Victoria Park Collegiate Institute (commonly known as Victoria Park C.I., Victoria Park, Vic Park, VP, and VPCI); formerly Victoria Park Secondary School, is a

collegiate institute A collegiate institute is an institution that provides either secondary or post-secondary education, dependent on where the term is used. In Canada, the term is used to describe an institutions that provide secondary education, while the word is us ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada. It is located south of

York Mills Road York Mills Road is an east-west route in Toronto, Ontario, Canada named for the historic village of York Mills that was located on the hill immediately north of today's intersection of York Mills Road and Yonge Street. The village of York Mills i ...

and west of Victoria Park Ave. in the district of

North York North York is one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of York, Old Toronto and East York, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2016 Census, it had a popu ...

. It is the first publicly funded school in Ontario to host the

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) is a two-year educational programme primarily aimed at 16-to-19-year-olds in 140 countries around the world. The programme provides an internationally accepted qualification for entry into ...

. Authorized to offer the IB Diploma Programme since July 1987, the programme is taught in English. The school is open to male and female students. Some feeder schools include Milne Valley Middle School and Donview Middle School. The student population of Victoria Park Collegiate Institute is diverse, with a component of English as Second Language students (over 30%).

History

Victoria Park Collegiate Institute was officially opened to students in 1960. Approximately two decades after its founding, Victoria Park C.I. became the first public school within

to offer the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB Dip ...

Program. In the late 2000s, a fitness center was opened which goes by the name of "Brian Maxwell Fitness Centre". This was to dedicate Brian Maxwell and his contributions to this school, as well as his passing in 2004. Throughout 2016-2018, many renovations had occurred in the school with new additions such as a new and improved resource room, a remodeled gym, an improved track field, revamped parking lots, a cell phone charging station, and repainted walls/doors.

Academical achievements

Provincial assessment

For the year 2010/2011, *Grade 9

EQAO The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is a Crown agency of the Government of Ontario in Canada. It was legislated into creation in 1996 in response to recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Learning in February 1995. EQ ...

Mathematics assessment: 89% of all students were at or above the provincial standard (level 3 and above), compared with 81% for the

Toronto District School Board The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), formerly known as English-language Public District School Board No. 12 prior to 1999, is the English-language public-secular school board for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The minority public-secular franco ...

. *Grade 10

Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT; french: test provincial de compétences linguistiques or TPCL) is a compulsory standardized test for secondary school students in Ontario who wish to obtain the Ontario Secondary School Diploma. ...

: 86% of first-time eligible students who participated fully successfully passed the assessment, compared with 81% for the

International Baccalaureate program

Victoria Park C.I. was the first public school in Ontario to offer the

Diploma Program, beginning in 1987. Grade nine and ten students are admitted into a pre-IB program at Victoria Park where they are given the opportunity to gauge the IB curriculum. Individuals who wish to apply for the pre-IB program must complete a math test and then write a student application essay of 400-500 words. Afterwards, the applicant must attend an interview with the IB Coordinator in order to complete the application process. IB graduates from Victoria Park C.I. consistently score in the top 10% worldwide, with many individuals in the top 5%. In the graduating class of 2013, 16 students out of 94 achieved a total score of 40 points or above, including one student who scored 44 points.

Sports, teams, and clubs

Sports offered at Victoria Park C.I. include: *Curling *Baseball :* The Varsity Boys' Baseball offered again in the 2006-2007 school year *Volleyball *Soccer *Archery :* The archery team was started in 2002 and has won a medal every year since 2003. * Girls' Field Hockey *Tennis *Ultimate Frisbee *Badminton *Rugby :* Resumed in the fall of 2010 after a 15-year hiatus *Ice Hockey *Aquatics *Basketball *Track and Field *Water Polo :* The Varsity Girls' Water Polo team was the TDSB North Region champion in 2015 and 2016 Competitive clubs include: *Chess :*The Senior chess team placed first at the city championships and 2nd overall at the provincial championships in 2009-2010. :*In 2018, the Senior chess team took first place again in the Toronto Secondary School Chess League (TSSCL) Team Championships. The junior team tied for first, but placed second on tiebreak. *Robotics :*The robotics club has mainly two subdivisions, one for

VEX Robotics Competition VEX Robotics is a robotics program for elementary through university students, and a subset of Innovation First International. The VEX Robotics competitions and programs are managed by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation (RECF). In ...

, and another one for

FIRST Robotics Competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weig ...

. :*The FIRST team has won several awards since the year of 2014. VPCI also has its student-led orchestra that is not limited to students taking music classes. VictoriaParkCollegiateInstituteSwimmingPool

VictoriaParkCollegiateInstituteSwimmingPool

VPCI also has a yearbook committee who works every year to deliver and design the school's annual yearbook.

Library

Victoria Park C.I., like all high schools in the

TDSB The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), formerly known as English-language Public District School Board No. 12 prior to 1999, is the English-language public-secular school board for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The minority public-secular franco ...

, has a resourceful

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

. The library offers over 20 workstations, two computer labs, independent study areas, printing services, and photocopying service. The library is also the home to over a thousand books of all

genres Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

. The library occasionally holds fundraisers for the Hospital for Sick Children and much more. Some programs on the hundreds of computers (which run on

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

) are Turing programming software,

Microsoft Office 2010 Microsoft Office 2010 (codenamed Office 14) is a version of Microsoft Office for Microsoft Windows unveiled by Microsoft on May 15, 2009, and released to manufacturing on April 15, 2010, with general availability on June 15, 2010, as the succes ...

, and graphic editors such as

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

. The

Accelerated Reader Accelerated Reader (AR) is a website used to assist students with reading skills. Components ATOS ATOS is a readability formula designed by Renaissance Learning. Books with quizzes in Accelerated Reader are assigned an ATOS readability level. ...

software is offered, with which grade nine students are encouraged to read and are tested afterwards on the content of the novel they chose. Victoria Park CI also has many carts of laptops which run on

as well.

White Pine at VP

The White Pine high school reading program started in Victoria Park C.I. in the spring of 2003. Every year at the beginning of semester two, a meeting is held in the school library to gather students who are interested in participating in this reading program. All books nominated for White Pine are young adult fictions written by Canadian authors. The ten nominated books are introduced to the students who will have to read at least seven out of the ten selections to be eligible to vote for their favourite book. A meeting takes place every three weeks in the library where students get an opportunity to discuss, with their peers as well as other teachers, about the books they have read. The voting for the favourite book takes place in mid-May at the school. After all the votes from across Ontario have been accounted for, teachers and students of Victoria Park C.I who have participated in the White Pine reading program are then invited to the ceremony where the winning author of the nominated books is announced.

Notable alumni

Katharine Birbalsingh Katharine Moana Birbalsingh (born 16 September 1973) is a British teacher and education reformer who is the founder and head teacher of Michaela Community School, a free school established in 2014 in Wembley Park, London. Ideologically, she ide ...

, headteacher *

Brian Maxwell Brian Leigh Maxwell (March 14, 1953 – March 19, 2004) was a British born Canadian track and field athlete, track coach, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He founded PowerBar, a maker of energy and nutritional products for athletes. Maxwell ini ...

, athlete, founder of

PowerBar PowerBar is an American brand of energy bars and other related products including sports drinks, gels, and the ''Pria'' bars targeted at women. The former company had been established in 1986, being then acquired by Nestlé. History The PowerBa ...

Pierre Browne Pierre Browne (born January 14, 1980) is a Canadian sprinter of Barbadian descent. He represented Canada for the 100 and the 200 meters dash in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, 2002 Commonwealth Games, and the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.

, sprinter * Bruce Boudreau, Coach of the

Vancouver Canucks The Vancouver Canucks are a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, and play their home games at Rogers Arena. Bruce B ...

* Paul Quarrington, author and musician *

Dan Hill Daniel Grafton Hill IV (born 3 June 1954) is a Canadian pop singer and songwriter. He had two major international hits with his songs " Sometimes When We Touch" and "Can't We Try", a duet with Vonda Shepard, as well as a number of other charti ...

, singer and songwriter *

Michael Coteau Michael Joseph Coteau is a Canadian politician who serves as the Member of Parliament for Don Valley East in the House of Commons of Canada. From 2011 to 2021, he was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario representing the ...

, Ontario MPP and Minister for Citizenship and Immigration * Yuanling Yuan, Canadian WIM Chess Master and founder of Chess in the Library. *

Jowi Taylor Jowi Taylor (born June 15, 1962) is a Toronto-based radio personality, public speaker and originator of the Six String Nation guitar, also known as Voyageur. As a radio broadcaster, producer, writer and host, Taylor is known for his work at CBC Rad ...

, CBC Radio Broadcaster, and Founder of the Six String Nation project

References

External links

Victoria Park Collegiate Institute's Official WebsiteTDSB School Info
{{Coord, 43.755768, N, 79.321445, W, region:CA-ON_type:landmark, display=title High schools in Toronto North York Schools in the TDSB International Baccalaureate schools in Ontario