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Shelley Falconer, Curator and Educator, shows off some of the extensive art collection including two Emily Carr paintings, at the Toronto District School Board vault in Toronto.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

For years, millions of dollars of artwork and artifacts have sat in an undisclosed location, with only a handful of Toronto District School Board staff and a mounted Muskie to appreciate them.



The stash includes noteworthy paintings by members of the Group of Seven, nearly a million photographs dating back to the mid-19th century and a pair of 1950s Turbinator hair dryer-chairs, secreted away with the stealth worthy of a spy novel. Valued at about $7-million, they amount to one of the board's greatest educational resources, albeit an untapped one.

The board has been faced with a financial catch-22: Without the money to restore or display the treasures, the collection loses their earning and learning potential. A report, a one-year strategy document on how to open, organize and market the collection, completed this month, offers the first glimmer of hope.

Thursday, the TDSB opened its vault and took journalists on a tour to announce its plans to introduce the collection to students.

"What we want to do is we want to get all of these objects out of vaults and into the schools," said trustee Gary Crawford, who hosted the tour. "We want [students]to learn from these wonderful objects that we've been collecting - that's our job as educators."

The TDSB began to collect and catalogue its artwork in earnest after Cranberry Lake, painted in 1936 by Franklin Carmichael was damaged when a steam pipe burst at Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute in 2004. Through a partnership with the Toronto Foundation for Student Success, the board was able to raise $10,000 to restore the painting and three others by selling off limited edition prints of the moody landscape.

The collection also includes a Tom Thompson painting with an estimated value of $1.5-million that was removed several years ago from the principal's office at Riverdale Collegiate.

"People think I'm a dragon sitting on a pile of gold," said Greg McKinnon, an archivist and manager of the TDSB's heritage services, who has spent the past few years cataloguing and restoring the collection. "But I'm not... I've brought it to the 10-yard line with these curators who have been identifying ways to create better access, create better fundraising opportunities and to connect these items to our core business of learning. Now we're looking for partnerships."

The report outlining ways to tie the items into the curriculum, how to build a framework for teachers to access the collection, and how to fundraise, is being circulated to trustees, but decisions about budgets and funding won't be made until the fall when the document will be debated before the full board.

Beyond the artworks that are valued in the millions, the value of some objects is more pedagogical than monetary.

A battered violin with hateful graffiti etched into its back was donated to the TDSB by the parents of a boy who died about 10 years ago. The young student was tormented by bullies, and committed suicide after they got a hold of his violin and scratched 'fag' into its varnish. For students the instrument could be a powerful lesson about bullying and homophobia.

A photograph taken in the early 1900's of rows of students at their desks in an outdoor classroom in High Park. The open setting was in part a response to a tuberculosis outbreak, and it provides a powerful visual for a discussion on the evolution of public health.

Some critics favour cashing in on some of the more valuable pieces and freeing up dollars for things like school pools. Mr. Crawford and Mr. McKinnon said that the artworks are not for sale, and that most had been donated on the condition that would never be sold.

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