
Rising to the Challenge
“Girls instinctively think Voice means participation, raising your hand or having the bravery to stand up in front of the assembly and make an announcement, adds Ms. Hant. She says as girls move through the grades, and begin to integrate the various attributes in the Signature, “they understand Voice also means advocacy; for example, speaking up beyond your classroom, beyond the school itself; in the neighbourhood, within the community-at-large. And that is a lovely building block to Ethical Citizenship.”

Exploring the Culture of Powerful Learning in practice at BSS
It was the first snowfall of the winter and as the taxi approached BSS, the driver observed “how pretty the buildings look” and asked me, “so you’ve come to spend a day at the school to see what it’s like?” “Yes, but more than that,” I said. “I want to understand, why, for generations, more than 150 years, parents have trusted this school to educate their daughters. Why generations of alumnae, I hear it’s more than 6,000, have been proud to actively retain ties with the BSS community.”

City Connections
When Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs won the competition this past fall to turn 12 acres of Toronto waterfront into a smart, sustainable neighbourhood, it helped reinforce the sense that the city could become a model for innovative living in the future. As it happens, months earlier a group of BSS girls from a Grade 8 class were surveying an as-yet-undeveloped part of the Port Lands…

Art in Our Environment
Showcasing the talent and creativity of visual arts throughout the school.

For the Love of Sport
Cheryl Pounder’s path to multiple ice hockey Nationals, Worlds and, ultimately, Olympic golds started at home. Her mother was an athlete; her grandmother was offered (and declined, for family reasons) a baseball contract at Wrigley Field in the 1940s; she and her three siblings spent winters playing on their backyard rink.

Truth, Reconciliation and Education
Barely a week before the new BSS Indigenous land acknowledgement statement was read at closing ceremonies in June, the two students who authored the document were still poring over historical sources. Isabel COLEMAN ’17 and Abbie LAI ’17 began working on the statement in the fall of 2016 when they became the school’s first Community Voices Prefects, a role in which they were expected to tackle issues beyond the school’s walls.

Thoughts on Moral Courage
Everyone has different opinions and passions, and there will be conflicts between ideas which do not coincide with each other. We just have to learn to embrace those conflicts.

The Chroniclers
The oblong watercolour painting is exquisite; showcasing detailed figures of BSS students in 1931, lacing on skates as they chat with each other before an outing on the school’s skating rink. “Their poses are so lifelike, their winter outfits reminiscent of a time gone by,” says Sue ALLEN Dutton ’79, Archivist of the BSS Museum & Archives. “Receiving this donation was a very lucky day for us.”

BSS Girls at Work
Imagine being able to work at an ad agency, hospital, veterinary clinic or Member of Parliament’s office even before finishing high school. That’s what students in the BSS Grade 11 Co-operative Education program experience – full-fledged exposure to a career at a time when they are actively working out their educational and professional aspirations. After […]

It’s up to youth
When BSS student Claire Vaughan heard about the chance to get involved in an event aimed at tackling the tough issues facing girls in Toronto, she knew she had to be part of it. When she learned that students would be planning and running the event, it was the icing on the cake. “The best […]

Carving Their Own Way
How does a school tell its story of community in a way that inspires and enlightens generations to come? Reverend Cathy Gibbs had an idea. To celebrate the school’s 150th anniversary in 2017, she decided to act on her longstanding vision for a wood carving on the front of the Chapel’s altar. And she had […]

Beyond the Books
Discovering and overcoming a fear of heights to rappel down a rock wall, transcending a language barrier to aid new immigrants and leading worn out campers through a nine-portage canoe trip: these are just a few of the things that don’t appear on Piper McGavin’s academic transcript. A top Grade 12 student with ambitions to […]

A New Age
It’s Sunday afternoon, and Ellen De Beer has just completed a massive science project. Ellen is a Grade 8 Boarding student from China, and it’s her first year at BSS. The project has been an important awakening. “In the beginning I figured I had a lot of time so I’d just do it later,” she […]

Students Without Borders
Ask Grade 10 student Mariana Brizuela to share her experience arriving as a boarder to BSS in September and her face lights up, even when discussing the challenges. Until just four days before classes started, she and her younger sister Veronica (a Grade 8 boarder) had never before visited Canada, never mind Toronto, never mind […]