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Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts

public high school in Scarborough, 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 authorityQ14875477 ↗
Source-derived summary

Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts (commonly known as Wexford Collegiate, WCSA, Wexford CSA, Wexford or "Wex" for short), formerly and still known as Wexford Collegiate Institute (WCI) (initially known as Northwest Collegiate Institute) is a public high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located in the former suburb of Scarborough, it is run and organized by the Toronto District School Board. The school officially opened to students in September 1965 by the Scarborough Board of Education. It was renamed Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in 2006 in recognition of its specialized arts programs.

The school is located in the Wexford neighborhood of Scarborough, north of the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Pharmacy Avenue. The motto for the school is Palman Qui Meruit Ferat which means "Let him bear the palm who has deserved it".

History

Located on Pharmacy Avenue in Scarborough, Wexford is a mid-sized, three storey secondary school. The origins began when the Scarborough Board of Education applied for accommodation for a 1200 pupil secondary school named Northwest Collegiate Institute on April 2, 1962 and took steps to acquire the 8.59 acre farm owned by the late William Henry McGuire. Meanwhile, the Board offered $200,000 to James Worrall (McGuire's son-in-law) who later accepted it.

Page & Steele was appointed architects for the Northwest C.I. project and the contract for removal of buildings on the McGuire site was awarded for $1800.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts” is public high school in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wexford, Collegiate and School, not as a finished interpretation.

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—1965, 2006, 1200, 1962—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-01-01. For this dossier, Wexford, Collegiate and School is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “public high school in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14875477. Authority coordinates are 43.746, -79.307. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 2006, 1200 and 1962.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. 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 “Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts primary sources, Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts archive and Wexford 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 “Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts” 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.