Ontario. Department of Education

For many older Canadian schoolbooks and manuals, the named author is not a single person but Ontario's education department itself. Under names such as the Department of Education and, later, the Ministry of Education, this provincial body was responsible for curriculum, policy, and guidance for publicly funded schooling in Ontario.

That helps explain the range of works published under this name: classroom readers, teacher handbooks, science and household manuals, and reference lists for schools and libraries. Collections such as Project Gutenberg and The Online Books Page preserve many of these titles, showing how widely the department's publications were used in everyday teaching.

For listeners today, books credited to this author can be especially interesting as historical documents. They reflect the official voice of Ontario education in their era and reveal what students were expected to read, memorize, and discuss in school.