Earl of March Secondary School is an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board secondary school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located in suburban Kanata in the Beaverbrook neighbourhood near the Ottawa Public Library Beaverbrook Branch and the John G. Mlacak Centre. The school also serves the neighbourhoods of Kanata Lakes, Beaverbrook, Katimavik-Hazeldean, Richardson Ridge, and Morgan's Grant.
History
The Earl of March Secondary School opened on December 6, 1971, and was the only secondary school in the area that would become the City of Kanata (later to be amalgamated within the City of Ottawa). The school was designed by Balharrie, Helmer, and Gibson architects and engineers for the Carleton Board of Education (which became part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board) and was built for . The school featured a 750-seat auditorium, a large gymnasium with a balcony, a smaller exercise gym, a large cafeteria, a library, specialized science, technology, and arts rooms; as well as several "flexible" learning spaces. The school took its name from Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond and Earl of March, who served as Governor General of British North America in the early 19th century.
When the school opened, the Earl of March's catchment area was a large part of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton, encompassing March, Huntley, Torbolton, and Fitzroy townships and part of Goulbourn Township. As such, Earl of March served for many years as the sole high school for Ottawa's then-nascent northwestern suburbs outside the Greenbelt. As Kanata started to rapidly expand in the late 1970s to the 1990s, other high schools were built and the catchment area was made smaller to prevent excessive over-crowding. Today, the Earl of March is one of five public high schools, three Catholic high schools, and several private high schools that now facilitate the area.
The school has undergone several renovations and additions, the first major one being in 1979 when an elevator, a wheel-chair ramp, and several mechanical doors were added into the building to make it wheel-chair accessible, as well as a renovation to the auditorium and arts wing to add more storage space and a better sound system.
In the 1980s, the auditorium, library, arts wing and tech wings were renovated to add more music rooms to the school to facilitate the school's large music program. The old music room which shared space with the back section of the stage was removed, the old art and drama rooms were turned into two new music rooms and a group practice room was turned into a keyboard lab for a keyboard classes (which has since been turned back into a group practice space). The art rooms were moved to two new classrooms added at the back of the library, making it significantly smaller, and the drama room was moved to the old mechanical drafting room.
During the 1990s, the tech department was renovated to better accommodate the new drama room, as well as better safety systems, a wood-working lab, a metal-working lab (including welding) and a machine shop. The second floor of the school also received renovations, adding five new computer labs to the building and adjusting the layout of some of the internal classrooms to accommodate. Several of the flexible classroom spaces were removed during this period.
In 2002 the auditorium was renovated again, the stage was made larger on either side, the last remains of the old music room were taken out, new seats were added in one of the lecture theatres and one of the seating sections, as well as a new stage light dimming system was installed.
In 2009, the science classrooms were renovated to fix possible gas and water leaks in the old wooden benches and desks, as well as to remove safety issues regarding climbing stairs with chemicals. The old science rooms were similar to the lecture theatres, with rows, each on a step higher than the last, of wooden benches and desks. The new science rooms feature lab-grade counters forming a U-shape around the outside of the room facing in towards the centre where labs can be completed. The centre of the room contains regular desks for note-taking, and the front of the room has the teachers counter as well as smart boards for writing notes. The new science rooms also feature proper fume-hoods for handling chemicals, which are sometimes used by the computer technology department for soldering.