Thornlea Secondary School
Thornlea Secondary School is a public high school that opened in
1969 and is located in
Thornhill,
Ontario,
Canada, on Bayview Avenue and Willowbrook Road, just north of the
Steeles Avenue border dividing the city of
Toronto and the municipality of
York Region.
Due to the
demographic composition of the area, Thornlea boasts a highly
multicultural population, and is generally not considered by its students to be a
stereotypical high school, in that there are few
jocks,
cheerleaders, or
nerds in the sense so often depicted in American
popular culture. Rather, the emphasis among even the more
"popular" members of the student body tends to be on community work and
academic achievement. Thornlea students often play key roles in the
social activist life of Thornhill, and have, in the past, helped organize the
Terry Fox Run, as well as the Walk Against Male Violence. The school began in the '70s as somewhat of an educational experiment. The curriculum was unique, varied and highly specialised, following a trimester system, and students were encouraged to address their teachers by their first names and focus on independent learning. The school attracted innovative teachers and self-directed students. Gradually, this model gave way to a more traditional, but still high-achieving academic environment.
Generally, the school is known externally for its support for
social causes and its relatively
progressive politics. The school, which in the mid-'90s had an enrolment of over 2300 students and a staff of perhaps 150, was once known for its Grade 9 and 10 Gifted Program, Talented Athlete Program, musicals and other arts programs, all of which were cut or starved in the late '90s as a result of political pressures in the Board, and ostensibly an effort to lower the student population. This era saw the retirement or transfer of many dedicated teachers, the firing and hiring of new department heads, frequent curriculum changes, and the discontinuing of many specialty courses as the OAC program (Grade 13) was eliminated.
Thornlea also boasts a thriving artistic community, with many prominent Canadian musicians among its alumni, including the groups
The Philosopher Kings,
Prozzak, Courtesy Blush,
By Divine Right, hHead, Hayden and
Moxy Früvous. Most of its more active extracurricular organizations are
arts-oriented rather than
athletics-oriented, the two most prominent arguably being the Drama Club and the Music Council. Despite occasional friction between members, the two organizations have been known to collaborate on intra-scholastic events and concerts. Notable quasi-annual examples of such events are known as Thornstock, and An Evening of the Arts. The Thornlea Lights Sets Sound (TLSS) committee also plays an instrumental role in the organization and orchestration of the school's
extracurricular activities, as it is accountable for the
technical work that many of the aforementioned events necessitate: for instance, the operation of
audio-visual equipment, stage set-ups, mechanical labour and assistance, and so on.
Thornleas's Drama Department has a tradition of ambitious projects, including a weekly show called Maxwell's House that the OAC students put together in 2001-2002 as their collective graduating project. Sets, scripts, direction, stage managing, and acting were all undertaken by the students, and their show was free every week. It was a popular event that drew not only students either skipping or on a spare, but also field trips from other schools.
Other prominent groups in Thornlea include a
yearbook committee, an
anime club, an
environment club,
art and
film clubs, a
prom committee, and a local chapter of the
Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA). The school has a tradition of student and teacher activism on certain equity-related issues. In 2000, the Thornlea Rainbow Alliance was established - becoming probably the first gay-straight alliance in a York Region school. The group staged a Pride Week in June 2000, which included an LGBTQ-themed film festival, workshops and presentations for staff and students, and a display about LGBTQ culture. The Alliance also made recommendations for LGBTQ-related books and materials to be purchased by the school library. The Rainbow Alliance did not continue after its founding students had graduated.
Most student events at Thornlea are organized by Thornlea Student Association Council (TSAC). TSAC consists of six executive members and three appointed directors as well as three representatives from each grade. TSAC's major events include Thornstock, an end of year music festival, Some Wonderful Entertainment (SWE), and Hip Hop Away From Violence, a charity hip hop concert.
In the late
1990s, Thornlea students published a
newspaper called
Deadline. This paper, unfortunately, was discontinued the year after its editor-in-chief graduated. During the 2001-2002 school year, the Music Council funded the publication of an arts-oriented paper called
Volume, which again was discontinued after the graduation of its entire
editorial staff at the end of that year. A new publication known as
Ka-boom has recently been founded, the latest in Thornlea's turbulent but prolific tradition of student journalism. Past student publications included Shonen Knife and Thornlea RAW.
For all of its extracurricular idiosyncrasies, Thornlea is by all accounts a reasonably paradigmatic Canadian high school with departments in a fairly standard set of
subject areas. Alongside traditional disciplinary staples such as
English,
mathematics,
science (
chemistry,
physics, and
biology), and
social science (divided evenly between
history and
geography), Thornlea also offers courses in the
fine arts,
music (vocal,
choral,
orchestral, wind ensemble and
jazz),
drama, and
design and technology. A survey course in
philosophy that is generally popular among Thornlea seniors has also been offered inconsistently over the years, depending upon the availability of a qualified instructor. A variety of popular
creative writing courses have also been offered over the years, again, the existence of which has typically been a function of instructor interest and availability.
Students from Thornlea have been known to perform extremely well in provincial competitions in the sciences, such as the Ontario
Biology Competition, hosted by the
University of Toronto, and various
mathematics and
engineering competitions hosted by the
University of Waterloo. Business students have also done extremely well, with Thornlea sending many to the
DECA international finals over the years, as well as having many students achieve high scores on the [https://www.ca2b.biz/H/events/coin/index.cfm ¢OIN CA Challenge] accounting contest, run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. Thornlea also has an excellent Modern Languages department, as evidenced by its students' consistently high scores in regional and provincial
French competitions over the past decade.
The acceptance rate of Thornlea graduates into post-secondary institutions, most often colleges and universities in the province of
Ontario, but not infrequently in neighbouring provinces or in the
United States is, in general, quite high. Whether this is due to rigorous academic standards at Thornlea itself, Thornlea students' own peculiar diligence, or the overall
socio-economic privilege of the community is largely a matter of speculation.
Overpopulation is yet another serious challenge faced by the Thornlea community. Since the school's construction in the late
1960s, the population of the surrounding municipality has ballooned due to both
immigration and
urban sprawl. The rapidly expanding middle-class towns of
Richmond Hill,
Markham and
Vaughan have led to a corresponding increase in extremely wealthy students, while emigration from Milliken Mills,
Scarborough and other peripheral areas in the former
Metropolitan Toronto has led to a somewhat smaller demographic increase of substantially less privileged students.
The physical structure of the building itself has been the target of many complaints, notably due to its extremely poor internal ventilation, and its noticeable lack of
exterior windows (there are windows
inside the school). This architectural peculiarity is accounted for by the fact that Thornlea was originally intended to be a
prototype for an educational model wherein extrinsic
stimuli (such as vegetation, the sky, wildlife) are minimized, while intrinsic stimuli (such as bookshelves, other students in class, computer terminals) are maximized. The idea was that students would then be less distracted and more psychologically conditioned to focus on their studies during the day. At some point the
experiment was abandoned, and finally, to the delight of students and staff alike, a new southern wing was built during the
2000-
2001 school year, complete with windows in every classroom with an externally facing wall.
The Thornlea experience has spawned a class of expressions that have attained
metonymic and in certain cases
eponymous status among Thornhill residents. Examples include:
*
The Graduation Hall: Lined with composite graduation photos and sports actions shots from years 1982-1986, this is Thornlea's most traditional and impressive hallway. Students frequently observe these photos to see if past graduates resemble members of their current class.
*
The Purple Hallway: Named for the colour of the lockers lining said hallway.
*
The Un-Carpeted Hallway: Refers to a tiled hallway that connects the recreational wing of the school with the classrooms proper. A location that is monitored by school authorities in theory only, and was once known as the
carpeted hallway for its previous furnishings.
*
The Thornlea Loft: A secret location somewhere in the school's main gym, strictly monitored by the schools drama department, the Thornlea Light Set Sound (TLSS) team, and the Costume Goddess.
*
The Music Hallway: Named for its proximity to the school's two music rooms, and is adjacent to one of the only sets of windows that were included in the building's original plans.
*
The Pit: A depression in the ground immediately beyond the southern frontier of school property. It is also the main smoking area for highschool students because smoking on school property is not allowed. The Pit was also the name given to room 016, the home of the Autonomous Learners' Programme in the 1980s. The name was given to it owing to the mini-amphitheatre located in the classroom, sunken below floor level.
*
The Rock: A
metonym for an enclosure on the school's east side within which a multi-coloured boulder is contained.
*
The Dennis Herbert Wall of Fame: Named after former coach, teacher, and mentor Dennis Herbert, the wall boasts pictures of those students who have made exceptional contributions to Thornlea Athletics during their high school careers.
*
Pharley's Place: A mythological persona for whom the student-run convenience store in the cafeteria is named. According to the store, Pharley was once a real student who anonymously returned lost items to their owners' lockers, and so that tradition continues in providing materials and snacks to those who need them.
*
The New Wing: Completed in the summer of 2001, the new wing is the latest addition to the school in an attempt to fight overcrowding. However, even with 12 new classrooms and 2 computer labs, overcrowding is still a problem.
*
The Res: An unpaved area, located on the northeast side of the school property. Students are allowed to park their cars there although on occassion, the vehicles will sink into the mud and have to be rescued by the custodial staff. In addition, you can often find people smoking cigarettes in this area.
Thornlea was the first high school in the district to have a computer. The
IBM 1130 was installed at or shortly after the school was opened in the late 1960s. Unlike the way students program modern computers, programs were generally prepared on punch cards and run in
batches; the output was printed in a
line printer. There were a few experiments with the pioneering interactive
APL system.
*Author
Gordon Korman*Actor
Cameron Mathison*Actor
Stuart Stone*Actress
Lauren Collins*Much More Music VJ
Bill Welychka*Actress Jocelyn Lai
*
Moxy Früvous*
Prozzak*
Mike Koreen,
Toronto Sun Sports Writer
*
The Philosopher Kings*Jose Contreras of
By Divine Right*Singer/Songwriter
Hayden*Singer/Songwriter Mike Ford of
Moxy Früvous*Playwright and Artistic Director of English Theatre for the
National Arts Centre,
Peter Hinton*artist/photographer
Greg Schilhab*Award Winning Film Director
Harvey Glazer - sometimes credited as harv
*Canadian National Basketball team member Rans Brempong
*
Thornlea Secondary School official website
