When Collingwood opened in 1984, it only had space to teach students from Grade 1 through 8. As those Grade 8s advanced, another grade level would be added until the school served all 12 grade levels. There was a major problem: the original campus was simply too small and the financial pressure of adding a new senior class every year was burdensome. 

The Board of Governors had predicted this struggle. The school needed to operate for at least its first three years on private fundraising alone; the provincial government required this much time as a probation period before it would provide per-capita funding. By the fall of 1987, the school population had grown from 241 to 600 students and the Morven Drive campus was bursting at the seams. A large expansion was due. 

The School and the Board began looking at ways to split the school into junior and senior campuses, and acquire more land, but ran into municipal red tape. Instead, plans for a $5.8 million new wing of the Morven Drive campus launched in 1988 and Collingwood officially purchased the property it had leased up until this point, for a steal of a deal at $1.4 million. To raise this kind of money, parents were called upon to essentially mortgage the project. Thanks to the volunteer work led by Liz Byrd, most families signed up to help with the financing. The new Parents’ Wing, as it would be called, was designed to house the senior students with top-of-the-line equipment and facilities.

This new wing of the school opened on April 2, 1990. Some of the parents behind this project are names familiar to today’s Collingwood community: Joe and Joanne Houssian, Jean Senft, and Liz Byrd, among others. Over the last 34 years, the Parents’ Wing has been home to many indelible lessons, and several more renovations.