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Upper Canada College

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Drawing of former UCC campus at King and Simcoe Streets in downtown Toronto

Upper Canada College (UCC) is an all-male elementary and secondary school in Toronto, Ontario. It is widely considered to be the leading private school in Canada, having educated many of the country's sons of the elite and wealthy.

It is the oldest private school in Canada, having been founded in 1829 by then-Lieutenant Governor Sir John Colborne (later Lord Seaton). Teaching at the College began in 1830. It moved to its current site, at Avenue Road and Lonsdale Road in Forest Hill, in 1891. (Its exact address is 200 Lonsdale Road.)

All of UCC's 1,000 day students and 110 boarders complete the International Baccalaureate diploma programme during grades 11 and 12. The International Baccalaureate is widely considered to be the world's premier high school diploma.

The school is Canada's wealthiest independent school, having a Canadian endowment of $38 million, which it has devoted to physical expansion, financial aid, scholarships, and advanced computer and laboratory equipment. The school has five gyms, a hockey rink, swimming pool, an advanced Learning Centre (to study the way boys learn and to help students with their studies), 10 tennis courts, 12 sports fields, an extensive library collection (100,000+ editions), a new sports activity bubble, as well as numerous support groups for the boys who attend. The school also maintains their own archives which are widely considered to be one of the most extensive educational archives in Canada.

The school provides in excess of $1.9 million dollars in annual financial aid to students from all over Canada and the world. In the words of current UCC Principal Dr. James P. Power, "[it is my hope] that one day the cab driver's son may work side-by-side with the brain surgeon's son...my goal is to ensure that finances are not a consideration for a boy wishing to attend Upper Canada College." Consequently, UCC has announced its commitment to doubling their scholarship endowment from $12.5 million dollars to $25 million in the coming decade.

UCC maintains separate foundations in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Hong Kong, each of which maintains a separate endowment.

UCC has a rich collection of art work, war medals and real estate. The school houses an extremely large collection of original paintings from the Group of Seven. Moreover, UCC is the owner of the world's first Victoria Cross awarded in 1854 to Old Boy, Alexander Roberts Dunn. Among the real estate holdings of the College is Canada's oldest "outdoor" school located in the town of Norval, 50 kilometres north of Toronto. The Norval Campus, as it is known, stretches more than 181 hectares along the Credit River. UCC has not released the value of the land, however with the boom in residential development in the area, many speculate the value to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, UCC's real estate portfolio includes various other sites in the Greater Toronto Area.

UCC has begun plans to launch a $90+ million building and renovation campaign to be completed within the next decade.

Alumni

Many notable Canadian men are graduates of the school. UCC's alumni are usually known simply as "Old Boys" (as is common with most all-male private schools). They include:

Literature

Business

Politics and current affairs

The Arts, Film, Theatre & Media


Current Events

UCC's sister school, the Bishop Strachan School, is located three blocks away from UCC. Lower Canada College, a coeducational private school in Montreal, Quebec, is not affiliated with UCC.

In May of 2004, UCC raised $1.8 million dollars in an exclusive black-tie gala at the College. The proceeds of the gala will be part of the College's capital building campaign.

UCC is currently embroiled in a class action lawsuit brought by eighteen students who are suing the school over alleged sexual abuse by Doug Brown, a member of the faculty who taught at UCC from 1975 until 1993.

In October of 2004, Doug Brown was found guilty of 9 counts of indecent assault, while a housemaster at UCC. The College has settled the class-action lawsuit outside of court. In a recent media release, UCC has announced that they: "continue to offer our support to those who were victims of abuse at the College, and we are committed to a fair process for determining the school's responsibility to compensate those who were victimized by Doug Brown."

In the face of growing negative media-attention versus UCC, the Toronto Police has released the following statement:“UCC has been very open and supportive of our efforts. They have been a model for how an institution should deal with allegations such as these from its past.”

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