page_title: Jarvis Collegiate Institute
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Jarvis Collegiate Institute / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Commemorative plaque marking the original location of the Home District Grammar School
context_page_description: Jarvis Collegiate Institute is a high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is named after Jarvis Street where it is located. It is a part of the Toronto District School Board. Prior to 1998, it was within the Toronto Board of Education.
  Founded in 1807, it is the second oldest high school in Ontario after the Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute, and the oldest high school in Toronto.
context_section_description: Jarvis Collegiate was founded as a private school in 1797. In 1807 the government of Ontario, then known as the British colony of Upper Canada, took over the school and incorporated it in a network of eight new, public grammar schools (secondary schools), one for each of the eight districts of Upper Canada. Of the eight were four key schools:
  Eastern Grammar School or Cornwall Grammar School c. 1806 was located in Cornwall, Ontario
  Western Grammar School c. 1854 or J. C. Patterson Collegiate Institute was located in Windsor, Ontario; school closed in 1973
  Home District Grammar School in Toronto - Jarvis was the grammar school for the Home District, an area covering much of the modern GTA. Its first name was the Home District Grammar School.
  Midland Grammar Schools or Kingston Grammar School c. 1792 then as Midland Grammar School 1807 in Kingston, Ontario
  These were the early days of Toronto, when the first parliament buildings were established and the first church and jail were constructed. In fact, it was only fourteen years earlier that Governor John Grave Simcoe arrived at the location on Lake Ontario, home to Mississauga communities and site of important Indigenous trade routes, to lay out the design of the new town he named York.
  After the early period 1807-1811, enrollment started at five, rose to twenty, then fell to four - the school gained momentum in 1812 when the redoubtable John Strachan took over as headmaster. In 1839, Strachan became the first Anglican bishop of Toronto, living grandly in a home known as the "Palace" and signing his name (following the "first name / diocese" format customary for Anglican bishops) "John Toronto". He also founded Trinity College.
  
  The original 1807 school building was a shed attached to the headmaster's house. Strachan raised funds for a new two-storey building, completed in 1816 on College Square, a 6-acre (24,000 m²) lot north of St. James' Cathedral, bounded by Richmond, Adelaide, Church and Jarvis Streets. In 1825 the school was renamed the Royal Grammar School. Later the name was changed to Toronto High School. In 1829 it moved to the corner of Jarvis and Lombard Streets. When Upper Canada College was founded in 1829 it shared a building with the Grammar School and for several years the two organizations were essentially unified. UCC eventually moved to its own facilities.
  By 1864 the three rooms of the schoolhouse were inadequate for the 150 students, so a new building was constructed on Dalhousie Street, just north of Gould Street, near present-day Ryerson University. This was also the year of the founding of the Toronto Grammar School Mental Improvement Society, the predecessor to all school clubs. Later known in schools as "the Lit," the club was a literary and debating society. Originally exclusively for boys, the club began admitting girls in 1893. It was also around this time that the first debates between schools were held in Toronto, the competing schools being Parkdale Collegiate Institute and Harbord Collegiate Institute. In the following decade, once again growing enrollment necessitated a new building. As the school underwent construction between 1870 and 1871, classes were held in a vacant insane asylum at Queen's Park, where the east wing of the legislative buildings are located today.
  In 1871 the new building opened at 361 Jarvis Street, just south of College Street, directly in front of Allan Gardens. In 1889, the annexation of Parkdale brought a second high school (Parkdale Collegiate Institute) to the board, precipitating yet another name change from Toronto High School to Jarvis Street High School. The school was given its current name, Jarvis Collegiate Institute, in 1890. In 1924 it moved to its current Collegiate Gothic building designed by architect Charles Edmund Cyril Dyson.
  Jarvis Collegiate celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2007.
caption: Commemorative plaque marking the original location of the Home District Grammar School
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