Welcome to Four Waters Academy

Canada's Foremost School in the Teaching the Magical Arts

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I wonder about Métis culture and Métis users of magic and how they fit into Four Waters? Do they follow their ancestral tribe's traditions or the European ones? I'm asking because I'm Métis and my people and culture are very very important to me.

Well, firstly, I’d like to thank you for your interest in Four Waters and hope that you’ve found it respectful, that’s been my utmost priority in creating it.

Now, to your question, I don’t think there would be any reason why Metis magic users would not be largely welcomed at Four Waters as Four Waters was created in an effort to stop the destruction of many different magical cultures so I think Metis would definitely be one of the communities long welcomed into Four Waters Academy, though I could also see some tension and resistance around the Metis being a risk to the school by some in the Canadian Indigenous magical community because of their roots in both European and Indigenous magical cultures. Obviously, not being Metis myself, I can’t necessarily speak to the tradition the Metis magical community would have, though I imagine it would definitely incorporate aspects of both European and Indigneous magical culture, but, as I think about the origins of Four Waters and the Magical history of Canada which I posted on the blog, I would actually think that the Metis have always been an important part of Four Waters since some of the wizards who tried to stand up for the First Nations magical community where European wizards who had learned Indigenous magical traditions and were accepted into the Indigenous communities and their families so many of them have always been strong allies of Four Waters and were probably quite instrumental in its founding and in its current preservation. I imagine that there are probably several courses at least which teach the students at the school about the Metis magical community, its history, its traditions, and its unique magical practices as well as probably a number of Metis professors and mentors who work, live, and teach at Four Waters, too. Certain, the history between Four Waters and the Metis would probably not be completely clean of mistakes or problems, but I think that, especially nowadays, Metis are welcomed with open arms at Four Waters and contribute much to the school as many other groups do.

Hope that answers your question and that you find it satisfactory. Thank you once again for your interest in Four Waters and, if you have any more questions or ideas to contribute, don’t hesitate to bring them up. :)

[fandom-imagination-ss]

Canadians

Would canadian wizards / witches say no Maj or muggles? This will haunt me forever

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Muggles because of the British influence in Canadian culture and because of European origins of the Anglo-Canadian magical community, though no-maj is still heard on occasion, but it generally seen as more of a slur against muggles.

[caramelalmonnd]

all the posts about what an american wizarding community would really be like, in light of rowling’s… attempt, what with fbawtft and ilvermony, have got me thinking a bit about what the canadian wizarding world would be like. so. here are my thoughts:

obviously a single school for the whole country is… not practical, just as it would be in america. most likely there’s one or two per province — and just like non magical education in canada, the courses/standards are provincialized to heck.

please consider: quebecois magic and acadian magic. imagine metis magic springing up just as the people did… it’d be such a cool part of magical history imo.

wizarding communities, in general, are… old fashioned, kind of out of touch. england’s wizards are practically medieval. thus i posit to you: canadian wizards hanging on deeply to being workers of the land.

so much canadian magic was created by fur traders, lumberjacks and fishermen, it’s not even funny. canadian wizarding schools have probably so many variations of classes on ‘outdoor magic’… i can’t think of what to call that… it’d be part herbology, part care of magical creatures, part boy scouts…

imagine packing up to go on your school endorsed magical camping field trip. or hikes. magical hikes. the forest is not forbidden in canada, it’s actually the location of your exam at the end of the year.

ontarian and quebecois wizards are the most modern/urban. especially ontario. quebec still incorporates lots of The Old Ways too, lots of old french magic and a strong sense of heritage going on, ontario on the other hand is all about that forward progress.

albertan wizards are basically magic cowboys. it’s the best. imagine the wizarding world side of the calgary stampede… the secret magical entrances hidden around the west edmonton mall… 

saskatchewan… prairie wizards? i guess. i’m sorry. i know so little about saskatchewan. agricultural magic? i mean probably. i’ve looked at the USask viewbook okay. why does your main university have so many courses about farming??? you can literally major in farming?? your people’s practices befuddle me.

manitoba… i know even less about manitoba, i’m sorry. do you people exist? is winnipeg really a place? i guess manitoban wizards are literally the best at the statute of secrecy. they’re so good at the statute of secrecy they’ve obliviated the very concept of their province from the public mind. what are manitoban wizards really up to? we’ll never know.

british columbian wizards are all about nature. plants. water. influences from chinese magic traditions, due to the high chinese population that’s been here for so long. what kind of potions do you think marijuana is an ingredient in?

maritime wizards have lots of water-based magic too. lots of spells made by and for fishermen, lots of spells that are just… nigh on incomprehensible to everyone else in the country. maritime magic is hard to pass on anywhere west of quebec because we just… we don’t know what you’re saying, man. as such maritime magic is rather insular. 

now the territories, they have fewer wizarding schools than anywhere else. there’s probably pretty much just one big one, in the yukon. up there is where you get a lot of old spells from the prospectors, the miners. i will 100% bet you the school colours are, like, white and gold. 100% odds.

NWT and nunavut are a lot less white, since the gold rush fell west of them, and they’re predominantly inuit and first nations. i’m white so i don’t have authority to speak on how these communities would operate but i sincerely doubt they would have these european style boarding schools.

i also can’t speak of how first nations communities in the rest of the country would operate around harry potter-style magic but it’s sure as heck not by willingly sending them to a colonialist-run white people school who-knows-how-far from their actual tribe’s land… looking @ you ilvermony. our country had enough problems with residential schools without whatever you’re doing.

[pleurocoelus]

Wizarding America, pt 8

Centaurs have immigrated to the Americas, the main waves occurring the the 1600s and the 1800s. They primarily live in regions sparsely populated by humans.

Since Centaurs refuse to recognize human borders, members of the Greater Centaur Herd of North America have triple citizenship in Canada, the US, and Mexico.

Central American Centaurs and South American Centaurs have their own governmental structures.

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Other Canadian Magical Schools: The Upper Canada Institute for the Magical Arts

The Upper Canada Institute for the Magical Arts is the third, and many other than the Canadian Magical Parliament would say least, of the Canadian magical schools. Located within the heart of Parliament Hill and actually sharing the building of the Magical Parliament of Canada, the Upper Canada Institute is seen by many outside of the Anglo-Canadian magical community as basically a training ground for the Magical Parliament of Canada and the fact is that many graduates of the school do go to work within the Magical Parliament. The school itself is accessed via a hidden tunnel dug deep into the heart of the hill, its entrance being concealed behind one of Parliament Hill’s soldier memorials and accessed by running one’s wand across a certain name which causes a section of the memorial to vanish. Of course, this is only accessible if one has a wand. Once down the dark, damp tunnel, the school itself is a warren of wood-paneled hallways and corridors that lead to simple, austere classrooms with no windows to encourage focusing on work instead of daydreaming. The hallways are a fusion of the school and the Department of Magical Affairs, causing students and Department employees to often cross paths with one another or even bump into each other, often resulting in the students getting scolded or disciplines for impeding Department business. Consensus seems to be that the biggest problem with the Upper Canada Institute is the fact that it strictly conforms to the Magical Parliament’s guidelines as to how magic needs to be taught and strictly conforms to the “official” magical history taught by the Magical Parliament. Certainly, for some students, the education works and they are successful, but most students who transfer from Upper Canada Institute to either Four Waters or D’Urfe often talk about the relative austerity of the education at Upper Canada Institute, often remarking about how they’re never really taught any “flashy” magic or anything particularly impressive like self-transfiguration. The style of magic taught at Upper Canada Institute is known to be very practical and it has very, very few international students despite being the “official” school for magic in Canada. It also has very little reputation outside of Canada, vastly overshadowed by Four Waters Academy and D’Urfe. Though the school still has a good amount of students, its attendance has been going down in recent years as even those in the Anglo-Canadian magical community are beginning to look for other options with only those of the most conservative, waspish bent or those who have ties to the Magical Parliament seeming to choose Upper Canada Institute as a first choice. More and more students have begun transferring to D’Urfe, though that often requires the purchase of special translation charms, or Four Waters, but Four Waters only takes those who it deems would benefit and appreciate its style of education. More and more every year, the calls for the reform of the Upper Canada Institute of the Magical Arts grow louder and more numerous, and, judging from the fact that D’Urfe and Four Waters students, in particular, have been outshining Upper Canada students in pretty much every aspect, the hope is that the hour of reckoning will soon be at hand.

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Other Canadian Magical Schools: La Ecolé de Magie a la Marquise D’Urfé

After Four Waters Academy, La Ecole de Magie a la Marquise D’Urfé , or the Marquise D’Urfé School of Magic in English, and D’Urfé for short, is probably the largest and best school for magical education in Canada and the only school in Canada where French is the language which all classes are taught in. Hidden deep in the Laurentian Mountains of Southern Quebec and set within the valley between two of the tallest peaks sits a tiny, seemingly abandoned cottage which has only become smaller and dingier down the years. Local superstition says that anyone who goes into the cottage never comes back out, but that simply a misunderstanding that the cottage is actually the entrance to the grounds of D’Urfé with students having to enter through the front door and quickly dash out the backdoor without slowing. Once through the back door, students emerge into the vast, sprawling, and carefully maintained grounds of La Ecolé de Magie a la Marquise D’Urfé which is covered in beautiful and delicate French-style gardens with a fountain that is said to be the twin of the fountain at Beauxbatons while the tall, imposing edifice of the main school building looks on. The school building is a massive manor house done in the French chateau style and sits right at the center of the grounds, having been founded almost 200 years ago by the French witch, the second Marquise D’Urfé.

The second Marquise D’Urfe’s real name was Adelaide-Marie-Thérèse , Marquise de Bagé and Langeac, Countess of Saint-Just, born in 1727 as  the eldest child of the original Marquise D’Urfé , her mother, Jeanne Camus de Pontcarré, the famous victim of Casanova. Her mother was a woman of incredibly little magical talent, having never been able to perform a spell properly in her entire seventy years, but a woman with an immense fortune left to her by her late husband and endless misguided determination. Her mother was fascinated by alchemy and spent her entire life attempting to recreate a Philosopher’s Stone, though only succeeding in nearly blowing her house up with everyone inside it several times after her Muggle husband’s death freed her to conduct her research openly. Adelaide-Marie-Thérèse’s brother and sister both died before their mother, leaving her as the only surviving member of her family after the death of her mother since she herself had lost her own husband soon after they had married. Adelaide-Marie-Thérèse was left with nothing, but the title of the second Marquise D’Urfé and a minuscule fraction of her mother’s vast fortune, her mother having wasted almost off of it, but she had two things her mother didn’t, she was a witch of immense magical talent and had graduated Beauxbatons with the highest of honours . Nearly forty years-old, Adelaide-Marie-Thérèse left France and moved to Canada, settling in Montréal where she became something of a matriarch for the French-Canadian magical community and eventually founded the school which still bares her name in the 1850s at the age of almost 130. For the next twenty years, Madame D’Urfé served as the headmistress of the school until her death in the 1870s at the age of 153.

La Ecolé de Magie a la Marquise D’Urfé is known for a largely female staff and student population, mostly made of French-Canadians, and it is said to be one of the best schools in the world at the teaching of alchemy. D’Urfé sees Four Waters as its rival due to often feeling like it is left in the shadow of Four Waters and it is one of the two schools which conforms to the guidelines set out by the Canadian Magical Parliament, but it has, in recent years, begun to move closer and closer to Four Waters as it feels the Canadian magical government often doesn’t respect French-Canadian magical culture and history so the two schools have found themselves slowly becoming allies and D’Urfé has begun pushing back against the government’s oversight. This has not deadened D’Urfé’s rivalry with Four Waters, however.

[fourwatersacademy]

The History of Four Waters Academy

To look at the history of Four Water Academy is to also look at the interaction of the Indigenous magical community and the European magical community, and its history begins when the two worlds met. The first European witches and wizards to reach the shores of the land that would be named Canada were explorers, the most adventurous and talented of their time, and, upon landing on the shores of Atlantic Canada, both European and indigenous accounts say that the meeting of the two worlds went very well with both sides intrigued to have found one another and interested in one another’s strange customs. The European magical explorers quickly learned many of the indigenous languages, with the help of magic, and grew fascinated with the practices of the indigenous peoples and their shamans and medicine people, one of the reasons for this being that the European witches and wizards almost immediately discovered that many European wizarding practices proved very difficult to complete in the strange new land with things such as potions were render nearly impossible to make due to that lack of the European plants and ingredients necessary to make them as well as the fact that many things such as the exact positioning of the stars were different from the European homeland, not to mention that these first witches and wizards were confronted with seasons which were much harsher and more variable than they had been prepared for. However, it was the fact that the indigenous people of Canada did not look at magic as something to fear, but something which was a valuable tool for survival which truly attracted the magical explorers to the indigenous magical community and so these first magical explorers learned the traditional way in which many of the tribes performed magic and, rather than returning to their home, many chose to stay in Canada, eventually being adopted into the indigenous communities.

But, once word of what those explorers had discovered reached Europe, it exploded across the European magical community as European wizards and witches realized that there was a place where magic wasn’t only accepted, but even celebrated and many immediately applied for future expeditions to the “New World”. This started the waves of magical immigration to Canada and, at first, these new magical folk were welcomed by the indigenous peoples and those explorers who had found a new home amongst them as the first magical immigrants, mostly the poor and impoverished, magical merchants or the families of the first explorers, did as the explorers had done, learning indigenous magic and cooperating with the indigenous magical community. However, as more and more magical immigrants flocked to Canada on an ever-increasing number of expeditions and more and more wealthy wizarding families settled in Canada, the settlements grew larger and began to resist the indigenous way of magic, insisting on remaining European and following the European style of magic which, with the ability to import ingredients from overseas and things like that, largely felt they did not need the indigenous peoples in order to flourish. These settlements and village largely held the hope that they could settle the “New World” as where the European magical community would no longer need to hide itself, but also felt superior to the indigenous peoples and their magical skills, seeing the indigenous peoples as less advanced and inept as certain practices like charms or transfiguration, and so, as these settlements expanded and began encroaching into indigenous territory, hostilities began to emerge. The first explorers who had been taken in by the indigenous peoples tried time and time again to smooth over relations between the two sides, but increasingly found that their efforts were in vain.

Of course, the efforts of the magical community to keep Canada for them were in vain, as well, as Muggles soon began to settle in North America, too, and, though early settlements are rumored to have been sabotaged and cursed by vengeful witches and wizards, the Muggle population soon outnumbered the wizarding population which, instead of making the European witches and wizards more receptive to indigenous ways and culture, pushed them to take even more land and territory from indigenous peoples which caused even more hostility between indigenous and European magical communities until European wizards and witches slowly began to give up on the dream of a place where they could practice magic openly and returned to living in secret amongst Muggles. From this point onward, many European witches and wizards actively joined in the oppression of the indigenous magical community.

European influence took its toll on the indigenous magical communities, especially as indigenous communities became more and more anglicized and were forced to turn away from their traditional beliefs and the shamans and medicine people which had been so central to their society previous. By the late 18th century, as the Europeans in Canada began to actively force the indigenous peoples to conform to European society, a settlement of indigenous magical people was created on Canada’s pacific coast with the help of the descents of those original wizarding explorers who had been allies of the indigenous peoples of Canada for centuries, but largely ignored by the European magical community. This settlement was created in the hopes of preserving indigenous magical practices and culture, and it was this settlement which would eventually become the main campus of Four Water Academy, Green Waters. Following the example of Green Waters, other settlements which would later become Red Waters, Dark Waters, and White Waters were established as well, with the four forming an alliance during the end of the 18th century. When the residential school system was created in Canada in the 1800s, the four settlements countered the forced enrollment of First Nations’ children by declaring their four separate as the four campuses of Four Waters Academy.

Throughout most of its history, Four Waters has acquired as reputation as, largely, an immigrant school. At first, indigenous students were the only ones attending the school with the arrival of children from Asia in the later half of the 19th century which caused the immigrant wizarding community to flock to the school as an alternative to the other, government-overseen magical schools. It was only a few decades ago when Four Waters opened its doors to European-Canadian students due to the lingering memories of the damage that their community has done, but efforts are being made to reach out and educate Anglo-Canadian students about the indigenous magical tradition. As of yet, the majority of the Anglo-Canadian students tend to be those who do not flourish in the European model of magical education employed by the other magical schools in Canada and Four Waters remains very particular in the Anglo-Canadian students it enrolls, mostly only those they find exceptional and/or those they believe will benefit from their unique style of education. Even still, Four Waters is Canada’s most well known school outside of the country and has become renowned throughout the world for stellar magical education and a rather unorthodox teaching style, the word having spread so quickly and thoroughly because of the sheer number of international students which Four Waters takes in.

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The Symbol of Four Waters Academy. Each leaf represents one of the four main campuses.

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A History of Indigenous Magic in Canada

Magic has existed in the Americas ever since the tail end of the last Ice Age when man crossed the ice bridge across the Bering Strait and moved into what is now called Alaska, eventually migrating down into Canada and into the upper United States. For millennia afterwards, the majority of the various Indigenous tribes and cultures held magic as something central to daily life with both Muggles and Magical folk seeing it’s importance and power, something which stands in stark contrast to how magic was seen by European Muggles after the 11th Century A.D. Magic users were often referred to as shamans or medicine men rather than witch or wizard and were generally held in high regard by their various tribes and seen as incredibly important to the survival of their people in Canada’s harsh climate, particular during its cold, barren winters where food was scarce, often forming the backbone of their tribe’s social structure. However, unlike their European counterparts, the indigenous medicine men of Canada largely did not exist within a singular “magical community” due to the fact that magic was largely embraced by Muggles and because pf the differences in language, religion, and culture between the numerous different tribes which they belonged to, though that is not to say that they were completely isolated as alliances and cooperation between tribes did allow many medicine men to meet and interact with one another. It was only in modern times when the indigenous magical community formed in one, somewhat-unified whole as a way of protecting itself and its culture not only from the attacks of Muggles, but also from the European magical community.

There are many misconceptions around the indigenous model of magic, but these are largely misinterpretations made by European witches and wizards who fail to look beyond their own culture and history. Overall, wands were often not used, but they were present in some tribes while other tribes were known to use staves or amulets to focus their magical abilities, others even using elaborate rituals or simply performed magic without any channeling aide, so wide generalizations can often not be made. Wands have become used by many a modern indigenous witch or wizard, but Four Waters Academy in particular advocates for the study of wandless and non-traditional styles of magic as a way to preserving indigenous magic in the face of the European majority. Indigenous magic did not, of course, use European style spells spoken in European languages, though those are indeed used by modern Indigenous witches and wizards, but chants, phrases, and words have been used by many tribes across the country so, once again, generalizations can not be readily made. Indigenous magic is as varied and as diverse as any other style of magic, but what often causes the belief that it is “less advanced” or that things such as Charms or Transfiguration are more difficult for indigenous witches and wizards is simply the fact that indigenous magic does things differently than European magic. Charms and Transfiguration are not overly difficult for indigenous witches and wizards as shown by the sheer number of Animagi among the indigenous magical community, they are both simply done in a way that is different from how a European witch or wizard would execute them and may seem difficult to the European eye. And, as stated previously, Animagi are found both among ancient indigenous tribes and the modern indigenous magical community, though there were a handful of tribes who saw it as a sign of an evil witch, but most tribes found it perfectly normal and even important for their shamans and medicine people to be able to turn into animals. To this day, Four Waters Academy is renowned for its teachings on Animagism and regularly offers courses on the subject to those who show particular affinity for Transfiguration with it not being uncommon for entire graduating classes to be Animagi, much to the chagrin of the Department of Magical Affairs.

The indigenous peoples of Canada had, of course, known of other peoples throughout the North America and even from Europe for centuries with the trade networks between various tribes that linked one coast to the other and spanning across the continent from Canada’s south all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention the arrival of the Vikings over a thousand years ago, but it was with the arrival of Europeans to the shores of Canada when the history of the indigenous peoples would change forever, both for the muggle world and for indigenous magical world.

While the indigenous magical community has managed to endure into modern times with a good amount of its traditions, culture, and practices intact, it has still lost much over the years and has seen itself sidelined not only by the tribes which had once embraced it, though that is slowly beginning to change, but also by the European magical community who are supported by institutions such as the Canadian Magical Parliament and the Department of Magical Affairs. It is now is working diligently in order to protect what fragments of itself do remain which has caused Four Waters Academy to become a hub of the indigenous magical community, serving as a repository of history, traditions, language, and culture as well as a safe haven for indigenous and non-indigenous students to learn the old ways and to connect with a heritage which dates back tens of thousands of years. Four Waters Academy has also provided an axis around which the indigenous magical community can revolve around and has provided it stability and a foundation, allowing it to avoid some of the problems which have plagued Canada’s indigenous muggle communities, though they have certainly still had more than their share of trouble.

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The School of Four Waters

The name “Four Waters” comes from the fact that Four Waters isn’t located in one single place, but is rather a collection of four main campuses which are situated at four different locations across the country now known as Canada. Each of these campuses is looked after by elders and teachers from different indigenous magical communities and, as such, each campus teaches in a somewhat different way, having its own specialties and its own responsibilities, but they all work together in order to protect the school and those who find sanctuary within its territory. Students commute between the four campuses depending on which class they have and where their interests lie. When they are still young, they will room in the campus which is closest to their family homes, but, once they’re old enough, they will move into the campus which specializes in the classes they’re most interested in taking.

Green Waters campus is located on the Pacific coast of Canada and serves as the main hub of the school’s administration, having been the first campus to incorporate itself under the mantle of Four Waters academy. Nestled within the British Columbia temperate rain-forest, Green Waters sits on the edge of the famous Emerald Sea, a section of Canada’s Pacific Coast which has water so fertile that the algae and the microbial life make the water appear green which gives the campus its name. Being surrounded by primordial rain-forest, the campus has become known for its work with conservation, bringing communities of magical creatures which face extinction elsewhere and providing them with a safe haven where they can live safely hidden from those who would seek to harm them or restrict their movements. Currently among the varied creatures gathered to the school, the campus watches over several colonies of mermaids as well as several tribes of centaurs, both species teaching courses on their cultures and on specific skills which their peoples have mastered. The main school building is wrapped in a massive, living tree which serves as the campus’s main means of defense, its roots said to reach across the country and warning the school’s headmaster of any problem that should arise.

Red Waters campus is located in the heart of the Canadian Shield, carved from the bedrock which formed the country and earning its name from the thick forests surrounding it which are full of trees perpetually in autumn colours. The campus sits among a series of massive basalt cliffs known as the “Whispering Rocks” because of the petroglyphs which cover almost every inch of their surface, telling the stories of the indigenous peoples who lived in the area for thousands of years and who run the school, while overlooking a massive fresh water lake left over from the glaciers that covered Canada during the last Ice Age. Red Waters primarily acts as the intermediary between Four Waters Academy and the Department of Magical Affairs which is the main operating arm of the Canadian Magical Parliament.

Dark Waters campus is located on the very edge of Canada, perched precariously on a spear of rock that emerges from the rough, dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The campus is notoriously difficult to reach, students often having to canoe from one of the nearby sand bank islands to reach the rock which the school’s main building sits on, docking into a number of sea caves which are only accessible when tides are out so students who are late will be left waiting for hours until the tide goes back out. The campus maintains regular communication with Greenland magical communities and it is said that hundreds of shipwrecks surround the rock the school sits on, sitting only just beneath the waves.

White Waters campus was the last campus to incorporate into Four Waters Academy, giving the school its name. It is located in Canada’s far north, sitting among towering, white icebergs which gave the campus its name and under a sun which has been known to stay up for months at a time. This campus actually has no set location because it sits on a massive iceberg which drifts throughout Canada’s north with the arctic currents, making the campus the most autonomous of the four. White Waters is known to be very cold, but also very quiet so it often serves as a place for students to practice techniques and attempt experiments which require a great deal of quiet and concentration. White Waters also offers a subject which is taught nowhere else in the world, Auroramancy, the study of the patterns and colours in the northern lights to divine the future.

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Before I continue...

The idea for Four Waters came to me about a year ago when my brother, father, and I got into a brainstorming session about what a Canadian magical school would look like. Finally, after it being in my head for ages, I decided to create this blog about it and open it up for the world to see, hopefully other Canadians will see this and will like it just as much as I do. Four Waters is based off of the world of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”, but there is no need to stick strictly to that.

One of the big goals of Four Waters is to incorporate Indigenous culture and Indigenous beliefs into the magical world of North America and Canada, but it is of the highest importance to me to be as respectful as possible and to avoid appropriation at almost any cost. If any post made on this blog crosses the line into appropriation, please, tell me. Be respectful, but tell me, and I will do my best to correct any mistake or error made. I’m not indigenous myself, but I want Four Waters to be as inclusive to all identities as possible, and to pay indigenous peoples and their culture the respect that has so often been denied to them.

I also encourage anyone who is interested to contribute to Four Waters, as well. I’ll be the one who has final say, but I want to hear what other people have to say and what sort of ideas people have. I want to make this school truly Canadian in all aspects so many of you may be more knowledgeable on certain subjects than I am. If that’s the case, then I’m all ears. I probably can’t write everything so I’m probably going to need help and, don’t worry, you’ll get credit if your idea is really good.

I’m mostly going to be working on this as I go along because I don’t have all the details of the history and the operations of the schools ironed out so please be patient as I post and repost, but, hopefully, everything will turn out great, in the end.