Student Life

Norval Outdoor School

Go outside and play

Our "second campus" outside Toronto, a 535-acre nature reserve, helps boys develop a lifelong love of the environment.
Part of Upper Canada College’s core offerings since 1939, the Norval Outdoor School northwest of Toronto is one of Ontario’s oldest outdoor education centres. Here, students develop an enhanced awareness of the environment, ecosystems and their ethical responsibility to conserve them. Our alumni always tell us their time spent at Norval furnishes special childhood memories and a lifelong appreciation of nature.

Boys sharpen their outdoor skills and enhance their learning in science, geography, math, art and other subjects while having fun and bonding at the all-season school’s facilities which serve as headquarters for the exploration of the wide-ranging terrain on this property outside the hamlet of Norval along the Credit River.

Norval is an integral part of learning at UCC. By Year 9, boys will have amassed 11 weeks of wilderness learning, with overnight and day trips, maple syrup making, skiing and snowshoeing, plus lots of time for unstructured play.

Norval also hosts Family Open House days for the UCC community, five times each year, as a way to build community and wellbeing. The spring Maple Madness event focuses on the site's traditional maple syrup manufacturing, as well as cross-country skiing in winter and pumpkin carving in the autumn.

Norval is one of UCC’s most unique offerings. We look forward to building memories with you.

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  • Brent Evans

    Director, Norval Outdoor School

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  • History of Norval

    In the 1820s, right around the time Sir John Colbourne was busy founding UCC, James McNab, a lieutenant in the York Volunteers and veteran of the War of 1812 was given nearly 5,000 acres by the government as a reward for his service to king and country.
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