Why a Christian Classical School here in Ottawa?

Nicola and I were so pleased to attend the 20th anniversary celebration for St. Timothy’s. At the event, I provided some comments about how the school started and why.

Together, with my wife Nicola, we had the great privilege of being co-founders of St. Tim’s. Together, with Matthew Mann and his wife Natalie, we worked with a small community of families who understood the vision: a vision to reclaim a tried and tested model of education that had been lost and to bring it back and give kids the “lost tools of learning” (Dorothy Sayers).

The inspiration of the school was Augustine College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Ottawa. A group of University of Ottawa professors got together regularly and recognized two things: first, that students that were entering university lacked basic writing and research skills; and second, that in a culture emphasizing feelings, Christian students were increasingly unable to reason and to defend their faith. So Augustine College was started to bind, mend, and recover what was being lost.

Matt, Natalie, Nicola, and I declared that we needed to do this for our own kids. We quickly found that there was a whole movement of educators in the United States, led by Doug Wilson’s Christian Classical Schools movement, who had similar interests. In one year, St. Timothy’s was up and running with 12 students!

The rest is history with a lot of stretching and learning. I thank God for his grace and mercy on this adventure in bringing this school to life. And we also remember: there is nothing worth doing without the Cross of Christ at the very centre. And anything worth doing will have moments of sacrifice and difficulty for each family and this community. But when we unite any challenges and suffering with the Cross, we know He is faithful and He will bring resurrected fullness of life to us. And we also know that His ecstatic desire for us and our children, in the words of the early Church Father, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, is that “the glory of God is the person fully alive.” We pray that St. Timothy’s may equip our children to be gifts for building up God’s Kingdom to be a blessed instrument towards this fullness of life.

St. Timothy's Classical Academy, September 2024

Tim Kennedy is married to Nicola and they have nine children, several of whom attended St. Timothy’s. He leads a national industry association in Ottawa and is a choir leader at St. George’s Parish in Ottawa. He was the first Board Chair of St. Timothy's Classical Academy, and along with Nicola, their children, and the other founding families, passionately invested their talents, time, and treasure to prayerfully lay the groundwork for the school we have now.