Research guides: OISE's Ontario Historical Education Collections (OHEC): Archival Materials

Archival Materials in the OHEC

The Ontario Historical Education Collections include several collections of archival materials. Finding aids can be found through Discover Archives, a shared portal for exploring the archival holdings of the University of Toronto and its federated colleges.

Kindergarten Teacher Training collection
The collection contains materials related to Froebelian kindergarten education practiced in Ontario in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Materials include sample workbooks demonstrating Froebel's Occupations, teachers' lesson books, certificates, and photographs.
Railway Car Schools collection
The collection contains materials related to the Railway Car Schools which operated in remote parts of Ontario between 1926 and 1967. The collection contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, articles and newspaper clippings, museum and exhibit materials, and photographs.
Canadian Farm Radio Forum collection
Contains materials related to the Canadian Farm Radio Forum, which ran from 1941-1964. The materials in this collection include meeting minutes, correspondence, memoranda, surveys and questionnaires, reports, broadcast programming and transcripts, pamphlets and promotional materials, research notes, articles, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks.
Education Ephemera collection
Contains ephemera related to education in Ontario. This ephemera includes materials such as educational certificates, grade reports, teaching applications, contracts, meeting minutes, school accounts, student rolls, correspondence, inspection reports, examination papers and timetables, insurance policies, student assignments and workbooks, and class photographs.
School Supply Catalogue collection
Contains a number of school supply catalogues from the mid-20th century. These catalogues include supplies such as school furniture, maps and globes, art supplies, science supplies, and school readers.
Vernon G. Turner fonds
Vernon George Turner (1926- ) is a former Canadian ambassador. This collection contains the notebooks, schoolwork, and school records of Vernon G. Turner documenting his education at North Toronto Collegiate Institute (high school) and Maurice Cody Public School (elementary school) during the late 1930s and 1940s.
Paulo Freire Resources at OISE Library
A research guide for materials related to Brazilian educational philosopher and activist Paulo Freire (1921-1997).
Canadian Public Figures on Tape
A digital exhibit featuring OISE's Canadian Public Figures on Tape interview series.

Blissymbolics Communication Institute - Canada collection
The collection contains materials related to the use of Blissymbolics as an augmentative communication language. The materials in the collection span the years of 1952 to 2023 and include educational, administrative, research and promotional records in the form of books, reports, publications, audio-visual material, activity kits and posters.

Historical Education Archival Collections in Ontario

Historical Education Archival Collections in Canada

Digitized Archival Collections in Canada

Héritage
Héritage is an open-access portal to digitized Canadian archival materials. Héritage collections include primary-source documents from the 1600s to the mid-1900s.
Canadiana Online
Canadiana Online is a digital library providing access to over 1,630,000 pages of Canada's printed heritage, including monographs, serials, and government publications. It features works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail
A database containing full-text digitized copies of the Globe (1844-1936) and the Globe and Mail (1936-2017) newspapers.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Toronto Star
A database containing full-text digitized copies of the Evening Star (1894-1900), the Toronto Daily Star (1900-1971), and the Toronto Star (1971-present) newspapers.
Canadian Newspapers in Paper of Record
Paper of Record is a searchable archive of historical newspapers from around the world. It contains digital facsimiles of original newspaper pages, including the Canada Gazette (1867-1869) and numerous local and provincial publications.

Ministry of Education Website Archives

The Internet Archive has been archiving snapshots of the Ontario Ministry of Education website since 1997. The WayBack Machine gives researchers access to the historical content of the Ministry's website, including pages from the Trillium list.

Find archived pages by clicking the year you would like to view from the bar at the top, and then the date from the calendar below. Blue circles represent days on which a snapshot was created.

You can also search the UTL Canadian Government Information Website Archives for more archived web pages on education in Ontario.