From The Archives Williams purchased the School and the house from Jimmy James’ widow, the sale was structured as instalment payments over many years to Mrs. James, and one of the conditions of the sale was that Williams was not required to maintain the payments if he received no salary from the School. No salary, no payments…but Mrs. James clearly not happy with this state of affairs, took her concerns to a prominent lawyer, and Old Boy, Britton Osler, and in short order Williams reinstated his salary, renewed payments to Mrs. James and returned to his unceasing struggle with Crescent’s budget.
The greatest on-going financial concern was the cost of transporting the students to Dentonia Park each day. An idyllic campus it was, with creek and ponds, woods and fields (Raymond Massey, the noted Hollywood actor, described it as “the most beautiful farm I have ever seen”), but unfortunately it did lie some considerable distance from the homes of most of the students in the central part of Toronto. At first, the School had its own two school buses, while later a fleet of taxis was used, but either way the cost continued to wreck havoc with the School’s finances. “When I went on the School
board”, said Sydney Hermant, who served on the Board of Governors from 1957 to 1963, “the number one financial difficulty was the expense of getting the boys to Dentonia. No matter what the parents were charged, it could never be enough to cover the cost to the School.” In the 1950s Crescent sold off three small parcels of land for a few thousand dollars each, but despite this temporary influx of capital, Williams and his successors were forced to let the maintenance of some aspects of the physical plant slide. The 1960s are a study in contrasts in the financial health of the School. In 1961,
Crescent’s location at Dentonia Park
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