The year 2014 began with the promise of much remembering. One hundred years since the outbreak of the Great War; 70 years since D-day in the Second World War. Princess Anne would re-dedicate Canada’s national war memorial in Ottawa, 75 years after her grandfather, King George VI, first unveiled it […]
Martha Jackson
35 posts
Wellesley Public School, closed in 1956, lingers in the memory of former students, who have responded to our blog post (Vanished School and Vanished Times-March 17, 2013). When the students moved to Church Street School, Wellesley’s bell went with them. Its ringing days long past, the bell sits in a […]
As students and teachers settle into their classes for another year, our project volunteers are celebrating a back-to-school accomplishment—we now have a full 100 schools in For King and Country database! Just added are war memorials and school histories from: The Bishop Strachan School; Davisville Public School; Eastern High School […]
Leslieville (Leslie Street) school will celebrate 150 years on April 26. The school’s first principal was Alexander Muir, composer of “The Maple Leaf Forever.” The school’s war memorials (485 names) have been indexed and a photo is on our website. Congratulations to this east-of-the-Don school and to a neighbourhood packed […]
How did schools collect the names for their war memorials? Danforth Tech, with 2,235 volunteers— more than any other school in the Commonwealth—shows us. A War Memorial Committee sent forms like John D. Marr’s (pictured here) asking former students how their names should appear. This form, not dated, was probably […]
In the airport-style waiting room of Toronto West (York) Court House—Traffic Division, the security guard searching bags answers my question about the overhead sign “FAW.” “I think the ‘F’ stands for first offence,” he says. My first offence? Failing to produce my motor vehicle permit when stopped by police. A […]
A great uncle’s school certificate sparked a search for one of Toronto’s “vanished” halls of learning. Opened in 1874, Wellesley Public School sat like a fancy wedding cake on the north east corner of Bay and Wellesley Streets in downtown Toronto. The “most handsome and best-furnished school building in Toronto” […]
This plaque hangs in Rose Avenue School, 675 Ontario Street, (south of Bloor Street East, between Parliament and Sherbourne Streets) in Toronto’s St. James Town. Chilton Street does not appear on current maps of Toronto. There is a Chilton Road in East York, but it is several kilometres northeast of […]
…I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen When you joined the great fallen in 1916. Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean. —Eric Bogle “No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France)” ©Larrikin Music Our first recorded memorial to an individual was that […]
Sackville Street School displays a memorial for World War I, but none for World War II. Little Trinity (Anglican) Church, a three-minute walk (270 metres) northwest of the school, fills some gaps in the neighbourhood history. Of the 581 parishioners involved in World War I, 70 died. A cenotaph beside […]