Our official opening was held on Thursday, January 31, 1985. 

Minchau School was named in honor of August Minchau, a Prussian immigrant who settled in the Mill Woods area in the late 1800’s. He was a true pioneer who courageously left his country to travel halfway around the world in order to provide his children with an opportunity for a better way of life. This story began over 100 years ago on a small Russian farm near the village of Volhynia. After a fire had destroyed their farmhouse and much of their land, the Minchau family decided to fulfill their dream of a new life in Canada. Needing to disguise two of their male children as girls to obtain affordable passports, the family of six managed to board the S.S. Samaritan and they arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 24, 1894.

Taking a train westward, they settled in Strathcona where the family lived in a teepee and a dug-out canoe shared with the Ertman family, not far from Ellerslie. They eventually built a log house after purchasing a parcel of land for four dollars an acre. This land became the home base to three generations of Minchaus for more than eighty years. Around 1950, the family moved to Edmonton to help organize the Good Samaritan Hospital and became prominent members of the community. In 1978, Edmonton Public Schools’ Board of Trustees gave approval to name a school in honour of this family’s great accomplishments.