students

to enroll, but instead was left reeling as 746 registered, overflowing the new
institution that had no books, no buildings and only one full-time faculty person.
But somehow the classes went forward.

In the next few years West

Van High was ·surrounded with portables to house the mushrooming college.

A new

site had to be found, and finally, in 1976 the Lynnmour campus, up on the hill
behind Lynn Creek officially opened up.
The Lynnmour site has grown in the past few years and will continue to do
so with plans in the wind for a new building to accommodate the again overcrowded facilities.

Classes are also being offered in West Vancouver, Squamish

and Pemberton as the college attempts to serve the needs of all the residents
in its area.
From evening classes shoehorned into a basement bookroom to the forest
setting of Lynnmour where deer wandered down to join the fall '73 registration,
Capilano College has come a long way.
- 30 Contact:

W. Little

986-1911, local 326