Grey Highlands Secondary School is a Grade 9-12 high school located in
Flesherton, Ontario
Flesherton (population 584) is a community in the Municipality of Grey Highlands, in Grey County, Ontario, Canada, located at the junction of Highway 10 and Grey County Road 4 (formerly Highway 4). Although the area initially showed a high rate ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, in rural
Grey County
Grey County is a county of the Canadian province of Ontario. The county seat is in Owen Sound. It is located in the subregion of Southern Ontario named Southwestern Ontario. Grey County is also a part of the Georgian Triangle. At the time of t ...
. It was built in 1967.
Early history
Grey Highlands Secondary School (GHSS) was built in 1967 as one of the many new school construction projects undertaken by Education Minister
Bill Davis
William Grenville Davis, (July 30, 1929 – August 8, 2021) was a Canadian politician who served as the 18th premier of Ontario from 1971 to 1985. Davis was first elected as the member of provincial Parliament for Peel in the 1959 provincia ...
in order to modernize and centralize rural elementary and secondary schools. When it opened in September 1968, it became the central high school for students from three smaller district high schools, covering a collection area of 195,000 hectares (750 square miles). Those smaller high schools were converted to elementary schools, which in turn replaced the many one- and two-room school houses that were still in operation until that time.
Until that time, the curriculum and facilities in Ontario's rural high schools were designed solely for academic students destined for post-secondary education. Students needing a level of education necessary for the trades, business or a non-academic career inevitably dropped out of high school.
E. Murray Juffs, the first principal of Grey Highlands and the main driving force behind the design of the school, envisioned Grey Highlands as a multi-discipline school encompassing opportunities for education in all streams, from occupational training as a car mechanic or short-order cook, to business office training, to a liberal arts education suitable for university preparation.
Incidents
The area around Flesherton is in a
snow belt
The Snowbelt is the region near the Great Lakes in North America where heavy snowfall in the form of lake-effect snow is particularly common. Snowbelts are typically found downwind of the lakes, principally off the eastern and southern shores.
...
region, and winter storms from
Lake Huron and
Georgian Bay
Georgian Bay (french: Baie Georgienne) is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To ...
can cause several "snow days" each year, when buses cannot safely deliver students. While this is not a problem when students are forced to stay home, there is always the question of whether to send students home early when a daytime storm threatens. This problem was not anticipated in the first winter of operation (1968–69), when a sudden storm stranded the entire student body and staff at the school, forcing them to spend the night in the gymnasium and auditorium. Procedures were developed to try to avoid this, including a
barograph
A barograph is a barometer that records the barometric pressure over time in graphical form. This instrument is also used to make a continuous recording of atmospheric pressure. The pressure-sensitive element, a partially evacuated metal cylinde ...
in the office of then Head of Science W.J. Brown that would warn of sudden drops in
barometric pressure
Atmospheric pressure, also known as barometric pressure (after the barometer), is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as , which is equivalent to 1013.25 millibars, 7 ...
. Despite this, there was another forced sleepover twenty years later, on February 8, 1989, when 130 students had to stay at the school overnight due to an unexpected storm.
Notable alumni
*
Matt Galloway
Matt Galloway (born 1970/1971) is a Canadian radio personality, who debuted in January 2020 as the host of '' The Current'' on CBC Radio One. Previously, he was the host of '' Metro Morning'' on the network's Toronto station CBLA-FM from 2010 to ...
(graduated 1989), CBC radio personality
*
Chris Neil (graduated 1996), NHL hockey player
*
Oliver Schroer (graduated 1974), award-winning fiddler and recording artist
See also
*
List of high schools in Ontario
The following is a list of secondary schools in Ontario. Secondary education policy in the Canadian province of Ontario is governed by the Ministry of Education. Secondary education in Ontario includes Grades 9 to 12. The following list includ ...
Footnotes
{{reflist
External links
Grey Highlands Secondary School
High schools in Ontario
School buildings completed in 1967
Schools in Grey County
1967 establishments in Ontario
Educational institutions established in 1967