OUR IDENTITY

History

The following speech was written and presented by Nicole Minnema, a student of Kingston Christian School in 2006.

We are in this amazing school with all these great teachers almost every day.  We know about the school and what it is now. Have you ever wondered how it got started, and what made it what it is today?

After the Second World War, in the early 1950s, there were a large number of immigrants from Holland that came to Canada and the United States.  These new settlers held devout Christian beliefs, and as soon as they established themselves, they began building their own churches in the tradition of the churches they left in Holland.  Their denomination was called the Christian Reformed Church. These congregations didn’t like the idea of sending their children to be educated in the public school system. The main reason was that when their children were baptized, one of the promises they made to God was to educate their children in the Christian faith.  So across North America these settlers, with the help of their churches, started building their own schools.

Our school was built by the congregation of the First Christian Reformed Church in 1963.  The first building was on Wright Crescent, which is just north of the Kingston Shopping Centre, where an apartment building now stands.  It was first called the Calvin Christian School, after the reformist John Calvin. This new school had only four classrooms with students from grade one to eight.

The school was set up to be run as it is now, a group of people called the Society, who vote and elect a Board of nine who run the school.  Although the School was built by members of the First Christian Reformed Church and the Dutch immigrants of its congregation, when it drafted its constitution it was clear that while the school was going to be operated based on Christian values, it was not going to be associated with any one Christian denomination, and Society membership was going to be open to all persons regardless of denominational background.

The school grew to the point its facility could no longer hold all that wanted to attend.  In 1992, a new school was therefore constructed on its current site at 1212 Woodbine Road. The old limestone farmhouse, that is now the office, was there at the time, and rather than tear it down it was incorporated into the design.  The school had an open house on Wednesday, April 15, 1992, and the first school year started September, 1992.