High Park Forest School
High Park Forest School, located just inside the main entrance of High Park from Bloor Street West in Toronto, Canada, was first created around the beginning of the 1900s. It was initially a place for children with tuberculosis but through the years it became a summer school for underprivileged and/or undernourished children.
Poor and/or undernourished children from Toronto's public schools attended the school from May 1st to October 31st to augment their education and also get good nutritious foods and exercise to help them become healthy.
Children attended the school Monday through Saturday (half days on Saturdays). On Saturdays, if the weather was good the children were all bussed to Sunnyside Swimming Pool where they were entitled to free admission and free swimming (no classes).
Mondays through Fridays children would attend at outdoor classrooms and in the mornings they were brought snacks of whole wheat bread and butter and hot chocolate in the cooler months and milk in the warmer months. At lunch time, the children would line up and go into the main building, entering through the main right hand door in the picture where whey were seated according to age. They were served a hot nutritious meal, milk and a cod liver oil pill every day.
After lunch, the children would line up once again inside the building, pick up their bed rolls which consisted of a pillow, a sheet and an army-type blanket. There were cots set up near each classroom and the children would take their bedrolls to the cots for an afternoon nap of 2 hours.
When they awoke from their naps, they returned their bedrolls to the room inside where they were stored, then lined up to wash hands and faces and brush their teeth.
This was followed by an hour of playtime.....baseball, dodge ball and many other sporting activities.
After play time, the children returned to their classrooms for more education and then were served the whole wheat bread and hot chocolate or milk again.
When 4 o'clock came...the teachers would escort each child up to Bloor Street and made sure each child got on the street cars for their journey home.
The objective was to provide underprivileged and/or undernourished children who ordinarily would have spent their summer days on the streets of Toronto a place to go for good food, good activities, good health and education. All the things the Toronto Board of Education felt poor and/or undernourished children would miss out on without this program.
High Park Forest School ceased existence as a school for poor and/or undernourished children in the early 1960s. The original main building, however, still exists.
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Coordinates: 43°39′04″N 79°27′49″W / 43.6512°N 79.4635°W