John McGregor Secondary School

JMSS students abs staff were thrilled to participate in the CK Pride Parade today!

As we wrapped up our final Board Meeting of the 2025-2026 school year, we also celebrated three incredible student leaders whose terms as LKDSB Student Trustees have come to an end.

A heartfelt thank you to Kasee Racher-Silverman, Spencer Horwood, and Lily Bressette for their commitment, leadership, insight, and advocacy over the past year. Their voices helped shape important conversations, their ideas inspired positive change, and their dedication to representing LKDSB students made a lasting impact across our system. 💚

We are grateful for the time, energy, and passion they brought to the Board table and wish each of them all the best as they begin their next adventures.

Thank you, Kasee, Spencer, and Lily — your leadership has made a difference, and we can't wait to see what comes next. 🌟

The top student in each of the Transportation Technology classes receives a Mechanic's Hand Tool Award. The award is based on Academic Merit, Technical Skills, Responsibility, Initiative, Working with Peers, Setting Goals and Personal Persistence.

The award winners are attached.

This year we had an unusual situation. Thea G, an exchange student from Belgium won the Tool Award for G12 Transportation Technology. However Thea said she would not be able to take it home as it was too heavy for her luggage and probably would have a hard time going through the airport with it. She decided that she would gift it to the 2nd place winner. The 2nd place person was Tapanga D.
The picture shows Thea presenting the set of Mechanic's Hand Tools to Tapanga.

Further more, Thea selected JMSS as her host school because she really liked automobile racing. She joined the JMSS #57 Pit Crew and spent a great deal of time with the crew building our race car. Through her persistence she was selected as the Crew Leader by the rest of the students on the racing team. I have included a couple of pictures of Thea at the race with the car the team built.

June 21, 2026 is the 30th anniversary of National Indigenous Peoples Day. It's a time to recognize and celebrate the traditions, cultures and contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

National Indigenous Peoples Day takes place on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. For generations, many First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities have celebrated their cultures, languages, and traditions at this time of year. The summer solstice holds deep spiritual and cultural significance for many Indigenous Peoples, marking a time of renewal, connection, and celebration.

Our history department offered a new course this year, CHE3O - Origins and Citizenship. This course was taught through the lens of tracking the history of black Canadians from the roots in the motherland of Africa through the transatlantic slave, trade and migration and eventually reaching settlement opportunities and highlighting black excellence.

Below are a few samples from multiple students culminating activity. They had been tasked with making a scrapbook and did such an amazing job producing a tangible and reflective assignment.

We would like to thank all of the local partnerships (Buxton, Josiah Henson Museum of African Canadians, and the Chatham Kent Black Historical Society) who helped make this course what it should be and we can not wait to continue to improve upon next year.

I really liked the project, I got to paint something for one of my favorite teachers (you) for it to be a part of her classroom. I like the fact that anytime that someone goes to get paint they’ll have to look at my artwork to get to it >:) the only thing that troubled me was painting every single stroke for the blades of grass by hand but I had started it that way and I committed to it. If I were to change anything I would probably add flowers as I hadn't had the time to put them in and I would have made it new handles or gotten it new handles.

I enjoyed doing this project a lot, I felt very free while working on this project. I did feel stressed cuz I didn’t know if the door would be finished on time, but i'm glad that I took a little bit of time out of my spare last week to add more things to it due to missing a few days of school, It was very meaningful to me to paint Mrs.McQuades door for this assignment because out of all of the teachers in this whole school, Mrs. McQuade is my favourite teacher. The challenging part of this project was sanding the door down, i'm pretty sure I got wood dust in my eyes cause they were itchy for a good couple of days. I loved the fact that I got to do the role of a designer in this assignment. The only thing I would add to the painting is a little bit of light green to the rocks of the cave, but overall I love how it turned out. (Yes, I’m aware that it doesn’t look exactly like the reference photo but it’s okay-)