Alderwood Collegiate Institute

Origins

In 1952, the Etobicoke Board of Education had originally intended a middle school in the present site. With overcrowding at Royal York Collegiate Institute, the board decided to purchase the 15.87 acre Shields Site for $148,000. The northern portion would be then used for Douglas Park Junior School which opened in 1956.
Gordon S. Adamson and Associates were commissioned as architects for the Alderwood project. Construction began in July 30, 1954, but the flooding from Hurricane Hazel caused an delay. The school was opened on September 6, 1955, to the first 340 students with the official opening ceremony November 1955. With increasing population, four classrooms, a science lab, a commercial room, a new auditorium and enlarged cafeteria were added in 1960.
Alderwood had its amazing athletic program such as football, cross country, wrestling, basketball, and more.

Closure and onwards

In September 1980, New Toronto Secondary School, Royal York Collegiate Institute (now Etobicoke School of the Arts), and Alderwood underwent a review due to low enrollment as many catholic immigrants who arrived in the area transferred their children to the separate school system when full separate school funding commenced.  As a consequence, on June 24, 1981, the Etobicoke Board approved the closure of Alderwood and New Toronto whose students were combined into the newly renamed Lakeshore Collegiate Institute on June 25, 1983, with the afternoon closing ceremonies.
Since the merger of Etobicoke's first catholic high school, Michael Power/St. Joseph High School in 1982, the main campus suffered overcrowding resulting the Alderwood building being leased to the Metropolitan Separate School Board (later the Toronto Catholic District School Board) from the Etobicoke Board of Education. It was reopened as the south campus of Michael Power/St. Joseph. In September 1986, Father John Redmond Catholic Secondary School was established. The school later moved to a new building in New Toronto's large former Mimico Lunatic Asylum grounds in 2006 after its buildings were deteriorated.

Val Homes

Alderwood Collegiate's buildings remained empty for five years. In 2011, however, the TDSB transferred the vacant Alderwood's 8.5 acres portion of the original 14.1 acre site to the Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC) for sale.  TLC sold the portion to a townhouse developer, Urbancorp in August 2012. After much community consultations, Alderwood's school facilities were demolished in November 2014 with the property being converted to an residential complex known as Val Homes.