Thornton Hall

Thornton Hall Private School (also known as "Thornton Hall" and "Thornton") was an incorporated Canadian co-educational private high school that operated for half a century from 1948 to 1997. It was founded by Stuart Edward Mackey.

Stuart Mackey graduated from high school during the Great Depression and while he wanted to pursue a post secondary education that would lead to a career as a psychiatrist, the world economy and financial constraints made such a course impossible. Instead, he went into teaching in the Peterborough Teachers' College. Graduating on July 16, 1934 he subsequently assumed a teaching post in Haliburton, Ontario for several years. Advancing his professional interests, he subsequently worked for the Federal Government of Canada and taught on a First Nation Reservation in northern Ontario. At the same time, Mackey continued his professional development studying with the Queen's University Correspondence Course which required him to write and submit essays during the school year and attend instructor led courses on campus during the summer months. While attending a final course in 1939, Mackey met some young people connected with private schools in Toronto. With the economy rebounding in the '40s, Mackey eventually moved to the City and became a resident master at Cantab College located in the neighborhood of Forest Hill. In later years he would study psychology and complete his work to become a counseling psychologist.

In the post-war, baby boom years, Mackey developed a business and educational plan for a school of his own that he described as "... a new concept in education - a private school uniquely engineered for one specific purpose: to provide the serious matriculation candidate with the most individually effective instruction it is possible to obtain". In pursuit of his goal, Mackey began to survey the Forest Hill neighborhood for a suitable location and soon after focussed on a dilapidated single family home located nearby at 241 Poplar Plains Road. The large scaled residential structure had been designed by architect Eden Smith in the Edwardian era and represented a modified English Arts and Crafts styling, newly introduced by Smith in Canada, with a centre hall floor plan breaking with modernity from Victorian tradition. Of red brick and limed mortar, it was originally the home of West Prussian born Frederick Wilhelm Kischel, Vice-President with Toronto's A.R. Machinery Company, Limited, his wife Anna Marie (née Kalbfleisch of Stratford, Ontario) and their sons Emil H., Fred W. and George H. The Kischels lived in the home for decades, attended St. Paul's Lutheran Church and often engaged in typical pastimes of the day such as croquet on the lawn of the back garden. Kischel survived his wife for many years but at the age of 85, died at home leaving the house to later be sold on behalf of his heirs. By the time the property came to market in the late 1940s, it was in a state of decline and Mackey was able to purchase the lot and built form with his personal savings of $1200. Shortly after closing the real estate transaction, Mackey began restoring the exterior, renovating the interior and building furniture for the space, adapting the residential form's basement and first two stories to function as a school with multiple classrooms, museum, science laboratory, study, records room and administrative offices. A kitchenette and private living quarters completed the second and third floors of the structure. Thornton's "fully equipped language stations, special premises for private study, a laboratory with individual work places… these too help to produce a school which can be genuinely helpful", Mackey once said. His rehabilitation of the premises neared completion just a week before classes first started on September 13, 1948 but by then, Mackey had named the school after an old friend - "Thornton". "That's how we got going" he once said of his work. In later years, facilities were expanded and came to include a two-room art studio/lecture hall, flagged amphitheatre and a raised wooden stage where the original garage and back gardens had been located and a fencing terrace and arched security gates where formal side and front gardens had been kept. "We want a separate little space but not a [typical] school. We want them to feel it's different when they get inside" Mackey once said of it all.

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