Merivale High School

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Merivale High School (MHS) is a secondary school located at the intersection of Merivale Road and Viewmount Drive in Nepean, Ontario, Canada. The school is known for its gifted student program, but also runs French Immersion programs and extensive visual art, music, and co-operative education programs.

Due to its location on the increasingly commercially developed (and valuable) Merivale strip, and its reduced importance since the completion of John McCrae Secondary School in Barrhaven, efforts had been made by the province to close the school in the late 1990's as a means of saving money. These efforts proved unsuccessful due to a large amount of community and student body support for the school. Levels of enrollment are expected to drop in the coming years as the demographic composition of the surrounding area changes, and as new schools are built to service some of the current source communities for students. Nonetheless, the immediate future of the school appears secure with the 2005 closure of nearby J. S. Woodsworth Secondary School by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, because of declining attendance at the nearby school. The population of the school is around 1375. The school's team is the Merivale Marauders, and the school's colours are maroon and gold.

The school is among the top schools in Ontario for academics. In 2000, a team of Merivale students won the Reach for the Top national championship;^[1] in 2003, the school was named champion on the CBC television series SmartAsk.^[2] The school's music program is considered one of the best in the Ottawa area: the school's ensembles regularly win "gold" standings at regional MusicFest competitions, and won 5 golds when they attended the 2000 national finals at York University.^[3] The school also competed in the 2006 national MusicFest competition with 7 ensembles, all achieving a grade of silver or higher. Merivale also excels in dramatic arts. Their musical production of "Lucky Stiff" was nominated thirteen times for the Ottawa-area Cappie awards in 2005-2006, an awards ceremony for high school productions. It took home eight awards, the most of any school that year.^[4] In 1999, the student newspaper, The Vanguard, won First Place (for a credit course newspaper) in the Toronto Star High School Newspaper Awards, a first for the publication. The Vanguard had previously won multiple first place awards in a similar competition held by the Ottawa Citizen.

The school has had recent success in sports. Six sports teams qualified for the OFSAA finals in 2005-2006. In the 2006-2007 season, the senior boys soccer team qualified for OFSAA.