The images in this collection are collected from several series of historical photos throughout Osgoode Digital Commons.
If you would like to view the images in their original galleries please follow the links below:
Osgoode@125 Historical Photo ExhibitOsgoode Catalysts
Remembrance Day
Graduating Class Composites
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1925 - Champions
The Osgoode Hall football team makes a comeback in the Ontario Intercollegiate Union. The Osgoode Hall Intercollegiate football team, 1925.
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David A. Croll ’24 (1900–1991)
David Croll was born in Moscow and immigrated with his family to Canada when he was a young boy. An early advocate of welfare and other types of social assistance, Croll first worked as a lawyer then moved into politics. He served as the mayor of Windsor from 1931 to 1934 during the height of the Great Depression. Croll insisted the city go into deficit in order to provide relief programs for the unemployed and destitute. He became Canada’s first Jewish cabinet minister when he was appointed the Minister of Public Welfare under Mitchell Hepburn’s Liberal government. While serving as Minister of Labour, Croll resigned from Hepburn’s Cabinet, after the Premier sided with General Motors during the 1937 United Auto Workers Strike in Oshawa. He wrote: “I would rather walk with the workers than ride with General Motors.” After another term as mayor of Windsor, and service with the Canadian Army during WWII, he was elected as an MP for Toronto-Spadina riding. Croll became Canada’s first Jewish senator in 1955. He was the author of an influential report on poverty, which moved the Trudeau government to triple family allowances and institute the Child Tax Credit in 1978. Croll was also responsible for several Senate reports on aging. In 1990, he was sworn into the Queen's Privy Council, an honour usually given only to federal cabinet ministers.
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Vera Parsons ’24 (1889-1973)
Vera Parsons was the first female criminal defence lawyer in Ontario, likely the first woman to appear before judge and jury, and the first to defend an accused murderer. A great fan of litigation work, especially at the appellate level, Parsons practised criminal law at a time when it was seen as particularly unsuitable to women. Parsons, the daughter of a Simpson’s department store executive, was a highly educated woman, holding a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master’s degree in Comparative Languages from Bryn Mawr College. In 1924, she graduated from Osgoode and became the first woman whose academic accomplishments earned her the Osgoode Silver Medal. Parsons was also one of the first female lawyers in Canada with a disability, requiring a cane after having contracted polio as a child. In 1944, she became only the third woman to be named King’s Counsel.
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1923 - A New Era
John Delatre Falconbridge (1875-1968) is appointed the Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School. Falconbridge would serve as Dean for twenty-five years, and is second only to Newman Wright Hoyles, who served for twenty-nine years. This is the 1926-1927 Osgoode Hall Student Directory and Handbook. The names, phone numbers (only four digits long), addresses, and articling firms of students were listed in the back.
