The longest-serving principal at Canada’s largest school board has died.
Barrie Sketchley, an administrator with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for 42 years, was 85 years old.
Rosedale Heights School for the Arts (RHSA), which he lead for more than three decades, shared the news of Sketchley’s death in a letter sent home to the school community on Tuesday.
“It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Mr. Barrie Sketchley, Rosedale Heights School of the Arts’ beloved Principal for 34 years,” current principal Joe Ghassibe wrote.
“Barrie’s love and support of The Arts, his students, and his staff will be felt in our school building forever. His kindness and compassion, his tenderness and charisma, as well as his magnificent sense of humour, have created the community we now represent.”
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During a May 2023 interview with CTV News Toronto, Sketchley said he walked into a classroom in 1965 and “never wanted to look back and I’ve loved all of those years in between.”
“I love working with young people, seeing them mature, watching where they’re going, helping them get there,” Sketchley said at that time.
“There’s lots of laughter along the way as well as tears.”
Affectionately known to some as Sketch, he worked at Eastdale and Bloor collegiates before coming to Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. At that time, it was a vocational school known as Castle Frank, Sketchley told CTV News Toronto during the aforementioned interview. It then became Rosedale Heights Secondary School before evolving into RHSA in the 1990s.
“His leadership empowered staff to make an important change at Rosedale Heights - to turn the school into a School of the Arts, where all identities were included and affirmed. Barrie was a pioneer,” Ghassibe said in the Oct. 13 letter.
“Not only did he help create Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, he also worked at a vocational business school for girls (at Bickford Centre), and the Urban Studies Centre.”
The board wanted to transfer Sketchley to Harbord Collegiate in the fall of 2025, but students and parents protested, and he was able to remain at RHSA until his retirement planned for the end of that school year. Sketchley, however, left the school last May due to cancer.
For his retirement, the school’s parent council commissioned two former students, Nina Djordjevic and Elizabeth Ford, to create a short film in Sketchley’s honour. Sadly, the beloved educator, who was known to attend every single school event, missed the screening at RHSA’s annual film festival because of his illness.
The school newspaper and the yearbook featured colourful farewell tributes for Sketchley.
Tasha Kheiriddin, co-chair of RHSA’s Parent Council, said the school community sent Sketchley boxes of get well and farewell cards after he became sick and left suddenly.
“He was a principal like no other. Mr. Sketchley was someone who created this culture of kindness, inclusivity, acceptance, and a love of learning,” she told CP24 late Wednesday afternoon.
“He inspired everyone to do their best.”
Kheiriddin, who is running the TDSB Trustee in Ward 7, said Sketchley was also a noted “champion of the arts” at the board.
“The whole TDSB owes him a great debt,” she said.
A legacy of ‘empowerment’: principal
Ghassibe said his predecessor’s legacy is “one of empowerment.”
“Barrie truly believed (and knew) that children are our future. Thousands of students (as well as families and staff) have benefitted from his leadership, support, and love,” he said.
“We will miss Barrie’s leadership, his smiles, his love, his wonderful stories of the amazing life he led such as taking his first commercial flight to the U.K. in 1957, his wonderful ski trips, as well as the road trips he loved to take. We honour Barrie today, tomorrow, and forever at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts.”
Tributes pouring in online
Dozens of Sketchley’s former colleagues and students have taken to social media to express their sadness following the death of the “heart and soul” of RHSA.
He is being remembered as supportive, non-judgemental, understanding, kind-hearted, and generous, a true leader, a caring soul and a one-of-a kind person and mentor, who “fostered an environment of acceptance, love, and compassion for every person that walked through Rosedale’s front doors.”
They called Sketchley an amazing man who lived an amazing life, saying he’ll be “in all our hearts forever.”
Others said he had a passion for teaching and the arts, an educator who made an impact on “so many lives” and managed to remember everyone’s name. Many fondly remembered Sketchley greeting the student body every morning, ringing the bell on the school’s front lawn.
A private funeral service for Sketchley has already taken place, however a celebration of life for the school community will be held in November.
Ghassibe said there will always be a reminder of RHSA’s beloved long-serving principal at the school, with “Barrie’s corner,” a re-creation of his office, set up in the foyer.
School library to be renamed
The school’s current principal added that RHSA’s library will also be renamed The Barrie Sketchley Library on the day of his celebration of life.
“Until then, let’s love and laugh and express a passion for life as Barrie always did,” Ghassibe said.
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Allison Hurst
