children playing

Roots of big box child care

Printer-friendly versionSend by emailPDF version
Fish eating fish
Know Thy History: Looking Back on Child Care
Author: 
Childcare Resource and Research Unit
Publication Date: 
16 Nov 2011

Fish eating fish

 

US day care centre sets sights on Canada, Canadian Press, June 8, 1982:

Kinder-Care Learning Centres Inc., which has more than 700 day-care centres in 36 U.S. states, plans at least 2,000 in North America by 1986.

     When the first centre opened in 1969, it was a precursor to the 1970s trend toward divorce, inflation and feminism that would see millions of North American women going to work and requiring affordable, accessible day care.

     Mini-Skools, Kinder-Care's Canadian component, opened in Winnipeg in 1969. There now are four Mini-Skools in Winnipeg and 13 in Toronto.

     Jocelyn Cowern, director of Kinder-Care for Canada, says the Alabama-based company currently is concentrating on Alberta, where it will open a centre in September.

     "Alberta encourages private enterprise and seems to feel it's important the public has a choice of day care," she says.

     "We originally did look at British Columbia and would very much like to be there." However, she says, "the rules and regulations governing day care (in B.C.) are extremely difficult to live with and the land cost is not feasible from a financial point of view."

     But many B.C. day-care representatives are saying "no way" to profit-making centres.

>> Read full text.

Timelines:

  • Ontario's Mini-Skool chain was bought by Albama-based KinderCare in the early 1980s.
  • KinderCare continued to operate in Ontario under the Mini-Skool brand. It experienced a bitter strike in the early 1980s.
  • The Mini-Skool chain was later bought back by Canadian owners.
  • Mini-Skool now operates under a large American company, Phoenix Children's Academy Family of Schools, which operate under multiple names including Mini-Skools Early Learning Centers, which are linked to the Ontario Mini-Skool chain. According to their website, the Ontario Mini-Skool chain is incorporated in Ontario as a not-for-profit organization.
  • KinderCare (now operating 2,000 centres) was acquired in 2005 by Knowledge Universe, which operates 3,700 locations worldwide under the brand names including Knowledge Beginnings, Busy Bees and Odyssey.
  • Canada's first publicly-traded child care corporation, Edleun, has recently announced the appointment of former Knowledge Universe CEO Ty Durekas as Edleun's CEO.
Region: