Prince of Wales College

Prince of Wales College

Prince of Wales College campus on Grafton Street in Charlottetown's east end. It is now known as the "Prince of Wales Campus" for the province's community college system, Holland College.
Type	university college
Active	1804–1969
Location	Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Prince of Wales College (PWC) is a former university college, which was located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. PWC merged with St. Dunstan's University in 1969 to form the University of Prince Edward Island.

PWC traces its history to 1804 when land was set aside by Lieutenant-Governor Edmund Fanning for a college - the colony's first. In 1821 a district school called the National School opened on the site located on Kent Street in the east end of Charlottetown. In 1835 Central Academy opened on a site along Grafton Street, immediately south of the National School. The National School closed in the early 1850s and the provincial Normal School for training teachers opened on the site in 1856.

In 1860 the Central Academy was upgraded and renamed Prince of Wales College (PWC) in honour of a visit to the colony that year by the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. In 1879, PWC became co-educational and the Normal School was merged into the institution. A significant expansion took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s when a new brick and stone campus was constructed on the site of the original PWC campus. Ferdinand Herbert Marani, an architect with Marani & Paisley designed the new PWC campus which opened in 1932. PWC remained a non-denominational or inter-denominational college which served to provide an education comparable to the present-day colleges in Quebec, namely senior matriculation and one or several years of university. It was the non-denominational character of PWC which led many of Island Roman Catholics to label the school as being "Protestant". Many Catholic women attended PWC despite this label because they were barred from attending St. Dunstan's University which was male-only. It was not until 1965 that the provincial government granted PWC a degree-granting charter and the only Bachelor degrees from PWC were awarded in the spring 1969 convocation.