Upper Canada College

Drawing of former UCC campus at King and Simcoe Streets in downtown Toronto

Upper Canada College (UCC) is an all-male elementary and secondary school in Toronto, Ontario, the oldest independent school in the province, and the third oldest school in Canada. It is widely considered to be the leading school in Canada. It has educated many of the country's elite, powerful and wealthy and declares its goal as being a "private school with a public purpose."[1]

UCC is a non-denominational school administered by a Board of Governors as a public trust.

All of UCC's 1,000 day students and 110 boarders study the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme during Grades 11 and 12.

The College maintains a traditional link to the Royal Family through Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who acts as Visitor to UCC. He is also a member of the school's Board of Governors.

The current Chairman of the Board of Governors is Andrew Pringle, the Chairman of the Foundation is Roland Browning Watt, Q.C and principal is Dr. James P. Power. The Heads of the Upper School are Bradley K. Adams and Michaele Robertson, while the Preparatory School is headed by Donald Kawasoe. The students are represented by Head Steward Jonathan Tam.

History

The College was founded in 1829 by then-Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Sir John Colborne (later Lord Seaton). Teaching at the College began in 1830. The school was founded in the hopes it would serve as a feeder school to the newly founded King's College (later the University of Toronto), and was modelled on the great public schools of Britain, most notably Eton College. The school was closely associated with the colonial establishment at this time.

UCC's student militia assisted Sir Francis Bond Head's Family Compact government in suppressing the pro-democracy William Lyon Mackenzie Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. They were awarded Battle Colours by the monarch - one of only two schools in North America to be given this honour.

The College initially shared facilities with the Royal Grammar School (now Jarvis Collegiate Institute). Its first permanent buildings stood on Russell Square, on land that is now bounded by King, Simcoe, Adelaide and John Streets in downtown Toronto. After rapid industrial growth in the area, UCC moved to its current site, the Deer Park campus, 200 Lonsdale Road at Avenue Road in Forest Hill.

In 1867, W. George Beers, a Canadian dentist, codified the game of lacrosse. The world's first game played under Beer's rules was at UCC,when the Toronto Cricket Club beat the hosts by a score of 3-1.

1902 saw the foundation of preparatory school separate from the Upper School, housed in its own buildings at the south edge of the Deer Park campus.

Nearly 600 graduates perished during both the First World War and the Second World War. According to historian Jack Granatstein, UCC graduates accounted for more than 30% of Canadian generals during the Second World War, including General Harry Crerar, Commander in Chief of the Canadian Army, and Major-General Bruce Matthews, Commander of the 2nd Canadian Division and later Chairman of the College's Board of Governors.

During the Second World War, the school accepted Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe such as Peter C. Newman. This was the first time the school's student population included students from an ethnic or religious minority group - a change from the traditional Anglo-Saxon background of the school's student population.

Today

UCC is Canada's wealthiest independent school, having an endowment of $45 million (CDN), which it has devoted to physical expansion, financial aid, scholarships, and advanced computer and laboratory equipment.

UCC's Upper School on a snowy winter morning

Tuition fees range from $20,350 to $37,975, representing a 16 per cent increase since 2002. Today, only 8 per cent of the school population received financial aid, far less than at many other leading independent and private schools in North America. UCC is well-known for challenging admissions standards, accepting less than 22% of all applicants. The current student-to-teacher ratio is 18:1.

UCC has four gyms, four theatres, a hockey rink, a swimming pool, two Learning Centres (to study the way boys learn), six tennis courts, eight sports fields, an extensive library collection, and a sports activity bubble. UCC also maintains its own archives.

The College has a notable collection of art work, war medals and real estate. The school houses a large collection of original paintings from the Group of Seven. Moreover, UCC is the owner of the world's first Victoria Cross awarded in 1854 to Old Boy, Alexander Roberts Dunn. Aside from Norval (see below) and the Deer Park campus, UCC's real estate portfolio also includes other sites in the Greater Toronto Area.

Houses

UCC, like several other Commonwealth schools, divides its students into ten houses, each led by a Housemaster and a student-elected Head of House. Heads of Houses are among the sixteen "stewards" who form the student government of the College. The house system was first adopted in 1923-4, previous to that members of the residence community were referred to as living in "the House" while day students were part of "the Town". There were only five houses until the late 1950s. There are now ten. Two of these houses, Wedd's and Seaton's, are boarding and the remaining eight are for day students. The houses are:

• Bremner's
• Howard's
• Jackson's
• Martland's
• McHugh's
• Mowbray's
• Orr's
• Scadding's
• Seaton's
• Wedd's

Each year, the houses compete for the "Prefect's Cup", under a traditionally British style of inter-house competition.

School publications

The school's biweekly newspaper is known as Convergence, a two-to-three extended, and double-sided leaflet which reports solely on school issues, as opposed to international, national, or municipal affairs. In recent years, Convergence has received numerous awards from the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail - most notably "Best Student-Run Highschool Newspaper", which it has won several times. It has also received numerous donations from the National Post. The current editors are Max Marcus, and David Hertzberg.

The College Times is Canada's oldest high school yearbook publication, as has been printed without fail since 1829, the year of the school's founding. Like Convergence, the College TImes has won a great range of awards for quality, diversity and professionalism over the years. The current editors are Clarence Tso, and Alex Zhang, while past editors include Robertson Davies, and Stephen Leacock.

The Blue Page is UCC's student-run opinion paper. It is published each Friday, and contains articles written by and for both students and faculty, and pertains to both external and internal affairs. The current editors are Steven Rotchtin, and Henry Lambert.

Old Times

School programs

• Horizons
• Habitat for Humanity
• The Learning Centre
• The Green School

Norval

Similar to the problems that the College faced with its Russel Square property at the end of the 19th century, by the early 20th century the city was already growing quickly around the Deer Park campus. The College trustees began to explore the possibility of moving the school again, and a property of 450 acres on the Credit River, north of the city, was purchased in 1913. Plans for a new college building were even drawn up by a Toronto architecture firm. However, due to the depression, the plans to move the school were abandoned in the 1930s. Still, the property remained in the hands of the school, a simple bunk-house eventually being built to allow students a few days to a week of outdoor education.

Though the original bunkhouse remains, in 1967 a more permanent building was constructed for students to reside in. Called Stephen House, the structure contains a bunk area, dining area, lounge area, kitchen, bathrooms, accommodation for teacher chaperones and staff, and a classroom/laboratory.

Norval is today Canada's oldest "outdoor" school.

Recent events

Scandal

In 2004, UCC was embroiled in a very public $62 million class action lawsuit brought by eighteen students who sued the school over alleged sexual abuse by Doug Brown, a member of the faculty who taught at UCC from 1975 until 1993.

The lawsuit was settled on the eve of the trial, but the some continue to criticise what they view as a poor handling of the scandal by the College.

In October of 2004, Doug Brown was found guilty of 9 counts of indecent assault, while a housemaster and teacher at UCC. In January of 2005, he was sentenced to 3 years in jail. An appeal is currently in the works.

In a media release, UCC has announced that they "continue to offer [their] support to those who were victims of abuse at the College, and [they] are committed to a fair process for determining the school's responsibility to compensate those who were victimized by Doug Brown."

Capital building project

UCC has launched a decade-long $90 million capital building campaign - the largest and most ambitious fundraising campaign of any pre-university school in Canada. The plans call for the creation of two new arena complexes, an Olympic-standard 50-metre swimming pool, a new racquet centre (squash, badminton and tennis), a rowing centre, expansion of both the Prep and Upper School academic buildings, and an expansion of the Archives.

Affiliations

The Bishop Strachan School (BSS), located three blocks away from UCC, is UCC's official sister school, although ties between the schools have been strained over the past few years. This has lead UCC to become actively involved with other nearby girls schools, including St. Clement's School (SCS), Havergal College, and Branksome Hall.

Lower Canada College, a co-educational private school in Montreal, Quebec, is not affiliated with UCC.

The College is a member of the Conference of Independent Schools of Ontario (CIS), the Canadian Association of Independent Schools (CAIS), the Secondary School Admission Test (SAT) Board, The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) and an associate member of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), and the Principal is a member of the Headmasters Conference (HMC) in the UK. Furthermore, UCC plays a leading role in International Boys' School Coaltion (IBSC) and the Toronto Boys' School Coalition (TBSC).

Alumni

UCC has a reputation for educating many of Canada's powerful, elite and wealthy. As is common in single-sex male schools, UCC's alumni are known simply as "Old Boys." Examples include:

• Lord Kenneth Thomson - "Canada's wealthiest man" and Chairman of Thomson Corporation
• Stephen Leacock - writer and economist
• Robertson Davies - notable author
• Michael Ignatieff - noted academic, Harvard professor, and touted successor to Paul Martin
• Michael MacMillan - Academy Award winner and CEO of Alliance Atlantis
• Vincent Massey - the first Canadian-born Governor-General
• Lord Conrad Black - publishing tycoon (expelled)
• Galen Weston - owner, George Weston Ltd. and Canada's "second richest man"
• Peter C. Newman - journalist, author and biographer
• Ernest McCulloch - accredited with the discovery of the Stem Cell

A more exhaustive list of some of the College's most notable graduates can be found here: List of Upper Canada College alumni.

Famous Masters

Many leading intellectuals have taught at UCC. They include:

• Sir George Parkin - Principal, leader of the British Imperial League and First Secertary of the Rhodes Scholarship
• Robertson Davies - Old Boy and English Master
• Stephen Leacock - Head Boy and English Master
• George Grant - Principal
• George Monro Grant - Principal
• Reverend Sowby - Principal and Canadian-education reformer
• J. Douglas Blakey - Principal and leading Canadian environmentalist
• George Sheppard - History Master and leading expert on the War of 1812
• Michael Eben - famous CFL footballer and Governor of Victoria College at University of Toronto
• Vernon Mould - Former Vice-Principal, leading Canadian intellectual
• Henry Scadding - Canadian intellectual
• Mary Gauthier - Renowned boys education expert

External links

• Upper Canada College

Sources

• More About UCC, UCC Website