Canterbury High School (Ottawa)

Canterbury High School (Ottawa)

Canterbury High School is an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board high school in the Elmvale Acres neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is an arts magnet school, and located at 900 Canterbury Ave. It serves 1304 students. While offering both an arts program and a general program, Canterbury is known primarily for the arts. The Arts Canterbury program began in 1983. It was recently rated by Maclean's Magazine as the top high school for the arts in Canada.

The school opened in 1969 as a comprehensive high school. It was the last in a series of ten high schools built by the Collegiate Board to deal with the baby boom. At the time of its opening it was considered an extremely modern school, employing all the latest ideas in education. Most notably many of its walls were moveable, allowing for an easy reorganization of space. It also had one of the largest libraries of any secondary school. From 1969 to 1976, Canterbury offered a technical programme based on Aerospace Technology. The shops offered Airframe, and other aviation based technical studies. The school did operate a 1969 Cessna 190J (CF-CHS) and our Schweitzer 2-33 glider(CF-ABE). The Ottawa Board of Education withdrew support of the concept based on liability issues.
The two aircraft owned by Canterbury high School were:
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Schweizer 2-33A two place glider.
Canada Registration Mark : CF-ABE
Aircraft Make : Schweizer
Aircraft Model : SGS 2-33A
Aircraft Manufacturer : Schweizer Aircraft Corp.
Aircraft Serial Number : 155
Aircraft Year : 1969
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Cessna 150J two place, piston powered propeller driven,tricycle gear, light single.
Canada Registration Mark : CF-CHS
Aircraft Make : Cessna
Aircraft Model : 150J
Aircraft Manufacturer : Cessna Aircraft Company
Aircraft Serial Number : 15071042
Aircraft Year : 1969
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1969 ~ 1974: The airframe shop was rebuilding a storm damaged Aeronca Citabria. The Aerospace Technology shop also was building a VW engine powered hovercraft, and we built a hover-platform. This was a 3' diameter test bed using a single 28V 400 Hz electric lift-fan. Fibreglas molding produced several canoes, as the method is the same as producing wing tips. ______________________________________________________

The school later, as a result of a specialized schools program became an arts magnet school. As an arts magnet school it has since enjoyed great support from the local and arts communities as well as its former alumni, as best illustrated when the band Arcade Fire played a special show on January 19, 2007 in the cafeteria in support of the arts programs.

In spite of the focus on the arts, the school still maintains a strong athletics program which includes rowing, swimming, volleyball, baseball, basketball, soccer, football, water polo, curling, ultimate frisbee, ice hockey, rugby and track and field. It has one of the broadest ranges of sports teams in the OCDSB.

The school is on the Greenboro route (651/652) of the OC Transpo system, in the Alta Vista neighbourhood. Furthermore, the 148X (Special) goes from Hurdman station to Canterbury for the students. They may also take the 148 or 149 from Hurdman station. Some yellow school buses are provided.