Val Donahue

Val is the Director of the Learning Centre and she is armed with years of experience teaching and parenting! Born and raised in Calgary, Val and her husband Paul previously spent 20 years in Ottawa where they raised their three children Nathan, Allie, and Ainsley.

Val studied Archeology at university and worked as a field archaeologist. With three young children to raise it became apparent that it wouldn’t be easy to leave home for months at a time to pursue fieldwork, which is how Val ended up working for the Museum of Man in Ottawa. One of her responsibilities at the museum was to run interpretive programmes for school groups. Her enjoyment of this is what inspired a career change.

Previously, Val has worked as a teacher and learning support specialist in the public school system in Ottawa – she even did a four-year stint as acting principal of a K-6 school. When asked about the move to Vancouver Island and to boarding school life, Val said that she and Paul have long wanted to come to the Island. Her parents reside in the Nanaimo-area and youngest daughter Ainsley attends Malaspina University-College.

Paul, also an archeologist by training, retired from the National Museum of Science and Technology and is pursuing his other passion – landscape design, which he practices here on Vancouver Island with his company Joshua Tree.