The First Century
As published in the 75th Collegiate Reunion Program (1998)
The origins of the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute and Vocational School (St. C.C.I.&V.S) can be traced to a public meeting at a “Mr. Dwyer’s Merchants’ Exchange” that was held in 1827. It took the new academy two years to get off the ground because of a requirement of a government charter. Despite this delay, the new academy, with the exception of the early District Grammar Schools, was the second oldest secondary school in Ontario. It was preceded only by the Ernestown Academy at Bath, which opened in 1812.
The Grantham Academy had a classical core in its subjects, such as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, rhetoric, logic and natural theology. After a few years, tuition fees were found to be an inadequate basis for school finances. This began quite a protracted and bitter battle for government funding.
The Grantham Academy’s access to government grants was a matter of considerable controversy in the turmoil prior to the Rebellion of 1837. The unelected upper house wanted secondary education to be under the control of the Church of England. This issue was among the petition of grievances of William Mackenzie drafted to the British government, which was used to justify recourse to the rebellion.
The Grantham Academy was open to girls in segregated classes until 1845. Females however, could only be taught the three R’s and geography. Permission was given for an English class for blacks in 1883, but for mysterious reasons, it never got underway.
In 1871, the Grantham Academy was renamed the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute. By this time it resembled a contemporary high school, more than a classical academy. Courses of study had evolved to include the natural sciences and athletics. A chemistry library was established. Cricket and later rugby became important school sports. A few years later, the first commercial classes were introduced.
The changes in the St. Catharines Collegiate kept pace with the most innovative changes anywhere in Ontario. Taking advantage of the 1871 legislation, the last important legacy of Edgerton Ryerson, secondary school now had a greater range of instructional subjects. They were also now partly supported by municipal property taxes, although tuition fees remained for the rest of the century.
The St. Catharines Collegiate was one of the few schools in the province with senior matriculation. This was considered to be the equivalent of second year university. Students came to the school from great distances across the province until 1910. Many boarding establishments catered to them in St. Catharines. For a few years later, boarding of students continued however, from the more distant parts from the Niagara Region.
One of the most important achievements of the early St. Catharines Collegiate was its pioneering role of female education. One early female student recalled how, “the boys looked upon us as “Novum et mirabile genus” but on the whole received us kindly and occasionally fed us upon a more substantial kind of taffy than the young men of the present day use; it was made upon a spirit lamp surreptitiously kept in a deep drawer in the old chemistry room”.
Those opposed to female education “contented themselves with lofty contempt for the pretension of the sex supposed to be devoid of logic”. If library books needed stitching the female students services were requested.
By 1890, an intense extracurricular intellectual life had developed in the school. A debating club was organized. The firs school year book, the Whatnot appeared. The school’s Literary Society, which would carry on until 1940, presented entertainment once a month. Jointly the Literary Society together with the school’s choral society, performed Franz Abt’s Cantata and Little Snow-White, at the Grand Opera House on Ontario Street. A student of this era from Queenston, Joanna Wood, became one of Canada’s first women novelists. Her work won favourable recognition on Great Britain and America.
The St. Catharines Collegiate Institute lobbied vigorously for women to be admitted to the University of Toronto. They were banned from attending lectures here, although many won scholarships. It was only after years of agitation by the St. Catharines and Hamilton Collegiate Institutes that the University Senate passed a motion allowing women admittance to lectures. A former student of the St. Catharines Collegiate, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was the first woman to graduate from the University of Toronto.
In 1900, it was first suggested that the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute, then located on Church Street (the site of our current Multicultural Centre) have a new home. Action was stalled by a city fire and the mounting bills from granting bonuses to industry.
Growing student enrollment, and new areas of study such as sports, instrumental music, art and vocational education, created additional demands for better accommodations. This was a big challenge for Principal A.E. Coombs. A Classics teacher, Coombs, was an author of numerous local histories, the founder of the first Boy Scouts troupe in Canada, and coach of the school’s basketball team.
Coombs was able to persuade the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute Board in 1910 to expand the school on its existing site. This was done by the construction of a new building at the rear of the school property with an auditorium and gymnasium. In a few years, however, the new building was used for emergency classrooms as enrollment rapidly expanded. Also pressed into service was the basement of the neighbouring Presbyterian Church, the spare rooms in three elementary schools stretched along Church Street.
The bursting of the seams of the St. Catharines Collegiate all over Church Street was at the time of quite rapid enrollment increase. The percentage of the population receiving post secondary education increased form five to twenty five per cent of the population.
In 1913, Coombs sponsored the writing of the first yearbook, the Vox Collegiensis, as a student project. It contained a plea from the now retired teacher, W.J. Robertson, for a new building. Clashing with the powerful St. Catharines Standard publisher, Henry Burgoyne, Robertson argued that, “a new Collegiate building is more important than a high level bridge.”
Despite Robertson’s appeal Burgoyne got his bridge. Efforts to get a new school remained stalled until the dramatic intervention of Provincial Inspector Le Van. After being shocked by poor conditions during an inspection, Le Van persuaded the Ontario Ministry of Education, Dr. H.J. Cody to order the Collegiate Institute Board to build a new school. Failing immediate action, all its provincial and county grants would be cut off. Fortunately Inspector Le Van’s order coincided with the new federal grants for vocational schools.
For over four years two boards of education clashed with Henry Burgoyne over the Collegiate site. Burgoyne argued that, “The people of St. Catharines are today resolved that their $500,000 building must not be hidden away on a back street surrounded by back yards.” The Church Street sites favored by Burgoyne were too small for sports fields. They were also in hazardous locations due to heavy traffic. Despite Burgoyne’s objections, an eight acre site on the Lacrosse Grounds was eventually approved after three years of intense debate, on the motion of trustee Norman Lockhart.
The school’s new name reflected complex changes as a result of the new federal funding which made the long delayed expansion possible, the Vocational Education Act of 1919. This provided federal funds for secondary education for the first time. It had to be directed towards vocational schools. This required strict divisions between, as the new name spelled out, the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute and the Vocational School.
For a period, there was consideration given to building a separate Vocational School. This eventually was rejected, following the advice of the province.
For a few weeks the School Board considered a separate vocational school. This was eventually dropped after it became evident that a separate vocational school would have inferior facilities. The sites considered, such as the existing old Church Street school, lacked access to comparable sized athletic grounds, which were being prepared for the new Collegiate Institute.
Although a single school with a common athletic grounds and library facilities was adopted, it was highly segregated. Teachers and the Principal had separate salaries for their work in either the St. Catharines Collegiate, or the Vocational School. There were even separate washrooms for Collegiate and Vocational school students. Separate accounts were also prepared for lighting and heating.
The uncertain entry into vocational education encouraged more regimentation. The left door was for girls ,the center for teachers, and the right for boys. Students were required to walk in file according to the shortest distance between classes. They were suppose to avoid conversation and using water fountains during this period.
Although there were regrets over the more regimented style of education, necessitated by the new entry into vocational education, a great advance had taken place in secondary education in the Niagara Region. The new facilities were vastly improved over the much more severe and less accessible Collegiate of previous decades.
Future Canadian Army offices, General Geoffrey Walsh, best expressed the remarkable change for students moving from the cold attic of the old Central public school. Here the students, “..had nothing except desks and black boards in four rooms. With a change when we moved into the new building! Labs, Gyms, Library.” Walsh found the old library was just a “dingy back room twelve feet square” with a “few dusty books of dubious interest.” The new library had some 2,000 books, many of which were donated by the public.
Quite expressive of the great magnitude of the community’s new resource was the size of the auditorium – with room for over 900 persons. This shrine to community education is still the largest such stage in Niagara. Its capacity exceeds both the past grand Opera House, which closed shortly after the Collegiate opened, and the later individual theatres of Brock University. Some of the notable figures who soon spoke in the auditorium on the invitation of the Literary Society in the early years, were the poets Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Wilson MacDonald.
The ceremony for the school’s opening was of a grandeur that appropriately reflected the great gains that had been made with considerable debate and controversy for the many years. Although the school opened at the beginning of the 1923 September year, the dedication was delayed until November 5th. Important personalities in the ceremonies included Lieutenant-Governor Cockshutt, who was given the gold key to open the building. The first Rotarian medals for student leadership were given to the principal of the new school, W.J. Salter.
The range of activities soon expanded in the new school building. A school orchestra was organized in 1924. For many years it would be conducted by Gerald Marks. The orchestra was not a curriculum subject and practicing was done at noon hours and after school. The Board of Education did give a grant to purchase instruments, paid Gerald Marks a small honorarium.
The building of a new school did enhance a great range of public services in St. Catharines. An earlier proposed site provided the basis for a park, which was later the site of the Garden City Arena. Athletes benefited from improved facilities that were far superior to the change rooms in the Lacrosse Grounds. These outdated accommodations were viewed by city councilors as not “fit for a dog”.
The range of sports, especially for boys, rapidly expanded. For the first time a Niagara District rugby league of area schools was formed. Rowing began as a high school sport. Basketball for boys and girls returned after a number of years of absence from the conversion of the Church Street gymnasium for classroom space.
Sports facilities for girls, however, especially those who did not play basketball, were quite limited. Efforts to establish three tennis courts were defeated after considerable debate in the school board.
The building of the St. Catharines Collegiate and Vocational School in 1923 was a major milestone in the history of the community. It was a secular temple to the sacred ideals of democratic education, adopting the reforming vision of Edgerton Ryerson to new conditions. But this achievement was wrested after great civic debate, requiring co-operation between all levels of government.
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