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Vaughan Road Academy's building is available.

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CALC makes sense, but it would be nice if they could secure some space on Carlton. There's already a bit of a corridor of Francophone services there, so it would create some nice connections in the community
 
But NDP MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt), who has twice introduced private member’s bills for a French-language university, noted that no money has yet been earmarked for it and expressed concern about its proposed location in Toronto.

“The northerners are the big losers,” said Gélinas, pointing to the pockets of franco-Ontarians in Sudbury, Timmins, North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

“I have nothing against a campus in Toronto and more programs in the southwest, but that’s not what we need. The need is throughout the province,” she said.

“This has to be province-wide.”

Interesting notion that depends on the purpose of the school. If the purpose of a French-language school is to help shore up the Franco-Ontarian community against ongoing language attrition, perhaps locating it farther north closer to Francophone communities in the north might be a better idea. A Francophone university in the GTA might get "lost in the noise" or whatnot- and would be a relatively small teaching space in a larger Anglophone practical environment. Ottawa might be a better location with at least some prestige over smaller towns like Sudbury or Timmins.

On the other hand, it would be a great opportunity to service Francophone communities in the GTA (But wouldn't they be mostly billingual already? And would they prefer a higher-profile university like U of T over a new no-name francophone university?)
 
Not sure if locating a school up north will prevent attrition - the forces behind that are demographic and economic. Plus my understanding is that there is a growing Francophone (not simply Franco-Ontarian/Quebecois) community in Toronto as well. Maybe it can be an federated college (along the likes of University of St. Mikes at the University of Toronto) that is located at a separate campus (though that wouldn't be all that different from Glendon at York)?

AoD
 
The new institution is not going to parts of the province with higher concentrations of francophones, as those areas are already served by universities. Laurentian University in Sudbury is a bilingual university, as is the University of Ottawa. While some members of the Franco-Ontarian community would prefer unilingual French-language institutions, rather than bilingual, both Ottawa and Laurentian have pretty good track records when it comes to French-language services in Ontario, and both have pretty extensive French-language programs. Queen's Park has clearly decided that it is not interfering with either university, which is not surprising and has been the provincial position for the last three decades (particularly when La Cité collégiale was created in Ottawa).

Toronto is an attractive place to study for francophones for the same reason it attracts other language groups. Putting the new institution in Toronto facilitates links with business and government that could not be matched in Northern Ontario.

I wonder whether this will impact Glendon, and its bilingual programs, or not.
 
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It's worth noting that Toronto briefly had its own French-language community college, the Collège des Grands-Lacs, which lasted roughly five years or so before it was closed due to declining enrollment. Collège Boréal stepped in to fill the void, and now has a separate Toronto "campus"

The Collège des Grands-Lacs experience may very well not be a relevant precedent for what is now proposed (the circumstances and the role it would play are likely very different). But I do hope that the powers-that-be (those who are making the decisions here) have an institutional memory which extends further back than the past decade, and are able to avoid he pitfalls of the past.
 
I think Ontario Place's pods and Cinesphere could be a real contender.

If not, somewhere else along the waterfront is probably my best guess, even though a large number of franco services and organizations are currently in the Yonge/College area. Collège Boréal is currently in the Toronto Star Building (1 Yonge St), so a continuation on the waterfront may make sense, likely near George Brown's new campus (and maybe further justification for a QQE streetcar extension).

Sept. 25th is also Franco-Ontarian Day. I'd suspect it as a probable day for an announcement.
 
I'd rather not have any university at Ontario Place - it's a special (and challenging) location that demands unique uses that add character to the site. A university isn't it.

AoD
 
I took the reference to the pods and Cinesphere as being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but of course, AoD is correct on all counts. Plus, more specifically, it's not an easy site for students to get to.
 
I suspect that the first "campus" will be a few floors in an office building, not too far from a subway line.
 

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