It was competition from the private schools that the new high schools and collegiate institutes were in part designed to meet. If the clientele of private education wanted advanced or elegant institutions like the Lunenburg Academy, Nova Scotia upper photograph), then the public systems in various places would try to create them. But some reforms contradicted others. The principle of sexual segregation among adolescents, for example, for which some educators fought hard (as in the Upper Canadian grammar school debate of the 1860s) could only be met with difficulty when costs were high. Harbord Collegiate, Toronto (lower photograph), therefore, eventually welcomed girls as well as boys and, by the turn of the century, even boasted a few female teachers. For some time, however, it was evidently customary for girls to approach or leave Harbord along one adjoining street, while boys were only permitted to walk along another.
Courtesy: Public Archives of Nova Scotia and Metropolitan Toronto Central Library
