Site Record
Metadata
Site Name |
Dixie Public School |
Site# |
019 |
Description |
The Dixie Public School refers to not one, but many schools. In 1810, Mr. Philip Cody donated an acre of land on the northeast corner of Cawthra Rd. and Dundas St. in trust for a church, cemetery, and school. By 1816 an octagonal-shaped woodenschoolhouse behind the Dixie Union Chapel was in operation. This was the first documented school in the Dixie area. It served the settler's children until 1846 when a larger, wood frame, one-room schoolhouse on the northeast corner of Dixie and Dundas was built. In 1929, a reunion was held for former students. A former pupil of the wood frame school, John Clarkson, recalled, "Do I remember when I went to Dixie School? I should say I do remember. I recall the old frame school on Third Line with the desks around the wall, the forms with the pupils facing them and the teachers walking up and down between". In 1857 it was replaced with a red brick one-room schoolhouse known as Toronto Township School Section #1. As the population expanded another room was added in 1877. It became known as Dixie Public School. The second Dixie P. S. was built in 1923 at 2520 Dixie Rd. near the southwest corner of Dixie Rd. and Dundas St. The brick school had four rooms, an auditorium, and steam heating. Increasing suburbanization in the 1950s forced the old school to close its doors in the spring of 1960 and students were transferred into the new Dixie Road Public School. For a time the building was used as an office by the Ministry of Transportation, before being purchased in 1983 by Serbian Orthodox Church St. Sava. The present school, the third to be called Dixie P.S. opened in 1959 at 1120 Flagship Drive in East Mississauga. It was built to serve the children of Applewood Heights. |
