VANCOUVER—An elite Vancouver private school has found itself in the glare of a scandal that threatens to derail Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s re-election campaign. On Wednesday, Time magazine published a photo of Trudeau wearing brown-face makeup on his face, hands and feet at an “Arabian Nights” themed party in 2001. At the time, Trudeau was a teacher at West Point Grey Academy. Time said the photo was published in the yearbook from the school.The private school is located on an 18-acre lot overlooking the ocean in an affluent Vancouver neighbourhood. Founded by four families in 1996, the school was envisioned as “a progressive” option for an area that at the time had no other co-ed schools.The school has 940 students in junior kindergarten to Grade 12 with a ratio of eight students per teacher, according to the West Point Grey Academy website. The average student-teacher ratio for Vancouver Public Schools is 18 to one. Today, tuition fees range from $21,780 for younger students to $23,490 for students in Grades 8 to 12.Trudeau, who completed a Bachelor of Education in 1998 at the University of British Columbia, taught French and math at West Point Grey Academy, according to a short profile on the UBC Faculty of Education website. The Liberal Leader went on to teach at Winston Churchill Secondary School, a public school, in south Vancouver. The school has yet to answer requests for comment. On Wednesday evening, as previously scheduled parent-teacher interviews were taking place at the West Point Grey Academy, a staff member declined to comment on the 18-year-old photo of Trudeau. Layne Moore, who attended the school as an elementary student from 1996 to 1999, described a school with a culture of extreme pressure to perform academically and in sports. Moore recalled learning during a schoolwide assembly that Trudeau would be coming to the school, and that everyone was told to treat him as they would any other teacher. Moo ...
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