5 notable alumni from Lorne Park Secondary School in Mississauga

Located in the west end of Mississauga, Lorne Park Secondary School’s history dates back more than 50 years and boasts several notable alumni who went on to careers in government, science, technology, arts and sports.

The school was deemed very modern when it opened in January 1958 with 272 students and 16 teachers. The school went through a number of upgrades over the years and now has about 900 students.

It has an arts program, Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, extended French, and active sports teams with football, rugby, basketball and lacrosse.

Here are five notable alumni from Lorne Park Secondary School:

Nima Arkani-Hamed

Arkani-Hamed is a theoretical physicist concerned with the relation between theory and experiment, with a special focus on current and future particle accelerators as well as cosmological observations.

He and his family fled to Canada following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After studying at Lorne Park Secondary School, graduated from the University of Toronto and then went to the University of California, Berkeley, for his graduate studies. He was a professor at Berkeley and Harvard University.

He is currently at the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s foremost centres for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry, located in Princeton, New Jersey.

He was one of six physicists featured in the award-winning 2013 documentary film Particle Fever, and has won several prestigious awards.

Silken Laumann

Rower Silken Laumann won two bronze Olympic medals and one silver from 1984 to 1996. She also won two gold medals in single sculls rowing at the Pan Am Games, and a gold medal in quadruple sculls at the U.S. championships.

She may be best known for her courage and strength following a rowing accident in May of 1992, just as the Olympic Games approached. Though she was told by doctors she may never row again, after a mere 27 days and five operations, she was back at it and in August of the same year, she won the bronze medal for Canada.

It was her sister Danielle who was first interested in rowing at Lorne Park, Silken was more interested in track at the time. But she tried rowing after stress fractures in her feet sidelined her track career.

She was inducted into Legend’s Row in 2014.

Bev Oda

Born in Thunder Bay, Bev Oda’s family moved to Toronto, Etobicoke and then Clarkson where she attended Lorne Park Secondary School.

She reportedly had three part-time jobs during school including at a dry cleaning business, and she worked as a playground supervisor and had summer jobs at the CNE.

Now retired, Oda was the first Japanese-Canadian MP and cabinet minister in Canadian history. She represented the riding of Durham for the Conservative Party of Canada from 2004 to 2012. She left amid a spending scandal including reportedly ordering orange juice that cost $16 while at a conference on the immunization of poor children.

Brad Templeton

Brad Templeton was the founder and software architect of ClariNet Communications Corp., the world’s first-ever “.com” company.

He founded ClariNet in 1989 in Waterloo, Ontario with “the crazy idea of trying to make money publishing professional information over the net and to the net audience.”

In 2010, he joined the Google self-driving car project, and frequently writes and blogs about self-driving vehicles.

Now, he is a frequent keynote speaker.

Ty Templeton

Brad’s brother, comic book artist Ty Templeton, is also a Lorne Park Secondary School alumni.

Ty has worked for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Bongo Comics, and Moonstone Books working on well-known characters including Superman, Spider-Man, Star Trek, The Simpsons, She-Hulk, Howard the Duck, Ren & Stimpy, Scooby Doo and a celebrated run on Batman Adventures.

He was inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2014.