Resident pitches Brant councillors on Islamic school
Longtime Brantford resident Anwar Dost is hoping to build an Islamic community centre, school, gym, and place of worship on five acres of land he co-owns in Brant County.
Dost appeared before Brant County council on Tuesday night to tell councillors more about the vision and gain their support.
Paris is seeing an influx of South Asian and Islamic community members, Dost told councillors, pointing to affordability and proximity to the highway.
In the 2021 census profile from Statistics Canada, 410 Brant County residents identified as Muslim — a marked increase from the 2011 census, when no one reported identifying as Muslim.
With a growing community in the area, Dost said a community centre — open to all members of the public — gym, Islamic school and place of worship is “desperately” needed.
The closest Islamic school (and prototype for what Dost is proposing) is the International School of Cambridge.
The school follows the Ontario curriculum, but doesn’t receive any public funding, according to its website. Instead, it is supported through student fees and donations from the Muslim community, the website says.
Dost said around 50 children from Brantford and Brant County are currently commuting there for school.
But the school has reached its capacity of 200 students, and has warned the community that in future it might not be able to accommodate students from outside of Cambridge, highlighting an urgent need for another school in the area, Dost said.
Dost and two other community members have owned the land in question — on Greens Road, just east of the Brantford Municipal Airport — since 1980, he said.
He figures it will take around $20 million to bring this plan to fruition, but indicated they’ve been in talks with the State of Qatar, who he said helped sponsor the project in Cambridge.
Dost said they’ve been told they may face restrictions to building a school on that land, due to the proximity to the airport.
However, Dost argued that there’s already another elementary school — St. Theresa — next door. He said they let the Catholic school use part of their land for sports.
MPP Will Bouma has offered to address the restrictions at the provincial level, if the project receives council’s blessing, project secretary Mazher Latif told councillors.
Mayor David Bailey visited the school in Cambridge in April, and told councillors “we should be excited” they want to bring the project to the county.
Councillors received the presentation and referred it to staff for a report.
Celeste Percy-Beauregard’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows her to report on stories about Brant County. Reach her at cpercybeauregard@torstar.ca.
Celeste Percy-Beauregard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Hamilton Spectator
