In October, 1999, a group of parents, concerned about the cultural identity of their children, decided to create a Saturday school for the teaching of Arabic and Moroccan culture. Their goal was to create an environment that would allow their children to preserve their Moroccan heritage in their host country, Canada, and maintain close ties with their ancestral homeland, Morocco.

To achieve this goal, this group of parents created a non-profit association and named it AMICALE DES RESSORTISSANTS MAROCAINS EN MONTÉRÉGIE, of which the Saturday school would be one of its activities. Without any advertising, the school, named "Sibaweih School", opened its doors to a group of 14 students aged 6-11 on September 9, 1999 at André-Laurendeau secondary school in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, Canada. The students were enrolled in the 3 levels of primary school offered at the time. On behalf of our association, one member intervened with the principal of the above-mentioned school in order to have our school housed within his school free of charge.

During the academic year 2000-2001, the number of students enrolled in the four levels of primary school reached 22, which necessitated another intervention with the principal of André-Laurendeau to get another classroom to meet the demands of an increasing student population.

For 2 years, advertising for our school was done by word of mouth. In 2002, our association, confidant of its expertise, took the decision to go public and inform the Moroccan community of its existence and its specifically Moroccan programs. After advertising our school on the Moroccan channel Maroc Zine in 2002, a great number of Moroccan parents living in Montreal called us to register their children in our school. Unfortunately, our school could not respond to that urgent need of our community given that the geographical situation of our school, situated in Saint-Hubert, poses accessibility problems. Moreover, the capacity of our school to take more students was very limited due to the classroom space assigned to us at the host school.

Given the great number of phone calls our school received from our community in Montreal, our association pondered the possibility of creating another campus in Montreal for our school. To realize our project, our association called upon the FÉDÉRATION MAROCAINE DU CANADA (FMC), to which it is affiliated, for moral, material and logistical support. Considering the positive contribution that our school project would make to the Moroccan community, the FMC promised to help us and to make it one of its priorities for the year 2002-2003. Within this framework of cooperation, The FMC committed itself to finding a place to house our school campus in Montreal, paying the rent and using its contacts in Morocco and Canada to provide us with pedagogical materials.

To take up the new challenge of the academic year 2002-2003, our association decided to change the name of our school from "Sibaweih School" to "The Moroccan School" starting from September 2002. The new name reflects the cultural specificity of our school and does not in any way exclude other Muslim communities. The Moroccan School will have three campuses serving the Moroccan and Muslim community on the South Shore, in Montreal and Montreal North.