Smart Start Joins PEI

Smart Start PEI joins new Preschool Excellence Initiative

Smart Start, the integrated service model demonstrating best practices in early childhood service delivery, is becoming part of the PEI government’s new Preschool Excellence Initiative.

Four Smart Start programs have been selected to become Early Years Centres in phase one of implementation. Early Years Centres are the core of the new preschool initiative. They follow a common curriculum, have mandated parent committees and are operated by non-profit organizations. Staff salaries and parent fees reflect a province-wide grid.

Chosen as Early Years Centres are the Smart Start sites at St Jean and ...


Honourable Margaret McCain joins Premier Ghiz to open early years programs

CHARLOTTETOWN, Nov. 29, 2011 /CNW/ - The Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain joins Premier Robert Ghiz here for the opening of the new early learning centre at Holland College and a newly expanded Smart Start program. Both initiatives are supported by the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation Inc. (MWMFF).

Friday, December 2

9:45 a.m.

Smart Start expansion. West Kent School gym, 27 Viceroy Street. With the Honourable Robert Ghiz, Jane Bertrand, program director MWMFF, Verna Bruce, Chair of Smart Start and the children and parents of Smart Start.
     
11:00 a.m.

Holland College Early Learning Centre opening. Prince ...


Early Years Study 3 Launched

Early Years Study 3November 22, 2011. Co-authored by the Hon. Margaret Norrie McCain, Fraser Mustard and Kerry McCuaig, the third edition of the Early Years Study: Making Decisions, Taking Action is launched.

The federal government may have ended the national child care plan in 2007 but that hasn’t stopped the provinces from making progress, a new report released today in Toronto and Montreal reveals. “Our report shows we may be developing a Canadian early learning and child care program one province at a time,” says the report’s co-author, the Honourable Margaret Norrie McCain. 

Early Years Study 3 is the third in ...


MWMFF-Pratt partnership featured in Canadian Capital

November 22, 2011

Canadian Capital Magazine has published an article featuring the partnership between the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation Inc. and the Jimmy Pratt Foundation:

"Increasingly, foundations seek to leverage the impact of their grants by partnering with other philanthropic organizations that share their interests.

So when the Jimmy Pratt Foundation in St. John’s, N.L., launched in September, it teamed up with its more established New Brunswick neighbour, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation Inc., to fund its first beneficiary. Together, they each made a grant of $150,000, to be spent over three years ...


A Tribute to Fraser Mustard

Fraser Mustard (1927 - 2011)
Fraser Mustard

In Early Years Study 3 Fraser Mustard again brings his passion to early childhood development. His reasons were many, but mainly because he believed the future of our country, indeed of the world, depends upon it.

Fraser's brilliance came from his ability to distill the complex story of the dance between nature and nurture and its effect on early brain development. He gave voice to three enduring messages that have permeated the popular culture: The years before 5 last a lifetime; It takes a village to raise a child and Pay now or pay later ...