Toronto Normal School - Today (Originally Published Around 1947 )FOR six years the shadow of the Second Great War lay on the Toronto Normal School. First came the tragic loss of Thornton Mustard. Then came the enlistment of graduates in the armed forces, with tidings from time to time and from distant lands of former students who had made the supreme sacrifice. One of these, F/L Malcolm McIver, a F. C., was valedictorian of the year 1940-41, and son of Murdoch McIver of the School's Soldier Year, 1919-20.

In the summer of 1941, the influence of the conflict was felt by the School in another way. A call came from the Department of National Defence for quarters in Toronto for Initial Training School No. 6, in connection with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. The Government of Ontario promptly offered the buildings of the Normal and Model Schools and arrangements were quickly completed for the transfer of the teacher-training institution to the building known as the Earl Kitchener Public School. This three-storey building of seven­teen rooms, located at 870 Pape Avenue in the Township of East York, was made available through the co-operation of the Toronto Board of Education. Though lacking an adequate auditorium, and having no gymnasium, the building provided reasonably satisfactory temporary quarters for the Normal School.

H. E. Elborn, General Editor of Text-books in the Ontario Depart­ment of Education, had been appointed principal of the School in October, 1939. It fell to his lot to supervise the move to the new building, and to adjust the life and routine of the institution to its new surroundings.

The Model School, sister institution of the Normal School for ninety-three years, was disbanded at the time of the transfer to Pape Avenue. Its pupils were absorbed in the public, separate, or private schools of the city, and its teachers were either transferred to the staff of Toronto Public Schools, or were assigned new duties under the De­partment of Education.

The Model School had played a valuable role in the history of teacher-training in Ontario. Organized at a time when the common schools of the community were not of high standard, it had provided, as its name implied, a model for student-teachers to copy later in schools of their own. By the twentieth century, the publicly supported schools of the Province were well organized, well-housed, well-equipped, and well-staffed, and consequently were in a position to provide facili­ties for teacher-training purposes. For that reason, special Model Schools were not attached to the Normal Schools instituted in London, Hamilton, North Bay, Peterborough, and Stratford. But the Model Schools in Ottawa and Toronto continued to operate. They stood a little apart from the city school systems; they had their own traditions and com­manded their own loyalties. When their buildings were taken over during the war, families whose children had been educated in the "Model" for several generations mourned the passing of what had be­come beloved institutions.

The place that the Toronto Normal Model School held in the hearts of its "old boys and girls" had been shown in February, 1934, when a reunion was held of its graduates of fifty or more years before. Sir John Aird, Sir Henry Pellatt, and Col. A. E. Gooderham were among former students who attended this party organized by Headmaster F. M. McCordic in connection with Toronto's Centennial Year. "One by one the old students appeared," reads a report in the Mail and Empire of February 22, 1934, "looked quickly around the gathering and then, with 'Hello Bill' or 'Well, well, Charlie,' began to renew the acquaintances of more than half a century ago. There were those who brought old prize books, others with old photographs and autograph albums, and others with old reports. In one corner of the room were the old registers. Grey heads bent over these yellowing volumes, pick­ing out who stood first in his class or laughing because they discovered they stood last."

Headmasters of the Model School after the turn of the century were: Angus McIntosh (1887-1912) ; R. W. Murray (1913-15) ; Milton A. Sorsoleil (1915-21); Thornton Mustard (1921-23): F. M. McCordic (1923-40) ; and Adam McLeod (1940-41). Of these, M. A. Sorsoleil later became Deputy Minister of Welfare for Ontario, Thornton Mustard became eighth principal of the Toronto Normal School, and Mr. McLeod became Supervisor of Correspondence Courses in the Department of Education. Two staff members often recalled by graduates of the school arc Thomas Porter and Charters Sharpe. Mr. Sharpe is now on the staff of University of Toronto Schools, and keeps in close touch with the "old boys" of the Model by post-card, circular letter, and informal reunion. Former members of the staff who are now enjoying retirement in Toronto are: Misses May K. Caulfield, Alice Harding, Lilian Harding, A. F. Laven, and Mary E. Maclntyre; Messrs. F. M. McCordic, C. D. Bouck, and E. H. Price. The staff of the Model School during its final year,1940-41, was composed of: A. McLeod, C. T. Sharpe, R. G. Kendall, C. E. McMullen, Jessie I. Cross, Doris R.. Soden, Jessie McKay, Rose Lynch, Mrs. K. Crawford, Marion Evans, Jean Greig, Mrs. C. S. Burke, Elizabeth Mitchell, M. Maude Watterworth, A. Elsie Sherin, and Mrs. Vera S. Fuller. The following members of the Normal School staff were asso­ciated with the Model School: G. S. Apperley, D. W. Burns, E. Grace Conover, Joicey M. Horne, Mrs. Vera E. Russell. ...............

One hundred years is a long time in the history of public education in any land. In the century from 1847 to 1947 the pioneer Normal School of the Province has become one of a group of eight schools entrusted with the training of teachers for the elementary schools, the University of Ottawa Normal School having been opened in 1927. Two of these sister Normal Schools are now headed by former masters of the Toronto Normal School—Dr. C. E. Mark, appointed principal in London in 1932. and W. K. F. Kendrick, appointed principal of the Ottawa Normal School in 1946.

But the Toronto Normal School has meant much more in the educational history of Ontario than an institution for the training of teachers. As the home of the Education Office for many years it was, as Lord Elgin termed it, the seed-plot of the school system. In it, diverse educational projects were nurtured until they became sturdy enough for independent growth. Thus the collection of curios in the corridors of the Normal School is but a memory, dwarfed by the Royal Ontario Museum; the School of Art and Design has become the Ontario College of Art; the copies of old masters and the plaster reproductions of famous statuary, once the pride of the Normal School, are forgotten now that original masterpieces are on view in the Art Gallery of Toronto; experiments in cereal production, once a feature of the School's grounds, are now the province of the Ontario Agricultural College; the training of high school teachers, begun in the School in 1858, is now the function of the Ontario College of Education; books once assembled in the building in St. James Square now form the nucleus of the educational section of the Legislative Library. And so the catalogue could go on. The Toronto Normal School was long not only the seed-bed, but, as Ryerson described it, the main-spring of the system of public instruction.

Those days are gone by, but the chief task of the school—that of teaching those who will teach our children—remains one of first im­portance. In this history we have read much of staff members and buildings—of masters and masonry, if you will,—but a school is more than bricks and stone, more than its teachers; it is the sum of its staff. students, and graduates. Just as those groups have won for the Toronto Normal School, during the past century, the place it holds in the educa­tional life of the Province, so those groups to-day must uphold and strive to improve the quality of the school's work in the years to come. To men and women teaching or studying in its classrooms, or leaving its halls for classrooms of their own, might be addressed the lines from Newbolt's Clifton Chapel:

"Henceforth the School and you are one,
And what You are the race shall be."