Gilbert M Gutierrez Law Offices

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. . . . When the Toronto Public School Board was first created elementary or common schools in the city did not have dedicated buildings but instead "the thousand-odd children who were registered as common school pupils were accommodated in rented premises--a dozen or so small halls and houses designated by numbers." This changed shortly after the election of the first board when six schools identical in architecture were built one in each ward of the city More schools with distinct designs were built over the coming decades Some of these original schools are listed in the order of their construction below:. . . The Normal School was founded by Egerton Ryerson in 1847 as the first teacher-training institution in the province it moved into a new building in 1852 on a parcel of semi-rural land eventually bounded by Gerrard Victoria Gould and Church streets In 1852 at the core of the present main campus the historic St James Square Egerton Ryerson founded Ontario's first teacher training facility the Toronto Normal School it also housed the Department of Education and the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts which became the Royal Ontario Museum An agricultural laboratory on the site led to the founding of the Ontario Agricultural College and the University of Guelph St James Square went through various other educational uses before housing a namesake of its original founder Egerton Ryerson was a leading educator politician and Methodist minister. He is known as the father of Ontario's public school system. He is also a founder of the first publishing company in Canada in 1829 the Methodist Book and Publishing House which was renamed the Ryerson Press in 1919 and today is part of McGraw-Hill Ryerson a Canadian publisher of educational and professional books which still bears Egerton Ryerson's name for its Canadian operations Advances in science and technology brought on by World War II and continued Canadian industrialization previously interrupted by the Great Depression created a demand for a more highly trained population Howard Hillen Kerr was given control of nine Ontario Training and Re-establishment centres to accomplish this His vision of what these institutions would do was broader than what others were suggesting in 1943 he visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was convinced Canada could develop its own MIT over one hundred years Along the way such an institution could respond to the society's needs When the Province approved the idea of technical institutes in 1946 it proposed to found several it turned out all but one would be special purpose schools such as the mining school Only the Toronto retraining centre which became the Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1948 would become a multi-program campus Kerr's future MIT of Canada The Toronto Training and Re-establishment Institute was created in 1945 on the former site of the Toronto Normal School at St James Square bounded by Gerrard Church Yonge and Gould the Gothic-Romanesque building was designed by architects Thomas Ridout and Frederick William Cumberland in 1852 the site had been used as a Royal Canadian Air Force training facility during World War II the institute was a joint venture of the federal and provincial government to train ex-servicemen and women for re-entry into civilian life The Ryerson Institute of Technology was founded in 1948 inheriting the staff and facilities of the Toronto Training and Re-establishment Institute in 1966 it became the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute In 1971 provincial legislation was amended to permit Ryerson to grant university degrees accredited by provincial government legislation and by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC). That year it also became a member of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) in 1992 Ryerson became Toronto's second school of engineering to receive accreditation from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) the following year (1993) Ryerson formally became a University via an Act of the Ontario Legislature In 1993 Ryerson received approval to also grant graduate degrees (master's and doctorates) the same year the Board of Governors changed the institution's name to Ryerson Polytechnic University to reflect a stronger emphasis on research associated with graduate programs and its expansion from being a university offering undergraduate degrees Students occupied the university's administration offices in March 1997 protesting escalating tuition hikes In June 2001 the school assumed its name as Ryerson University Today Ryerson University offers programs in aerospace chemical civil mechanical industrial electrical biomedical and computer engineering the B.Eng biomedical engineering program is the first stand-alone undergraduate biomedical engineering program in Canada the university is also one of only two Canadian universities to offer a program in aerospace engineering accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) Organization.