Corso Italia parish, school celebrate 100th anniversary.
St. Clare Catholic Church, left, and the original four-room St. Clare schoolhouse, located on St. Clair Avenue West between Westmount Avenue and Northcliffe Boulevard as they appeared in 1914. Both the school and parish are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. The church, which opened in 1912, still stands, but the schoolhouse was demolished in 1982 and is now a parkette.
Photo/ARCHIVES OF THE ROMAN CATH
A historic church and school community in Corso Italia, at the border of the Oakwood and Earlscourt neighbourhoods, will celebrate the centenary of its parish with a mass on the site of the parish's original schoolhouse.
On Saturday, Aug. 14, at 5 p.m., the St. Clare parish will commemorate its first mass held 100 years earlier to the day with a service in the Piazza Santa Chiara parkette, weather permitting.
The parkette is located at the northwest corner of St. Clair Avenue West and Northcliffe Boulevard, just east of Dufferin Street, and is the site of the original St. Clare school, a four-room building that was demolished in 1982. The parkette now doubles as the playground of the new St. Clare school, a set of three buildings built during the 1960s and 70s on Northcliffe.
The school and parish both opened in 1910 to serve the new market garden community of Earlscourt, according to a website set up to celebrate the anniversary, www.stclare100.com
Earlscourt, located west of Dufferin and St. Clair, was annexed by the City of Toronto the same year. The grand St. Clare church, still standing at the northeast corner of St. Clair and Westmount Avenue, was completed two years later, about a year before the city opened the St. Clair streetcar line (perhaps ironically on private right-of-way).
The celebratory mass is the first of a number of events the St. Clare school community will hold this fall. On Sept. 29, the school will open its doors so that parents, neighbours and alumnae can see what a regular school day is now like and watch a variety of student activities. Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, will celebrate a mass at the church at 7 p.m., according to the website. Following the mass, a new statue of St. Clare will be unveiled at the school.
And on Oct. 2, the school will hold a grand reunion and cocktail party for alumnae of the school.