St. Paul Catholic School
St. Paul Catholic School has been in operation on its present site since 1959. As with St. Paul's Church, our school has a glorious history. The school began in 1842 when two classes, separated by a screen, were opened in St. Paul's Church. In 1853 a wooden building was erected on the site of the present St. Paul's Church. In its earliest days it was administered by the De La Salle Brothers and the Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1881 a new school was built on Queen Street.
St. Paul's Parish is the oldest Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Toronto. The parish was established in 1822.
St. Paul's School is synonymous with the concept of Catholic education. We have been in existence for 158 years and our mandate is to live Christ's message through the activities of everyone involved in our community.
Our patron saint, Saint Paul, urges us to carry out our responsibilities with the same zeal and determination that he displayed after his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
How We Meet the Diverse Needs of Our Students
Our mission is to ensure that all our students are valued equally and their unique strengths and needs are recognized and met.
We meet the diverse needs of our students in a myriad of ways:
Breakfast club
Safe arrival program
Ongoing peace education strategies
Clearly articulated behaviour code
Access to special education programs
Access to enrichment/gifted programs
Access to technology
Access to instrumental music program (steel drum band)
Access to computer literacy programs
Access to French as a Second Language--beginning in grade 1
English as a second language instruction
Yearly overnight excursion for our grade 8 class
Enriched and varied extra curricular activities
Head start program or pre-school literacy program for pre-junior kindergarten students started in January 1996. This is a pioneer program and will utilize the services of a retired teacher and our family resource drop-in centre
History of Corktown
Corktown is an historic Old Town neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. It is just south of Regent Park and north of the Gardiner Expressway, between Berkeley Street to the west and the Don River to the east. The southern part of this area borders, but is not part of, the Distillery District and contains many vacated industrial buildings, some in use by production and movie studios. The West Don lands, slated to be redeveloped over the next few years, will encompass the south-east corner of this area. The neighbourhood's name derives from its origins in the early 1800s as an Irish ethnic enclave, particularly for Irish emigrants from County Cork, though some say the presence of a distilleries, breweries and cork-stopper manufacturers in the vicinity may have secured the nickname. In the early 19th century, most Corktown residents found employment at one of the local breweries or brickyards. The first Catholic parish in Toronto, St. Paul's Basilica is found in Corktown. Protestants could not afford the lofty pew rents at nearby St. James Cathedral (Anglican) and this led to the building of their own "Little Trinity Church" in 1843. Little Trinity Church is at 417 King Street East. Today children and adults are still educated in the Trinity Schoolhouse, which is now run as a museum designed to replicate a mid-nineteenth century classroom.
Some of the original workers’ cottages can still be seen in the area, as well as old Corktown’s pretty Italianate church, St. Paul's Basilica
In the early 1960s, a significant amount of Corktown was demolished to make way for several elevated roadways, including the Richmond Street off-ramp from the Don Valley Parkway and the re-routed Eastern Avenue overpass. Among the most significant buildings destroyed was the House of Providence (1857-1962), an institution run by the Sisters of St. Joseph to care for orphans and the eldery poor.
Currently in the early stages of the same sort of re gentrification that revitalized present-day Cabbagetown, examples of late 19th century, intimate, quirky British-style row housing can still be seen lining Corktown side streets such as Bright Street, Trinity Street, Wilkins Avenue, Ashby Place and Gilead Place. Little Trinity Church just east of King and Parliament is Toronto's oldest surviving church building, its cornerstone laid on July 20, 1843. Corktown was also the site of the first Roman Catholic Church in Toronto: St. Paul's was originally built in 1822. The current St. Paul's (at Queen St. East and Power Street) dates from 1887.
St. Paul's Catholic School is the oldest Catholic elementary school in the city, founded in 1842. Beneath its schoolyard and adjacent to St. Paul's Basilica is an unmarked graveyard of Irish victims of the Great Famine.
Children in Corktown c. 1900, National Archives of Canada C4244
