Senator O'Connor College School


Senator O'Connor College School, previously known as John J. Lynch High School until 1967 is a Separate high school in the Parkwoods neighbourhood in the North York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada serving grades 9 to 12 in the communities of Wexford, Maryvale, Don Mills, and Dorset Park.
The school was named after Senator Frank O'Connor, founder of the Laura Secord chocolate company. The school is part of the Toronto Catholic District School Board and was originally founded as John J. Lynch High School in 1963, named after the first archbishop of Toronto from 1870 to 1888, John Joseph Lynch. It had 1,414 students as of 2018, and was ranked 266 of 738 secondary schools in the 2017-18 Fraser Institute School Report Card.
WWW senatoroconnor.tcdsb.org

History

The story

Frank Patrick O'Connor was a Canadian politician, businessman, philanthropist. He was the founder of Laura Secord Chocolates and Fanny Farmer, and the namesake behind O'Connor Drive in Toronto. He is the son of Mary Eleanor McKeown and Patrick O'Connor, O'Connor quit school at the age of 14 and started working at Canadian General Electric in Peterborough. He married Mary Ellen Hayes and moved with her to Toronto in 1912. He opened the Laura Secord Candy Store on Yonge Street in 1913 as he expanded the store across Canada and into the United States where it was known as Fanny Farmer Candy Stores.
As a Roman Catholic, he gave $500,000 in the 1930s to the Archdiocese of Toronto under the trusteeship of Cardinal James Charles McGuigan. O'Connor was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1935 by Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. He represented the senatorial division of Scarborough Junction, Ontario until his death in 1939. O'Connor survived his wife, who died in 1931, and died at this estate at age 54.

The school history

Prior to the founding of Senator O'Connor College School, several high schools were established around that area after the openings of Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Don Mills Collegiate Institute and nearby Victoria Park Collegiate Institute. In the meantime, several catholic separate schools within the Metropolitan Separate School Board were opened such as Precious Blood Separate School in 1953 and Annunciation Separate School in 1965.
Senator O'Connor College School was founded by the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Daughters of Wisdom in 1963 as John J. Lynch High School, becoming the first co-educational Catholic school in the Toronto archdiocese. In 1965, the second school building designed in an hexagon by Fisher Tedman Architects was erected, given the name Senator O’Connor College School with Brother Denis F.S.C. as its inaugurating principal. Starting in the 1967–68 school year, the "Senator O'Connor" name became the name for the whole school combining the Lynch and O'Connor buildings while the ninth and tenth grades were placed by the MSSB while grades 11–13 continued to be taught by their religious orders. The high school was built on land given to them by Senator Frank Patrick O'Connor, a Catholic philanthropist and founder of Laura Secord Chocolates, a Canadian chocolatier and ice cream company.
Senator O'Connor's House and Garage, and another building, belonging to the Christian Brothers, still exist on campus, and the Christian Brothers still lived there as a Provincial Office up until 2002.
In the 1970s, the Christian Brothers were an active part of school life, teaching classes, holding positions in the school administration and assisting with cafeteria monitoring. The administration of the school was turned over to lay teachers in 1973.
The school used to be split up into three main structures: the main O'Connor building, the JJ Lynch building, and a later addition of a complex of portables under one roof called the "Taj" or the "Taj Mahal". There was also another area with over a half dozen portables. There used to be an indoor swimming pool connected to the house, but it was torn down sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s. The Christian Brothers' house was located in the center of the campus, and so students would pass right in front of it or around it on all sides daily.
In 1984, when the Province of Ontario decided that Catholic secondary schools were to be fully funded, the school became publicly funded by 1987, and Senator O'Connor ceased being a private school. The school is fully operated by the MSSB. The last of the Christian Brothers staff to teach at O'Connor retired at the end of June 1990.
Originally the main high school was built to hold 732 students and by the 1990s the student population almost doubled that figure. Additions to the school such as the "Taj" were made over the course of the school's history. By 1995, talks of building a new school on the property began. That project was protested by local residents until its approval sometime in the early 2000s. In 2002, the Toronto Catholic District School Board acquired the O'Connor House from the Christian Brothers. The old Lynch, O'Connor and Taj Mahal buildings were demolished and a large new modern two-storey 1020-pupil high school which opened in September 2005 is now in place.

Notable alumni