The History of CHAT

CHAT - The Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto - has been in existence for more than forty years. It originally grew out of the desire of Associated Hebrew Schools (Elementary) to expand into High School, but was quickly transformed into an independent community school. It was originally sponsored by the Toronto Jewish Congress (the forerunner of UJA Federation) as a true "Community School" free of any denominational affiliation. For its first few years, CHAT was housed in the old "Associated" building on Neptune and approximately thirty years ago moved to what was then shared premises at a former Toronto District School Board Public school on Wilmington Avenue in Downsview. Eventually, CHAT took over the entire premises, and by the late 1990s had spilled over from the original elementary school building into a "portable city" of sixteen portables on the back field. At the same time, the school enrolment started to climb dramatically. After many years of hovering around four hundred to six hundred students, in 1998 - 1999, the enrolment climbed to just over nine hundred. In the summer of 1999 - 2000, a major renovation and extension project was carried out at the school, which replaced the portables with a new classroom block, a new gym, a much enlarged library, and improvements to other facilities. The expansion and renovation was made possible by a magnificent gift from Mrs. Anne Tanenbaum, and the Wilmington site was renamed "The Anne and Max Tanenbaum Education Centre".

It became clear that the increase in enrolment was continuing and that much of the increase came from Jewish families in the north of the city. In the summer of 2000, CHAT learned that a former York Region Public High School in Richmond Hill Village (18 kilometers north of the Wilmington Avenue site) was available for rent, and seized the opportunity. In September 2000 "CHAT Richmond Hill" opened with just over one hundred and fifty students.

In 2004-5, the total enrolment of the school was just over one thousand four hundred students. CHAT-Tanenbaum Campus had just over eight hundred students, and CHAT- Richmond Hill - by this time a full Grade 9-Grade 12 High School - had just under six hundred.

The Richmond Hill Campus was always seen as a short-term home. In 2001, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto announced ambitious plans to develop a fifty acre community centre in the Vaughan Region, north of Toronto, and not far from the new Richmond Hill Campus. CHAT was invited to be a partner in this campus, and immediately embarked on extensive planning to build a new, purpose-built High School Campus on the "Jewish Toronto Tomorrow Campus" in Vaughan. According to schedule, this building should open in September 2007. It will house CHAT-RH, and plans are envisaged to further develop CHAT-TC. We will continue to be one school with two parallel campuses.

CHAT is one of the world's leading Jewish High Schools. Its mandate is to make Jewish High School education accessible to the maximum possible number of students of the Greater Toronto Jewish Community. We look forward to the future with confidence and vision.