Barrie Central Collegiate

A Photo Essay

by Ryan Rowell

In the past few months, I have been photographing Barrie Central Collegiate High School. Maybe you were a student there, a teacher, or an employee at the school, and perhaps you have heard that it will be closing for good this June. We teamed up with the Barrie Historical Archive, which in this September will become Barrie’s first and only online museum; to document Barrie as it is today.

“The Barrie Historical Archive is an exciting new endeavour focused on celebrating and centralizing Barrie’s rich historical content into one free online archive.  The strength of the archive is in the thousands of unpublished family photos that have been submitted.

Our team of 25 local historians and volunteers have been hard at work to curate the archive for its launch at City Hall on September 21st.  Born out of Barrie’s need for a museum, the BHA not only focusses on historical photos, film and documents but on current history as well.

Partnering with Rowell Photography leading a team of local photographers in capturing the ongoing growth in Barrie, preserving and chronicling its development for future generations.  Their recent work in capturing Barrie Central Collegiate before its closure in June will ensure that this 170+ year old institution will always be remembered, celebrated and preserved for future generations.

We are always looking to grow our team.  If you you’d like to learn more or donate to our cause please visit barriearchive.ca.  The archive is being built on the generosity of our incredible community.  If you want to join our team or have historical photos, slides or documents you’d loan us to include in the archive, please get in touch with us.”

We invite you to scroll through our photographs in this post, reminisce about your experiences, and let the somewhat haunting memory of this giant piece of Barrie’s history fill you with a sense of obligation. Obligation to preserve and remember, because a building is more than just brick and mortar, steel and maybe in this case asbestos; it is a piece of art, and a piece of history. It might be a the place you discovered your true calling, made your lifelong friends, or even met the love of your life. 

The Barrie Historical Archive will be the place where we all can commemorate and preserve the history of our amazing city. Thank you to the wonderful people at BCC; Principal Greg Brucker, and Joanne McLaurin, the entire team at the Barrie Historical Archive, and our friend Matt McCartie who helped us on a number of these photo shoots. This is a collection of images we are very proud of, and its projects like this that make our calling as photographers that much more important.

Thank you!

 

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Celebrate BCC

Barrie Historical Archive