A Wallaceburg business has moved, but is offering the same educational services to the community.
After spending years inside Wallaceburg District Secondary School, Contact North – Wallaceburg’s online learning centre – moved across town recently into the Wallaceburg Kinsmen Centre, located at 1416 Dufferin Avenue.
“It’s our grand re-opening,” said Sandra Couture, online learning recruitment officer. “We were located in the high school, but because they were bringing the Grade 7 and 8’s in, we had to re-locate. We wanted to bring awareness that we are still here , we just moved.
Couture added: “We wanted to make an awareness that this is where you can get education, whether it is your high school, college or university, literacy based, or just training for yourself.”
Couture said typically, their clients are over the age of 18,
“It’s all adult based and not children-based,” she said. “My oldest is 85. There is never a limitation as to learning and how old you have to be to learn.”
Contact North does not specifically offer courses themselves, “it’s what is out there in the world, namely in Ontario.
“In Ontario, there are over 1,000 full-time programs that you can take and thousands of courses that are available. You can do the courses here at the centre or you can do them at home if you have a computer and Internet. We are open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. so you are more than welcome to come and use the computer anytime,” she said.
Wallaceburg’s Bill Garnet used the centre to help him obtain a diploma from Algonquin College’s occupational safety and health program.
“I worked in health and safety on various jobs, plus I was a certified health and safety rep. at Waltec,” he said. “I just didn’t have the credentials. I wasn’t working and I decided to get it. I went through Second Careers… part of Second Careers is you either have to go to an institution or go to a place of learning, so that they can see that you have gone to school.”
Garnet said the Contact North centre was instrumental in helping his achieve success in his program.
“It was nice, it got me out of the house and gave me focus for the course,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have been distracted with what was going on at home. Coming here, you block away a time and it’s like going to work, you’re here to do a job.
He added: “Sandra was great… there were some times I needed some help, and because of her time in the education system, she was able to direct me in the way I needed to go.”
For more information about Contact North – visit them online here.
Here are some photos from the re-opening:
