History

The Growth and Development of Malvern Collegiate Institute
1903-1914

Prior to 1903, such boys and girls of the town of East Toronto as wished a secondary school education had to attend Jarvis Collegiate Institute, Toronto or journey to Markham High School. But early in that year a high school board composed of three members from the town and three from the county was elected and obtained permission from the Ontario Department of Education to open a high school in the one-storey building vacated by the Mary Street, (now Kimberley), Public School, when it removed to its present building on the same site. Conditions were laid down that the board should erect a proper school building within two years. In September 1903, East Toronto High School came into being with an attendance of forty-two students and a staff of two teachers. It occupied at first, two rooms in the old school house; then as attendance grew, a small one in the new building also. The principal was a fine gentleman and scholar, Mr. F.W. French, B.A., who set a high standard of work and conduct. It was he who chose for the school the motto, “Victrix sapientia fortunae’ which he himself translates freely as, “ It is wisdom that wins success.” His first assistant, Mr. H.H. Smith, resigning within a few months to go to Jarvis C.I., was replaced by Mr. L.H. Graham, M.A. And so, with two fine men at the helm, the school was launched upon its career.

Although accommodation was what now would be considered primitive, and the atmosphere austere, the spirit of the school was good. Its growth in reputation and population was rapid. Students came from Scarborough, West Hill, Dunbarton and as far east as Pickering. When in 1905, the school board asked the town council for funds to build, the request was at once granted. A site on Malvern Avenue, (the south-west corner of which had been the premises of the East Toronto Lawn Tennis Club), was acquired, and on January 3, 1906, the new building of four rooms and an assembly hall on the third floor was ready for occupancy by a student body of 128 and a staff of four. Two women, Miss Edith Campbell, B.A., and Miss A.F. Wilkinson, were the additional teachers. When Miss Campbell resigned in June 1908 to go as a missionary to Japan, she was succeeded by Miss Lydia Barr, B.A., who remained a member of the staff until her retirement in 1930.

Late in 1908, East Toronto was amalgamated with the city and in January 1909, the school came under the control of the Toronto Board of Education as Malvern High School. In June 1909, Mr. French resigned the principalship and was succeeded by Mr. R.A. Gray from Jarvis C.I. Upon the latter’s appointment to the principalship of Oakwood Collegiate Institute, he was succeeded by another member of the Jarvis staff, Mr. Carl Lehmann, B.A., who reigned over the fortunes of Malvern until 1935.

Early commencement programmes reveal the interests and activities of the time. In addition to awards of scholarships to students who ranked high in their studies, (fees being paid in those days), prizes were given to winners of contests in elocution, oratory and essay writing. Trophies for athletic prowess were awarded to winners of the handball tournament and to champions of the annual field day held in October on the grounds of Glen Stewart, the property of Mr. A.E. Ames, on the south side of the Kingston Road east of Main Street. In 1912, and for several years after, there was a prize for the winners of bicycle races. There was one prize for girls’ athletics; it was awarded to the winner of an annual tennis tournament.

The formal social event of the year was a promenade in the assembly hall. How quaint and dull to the modern youth would seem that decorous procession around the room of couples conversing amiably to music! The last one was held in 1912; the next year, to celebrate the opening of a new wing, Mr. Lehmann treated the school to a combined promenade and dance. Favourite forms of diversion of the time were skating and sleighing parties. Later, paper chases and corn roasts became popular also.

By 1912, the school had a staff of six teachers who, by their high standards of professional conduct, devotion to duty and personal interest in their pupils, set an example to the younger teachers who came under their influence, and established for the student body traditions of honest work and play, and friendly co-operation. In the classroom and out of it, those teachers made the welfare of their students their first consideration.

Graduates of the first decade of the school’s life indulge in fond reminiscences of the fun and food fellowship enjoyed in a small school – a fellowship which included the teachers.

Mr. Lehmann, a gentleman of genial disposition and wide interests, had a fatherly feeling for his school. In 1911, he organized a luncheon club to provide tea and coffee at noon hour for students and teachers. Boys set the tables and even helped wash the dishes. In 1913, during the building of the south wing, Miss Barr organized a girls’ club. The Malvern Mädchen, (a name changed during the war to Maids of Malvern), the purpose of which was to make conditions more pleasant and comfortable for the girls. This club long persisted as one of the most vital societies of the school.

From 1903 to 1914, there was no physical training except simple setting-up exercises, and no organized games. But, when the students banded themselves together to make their own fun, the teachers aided and encouraged them. Mr. Lehmann and the other men teachers helped a scout troop, self-organized before the boy scout movement was officially introduced into Canada, to qualify for their badges. And great was the pride of the school when in 1911, Edward Redman, (with his brother Bill, founder of the troop), attaining second place among about two hundred competitors, went as one of the eight king scouts to represent Toronto at the coronation of George V.

The well-loved Dr. Lingwood served as honorary president of the Boys’ Athletic Society, and accompanied the boys to their practices and games at Kew Gardens and other places. A rugby team had been first organized in 1906 and during succeeding years, boys, clad in a motley assortment of uniforms of their own providing, played without benefit of coaches, picking up points of the game by watching matches at Varsity and elsewhere. They joined the secondary school league and, although generally beaten, played bravely through the scheduled games.

Mr. Graham, and later Mr. Wood, acted as presidents of a literary society, the first one functioning from 1903 to 1904, a second from 1910 to 1915. Under the auspices of the latter the magazine, The Tackler, was published, first multigraphed once a term, then in 1914 to 1915, its last year, printed once a month. From its profits was purchased the Tackler Cup, still [i.e. in 1953] awarded annually as the first prize in senior boys’ public speaking contests.

Within six years, the school had outgrown the 1906 building and in 1912 construction of a new wing was begun and finished late in 1913. It provided a gymnasium, up-to-date science rooms, bright classrooms and two staff rooms commanding a view of the ever-changing beauty of Lake Ontario. A room on the south side of the building became a cheerful library and in it Mr. Wood and later Mr. Horton, began to build up a collection of books. The additional space was however soon inadequate; the fifth form had no classroom and the girls’ drill was done in the corridors. Upon the completion of the south wing, Malvern High School became, in January 1914, Malvern Collegiate Institute.
 

Malvern and the Great War
1914 - 1918

Then came the Great War. Malvern graduates and students threw themselves into the struggle with characteristic spirit and vigour. Upwards of 122 of them and Mr. Wood enlisted. Within the school all other than classroom activities gave place to war work. Money was raised by various means; the girls knitted and took lessons in first-aid; the Maids of Malvern in 1919 adopted and for some years provided for a French war orphan, Roger Barrère. Of those in the services, twenty-five lost their lives. At the close of the struggle, the graduates, students and teachers raised a sum of $3,400 to erect in memory of the slain, the beautiful monument which now stands in front of the school. It was unveiled in a moving ceremony, May 19, 1922, by Mr. G.S. Henry, Premier of Ontario.
 

1918-1935

The end of the war ushered in for Malvern a great period of expansion and achievement. In September 1921, the regulation raising the legal school leaving age from fourteen to sixteen years was put into effect. Partly as a consequence and in spite of the loss in 1922 of out-of-town students to the newly opened Scarborough Collegiate Institute, Malvern students and teachers during the nineteen-twenties trebled in number. By 1930, the student registration was 937 and the staff comprised thirty-two teachers and a principal’s secretary.

To accommodate the increasing numbers, new building proceeded apace. By 1922, a north wing had been completed; by 1924 an assembly hall and a large gymnasium under it were ready for use. In September 1922 a cafeteria was opened. Between 1925 and 1929, a great west wing was added to the building; the cafeteria was enlarged and the art room (the old assembly hall) was extended and provided with a big north window.

At this time the ‘rotary system’ was introduced; that is, instead of the teachers changing classrooms between periods, the pupils all did so. Henceforth, the quiet of the corridors was broken every forty minutes by the trampling of many feet.

The twenties and early thirties were a period not only of physical growth but also of a great flowering of activities. As more young, enthusiastic and specially trained teachers were appointed to the staff, the literary society was revived in 1923; under its auspices a fine annual magazine The Muse was launched in 1924, a glee club was organized and a good orchestra founded in 1923. The orchestra in 1925 won second prize in the Broadview Fall Fair Orchestral Competition. Two athletic societies were active; the Maids of Malvern – affiliated from 1919 to 1936 with the Y.W.C.A. – flourished like a young bay tree. A radio club, a camera club – all sorts of clubs – were formed. And between 1919 and 1934 seven university scholarships were won.

Physical training, with the appointment to the staff in 1914 of two young teachers, Mr. L.H. Clarke and Miss Helen Dafoe, had already become a reality. Mr. Clarke had taken over the supervision of the Boys’ Athletic Society and Miss Dafoe had organized a Girls’ Athletic Society. The boys developed a fine gymnasium team and cadet corps. The girls’ wand, club and dumb-bell drills were varied by folk dancing. Tennis yielded in importance to basketball in which all girls engaged; interform games were played and interschool matches entered and won. In the twenties under those and later teachers, physical activities were still further extended.

The, all at once, after long and valiant effort, Malvern became a name in competitive sport. Coached by Mr. Edward (Ted) Reeve, ably assisted by different teachers, in 1923 and 1924, the junior rugby teams won city championships. In 1929, 1930 and 1931, the senior rugby team boasted a series of wins. The rowing crews, organized in 1922 and coached by Mr. Alex Blakeley, won for five years in succession the championships in high school fours at the Dominion Day regatta and the Canadian Henley. In 1926, the junior hockey team won the city high school championship. The boys had a rifle shooting club and later a badminton club. A field day was an annual event. As athletes, Malvernites had become famous.

In short, it might be said that, by the mid nineteen-twenties, Malvern had come of age. There are some who look back on that time as its golden age. The school was still not too large; the spirit was good; and staff and pupils worked together in friendship and harmony.

From its inception the school had always been fortunate in the interest taken in it by the community it served. Private citizens had helped promote its activities and encouraged them by donations of prizes and trophies. Among the names of such benefactors appearing on early commencement programmes are those of Messrs. N.B. Cobbledick, H.E. Redman, G.F. Jones, A. Shepard, J. Orr, J.W. Jackson, J. Wanless, T.N. Phelan, the Reverend W.L. Baynes-Reed, the Reverend P.M. Peacock and the Reverend Father G.A. Williams. Various chapters of the I.O.D.E. had also been generous in presenting prizes. But in April 1925, this community interest was given organized expression by the founding of the Malvern Home and School Club; and ever since then this association has served the school in every way possible. It has provided student banquets, assisted on other social occasions and presented the school with needed supplies. Most important, perhaps, of all its benefits has been the establishment of the Carl Lehmann Scholarship, presented annually to the student with the highest standing in pass matriculation (now junior school graduation). Donors of trophies of the present day include the families of Mr. H.V. Lush, of the late Dr. G.J. Steele (at one time chairman of the Toronto Board of Education) and Dr. J.S. Lapp, a graduate of Malvern during the first war. The interest of the people of the Malvern district in the school has been, and still is, one of the factors in its success.

In 1935 came the end of an era. Mr. Lehmann retired from the principalship (his vice-principal and head of the English department, Mr. Horton, had preceded him into retirement a year earlier) and was succeeded by Mr. W.E. Hanna, B.A., head of the history department of Oakwood Collegiate Institute.
 

1935-1953

Mr. Hanna held the principalship only until 1938 when he returned as principal to his former school. As his philosophy of education was not unlike that of Mr. Lehmann, under him Malvern pursued much the tenor of its former way. In 1937 a university scholarship was won and in 1936 the senior rugby team, coached by Mr. Jewell, won the high school championship, not only of the city, but also of the metropolitan area. Mr. Hanna was succeeded by Mr. L.H. Clarke, B.A., who, except for a few years spent at Jarvis Collegiate Institute as head of the mathematics department, had been from 1914, a member of the Malvern staff, and from 1934 vice-principal.

Mr. Clarke’s principalship from 1938 to 1947 coincided with changes in the curriculum and purpose of the school with a second great spurt in its growth, and with a world war. For these and other reasons it was a strenuous and disturbed period. In 1939 a large east wing, providing a girls’ gymnasium, a home economics room, a shop and classrooms, was opened. And in the same year a commercial department under the headship of Mr. M.H. Jewell, B.A., was added to the school. In 1941, under the leadership of Mr. Percy Douglas, M.A., a guidance department was formally inaugurated. In September 1942, a public health service with a nurse in daily attendance was set up.

Meanwhile, the school population grew by leaps and bounds, reaching in the year 1939 to 1940 a peak of 1490 students. Many new teachers were appointed and by 1946 the staff had increased to a high of fifty-two teachers and three secretaries. The classrooms in the new wing still fell short of what were needed and for a few years three rooms in Adam Beck Public School were borrowed for Malvern commercial classes.

During this second period of growth, an experiment in the abolition of examinations was made, but after some years discontinued. A wider choice of subjects was offered to the students and more time given to physical training. Under Miss Nichol and Miss Sexton, the physical education of the girls had already been broadened. Music was also given more importance as a subject of study and under Mr. R.W. Wood, teacher of music, fine choirs were developed. Extra-curricular activities again multiplied and athletic triumphs abounded. In the year 1945 to 1946, there were fifteen student organizations. The literary society, under Mr. J.H. Yocom, M.A., Ph.D., and other teachers, produced a brilliant succession of ‘big shows’ to which the choir, the orchestra and the physical training department contributed. The senior rugby team, coached by Mr. Jewell and other teachers, in 1938 and 1939 and again in 1945, won the high school city championships. In 1942, the junior rugby team won the city championship. According to the 1942 issue of The Muse, Malvern could at that time boast of ‘more social activities than any other collegiate institute in the city, perhaps in Ontario.’ Malvernites acted in plays, produced magazines, played games, skied, danced, and pursued a variety of interests. Some of them even worked. Between 1938 and 1947, Malvern students won ten university scholarships.

From 1939 to 1945, Malvern also helped fight a war. Over eleven hundred graduates and students, (some of them women), joined the colours; and thirteen teachers enlisted, some to go on active service, others to fill staff positions. The school raised money to send boxes at Christmas time to those overseas and to present a jeep and a mobile canteen to the services. Students bought war saving stamps and bonds. When peace came at last, the school had raised a sum of $4000 to provide a memorial of more than a hundred fallen. An electric organ was installed in the assembly hall and a beautiful Book of Remembrance was inscribed and illuminated by Miss Doris McCarthy and bound in hand-tooled red morocco by Mrs. Madeleine Glenn Bennett, both artists and graduates of Malvern. The book is kept always on display under glass in an oaken stand in the front hall of the school. The organ and the book were dedicated and presented to the board of education in a beautiful service on November 11, 1948.

When in 1947, Mr. Clarke was transferred to Jarvis Collegiate Institute, Mr. M.H. Jewell, B.A., who had for a year been vice-principal, was promoted to the principalship. Although during Mr. Jewell’s regime changes were being made in the secondary school curriculum, and Malvern was chosen to help with experiments in the grade 9 course of study, he succeeded on the whole to a quieter period in the school’s history. Perhaps it was a quiet of exhaustion. The student population had already begun to decline and by 1952, it had shrunk to approximately the 1930 figures of about nine hundred students. The staff numbered forty-two teachers and three secretaries. A Students’ Council, established in 1945, gradually superseded all clubs except the Interschool Christian Fellowship and the Boys’ and Girls’ Athletic Associations. Because of rising costs, there was no issue of The Muse after 1946 [until 1954].

School achievements were however, not lacking. Between 1947 and 1952, those included the winning of three university scholarships, a hockey championship in 1948, a junior basketball championship in 1950 and tennis championships in 1949 and 1950. Also the music and girls’ physical training departments were making the name of Malvern nationally, even internationally known. In 1949, the choir was chosen to send a typically Canadian school programme by transatlantic radio to France, and in 1952, they were featured on a CBC broadcast of Christmas carols across Canada. In the summer of 1952 a precision squad drill by Malvern girls was one of the greatest attractions of the grandstand show of the Canadian National Exhibition.

In June 1952, Mr. Jewell was made principal of Jarvis Collegiate Institute and was succeeded at Malvern by the vice-principal, Mr. J.L. Kerr, M.A., B. Paed.

June 1953 saw completed notable changes in the Malvern staff. The retirement within two years of Miss McGregor, Miss Ingham, Mr. Hisey and Miss Muirhead removed from it the last of that generation of teachers appointed within five years of the close of the first great war. But Mr. Kerr, who joined the Malvern Staff in 1929, is acquainted with the best traditions of the school and can preserve their continuity. He has the school’s good at heart and his watchword will be ‘Upward, Malvern!’ He will have a handsome new wing and a renovated interior of the building to put into service. But it is to be hoped that he will have time to look about him before Malvern, as it enters the second half century of its life, surges in a third period of growth.
 

A General Retrospect

In the history of a school fifty years is not a long time. But the first half-century of Malvern’s existence has been one of such radical changes in the ideas of men and in the mode and conditions of their lives that there is a greater gulf fixed between the intimate and simply-administered school of the early days and the relatively impersonal and complex organization that is Malvern today than there would otherwise have been. During its lifetime, two world wars have accelerated revolutionary spiritual, economic, material and social developments – some of them more abrupt in a growing city and country. These changes have had their effect upon the theory and practice of education. The raising in 1921 of the legal school-leaving age from fourteen to sixteen years and the demands of industry, business and other institutions for a higher level of education in those wishing to enter them, have not only swelled the population of the schools, but have kept in them up to the senior grades, a type of pupil who in 1903, would never have aspired to university matriculation or its equivalent.

Two consequences have been that Malvern, like other city schools, has become a big institution engaged in mass education and that it has ceased to be, since 1938, a purely academic school. The earlier unity of spirit and purpose has been perforce lost. It is no longer possible for a student to know more than a small group of his fellows and many of the teachers are to him only adult faces seen in the corridors. A guidance department has been found necessary to attempt to give pupils the personal attention which in former years was given them by those who year after year taught them in the classroom, supervised their extra-curricular activities and chaperoned their small parties.

In accordance with the demands of the times and the requirements of students of other than intellectual aptitudes, practical subjects such as home economics, manual training and business courses have been added to the curriculum. Music has been introduced as a subject of study leading towards matriculation. Perhaps among the most striking of all the developments in the school programme has been the steady expansion of health and physical education. The swimming pool and gymnasium of the 1953 wing present some evidence of that. This multiplication and expansion of subjects has crowded the school day and forced the pace and the increased tension is aggravated by a short noon hour and a lack of a recess period.

So the Malvern of 1953 is in many respects a very different institution from the Malvern of 1913 or even of 1923. Some qualities, however, persist – at least to a degree. Every school has its individual characteristics, determined partly by the type of community from which the pupils come, partly by traditions established by students and teachers in the initial period of its existence. Malvern has always been noted for its friendly spirit; and if of late years, friendliness has sometimes been confused with lack of ceremony and a show of respect, that is a common mistake of the times.

The typical Malvern student has never been one concerned exclusively with intellectual development. He has been, for the most part, a carefree person of many interests and with a preference for an all-round life. Yet the school has reason to be proud of the achievements of its graduates. Not a few have distinguished themselves as scholars at the university; and many have attained high places in business, in the professions and in the arts. Some of them are distinguished members of the staffs of universities in Canada and in the United States. And in the person of Thomas Harpur, at present studying at Oriel College, Oxford, Malvern can boast of one Rhodes scholar. Of the service of Malvernites to their country, little need be said.

Besides its joys and triumphs, a school, like a family, has its sorrows and bereavements. During the course of its existence, Malvern has mourned not only students lost in war and from other causes, but also three teachers who died while in service. In 1924, Mr. L. H. Graham, vice-principal, head of the science department and one of the two first members of the staff, died as a result of having been struck down on Hannaford Avenue by a motor car. In 1931, Mr. W. H. Rogers, head of the mathematics department, died of illness. And in 1946, Mr. Kenneth Bailey, head of the history department, died while undergoing an operation. The death of these valued teachers was a great cause of grief to the school.