The Toronto Catholic District School Board

Ontario's public education system has run on a dual structure since before Confederation, guaranteeing publicly funded Catholic "separate schools" alongside the public system as a constitutional protection meant to safeguard the religious education rights of the province's Catholic minority, many of them Irish immigrants who had settled in Toronto in large numbers through the 19th century. That protection, later written into the Constitution Act, 1867, gave Toronto's Catholic community its own school board rather than folding Catholic education into the city's general public board.

A parallel system that grew alongside the public board

The board now known as the Toronto Catholic District School Board evolved through several name changes and reorganizations, most significantly during the 1998 provincial restructuring of Ontario school boards that also created the modern Toronto District School Board out of the amalgamated city's formerly separate public boards. Ontario remains one of the few places in North America with two fully public, parallel school systems, Catholic and secular, funded and governed separately but operating side by side across the same city.

Sources

• Toronto Catholic District School Board — About us
• Wikipedia — Toronto Catholic District School Board

Continue reading

The Toronto District School Board

Toronto's public schools were run by six separate boards until a 1997 provincial law dissolved them all —…

Toronto's Literary Scene

Home to Margaret Atwood and Canada's largest, longest-running literary festival — plus, for decades, a store…

David Cronenberg's Toronto

Born and raised in Toronto, David Cronenberg built a decades-long filmmaking career largely shooting in and…

Robarts Library

The University of Toronto's massive Brutalist central library, opened in 1973, is famous for its distinctive…