To mark Toronto's 175th birthday, the Saturday Star is presenting turning points in the city's history that have helped make it what it is today.

Toronto owes much to Egerton Ryerson, who envisioned a public school system where children of all backgrounds would learn side by side. More than 160 years after the passing of the first Schools Act, his dream is realized in every classroom in the city.





He would go on to become the father of public education, but as a youth, Egerton Ryerson was always getting into trouble.

His first act of defiance was in his teens, when he decided against his Anglican father's wishes to pursue his mother's Methodist faith. Shocked, his father gave him an ultimatum: forgo his faith or leave home. Determined, but defiant, Ryerson left home.

It was his second act of defiance, a few years later, that would initiate Ryerson's quest for a more equitable society. In an effort to defend Methodism, Ryerson, by then a devout minister, took on John Strachan, one of the most influential men in Upper Canada in the 1820s.

Strachan, a leading Anglican cleric, was determined to maintain his church's elitist power and control over the business, financial and educational affairs of Upper Canada. When Strachan delivered what was later dubbed the "obnoxious sermon" at a funeral in 1825, he was trying to undermine the growing popularity of the Methodists, whom he called "ignorant American enthusiasts, unsound in religion and disloyal in politics."

Offended at being called a traitor, Ryerson, just 22, wrote a stinging rebuttal. A bold move by a man so young, it made him a spokesperson for a powerless community.

Ryerson noticed how the Anglicans could afford the best schools and seminaries to produce leaders, the kind of grooming he felt was a "danger" to society. He believed education should be "the surest means to the way a better, more equal, society could be built."

"He always was aware of the fact he was in a minority living in this British Anglican culture," said Anthony Di Mascio, a history professor at the University of Ottawa who recently completed a thesis on the origins of schooling in Ontario.

"He saw this idea of schooling Methodist children alongside Anglicans' children as a form of security against the potential of religio-social segregation," Di Mascio said.

Ryerson was given a chance in 1844, when he was appointed superintendent of education for Upper Canada.

Two years later, the first Schools Act was passed, a law that formalized and standardized public education – setting the stage for publishing local textbooks, formal teacher training and compulsory taxation to ensure that all children, regardless of faith or social status, would be educated.

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Over his 30-year tenure, Ryerson would contribute immensely to the city by creating standards, opening libraries, allocating funds, and opening the first Normal School (teachers' college) on the site of the university now named for him.

Ryerson predicted what kind of city Toronto would become – one where despite differences of colour, faith, and status, schools have remained an equalizer.

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