Helma Trass

Helma Trass née Helma van Kessel, a student under Maria Montessori was the founder of the first Montessori school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada Toronto Montessori Schools. The first Monessori school in Canada was founded in 1912 in Baddeck, Nova Scotia by Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell. Margaret Potts established the second Montessori school in Canada in Calgary in 1919. After the Second World War, Van Kessel, a citizen of Holland, was so grateful to Canada's contribution to the freedom of her home country that she decided to move there. In 1958 she married Reino Trass (1928–2013) in Toronto. She was shocked to find that there were no Montessori schools in southern Ontario, despite the growing popularity of the Montessori Method. As a result, she created the first Montessori school in Toronto in the 1960s. In 1971 she founded the Toronto Montessori Institute, a school for the education of would-be Montessori teachers.