A. E. Ryerson managed to teach children but labour demands trumped education

The third floor of historic St. Lawrence Hall on King St. E. is known mostly for its great ballroom with its magnificent crystal gas-lit chandelier where the likes of John A. Macdonald and Frederick Douglass once spoke.

On the third floor there is also the East Room—another albeit smaller event space—and the offices of Heritage Toronto.

The third floor also has another meeting space named the VIP Room where a remarkable artifact from our past resides: a large oval table once used by the Toronto School Trustees.

In 1871 the trustees gathered (at another location) around that table to celebrate the passage of a law they presented making school mandatory for all children between the ages of eight and 14. The head of the school trustees then was one of the most the remarkable and controversial men in Toronto’s history and the Comprehensive School Act he fought for was to change the lives of thousands of young children for the better.

Adolphus Egerton Ryerson was born March 24, 1803 in Charlottesville Township near Simcoe, Ontario. He would become a Methodist minister, educator, politician and public-education advocate in early Ontario.
He arrived in Toronto (formerly York) around 1820 and by 1846 would dedicate the rest of his life to providing free education for all children.

His belief was: “Every child born, or brought up in the Country, has a right to that education which will fit him for the duties of a useful citizen of the Country, and is not to be deprived of it, on account of the inability, or poverty, of his parents, or guardians.”

In the early 1800s going to school in York was a luxury few parents could afford and the Home District School (1807-1812) that once stood on the southeast corner of King and George streets cost $16 a year in a time when a teacher’s salary was $20 a year. The first teacher, Rev. George O’Kill Stuart, taught the sons and daughters ages 6-19 of the well-established families of York.
However in 1818 the establishment of a common (elementary) school by government grants was introduced into York with the first school opening for the sons and daughters of the working class with a Mr. Thomas Appleton as its first schoolmaster.

In 1820 that school was commandeered by the Upper Canada Central School System and would later evolve into the still-operating Jarvis Collegiate.

Also in 1820 a new schoolhouse opened where the giant maple tree now stands just outside the shoe repair shop in the laneway that separates the Metro Grocery Store from the Hot-House restaurant.
The Market Lane Common School was a small 2-storey wooden structure that sat in the middle of an orchard surrounded by a white picket fence.

Amazingly to us (considering where the waterfront is today due to landfill) the students could gaze out on an unobstructed view of the comings and goings in the harbour, which then was a stone’s throw away just south of Front Street.
The school shared the premises with a Masonic Hall and it was in that hall on the second floor where the Mechanic Institute, the forerunner to the Toronto Public Library system, was first formed.

By 1844 going to school was still not compulsory but it was however open to anyone who wanted to go providing there was room and a teacher that day.

Girls did attend elementary school but then were encouraged to stay home and learn to “keep house” since higher education was strictly for the boys. It wouldn’t be until 1874 at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N. B. that Grace Lockhart became the first woman in Canada and the entire British Empire to receive a university degree.

Another early schoolhouse in Toronto was built by the brewer Enoch Turner on Trinity Street in 1849 for the education of many boys and girls in the area around King and Parliament streets. This marvelous schoolhouse still standing is now a museum run by Ontario Heritage and offers a glimpse of what it was like to be a student over 150 years ago.

However none of these early schools were compulsory and sadly the majority of children in Toronto had a worse alternative that was less than voluntary; grueling full-time mill and factory work.

By the 1860s huge menacing iron and steel factories were built at the mouth of the Don River where school-age children, already hardened by the time they reached their teenage years, were working up to 10 hours a day in backbreaking, dangerous, toxic and tedious jobs. Something had to be done to help the greater part of these illiterate youth to have a chance at better lives and this was to become Egerton Ryerson’s mission.

Ryerson’s dedicated struggle that every child have a right to education were to be embodied into the School Law of 1850 followed by the Comprehensive School Act of 1871, finally making school mandatory for all Toronto children between the ages of eight and 14. Of course provisions were also made for factory owners that school was to be mandatory only three hours a day, three months a year, so children could still toil at the mill.

Ryerson also championed libraries be in every school, professional development conventions for teachers and a textbook press using Canadian authors.

However not all that Ryerson did led to the betterment of all children.

Ryerson’s study of native education commissioned in 1847 by the Assistant Superintendent General of Indian Affairs would see the founding of the controversial Canadian residential school system.

Egerton Ryerson, whose motto was “The truth shall make you free,” died Feb. 19, 1882 and today Ryerson University in Downtown Toronto is named for him.

Posted On: October 01, 2015