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This exhibition explores an important legacy of modernism in Toronto: the roughly 300 school buildings constructed in Metropolitan Toronto in the three decades after the Second World War.

Public schools are engines of social cohesion, and such places have been a mirror on the culture of Toronto in the 20th century. At the beginning of the public education system early in the century, school buildings embodied progressive ideals of education and assimilation. They were also some of the most thoughtfully designed and carefully constructed buildings in the city, designed by local architects whose ideas were influential across the country.

In the postwar years, when all of Canada was reshaped by the Baby Boom, schools only increased their social significance in Toronto – and here, a succession of innovations in pedagogy were joined to new architectural ideas, together capturing the ascendant energy of the welfare state and an increasingly metropolitan country.