Académie Marie-Claire was not born in a boardroom. It began in 1995 in the basement of its founder, Madame Marie-Claire Martin, with two registered children, a curriculum rooted in the arts, and a commitment to home-cooked meals and genuine educational care. 

Madame Martin is a pioneering figure in Québec education: the first and only Black woman to found a private educational institution in the province. Born and educated in Haiti, where she earned her degree in pedagogy from the University of Haiti, she came to Montreal with a vision that the existing school system could not contain. So, she built her own. 

From those humble beginnings, a network of daycares grew into a full-fledged Academy that opened its doors in 1997. Today, the Kirkland campus welcomes over 400 students from age 2 through Secondary V, in a prestigious environment where science, technology, and trilingualism thrive. 

The school’s motto — “Toujours plus haut… Toujours plus loin” (Always Higher… Always Further) — is not marketing copy. It is the operating principle that has guided every decision made since day one. 

Académie Marie-Claire did not have a grand opening or ribbon-cutting ceremony. It began in 1981 in the home of its founder, Madame Marie-Claire Martin, with a single educational daycare and a conviction that children in Montreal’s West Island deserved something better than what existed. 

Madame Martin is a singular figure in Quebec education. Against all odds, she established the first private educational institution offering a bilingual, academically enriched curriculum with a third-language option.  

For fourteen years, she built. The daycare grew. Her reputation for excellence, warmth, and genuine care for children spread across the West Island. Families sought her out. The waiting lists grew longer. It became clear that a daycare was not enough — that what this community needed, and what she was capable of creating, was something far more complete. 

In 1995, Académie Marie-Claire opened as a full private school. From kindergarten through the elementary years, and eventually through Secondary V, the Academy became the institution Madame Martin had always envisioned — rigorous, bilingual, warm, and uncompromising in its belief that every child is capable of more than most schools expect from them. 

Today, over 400 students from age 2 through Secondary V walk through these doors every day. The science lab, the trilingual curriculum, the specialist teachers, the home-cooked lunches — all of it traces back to one woman who started with a daycare in 1981 and never stopped building. 

To enrich the lives of students by providing a warm, caring, and safe environment where growth opportunities are abundant, exposure to knowledge is plentiful, and every child is developed into a leader and a contributing member of the larger community. 

We believe that the measure of a great education is not what a child memorizes — it is who they become. At Académie Marie-Claire, we pursue academic excellence and character development simultaneously. Our students learn to think critically, communicate across languages, collaborate across differences, and take personal responsibility for their actions and their impact on others.

We do not teach to the minimum. We teach above it, always — and we do so within a deeply human school culture: warm, structured, respectful, and genuinely invested in each child.