Bloor Collegiate Institute


Bloor Collegiate Institute is a public secondary school located at the intersection of Bloor Street and Dufferin Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school is located in the Dufferin Grove neighbourhood and part of the Toronto Board of Education that was merged into the Toronto District School Board. Attached to the school is Alpha II Alternative School.
In September 2021, the school will be relocated into the refurbished building in the former Brockton High School. The school building located in 7.6 acres is now transferred to the Toronto Lands Corporation, a TDSB-managed realtor arm.

History

The school was founded in 1920 as Davenport High School located in five classrooms on the top floor of the Jesse Ketchum Public School to form the first student body that became Bloor High School. It later became Bloor Collegiate Institute in October 1925, and the original building opened in 1927 had 15 standard classrooms, one lecture room, physics and science rooms.
In the 1970s, the school fielded sports teams in football, soccer, hockey, basketball, cricket, volleyball, rugby, cross-country running, track and field, and archery. Today, sports like Ultimate Frisbee, badminton have also been added to the roster. Teams compete in the "junior" level, and the "senior" level. There are intramural and extramural competitions.
In 2011, the school won more gold medals at the Toronto Sci-Tech Fair than any other school, and went on to send two students onto the national science fair. Both of these students were from the TOPS Program.
The school was named as the TDSB secondary school showing the greatest rate of improvement in the 2011–2012 Fraser Institute Report. The school is now ranked at 16th place out of the 627 secondary schools in the province. Over the previous five years, the school had ranked at approximately 78th place. The improvement is credited in part to substantial improvements on the EQAO Mathematics Assessment, which is written by grade 9 students. "That is a tremendous result for a school of modest-means families, where ESL is a strong component and special needs as well," states Peter Cowley from the Fraser Institute.
In May 2020, just a couple of months after COVID-19 was declared to be a pandemic in Toronto, the field behind the school was renamed Bloordale Meadow. This made the space more welcoming. As a meadow, this public space became slightly more popular with the local community.

Relocation to Brockton

In October 2009, the Toronto District School Board passed the redevelopment plan on Bloor/Dufferin. As a result, two schools were closed after the ARC review: Kent Senior Public School and West Toronto Collegiate Institute.
The Toronto District School Board will receive capital funding from the provincial government for the school's renovations. Meanwhile, the Toronto Lands Corporation, a realtor arm of the school board, declared 7.6 acres of the Bloor and Kent properties surplus and is placed up for sale.
Offers have been made by the Toronto Catholic District School Board to acquire a portion of the property in concert with the City of Toronto.
The province has committed to contributing $20 million toward the development of a new school and community hub on surplus TDSB land at the south-west corner of Bloor and Dufferin streets. The province has proposed a 30,000-square-foot community hub for the area, which will include licensed child care spaces. A replacement high school will also be built on the site of Brockton High School, which has been closed for a number of years before it was demolished in 2019. The proposed space will be the new home for the Bloor Collegiate Institute and Alpha II Senior Alternative School. It will accommodate approximately 900 students. There is no date set yet for the start of construction. For the time being, the space is functioning as a beach. Bloordale Beach has actual sand and, as it was created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it is a site much praised for offering a great deal of space for social distancing.

School culture

In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the student body was predominantly composed of immigrants and first-generation Canadians of immigrants of mostly European origin. Currently, 70% of students speak a language other than English at home. Bloor students come from the neighbouring community as well as from communities across the city for the TOPS on Bloor Program.
The school motto is "Quod Incepimus Conficiemus", meaning "What We Have Begun, We Shall Finish" in Latin..

Student achievements

The School includes many sport teams.
The school provides students with academic and special interest club opportunities.
Bloor CI offers many Advanced Placement courses.
A further description of this program can be found on the AP Canada website.

TOPS on Bloor Program

Bloor Collegiate Institute houses the TOPS on Bloor program. The program was established in September 2009 after the board decided to expand the program at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute. However, the programs at both schools are fully independent from each other. In order to apply to this specialized program, grade 8 students must pass an entrance exam covering math, science and writing skills. A student profile and a final grade 7 report card are also part of the application package. There is also a fee, which pays for all core field trips and classroom materials beyond the Ontario curriculum, allowing for additional enrichment. TOPS students have gone on to National Science Fairs, International Business competitions, and others, thus familiarizing Bloor CI's name on the international stage. A Bloor TOPS student placed third at the 2012 International DECA competition in Salt Lake City as part of the Ontario DECA Team.

Subjects required for TOPS on Bloor

Notable alumni