Everywhere we turn in Canadian local politics – from policing to transit, education to public health, planning to utilities – we encounter a peculiar institutional animal: the special purpose body. These “ABCs” of local government – library boards, school boards, transit authorities, and many others – provide vital public services, spend large sums of public money, and raise important questions about local democratic accountability. In Fields of Authority, Jack Lucas provides the first systematic exploration of local special purpose bodies in Ontario. Drawing on extensive research in local and provincial archives, Lucas uses a “policy fields” approach to explain how these local bodies in Ontario have developed from the nineteenth century to the present. A lively and accessible study, Fields of Authority will appeal to readers interested in Canadian political history, urban politics, and urban public policy.

Nineteenth-century educational reformers were fond of an agricultural metaphor when it came to the provision of more and better schooling: even good land, they argued, had to be cultiated; othersie noxious weeds sprang up. In this study of education in Ontario from the establishment of Upper Canada to the end of Egerton Ryerson's career as chief superintendent of schools in 1876, Susan Houston and Alison Prentice explore the roots of the provincial public school system, set up to instill a work ethic and moral discipline appropriate to the new society, as well as the beginnings of separate schools. today the Ontario school system is once again the subject of intense and often bitter deabte. Many of the most contentious issues have deep and complex roots that go back to this era. Houston and Prentice tell the story of how Ontario came to have a universal school system of exceptional quality and shed valuable light on an area of current concern.

Paul Axelrod and John Reid take the reader through one hundred years of the complex and turbulent history of youth, university, and society. Contributors explore the question of how students have been affected by war and social change and discuss who was

Half of Toronto’s population is born outside of Canada and over 140 languages are spoken on the city's streets and in its homes. How to build community amidst such diversity is one of the global challenges that Canada – and many other western nations – has to face head on. Making a Global City critically examines the themes of diversity and community in a single primary school, the Clinton Street Public School in Toronto, between 1920 and 1990. From the swift and seismic shift from a Jewish to southern European demographic in the 1950s to the gradual globalized community starting in the 1970s, Vipond eloquently and clearly highlights the challenges posed by multicultural citizenship in a city that was dominated by Anglo-Protestants. Contrary to recent well-documented anti-immigrant rhetoric in the media, Making a Global City celebrates one of the world’s most multicultural cities while stressing the fact that public schools are a vital tool in integrating and accepting immigrants and children in liberal democracies.

This long-awaited reader explores the history of Canadian people with disabilities from Confederation to current day. This edited collection focuses on Canadians with mental, physical, and cognitive disabilities, and discusses their lives, work, and influence on public policy. Organized by time period, the 23 chapters in this collection are authored by a diverse group of scholars who discuss the untold histories of Canadians with disabilities―Canadians who influenced science and technology, law, education, healthcare, and social justice. Selected chapters discuss disabilities among Indigenous women; the importance of community inclusion; the ubiquity of stairs in the Montreal metro; and the ethics of disability research. This volume is a terrific resource for students and anyone interested in disability studies, history, sociology, social work, geography, and education. Untold Stories: A Canadian Disability History Reader offers an exceptional presentation of influential people with various disabilities who brought about social change and helped to make Canada more accessible.

This work examines how Albertans have interpreted themselves and their world through history and social studies curricula and texts from 1905 to 1980, and shows that these courses, more than others, addressed issues of identity by creating the country and region's past.

Over the course of the twentieth century, North American public school curricula moved away from the classics and the humanities, and towards 'progressive' subjects such as health and social studies. This book delves into how progressivist thinking transformed the rhetoric and the structure of schooling during the first half of the twentieth century, with echoes that reverberate strongly today, and investigates historical meanings of progressive education. Theodore Michael Christou closely examines the case of interwar Ontario, where the entire landscape of public education, including curricula and avenues to post-secondary study, were radically transformed over just twenty years. Christou contextualizes this reformist thinking in light of a social, political, and economic climate of change, which seemed to demand schools that could actively relate learning to the real world. Through its examination of educational journals published throughout the interwar period and previously unexplored archival sources, this book illuminates how the present structure of curricula and schooling were achieved.