On Higher Education: Five Lectures 9781442653467

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
Contributors
The Establishment of a Provincial University in Ontario
The Evolution of a Provincial System of Higher Education in Ontario
The Contribution of Sir Robert Falconer to Higher Education
Governments and Universities: A Danish View
Higher Education as a Field of Study in the University
Index

Citation preview

On Higher Education FIVE LECTURES Edited by D. F. Dadson The diverse approaches to current, controversial questions on the conduct of university affairs which are contained in this volume make a stimulating contribution to discussion of the subject, and represent as well a useful addition to intellectual history. ROBINHARRIS, Principal of Innis College and Professor of Higher Education, University of Toronto, traces the attempt to develop as part of Ontario's educational system a university which, supported by public funds, could provide for the needs of the people of the province in the area of higher education, and then turns to the historyof higher education in the province since 1906, which he sees as anattempt to develop a network of publicly supported universities that, in association with each other, can provide for the needs of the province. These full and illuminating remarks give a historical perspective to the important question of university government relations which will be invaluable for reference. The persona! biographical point of view is brought to this discussion by Chancellor F. c. A JEANNERET, whose gracious and impressive tribute to Sir Robert Falconer indicates his contributions to higher education. The remarks of OLE THOMSEN, Secretary, Danish Ministry of Education, offer to Canadians a useful comparison with Danish practices in the area of university-government relations. Finally, Professor ALGO HENDERSON, Director, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Michigan, makes the provocative suggestion that the training of future university administrators is properly the function of the universities. The lecture series on which this volume is based was sponsored by the Ontario College of Education during the session 1964-65. D. F. DADSON

is Dean of the Ontario College of Education.

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On Higher Education FIVE LECTURES ROBIN S.HARRIS F.C.A. JEANNERET OLE B. THOMSEN ALGO D. HENDERSON Edited by D.F. DADSON

Published for the Ontario College of Education by

University of Toronto Press

Copyright, Canada, 1966, by University of Toronto Press Printed in Canada

Preface In July, 1964, Dr. Robin S. Harris, Principal of Innis College, University of Toronto, was appointed Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Graduate Studies, Ontario College of Education. This was the first appointment in the subject in a Canadian university and also the first appointment of a professor from another division of the University to a major post in the College. By way of celebrating the occasion and inaugurating higher education as a field of university study in Canada, the series of five lectures published here was given during the following year. On Higher Education is a collection of five sharp, diverse, and scholarly papers dealing with current controversial questions on the conduct of university affairs and also indicating at least four major approaches to the study of higher education. Dr. Harris's two papers prove the value of the historical approach when the historian has a new theme of significance to present conditions. With the growth of old universities and the founding of new ones, the need for a stable network of communication among universities, each of which dearly loves to call its own signals, and between the universities and the government, which is similarly disposed and which has to finance their individualistic expansion with public money, has become acute in all jurisdictions, not

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only in Ontario. In his first paper Dr. H arris examines afresh the old story of the establishment of the University of Toronto, and shows how government and university reached a workable relationship when there was only one "provincial" university in the field; his second paper brings the story up to date when there are a baker's dozen. These two lectures will be documents of lasting importance in the literature of higher education in Canada. Dr. Thomsen, the Danish contributor to the series, is a happy combination of a civil servant concerned with university affairs and a university man and scholar. His paper is a fine illustration of the value of the comparative approach to the study of higher education, and his exposition of the committee system, which has been long established in Denmark, for reaching a modus vivendi between government and university is not only interesting but useful to authorities elsewhere facing the same problems. Chancellor Jeanneret's biographical study of Sir Robert Falconer is surely a contribution to Canadian letters as well as to the literature of the subject. Writing with spontaneity, intimate knowledge of the man and the university, and characteristic charm, the Chancellor makes his portrait of the president glow with a warmth and power unsuspected by those who knew Sir Robert only from afar. The last paper by Dr. Henderson indicates a fourth approach to the study of higher education—the professional one. Boldly, Dr. Henderson claims that the university should introduce courses for training university executives just as many universities now do without a qualm for training administrators in business or the public service. With most of the dwellers in the Canadian groves of academe, Dr. Henderson's proposal will find little favour, for they will see in it the recommendation that the university community of scholars should foster the agents of their own destruction. But Dr. Henderson does not spoil his case by overstatement,

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and it is all the more provocative for that and for his quiet conviction in the rightness of his cause. All we need now is a philosopher, and perhaps he will show up in a subsequent series! The privilege of writing the foreword to this important book falls to me simply as the spokesman for the College that sponsored the lectures, and I wish to record here my thanks to Dr. George Flower, Director of the Department of Graduate Studies, Ontario College of Education, and to Dr. Robin Harris, who made possible these lectures and this book. D. F. DADSON Dean, Ontario College of Education

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Contents PREFACE

V

CONTRIBUTORS

X

The Establishment of a Provincial University in Ontario ROBIN s. HARRIS

3

The Evolution of a Provincial System of Higher Education in Ontario ROBIN s. HARRIS

36

The Contribution of Sir Robert Falconer to Higher Education F. c. A. JEANNERET

63

Governments and Universities: A Danish View

OLE B. THOMSEN

86

Higher Education as a Field of Study in the University ALGO D. HENDERSON

125

INDEX

143

Contributors

ROBIN S. HARRIS, Professor of Higher Education and Principal of Innis College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. ALGO D. HENDERSON, Director, Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. F. C. A. JEANNERET, Chancellor, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. OLE B. THOMSEN, Secretary, Danish Ministry of Education, Copenhagen, Denmark.

On Higher Education FIVE LECTURES

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ROBIN S. HARRIS

The Establishment of a Provincial University in Ontario

In a speech delivered in the Ontario Legislature on March 4, 1897, the Honourable George W. Ross, Minister of Education, witnessed as evidence of the virtues of the school system over which he presided the citation which accompanied the special award made to the Government of Ontario for a General Education Exhibit at the World's Columbian Exhibition held at Chicago in 1893: "For a system of Public Instruction almost ideal in the perfection of its details, and the unity which binds together in one great whole all the schools from the Kindergarten to the University."1 Ross's eulogy of the Ontario education system on this occasion was one of many he made during the seventeen years, from 1883 to 1899, when he acted as Minister of Education, and his view was one that was generally held. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a great deal was made of the perfection of the Ontario system, and for this the creator of the system, the 1G. W. Ross, Speech . . . on the Policy of the Education Department Delivered in Legislative Assembly, March 4, 1897 (Toronto: Warwick & Rutter, 1897), 26.

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Reverend Egerton Ryerson, was largely responsible. Ryerson, who was Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada from 1844 to 1867 and for Ontario from 1867 to 1876, was a master of what we now call "public relations," and he made it his business to advertise throughout the length and breadth of the land, and a good distance beyond, the work that he was accomplishing. On five different occasions he made an official tour of the province to hold conventions in every county, and to these were invited—and in some cases summoned—municipal councillors, school trustees, teachers, local superintendents, the clergy, and the general public for discussion of the measures he had introduced or intended to introduce. He prepared and circulated widely lengthy and admirably written annual reports from 1846 on, and he established and for many years edited a Journal of Education, which appeared monthly from 1848 to 1877. He also left a legacy in the person of J. George Hodgins, who continued to preach the Ryerson gospel until 1912. Hodgins had been appointed to the Department of Education as a clerk in 1844, became Deputy Superintendent in 1855, and, on Ryerson's retirement in 1876, succeeded him as the head of the Department of Education with the title of Deputy Minister, the superintendency having been abolished with the decision to place Education under a Minister of the Crown. Before he died in 1882 Ryerson wrote The Story of My Life, which appeared as edited by Hodgins in 1883. In 1889 Hodgins prepared the Ryerson Memorial Volume, which contained, in addition to the speeches made on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of Ryerson, a lengthy "Historical Retrospect of Education in Ontario, Past and Present." Hodgins retired as Deputy Minister in 1889, but he was then appointed Historiographer of the Department of Education, a post he occupied until his death at the age of ninety-one in 1912, and which enabled him to publish the

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three-volume The Establishment of Schools and Colleges in Ontario, the six-volume Historical and Other Papers and Documents Illustrative of the Educational System of Ontario, and the twenty-eight-volume Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada (Ontario). Since all these works cast Ryerson in the role of hero and in one form or another explained, justified, and extolled the system he had created, it can be said with a fair degree of confidence that between 1847 and 1912 the Ontario educational system had a rather good press. In our own time there has been an inevitable reaction against the Ryerson-Hodgins-Ross case that the Ontario system was a wonder to behold, partly because the argument was overdrawn and partly because the system, in due and inevitable course, began to break down. It is probably fair to say that the reaction against Ryerson and his system has gone too far and that we would be wise to recognize more clearly than we do the undoubted merits of the system he created. Certainly we ought to recognize very clearly the nature and dimensions of the Ontario system as it existed at the time of Hodgins' death in 1912 since this is the system under which we are still operating. The citation at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 which I have quoted refers to "a system of public education . . . from the Kindergarten to the University." It is not clear from this whether the university is intended to be included within the system or not. In the technical sense it would not be included, for the Department of Education over which Ryerson, Hodgins, and Ross presided had no control over the universities of Ontario, though it was responsible for certain areas that are now considered to fall within higher education, notably the normal schools and for many years the School of Practical Science, which in 1901 became the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering of the University of Toronto. But it is not and never has been possible,

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in Ontario or elsewhere, to draw a rigid line between the universities and the schools. If proof is needed, one has only to refer to the most unusual feature of the Ontario arrangements—the five-year high school. The inclusion of the thirteenth grade in the Ontario high schools is the direct result of arrangements made by the universities to permit certain first-year courses to be taught in the public high schools, and the effect this has had on the curriculum and teaching methods of both the universities and the high schools has been profound.2 Whatever else it demonstrates, Grade 13 reveals very clearly that all parts of the educational system are interrelated. The system does stretch from the kindergarten to the graduate school. As suggested by my title, this essay is an argument that the whole history of higher education in this province throughout the nineteenth century can be interpreted as an attempt to develop as part of the provincial educational system a university which, supported by public funds and available to all qualified students, could provide for whatever needs the people of Ontario had in the area of higher education. It deals with events from 1797 to 1906, and it culminates in an analysis of the 1906 University of Toronto Act, which, I shall argue, realized the objective that had been sought for over a century. It is difficult not to regard the 1906 Act as a remarkable achievement and one that effectively and completely provided an answer to the University Question, which the people of Ontario had been endeavouring to resolve since 1797. The only trouble with the 1906 Act was that it was now the twentieth century; within a decade it became apparent that new conditions were arising which would render ineffective a solution that had been based on nineteenth2

The origin and development of Grade 13 is described in the Report of the Grade 13 Study Committee 1964 (Toronto: Department of Education, 1964).

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century conditions. The next essay deals with events from 1906 to the present, and it is an argument that the whole history of higher education in the province since 1906 can be seen as an attempt to develop a network of publicly supported universities which, in association with each other, can provide for the needs of the province in this area. But for the moment I am concerned with the reasonably distant past. It is a past, however, which is highly relevant to the contemporary situation, for the organization which is in process of being developed in Ontario in the 1960's is firmly grounded in the organization which evolved in the course of the nineteenth century. We in Ontario cannot escape from our past—nor should we, for it is our past, as much as anything else, which distinguishes us from our neighbours in adjoining provinces and states. And it is our past that explains why our solution to the educational problems we now face must differ from theirs. The idea of a provincial university appeared very early in the history of this province, and it is perhaps surprising that it took so long for it to become translated into reality. The explanation lies only partly in the primitive conditions of the province at the time the idea was introduced, and only partly in the wrong-headedness—or the deviousness or the honest conviction that the idea was unsound—displayed by individuals and groups concerned with the problem during the next one hundred years. The truth of the matter is that the idea could not be realized until certain conditions existed, and some of these conditions did not exist until the closing years of the century. The idea of a provincial university (or of a state university or of a national university) involves two quite distinct things. One, the simpler, is the recognition by the majority of the people of a province (or state or nation) that there should be adequate financial support for the provincial

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university. This is not only the simpler idea but also a simple idea; indeed, it is essentially an either/or proposition: either there should be support or there should not. What may appear to be a third possibility—partial financial support— is not really a possibility at all, though it may be a practical necessity. Just as it is impossible to be a little bit pregnant, so, in theory at least, it is impossible for a people to be a little bit in favour of public support of a public university. The doctrine of public support does not, of course, imply that the public university must be completely dependent on state funds. It implies only a guarantee that it has the funds to do its job. It is the second idea within the idea of a provincial university which is the difficult one to grasp: the defining of the functions the university is to perform. This is ground that keeps shifting, and in the course of the nineteenth century it shifted very noticeably. In 1797, when a provincial university was first proposed for Ontario, or Upper Canada as it was then called, the functions of a university were understood to be twofold: the provision of a general or liberal education in the arts and sciences then known; and, though this was less generally accepted, the professional training of lawyers, doctors, and clergymen. But in the course of the next hundred years the functions were expanded to include, first, the professional training for many other occupations (engineering, agriculture, dentistry, pharmacy, teaching, and many more); second, the undertaking of research; and, third, the provision through what came to be known as extension services of practical information in a great variety of fields. At least three other ingredients were also added to the university complex in the nineteenth century: the admission of women, the regulated linking up of the university with the secondary school, and the principles of academic freedom as they are now defined, Not all

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of these several elements of what in the twentieth century we regard as "the idea of the university" had been "discovered" until the 1890's, and this is one reason for the failure of the people of Ontario to establish a provincial university before 1906. Much more remarkable than their failure to act more quickly is the surprising fact that they seem to have grasped the basic idea of a university for the people well before their neighbours to the south. At this point another of G. W. Ross's speeches of 1897 is appropriate: This year we celebrate two anniversaries of special interest . . . [the landing of John Cabot in Newfoundland in 1497 and the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837]. Let me add to this list another—the 100th anniversary of the Legislature of Upper Canada which gave birth to our High Schools and our Provincial University. I envy the Legislature of 1797 the honorable place it has obtained in the history of Canada as the friend of higher education. When we consider the condition of the country, the isolation of the settlers, and their terrible privations, we cannot but admire their heroic confidence in the future of the country. Nothing but such a spirit would have even conceived the idea of a university. They could scarcely hope that their own families or even those of the next generation would avail themselves of its privileges. And yet with a forethought and large heartedness which we should not forget, they anticipated the better day on which we have entered, and the greater needs of a larger civilization which we now enjoy. That they were wisely counselled by the Lieutenant-Governor, John Graves Simcoe, is no disparagement of their judgment. And while we show our respect for him as we propose to do by erecting a statue to his memory, let us show our respect for the Legislators, whose successors we are, by completing its [sic] good intentions and settling on its behalf obligations which have been in abeyance for over half a century.3 3

G. W. Ross, Address on Moving the Second Reading of a Bill re University of Toronto in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on April 1, 1897 (Toronto: Warwick & Rutter, 1897), 13-14.

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The action to which Ross referred was the adoption by both houses of the Upper Canada Legislature on July 3, 1797, of the following Address: Most Gracious Sovereign:—We your most dutiful and loyal subjects, the members of the Legislature Council, and the Commons House of Assembly, of Upper Canada, in Parliament assembled, being deeply persuaded of the great benefits that the Province must necessarily derive from the establishment of a respectable grammar school in each district thereof, and also of a College or University, where the youth of the country may be enabled to perfect themselves in the different branches of liberal knowledge, and being truly sensible of the paternal regard your Majesty entertains for every description of your subjects, do most humbly implore your Majesty that you would be graciously pleased to direct Your Majesty's Government in this Province, to appropriate a certain portion of the waste lands of the Crown as a Fund for the establishment and support of such useful institutions.4 This petition marks the beginning of the attempt by the people of Ontario to establish a provincial university. The idea of a university in Upper Canada had been enunciated on a number of earlier occasions by John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of the province; indeed, he had stated his belief that "a college of a higher class would be eminently useful" in January of 1791 some months before he left England to take up his appointment.5 But Simcoe was an Englishman; the men who voted in favour of the Address were Canadians, and it is their action which is the more significant. Ross was quite right in identifying Simcoe's role as that of counsellor and in crediting the Legislature with making the decision. The obligations to which Ross refers were obligations entered into not by the Imperial Government but by the inhabitants of what is now Ontario. 4 J. G. Hodgins (éd.), Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada (Ontario), 1791 to 1876, I (Toronto: Warwick & Rutter, 1894), 16.

5Ibid., 11.

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The petition was successful. In the following year, the appropriation of 500,000 acres of the waste lands of the Crown was authorized as "a fund for the establishment and support of a respectable Grammar School in each District . . . and also of a College or University for the instruction of youth in the different branches of knowledge."6 But, although four grammar schools were established in 1807, it was not until 1816 that any consideration was given in the Legislature to the establishing of a university and it was not until the 1820's that the possibility was seriously entertained. In 1827, however, a royal charter was obtained for a King's College to be established at the capital of the province—York, or Toronto as it has been called since 1834. The man chiefly responsible for obtaining the King's College Charter was the Reverend John Strachan, the Anglican Archdeacon of York. A memorandum he prepared in 1826 for the Lieutenant-Governor of the province, Sir Peregrine Maitland, makes it clear that the university was designed to be provincial in scope: The establishment of an University at the seat of Government will complete a regular system of education in Upper Canada from the letters of the alphabet to the most profound investigations of Science—a system which will be intimately connected with the District Schools, as they send up a number of boys to be instructed gratis—and the District Schools may be connected with the University by means of scholarships, to increase in number as the revenues of the University shall admit, either by the sale of lands appropriated for its endowments or grants from the Provincial Legislature.7

Strachan argued in his memorandum that a university must do more than provide instruction in the liberal arts; it must also provide training for lawyers, doctors, and clergymen, and among the seven professorships listed in the proposed *lbid., 16. ''Ibid., 212.

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establishment which he drew up for what he then called the "University of Upper Canada" were those of law and medicine. In Strachan's memorandum and in the charter itself are contained three essential ingredients of the provincial university idea: instruction in the professions as well as the liberal arts, the integration of the university with the public school system, and adequate financial support from provincial funds. But one absolutely essential ingredient was missing: adequate protection of the interests of the Legislature (and therefore of the people it represented) in the institution for which it was providing the funds. The King's College Charter provided for no external control. The powers of the College Council were absolute, subject only to the approbation of the Visitor, who was the Anglican Bishop of Quebec. All members of the council were required to be members of the Anglican Church. The only person on the council who had any necessary connection with the Legislature was the Lieutenant-Governor, who as Chancellor was an ex officio member. But at this stage in the province's history the Lieutenant-Governor was not in any real sense answerable to the Legislature, and he certainly was not answerable to the Legislature for his actions as a member of the King's College Council. Control of King's College rested entirely with the Anglican Church, of which, needless to say, the Lieutenant-Governor was a prominent member. Had all the inhabitants of Upper Canada, or even a large majority of them, been Anglican, the situation might have been satisfactory but this was by no means the case, as the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics were quick to point out. Petitions protesting the assignment of the University Endowment to a minority group immediately began to descend upon the Legislature, and a Select Committee of the House of Assembly was named in February,

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1828, to examine the matter. Its Report, presented on March 20, found "the sectarian character and tendency of the Institution to be manifest" and recommended that the House request the Imperial Government to cancel the charter and to substitute a proper one for it.8 The House agreed, and the appropriate Address was duly forwarded to London. There the Imperial Government referred it to a House of Commons Committee that had recently been appointed to inquire into the state of civil government in Canada, and its conclusions were the basis for a letter, dated September 29, 1828, from the Colonial Secretary to Sir John Colborne, who in the interim had succeeded Maitland as lieutenant-governor, indicating His Majesty's Government's general agreement with the House's view and suggesting that it make further representations. "I have observed," he noted, that your predecessor in the Government of Canada differs from the House of Assembly as to the general prevalence of objections to the University, founded upon the degree of exclusive connection which it has with the Church of England. It seems reasonable to conclude, however, that on such a subject as this, an Address adopted by a full House of Assembly, with scarcely any dissentient voices, must be considered to express the prevailing opinion in the Province on this subject.9

Colborne duly reported upon the matter to the Legislature but he did so in the most general terms and he did not encourage further consideration of the subject. But he also convened the King's College Council and stated to them in no uncertain terms that no further steps should be taken towards bringing the University into operation until alterations had been made in the charter. In 1837 the King's College Charter was amended and the way cleared for the opening of the provincial university. *lbid., 240-42. »lbid., 258.

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The Judges of the King's Bench replaced the Bishop of Quebec as Visitor; the President, who now need not necessarily be a clergyman, was to be appointed by the Crown; the twelve-man Council was to include four representatives of the Legislature (the Speakers of both Houses and the Attorney and Solicitor Generals) ; and neither professors nor members of the council were required to be members of the Church of England. As the Royal Commission of 1906 put it in retrospect: "The authority and control of the State were thus clearly emphasized before the institution actually came into existence." But six further years were to transpire before King's College actually opened, the delay being caused primarily by the generally unsettled state of the province following the rebellion of late 1837 but also by the need for a thorough investigation of the management of the University Endowment by the King's College Council. This delay had the effect of postponing indefinitely the realization of a provincial university, for by the time that King's did open, in June, 1843, there were three other universities in actual operation in Upper Canada—Queen's and Regiopolis in Kingston and Victoria in Cobourg. No longer was it simply a matter of developing an existing institution along appropriate lines. The role of other institutions must henceforth also be considered. The seven years from 1843 to 1849 saw no less than four attempts by the Upper Canada Legislature to create a provincial university that took into account the existence of four chartered institutions.10 The first, a bill introduced by Robert Baldwin in 1843, proposed a University of Toronto with which King's, Queen's, Victoria, and Regiopolis would be associated as theological schools. Legislative powers were to be vested in the Chancellor (the Governor of the province) and in Convocation (a large body embracing 10 A detailed account of the various bills of the 1840's is given in Hodgins, Documentary History, V-VIII.

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heads of colleges, professors, and all graduates), and executive management would rest with a Caput (the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, and a representative group of professors from all faculties and colleges). But basic control would be exercised by a Board of Control consisting of the heads of the denominations which were sponsoring the theological schools, the Members of Parliament for Toronto and York, the Treasurer of the Law Society, the President of the Medical Board, the Mayor of Toronto, and twenty persons appointed by the Government. The University Endowment was to be preserved for the use of the University but, pending appropriate settlement of the terms of an 1840 Clergy Reserves Act designed to provide for the propagation of religious knowledge in the several denominations, grants of £500 would be made to King's, Queen's, Victoria, and Regiopolis for four years. Queen's and Victoria appear to have been generally agreeable to this proposal but King's was unalterably opposed. The bill lapsed with the resignation of Baldwin's Government in November, 1843. The next attempt was made in 1845 when W. H. Draper, Baldwin's successor as head of the Government, introduced a bill to establish the University of Upper Canada, to which King's, Queen's, and Victoria would become affiliated colleges. The proposal was basically the same as Baldwin's, though providing more generous annual grants to the affiliating colleges and contracting to continue them indefinitely. King's College was again uncompromisingly opposed, and the bill was dropped after second reading.11 In both these proposals the University Endowment was preserved for the use of the provincial university. In the next, presented by John A. Macdonald in 1847, the Endowment was in effect to be divided among the four universities. n

Draper's bill of 1845 was twice re-introduced with only minor changes in 1846, once under the sponsorship of George B. Hall, and once by Draper himself. On neither occasion did the bill pass second reading.

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Each would be represented on a University Endowment Board along with a government appointee as chairman, and each would receive an annual grant—£3000 for King's and £1500 for the others. Part of any surplus was to be reserved for future colleges. This bill also was dropped after first reading. Robert Baldwin again became the head of the Government following the elections of 1848, and in 1849 introduced a bill which did become law and which transformed King's College into an undenominational University of Toronto with faculties of arts, law, and medicine. There was provision for affiliated colleges, but no suggestion that such colleges would receive financial support. The endowment was to be maintained for the development of one provincial university, the government's interests being maintained by appropriate representatives on the Senate and on the Endowment Board and by the power of appointment of president and professors. The preamble to the Act expressed its fundamental principle: Whereas the people of this Province consist of various denominations of Christians, to the members of each of which it is desirable to extend all the benefits of a university education, . . . it is therefore necessary that such an Institution, to enable it to accomplish its high purposes, should be entirely free in its government and discipline from all denominational bias, so that the just rights and privileges of all may be fully maintained without offence to the religious opinions of any.

After considering four bills in seven years the Legislature might have been expected to regard the University Question as settled at least for the time being, but this proved not to be the case; four more bills were introduced in the next four years and two of them were adopted. Many people were still convinced that there was an important role to be played by the denominational college and that religious knowledge was an important element in liberal education.

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Wasn't an undenominational University of Toronto a godless institution and was this the kind of institution upon which all the hopes of the province should be placed? It was to answer this criticism that in 1850 the Government introduced a bill empowering the University, as distinct from its affiliated colleges, to make appropriate regulations concerning church attendance. In 1851 both Henry Sherwood and W. H. Boulton introduced bills which, on the University of London model, would have made the University of Toronto (in Sherwood's case) and the University of Upper Canada (in Boulton's) a purely examining and degreegranting institution, with instruction being provided in affiliated colleges. Neither reached second reading, but the basic idea involved was carried forward in the bill introduced by Francis Hincks two years later, which became the University of Toronto Act (1853). The University ceased to be a teaching institution, but an undenominational University College was established, financially supported by the Endowment, to prepare students for its degrees. The Act specifically stated that the teaching staff of University College was to include no professor of divinity, medicine, or law "except in so far as the same may form part of a general system of liberal education." The University of Toronto degrees were to be available to duly qualified candidates prepared at other colleges in the province and at recognized professional schools of law or medicine. The finances of the University and of University College were to be managed by a Bursar appointed by the Government. A Council, consisting of its teaching staff, all of whom would receive their appointments from the Government, would administer the affairs of University College, while the powers of the University would be invested in its Senate. The constitution of the Senate was not specifically spelled out in the Act; it said only that the Chancellor and ViceChancellor ex officio and at least ten additional members

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appointed by the Government would be included. As originally named in March, 1854, it had twelve government appointees including the Chancellor, and eleven ex officio members, the Chief Superintendent of Education, the Principal of Upper Canada College, representatives of the Law Society and the Medical Board, and the heads of Victoria, Queen's, and Regiopolis and of four other institutions which had been recently established: Knox College (1844), the College of Bytown (1848), Trinity University (1851), and Toronto School of Medicine (1848). The assumption was that the various colleges and schools represented would become affiliated with the University, but in the event this did not happen. Nonetheless, this was the essential arrangement under which the provincial university operated for the next thirty-four years, until the Federation Act of 1887, and it had the odd effect of giving representation to its rivals on its governing Board. It will be noted that there was no provision for legislative grants; the University and University College were to be financed entirely from the Endowment and student fees. One other plan for the provincial university was seriously considered as early as 1852 and as late as 1860. This was a scheme proposed by the Chief Superintendent of Education, Egerton Ryerson, and its aim was to incorporate the University within a rigorously defined provincial system of education. As originally outlined in a draft bill forwarded with a lengthy covering letter to Francis Hincks in 1852, the scheme visualized a University of Upper Canada whose objectives would be as follows: ( 1 ) To ascertain by means of examinations, the persons who have acquired proficiency in Literature, Science, and the Arts, and reward them by Academical Degrees, as evidence of their respective attainments, and by marks of honour proportionable thereunto: (2) To impart knowledge in the higher departments of

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Science, Literature and the Arts, by means of Professors, Lectures, and Publications: (3) To prescribe the conditions on which Academical Degrees and Honours shall be conferred, to make the Regulations to be observed, and prescribe the subjects to be pursued in the Grammar, Normal and Common Schools of Upper Canada, the Textbooks to be used in the said Schools, and the Books for Grammar and Common School Libraries, and the Rules of managing them.12 In other words, the University was to be the single examining and degree-granting authority in the province, it would provide instruction at the university level in all fields, and regulate all the schools of the province—the normal schools, the grammar schools, and even the common schools. One is reminded of the citation at the Chicago World's Fair: "For a system of public instruction almost ideal in the perfection of its details, and [for] the unity which binds together in one great whole all the schools from the Kindergarten to the University." Additional evidence as to what Ryerson appears to have had in mind can be drawn from the Report of the Royal Commission on King's College, Fredericton, appointed by the Province of New Brunswick in 1854. Ryerson was one of its five members and it is known that he drafted the Commission's Report. This is what the Report says in part: . . . Looking at the question in its widest aspect, as embracing the whole System of University Education in the Province, and including as its proper component parts the Normal, Grammar, and Parish Schools of the Country, we think there should be established a Provincial Body under the style and title of "The University of New Brunswick" to exercise the powers and fulfil the functions of the present Council of King's College and the Board of Education; that the Corporation of the University should consist of a Senate, appointed by the Governor-inCouncil, one-third of whose Members should retire from office annually, but be eligible to be re-appointed; that the Senate should make all the Regulations relative to the Courses of Hodgins, Documentary History, X, 155.

12

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ROBIN S. HARRIS

Study, Government, and Discipline of King's College, the Collegiate School, the Normal, Grammar, and Parish Schools, and School Libraries, the selection of Text and Library Books; that the immediate administration of the whole System should be under a Chief Superintendent of Education, who, as well as the Senate, should be subject to all lawful orders and instructions which may be issued from time to time by the Governor-inCouncil. To give effect to these recommendations, we have prepared a Draft of Bill, which is contained in the Appendix to this Report, marked Number One, and to which we refer as the best exposition of what we propose.13 In the draft bill, the Chief Superintendent of Education is ex officio the Rector of the University and among the thirteen duties assigned to the Rector are the following: To prepare and transmit all Correspondence, which shall be requested, or authorized, by the Senate of the University; to have the immediate care and management, as may be directed, or approved, by the Senate, of the Endowment of King's College, and the payment of all Moneys, available for its support, and the support of the Collegiate, Normal, Model, Grammar, and Parish Schools. To use his best endeavors to provide for and recommend the use of uniform and approved Text-books in the Schools generally; to submit to the Senate all Books and Manuscripts which he may procure, or which may be placed in his hands, with the view of obtaining the recommendation, or sanction of the Senate for their introduction as Text-books, or Library Books; to employ all lawful means in his power to procure and promote the establishment of School Libraries for general reading in the several Counties, Parishes, Cities, Towns, and Villages of the Province; to provide and recommend the adoption of suitable Plans of School Houses, with the proper Furniture and Appendages; and to collect and diffuse useful information on the subject of education generally among the people of New Brunswick. To decide upon all matters and complaints which may be submitted to him by any Person interested in connection with the Grammar and Parish Schools. 13Ibid., XVI, 5-6. Hodgins reprints the complete Report. The other commissioners were John H. Gray, John S. Saunders, and James Brown, all from New Brunswick, and J. W. Dawson, who in 1855 was appointed Principal of McGill University.

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The Rector would have been a busy man, combining apparently the roles now played by the Minister of Education, the President of the University, the Deputy Minister and the Registrar of the Department, the Registrar of the University, and several dozen more. What his salary should be is not stated. The 1852 draft Ryerson prepared for Hincks was never presented to the Legislature, though some of its proposals are incorporated in the 1853 Act. In the draft bill Ryerson prepared for John A. Macdonald in 1860 the references to the schools have been removed. The proposal now is that the affiliated colleges of the University of Upper Canada ("a national institution should take its designation from the country at large") should share in the University Endowment upon an equal footing with the provincial colleges in relation to the number of matriculated students in each. No funds were to be used by a college for the support of its theological faculty and no grants were to be made to an affiliating college which continued to confer degrees in any subject other than theology. Macdonald was initially favourable to Ryerson's plan but, to use Sissons' happy phrase: "The merits of the case were lost sight of in the exigencies of politics."14 The matter was dropped with the resignation of Macdonald's government in May, 1862. From all this confused welter of actual and aborted legislation two points emerge clearly: first, the unwillingness of the majority of people of Upper Canada to divide the University Endowment or to allow it to be used for sectarian purposes, and second, their unwillingness to place the University under a Department of Education and thus deprive it of control over its academic affairs. The ideal of a single publicly supported university for the province is a constant factor. The attempts of the various colleges throughout the 14

428.

C. B. Sissons, Egerton Ryerson, II (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1947),

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1840's and 1850's to obtain a share of the University Endowment should not blind us to the fact that the government had been providing them with provincial grants all along (Table I). Victoria received its first grant ( £450) in 1842 and it received a grant every year thereafter until 1869 when the John Sandfield Macdonald Government cut off all grants to denominational colleges. Queen's received annual grants from 1845 (£500) to 1868 ($5000).. Grants continuing through 1868 were made to Regiopolis from 1846, to the College of Bytown (now the University of Ottawa) from 1855, to St. Michael's College (established 1852) from 1855, and to Trinity from 1864. There were also grants to the Belleville Seminary, later Albert College., in 1854 and 1855 and in 1858 and 1859 and to Assumption College near Windsor in 1858 and from 1860 to 1866., The Toronto School of Medicine received grants from 1858 to 1868 and additional grants were made to Queen's and Victoria for their medical schools from 1854 and 1860 respectively. The total amount granted to all these institutions between 1842 and 1868 was $330,790. The total granted in 1850 was £1500 (or $6,000); in 1855, £3600 (or $14,400); in 1860, $19,800; and in 1865, $24,600., During the same period it was the policy of the government to make substantial annual grants to literary and scientific societies, to the Canadian Institute at Toronto, for example., and the Ottawa Athenaeum. Since such societies were carrying on some of the extension and research functions now performed in universities, it is worthy of note that the Ontario people through their government early recognized their responsibility to provide such support.15 The year 1868 marks a definite turning point in the 15

Annual grants were made to the following during the years indicated, for the total amounts specified: Toronto Athenaeum (1847-57), $3800; Ottawa Athenaeum (1857-68), $3900; Canadian Institute, Toronto (1852-68), $17,250; Canadian Institute, Ottawa (1854-68), $5100; St. Patrick's Literary Association, Ottawa (1857-58), $340.

TABLE I.

1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857

PROVINCIAL GRANTS TO ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES, 1842-68

Victoria

Queen's

College Medical

College Medical

450 450 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 750 750 750

500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 750 750 750

Regiopolis

Ottawa

BelleToronto St. ville Assump- School of Michael's Seminary Trinity tion Medicine

250 250 250 250

500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 750 750 750

150 150 150 300 200 350

350 350 500

£8,650 $34,600 3,000 3,000 5,000 $1,000 5,000 1,000 5,000 1,000 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750

£7,250 £1,000 $29,000 $4,000 3,000 1,000 3,000 1,000 5,000 1,000 5,000 1,000 5,000 1,000 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750 5,000 750

£6,250 $25,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000

£1,300 $5,200 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400 1,400

£1,200 $4,800 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000

£450 $1,800 800 800

TOTAL $85,600 $7,500

$80,000 $13,500

$58,000

$20,600

$26,800

$3,400

Total 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1963 1964 1865 1966 1867 1868

Total

450 450 500 1,000 1,000 1,500 1,500 1,500 1,500 1,500 1,650 1,650 1,900 3,600 3,050 3,350

100 350

$ 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000

$ 140 $ 1,000 1,000 400 1,000 400 1,000 400 1,000 400 750 1,200 750 1,200 1,500 1,000 750 750 750

£26,100 $104,400 15,340 15,200 19,800 19,800 19,800 19,050 23,850 24,600 23,650 22,650 22,650

$20,000

$5,140

$330,790

$10,250

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ROBIN S. HARRIS

history of higher education in the province. This is partly because of the Government's decision to suspend grants to the denominational colleges, an action which in due course produced financial difficulties which led to their willingness to consider seriously the federation proposals of the 1880's. But perhaps more important, it was at about this time that the province itself entered the field of higher education and that professions other than medicine and law began to concern themselves with the education of their practitioners. As we have seen, medicine, law, and theology have been included within the university orbit in Ontario from the outset. Baldwin's 1843 Bill included provision for a professor of agriculture. His 1849 Act called for a Commission of Visitation, which was to report, among other matters, on the best means of making the Chair of Agriculture more efficient and useful. The commission also investigated the need for a school of engineering. It is not surprising, therefore, that a professor of agriculture in the University of Toronto was appointed on November 5, 1851, and that an attempt to appoint a professor of civil engineering was made in the same year. Courses in both agriculture and engineering were outlined in the 1857-58 Calendar of University College and continued to be listed until 1877-78 (engineering) and 1884 (agriculture). But only a handful of students enrolled in these courses—a total of seven degrees in engineering were awarded throughout the period and there were no "graduates" in agriculture. The explanation is that until the 1870's there was no real student demand for such courses. What was needed was something rather more practical than a university-type course, and it was to meet this demand, for the technician or technologist rather than the professional, that the province itself undertook to establish schools of engineering and agriculture. In 1872 the College of Technology was opened in Toronto, which in 1875 was renamed the School of Practical Science and which in 1876

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was relocated on the University of Toronto campus; four of its six professors were also on the staff of University College. In 1874 the Ontario School of Agriculture and Experimental Farm was established at Guelph, being renamed the Ontario Agricultural College in 1879. Both of these institutions were financed entirely by the Government. The 1870's also saw the beginnings of provision for professional training in dentistry and pharmacy. The Royal College of Dental Surgeons, an association established by Act of Parliament in 1868, authorized some of its members to open a school in 1875. A comparable body, the Ontario College of Pharmacy, was given licensing power in 1871; its school did not open until 1882, though efforts were made to establish it much earlier. The Government did not provide financial support to either of these institutions or to the Ontario Veterinary College, a proprietary school which commenced instruction at Toronto in 1864; but it did give grants beginning in 1876 to assist the Ontario Society of Artists to establish the school which was the ancestor of the present Ontario College of Art. This new outburst of activity in the 1870's was a response to changing conditions in the social and economic life of the province, which, by a coincidence that is perhaps symbolic, had changed its name in 1867 from Upper Canada to Ontario. What had been basically a farming community was on its way to becoming the industrialized province of the twentieth century. The population could no longer properly be described as sparse, there were cities where there had been towns, and transportation had been revolutionized by the railways. It began to be obvious to at least the far-sighted that native wit, hard work, and the Christian virtues were not in themselves sufficient to guarantee the survival, let alone the advance, of a young but backward province in a young and inexperienced nation. What also would be necessary was the knowledge represented by the new sciences, which were now beginning to develop rapidly

26

ROBIN S. HARRIS

in the laboratories and the machine shops of Western Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the importance of science in a number of the Ontario colleges in the 1870's, notably Victoria, Ottawa, and University College. The building of the School of Practical Science on the Toronto campus made available to the University College students reasonably well equipped chemical, mineralogical, and biological laboratories, and in 1878 a physical laboratory was provided in University College itself. Laboratory work —or practical work as it was then called—was introduced in all courses in the physical and natural sciences. The courses themselves were revised. In 1882 a fellowship scheme (not confined to the sciences) was adopted which provided a $500 stipend for young graduates to continue their studies and to pursue their own research while giving some tutorial assistance. It was proposed in the same year to establish the Ph.D. degree and to add no less than eleven new professorships: astronomy, botany (separated from zoology), mathematics (separated from physics), physiology, German, romance languages, Greek (separated from Latin), English (separated from history), constitutional law, jurisprudence, political economy. Unfortunately the University Endowment was quite unable to provide for all these needs. An application for a grant was made to the province in 1883, and although this was unsuccessful it initiated the discussions on federation. Since the story of the University of Toronto Federation Act of 1887 is a familiar and well-documented one, I shall devote no time to rehearsing it here.16 Rather I shall con16 See (to begin with) W. S. Wallace, A History of the University of Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1927), 114-39; C. B. Sissons, A History of Victoria University (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1952), 158-90; N. Burwash, "A Review of the Founding and Development of the University of Toronto as a Provincial Institution," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 2nd series, XI (1905), Section II, 37-98.

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27

fine myself to discussing the extent to which it did, and did not, provide for the Province of Ontario a provincial university in the full sense. The Federation Act was a necessary step along the way to a fully realized provincial university but it was by no means the final step. It had two great virtues: it reestablished the University of Toronto as a teaching and potentially a research institution, and by incorporating within its new federalized structure a considerable number of institutions that hitherto had operated separately and in some instances as competitors, it increased markedly the University's range and power. The entry of Victoria was, of course, the most important feature of all, both for the additional strength it represented in teaching staff, students, and graduates, but even more significant for the example set. In due course Trinity followed, but without Victoria there would have been no Trinity, and without Trinity and Victoria—and Father Carr—perhaps St. Michael's, like Wycliffe and Knox, would have concentrated on theology. A great university implies a great or at least a strong graduate school, but a strong graduate school can only be based on a strong faculty of arts and science. It is in this light that Victoria's decision in 1887 should be read. As a result of the Federation Act, Victoria, Wycliife, Knox, St. Michael's, and the Toronto School of Medicine, which was transformed immediately into the University's Faculty of Medicine, became integral parts of the University of Toronto. Eight other institutions became associated through affiliation, the School of Practical Science, the Ontario Agricultural College, the Ontario Veterinary College, the Trinity Medical School, the schools established by the Ontario College of Pharmacy and the Royal College of Dental Surgeons, and finally the Toronto College of Music and the Toronto Conservatory of Music. A Faculty of Law was established. A number of new chairs were created in

28

ROBIN S. HARRIS

the Faculty of Arts and Science, which permitted the honour courses to increase from five in 1887 to fourteen in 1904. But while federation thus transformed a college into a university, it failed to provide the University with either the financial support it required for its development or the administrative structure which was necessary to plan and carry forward that development. The task of presiding over the affairs of the University of Toronto has never been an easy one, but none of the other seven presidents has been in as difficult a position as James Loudon. London's term of office was from 1892 to 1906. An Act Respecting the Income and Property of the University of Toronto, University College, and Upper Canada College, passed in conjunction with the Federation Act in 1887, authorized "the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to appropriate yearly the sum required to defray the current expenses of the said University of Toronto and University College, including in both cases, the care, maintenance, and ordinary repairs of the property assigned for their use," But the clause, rather than implying an assumption of responsibility to draw on provincial funds for the annual operation of the University, meant only that the Government must approve charges against the General Income Fund. The Government did come to the University's aid to the extent of $160,000 in the emergency caused by the destruction by fire of much of the University College building in 1890, and it provided $30,000 in 1888 in recognition of having earlier acquired some University property. But other than this, its grants to the University between 1887 and 1896 were confined to the provision of a water-main in 1888 at a cost of $1038.03, and an annual grant of $500 for the Lady Superintendent (or Matron) who had been appointed at University College when women were formally admitted to classes in 1884. The cost of constructing the Biology Building (1888, $130,000), the Library (1892,

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29

$60,000), the Gymnasium (1894, $36,000), and the Chemistry Building (1895, $80,000) fell to the University, as did the cost of the new professorships. The effect on the University Endowment can be imagined. The situation was somewhat improved in 1897 when the Government agreed to compensate the University for certain claims it advanced that it had not in fact received the full Endowment specified in 1797, and that it had never received