Burnaby North Secondary School

Burnaby North Secondary School is a secondary school in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. It encompasses two buildings at 751 Hammarskjold Drive in Burnaby. Nearly 1,800 students from grades 8 to 12 attend the school. A statue of a Viking head, the mascot of the school's sports teams, stands in front of the two buildings. Burnaby North Secondary School is nestled in Kensington Park, providing room for the school's ice rink, 18 hole pitch and putt golfing centre, outdoor swimming pool, 3 tennis courts, 4 baseball diamonds, softball diamond, an artificial turf field, 6 lane 400 metre concrete track and field tracks, and 2 outdoor natural grass fields. It is the largest school by population and school area in the school district of Burnaby School District 41. History Burnaby North was established in 1922 with around 50 students. Before moving to its present site, it was housed on Willingdon Ave, which later became Burnaby Heights Junior Secondary, when it moved to the Hammarksjold location, which was built by Coyne and Ratcliffe Construction and completed in 1962. In 1982, Kensington Junior Secondary School (Crusaders) and Burnaby North Senior Secondary School (Vikings) were merged as one. The project to merge "Kensington Jr" and "Burnaby North Sr" into "Burnaby North Secondary" began in the 1981/1982 school year. The objective was to see if money could be saved by sharing the resources and staff between the two schools. The former Kensington was referred as the "South Building" and Burnaby North Sr. was referred to as the "North Building". A wheelchair access elevator was added in 1983 to the North Building's east entrance. To accommodate the merged schools, two connections were built. A level sheltered walkway was constructed to connect the ground-level south-facing entrance of the North building to the second floor of the southwestern entrance of the South building, and a wooden staircase was built on a hill to provide access from the North building's east entrance to the South building's ground-level north entrance. The latter was replaced by a sheltered walkway that had a more gradual slope to accommodate accessibility.