Ryerson to Toronto Metropolitan University

Toronto Metropolitan University was founded in 1948 as the Ryerson Institute of Technology, a school built to train returning Second World War veterans in practical trades and technical fields the traditional universities of the time largely ignored. It grew over the following decades into Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and then, in 1993, Ryerson Polytechnic University, gaining full university status and expanding into a wide range of academic programs on its downtown campus centred around Gould Street.

A name dropped in 2022

The school's original name honoured Egerton Ryerson, a 19th-century education reformer credited with shaping Ontario's public school system. Ryerson's legacy also includes his role in designing the residential school system later used to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children, and following the 2021 discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites across Canada, renewed scrutiny of that history led the university's governing board to formally rename the institution Toronto Metropolitan University in 2022, dropping the Ryerson name entirely, including from its own statue, which had already been toppled by protesters the previous year.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Toronto Metropolitan University
• Wikipedia — Toronto Metropolitan University

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