SEED Alternative School

Story

SEED Alternative School is a small Toronto District School Board alternative high school now located in Toronto's east end.Previous locations include Yonge and College, McCaul St, and Bloor and Spadina, in downtown Toronto. Originally, as a summer program, it was at Dundas St West and Bloor St W (where they cross in Toronto, not in then-Etobicoke).The acronym 'SEED' originally stood for 'Summer of Experience Exploration and Discovery', and when it became year round semestered school it was changed to 'Shared Experience Exploration and Discovery'. Students interested in a particular subject, would gather other students, and together they would find a knowledgeable person to act as a teacher or catalyst, and meet regularly to learn. The groups met at various locations and times, including sometimes evenings and weekends. It was entirely up to the students how many and which subjects they studied, and when and where the groups would meet. A group studying Mass Media, for example, would meet in the evening in the Lowther Avenue home of CBC Radio Broadcasters Betty Tomlinson and Allan Anderson. The Vegan Lifestyles cooking course met and cooked in student homes with parents joining to eat the meals prepared by the students. A Japanese Studies group met at the University of Toronto. A few groups met at SEED's own facilities.SEED was founded by the then Toronto Board of Education as a summer program for high school age students in 1968 during the Pierre Trudeau era, a period that also produced Rochdale College and Theatre Passe Muraille and fostered the growth of Coach House Books and a number of other experimental institutions in Toronto. (SEED was not connected with any of them.) The teachers, or co-ordinators as they were called, in the beginning were Les Birmingham and Murray Shukyn, both of whom came from the elementary school system.