One of Toronto's oldest Catholic schools, St. Patrick was founded as an elementary school on St. Patrick Market St. in downtown Toronto in 1852 during the introduction of publicly funded education in Canada. At first a primarily Irish school, St. Patrick (patron of Ireland) and St.
Marguerite Bourgeoys (a French Canadian) were chosen as the patrons. The school location changed places to Dummer St. to Caerhowel St. to 174 Beverly a 3-story school dubbed during a period as an open air school due to the large balcony facing Beverly which was used to for exposure to the sun for the health of specific students. In 1967 a new school building was started to the south of the old building at 70 D'Arcy St. completed by the September 1968 school season, replacing a former Jewish Orthodox school that was torn down. The old building was used by a private catholic school as a temporary building while waiting for theirs to be built. The elementary school closed in 1983 and was re-opened as a secondary school in 1986 under the leadership of the first principal Sr. Lucille Corrigan, a former principal at
Notre Dame High School. With the extension of public funding of Catholic education to secondary schools, St. Patrick became a secondary school and the Metropolitan Separate School Board (now the Toronto Catholic District School Board) began to search for a new site. The school opened as a result of students cannot be accommodated at
Brother Edmund Rice,
De La Salle,
St. Mary's and
St. Joseph College due to lack of space for portable classrooms. Initially, it served the population bordered between south central Toronto, an area south of Dupont Street, west of the
Don Valley Parkway and east of Ossington Avenue. In 1989, during a period of reorganization by the
Toronto Board of Education,
Lakeview Secondary School, in a new building on the site of a former quarry at 49 Felstead Avenue in Toronto's east end, was closed due to low enrolment and the property was turned over to the MSSB (
Metropolitan Separate School Board, now known as TCDSB) to be the new site for St. Patrick. The school has a large feeder area, serving Catholics from almost all of the former City of Toronto's east end. ==Centre for the Arts, Media, and Technology==