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Don Mills Collegiate Institute

high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ5293158
Source-derived summary

Don Mills Collegiate Institute is a high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located in the Don Mills neighbourhood, it serves an ethnically diverse student population of approximately 1000. As of 2017, 67% of students speak a first language other than English. The school opened in 1959.

Location

Initially, the board planned to build two separate schools on the site with a shared heating plant, but in October 1957, trustee Dorothy Bishop prepared a report which raised the possibility of saving money by placing the two schools under one roof, as had previously been done in Vancouver and Calgary.

DMCI shares its building with Don Mills Middle School (formerly Don Mills Junior High); however, the two schools have different street addresses and the buildings are designed in a way that keeps the two schools separated except for a common library and connecting hallways. The auditorium located within the collegiate building is also occasionally used by Don Mills Middle School. Additionally, a number of rooms in the middle school are used to teach high school students, possibly due to the lack of available space in the collegiate half of the building.

Special programs

Gifted

Don Mills Collegiate has a gifted program for students. The program was moved to DMCI in 1997 from Earl Haig Secondary School and has increased the number of students in the school.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Don Mills Collegiate Institute” as high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1000, 2017, 1959, 1957—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959. The account is most persuasive where Mills, Collegiate and Institute can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5293158. Authority coordinates are 43.736, -79.339. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1000, 2017, 1959 and 1957.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Don Mills Collegiate Institute”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Don Mills Collegiate Institute primary sources, Don Mills Collegiate Institute archive and Mills research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Don Mills Collegiate Institute”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Don Mills Collegiate Institute” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.