Dossier file 3 - Minutes and reports

Queen Elizabeth Home and School Association was an organization to represent parent interests at the Queen Elizabeth Public School, and help teachers organize class events.

The first monthly meeting of the Middle Road Home and School Association was held in November 1934. (1) The school was renamed in honour of the then-Queen Consort, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, better known as "The Queen Mother", in 1943, and the Home and School Association followed suit. (2) During the Second World War, the organization provided preschool services, to allow area mothers the time to take on war work. (3) Very active throughout the decades, they were the largest such organization in Peel County as of 1958, with a membership of 445. (4) During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the group ran an association library at the school, distinct from the school's own facility. (5)

A library at the site of the Queen Elizabeth Public School was started during the Second World War by the Queen Elizabeth Home and School Association, no later than 1944. It was completely separate from its venue and namesake, the school, receiving funding from both adult membership and government grants. In May 1948, it was spun-off as a separate organization, the Queen Elizabeth Library Association. It was volunteer-run, under direction of a librarian, Mrs. Wallberg. (6) Queen Elizabeth had the tenth highest circulation among the 219 Association Libraries in Ontario as of the 1952 annual general meeting. (7) As of 1952, the library would serve students on Wednesdays and Fridays through the day, and adult members on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. At some point in 1952 or 1953, the school established its own library for students.

Their January 1953 annual general meeting, intended to discuss the future of the library association, attracted only the members of its board. By March, the Toronto Township Recreation Commission was contesting the existing system of granting individual libraries and the Peel County Library Co-operative; previous correspondence suggests that the QELA wasn't able to get council to fund more than $30 per year. With only 10 members regularly borrowing books, the QEL didn't reopen in that autumn. (Records don't explain the sudden drop in users, although the school library may be key.)

Deciding that the members would be "adequately served by the Port Credit Public Library and the Cooksville Library", coupled with the school itself establishing their own library, they requested information from the Ontario Department of Education in October, requesting information on dissolution. Juvenile books were to be distributed to schools in south Peel, adult books to the Port Credit and Cooksville libraries, and remaining funds meant to purchase additional kids' books for the schools.

The Toronto Township bookmobile program was not started until 1958, and did not stop at Mineola until 1959. As of 2017, the closest branch to this area remains Port Credit.

The last known reference to the Queen Elizabeth Home and School Association was in January 1968. (8)

The Ontario Federation of Home and School Associations is the umbrella organization for this sort of entity. It was Canada's first provincial body for H&S As, incorporating in 1919. The first such group in Ontario was founded in 1896. Home and School Associations were similar to Parent Teacher Associations.

The school was also known as Toronto Township School Section No. 23.