J. Addison School opened in September, 2002 with 8 International students in a small building located in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. In a very short time frame, we had to source new facilities to comfortably accommodate the dynamic student population growth.

We were fortunate enough to acquire a Toronto District School Board site not too far from our original location, also in the city of Scarborough, and completed relocating by September, 2004. By only the end of our third year of operations, enrollment had grown to over 100 full-time students attending J. Addison School.

School uniforms were launched in November, 2004 and our private school identity was formed.

In that same year, we purchased a house, 3 Hathaway Drive, to offer a supervised boy's only residence; we rented a house on Bushmills Square for the female students.

We partnered with Shangde Experimental School P.R. China this school year. Shangde became our sister school that offered programs for studying abroad. A joint ESL program with our teachers was developed and international teaching opportunities became available for our high school teachers.

In February of 2005, to meet the needs of our future student population growth, approximately 3 acres of land was purchased to build a 60,000 square foot campus in the heart of the picturesque Town of Markham, centrally located in the Greater Toronto Area in the province of Ontario. In addition to student residence units, the designs for our new building were to include a cafeteria, gymnasium, indoor swimming pool, library, and classrooms.

In this year, J. Addison School's first soccer team was also formed.

The building of our new school was going to be a lengthy project, so a temporary modular building was to be erected to allow continuity of our school programs with minimal disruption. The decision to move our campus from Scarborough to Markham was to facilitate accesssibility to local students.

2 Valleywood Drive officially became our new address in September of 2007, located at the prevalent intersection of Woodbine and Highway 7. The main objectives for our first year at this new campus was getting established in the Markham community, to become a key player and valuable resource for the students and families residing locally and abroad.

In alignment with our goals to enhance and improve academic programming to better service the needs of the Markham community, we introduced several programs this school year, including:

• Individualized Instruction Courses (IIC's) - our very own hybrid of supervised courses for high school students
• Our first 2 in 1 Summer Camp program for children 4-12 years of age
• Our first Elementary classess for students in grades 1-2

Adapting to the changing needs of students and families has always been a priority for J. Addison School. In an effort to achieve this, we launched our Casa Montessori program to replace our Elementary program in the fall of 2009.

Shortly after, we announced our partnership with Athabasca University to offer post-secondary credit courses at our school site. High school students are now able to take advantage of getting a head start in their post-secondary education without physically having to relocate.

Our latest site addition is an illuminated digital pylon sign which stands almost 16 feet tall and 5 feet wide, allowing the display of bright school messages since November, 2009. Be sure to look for it the next time you are in our area!

We finalized our plans for phase 1 of the construction of our new building this year and celebrated with a Sod-Turning Ceremony on June 15th. The Town of Markham ’s Regional Councillor Gordon Landon and Ward 6 Councillor Alan Ho were able to attend and speak to congratulate us on this momentous event.

Construction officially commenced in August, 2011 and we are on track to meet our target of September, 2012 for occupancy! We are extremely excited with this project now underway – approximately 58,000 sq. feet on 3 floors complete with state-of-the-art classrooms, gymnasium, cafeteria, dormitory residences, library, IT/Science/Arts Laboratories, and so much more!