Gay on Friedland, 'The University of Toronto: a History'

H-Canada Gay on Friedland, 'The University of Toronto: A History'

Review published on Saturday, February 1, 2003

Martin L. Friedland. The University of Toronto: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. xiii + 764 pp. $60.00 (Canadian) (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8020-4429-7.

Reviewed by Hannah Gay (Department of History, Simon Fraser University; and Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College London)Published on H-Canada (February, 2003)

This history of the University of Toronto was commissioned to mark the university's one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary.[1] It is the first major treatment since that by William S. Wallace, published for the one-hundredth anniversary in 1927. A single volume work was requested, presumably with a view to sales to alumni and others with close attachments to the university. But, writing a comprehensive history of a major institution with so many different schools, centers and departments is no easy task and, from a scholarly point of view, a two-volume work would have been justified. The major inconvenience of having all the notes and scholarly apparatus for the book available only on the press website could then have been avoided. Even with a volume this weighty, Friedland must have found it difficult to balance the demands of scholarship, comprehensiveness, and accessibility. Despite the odds, he has succeeded in writing a lucid, balanced and representative volume which should appeal to both constituencies that the Press may have in mind, the larger university community and those with scholarly interests in higher education, the University of Toronto, or the city of Toronto.

Already in the late eighteenth century, when the European population of Upper Canada was only about 25,000 there were demands that a university be established at York, the site of present-day Toronto. By the 1820s plans were afoot for an Anglican university college along the lines of ones already founded in other British colonies. McGill University (with no religious tests) received a royal charter in 1821 and the British government thought it might serve the needs of both Upper and Lower Canada. But there was concern that too many young men were leaving Upper Canada for study in the United States where, according to the chief booster for the new university, Bishop John Strachan, the books "breathe hatred to everything English" (p. 6). Concern over Americanization, and the possible loss of young men to the United States, led the authorities in London to support the founding of a university in the colony. King's College, chartered in 1827, was to be run by Anglican clergymen, a major, albeit indirect, reason for its subsequent failure. The elite families of the colony may have been largely Anglican but, overall, Anglicans were in a minority. Methodists, who formed the largest minority, understandably objected to the terms of the new college and, in 1837, were successful in getting a bill passed in London removing Anglican religious tests from the original charter. But entrants still had to declare their belief in the "authenticity and divine inspiration" of the Old and New Testaments (p. 19). The university was, in essence, to be both a place where clergymen could be trained and a finishing school for Christian gentlemen. Most of the early entrants were graduates of Upper Canada College, an elite school where Latin and other subjects needed for matriculation were taught. But the 1837 Rebellion, and a number of financial problems, delayed construction. By the time the cornerstone was laid in 1842, the Methodists had founded Victoria

College in Cobourg and the Presbyterians, Queen's College in Kingston (both in 1841). The Roman Catholic St Michael's College was founded in Toronto in 1852 by French Basilians. Later, in the 1920s, Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain came to St. Michael's and built up the Institute of Medieval Studies (renamed Pontifical Institute in 1939), a major center in its field.

Bishop Strachan tried to hold out for only English staff at the new King's College. But recruiting from England was not easy; few talented young men wished to work in the colonies. Among those who did apply for positions in the early years, the scientists John Tyndall and Thomas Henry Huxley, and the mathematician J. J. Sylvester stand out. They were all rejected; Huxley, because the Rev. William Hincks, brother of the then premier of Canada, was given the chair of natural history; Sylvester because he was a Jew, though it is only fair to point out that he had just been thrown out of University College in London (Gower Street's 'godless institution') and was to have a rather odd career trajectory before becoming Savilian professor in Oxford. Tyndall, later infamous for his materialist Belfast address to the British Association, may have let his materialist bias show--though his being Irish might have counted against him. The early hiring ethos, in which the English and Scots were favoured, and in which nepotism and anti-semitism were practised, faded away only slowly. Friedland appears to have some sympathy for the claim, made by A. B. Macallum the professor of physiology in the late nineteenth century, that had these scientists been hired the university would have early been able to rival some leading US institutions. But this is surely false. Huxley and Tyndall needed the London environment with its new openings free of Oxbridge tradition and religious restrictions, in which to operate. Toronto would not have given them the same opportunities; though, had they gone, they would have made the best of it--as did other scientists, such as Henry Croft the first professor of chemistry, hired on the recommendation of Michael Faraday.

Strachan was unhappy that Charles Bagot, the Governor General, hired an Irishman, John McCaul, principal of Upper Canada College and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, as his vice-principal and professor of classics. Far worse, in 1849 an act was introduced in the parliament of Canada to convert King's College into the University of Toronto which was to become a secular institution. There was to be no public funding for the chair of divinity, and no religious test for students or professors. The idea was that the Victoria and Queen's colleges should affiliate with the university while retaining powers to grant degrees in certain subjects. Strachan and his followers labelled this act "entirely infidel" (p. 28). It prompted them to found yet another college, the strictly Anglican Trinity College which opened its doors to students in 1852, two years after the act inaugurating the new university. Those King's College professors who did not move to Trinity became professors at the University of Toronto. John McCaul became the first president and professor of classics. The Rev. James Beaven ceased being a professor of divinity and became professor of metaphysics and ethics. Victoria and Queen's did not wish to affiliate at this time. A little later St. Michael's bid to affiliate was turned down.

Perhaps appropriately, the old King's College site became the University Lunatic Asylum. Clearly sectarian tensions had clouded people's minds in the planning of tertiary education for the colony, and the university has had to live with the consequences of its early history. By the 1850s the new university took about fifty students a year, but the denominational colleges were holding their own so that the government had to rethink yet again. In 1853 royal assent was given to a bill redefining the university. It was renamed University College and a new University of Toronto, intended to be an

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Gay on Friedland, 'The University of Toronto: A History'. H-Canada. 05-20-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3449/reviews/27202/gay-friedland-university-toronto-history Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Canada examining body for all the colleges, was founded. This arrangement bore some resemblance to the one at the University of London, though not to the extent that Friedland, or some of the contemporary observers that he quotes, imply. Under the new legislation the fledgling faculties of law and medicine were abandoned. This is understandable given the existing climate of opinion on professional education, not just in British North America but also in Britain. The question of whether future lawyers, doctors, surgeons and engineers should be educated in colleges or universities, or on the job by tutelage, articling, working in hospital settings, or as apprentices, was highly debated. Egerton Ryerson, the power behind Victoria College, still believed in a gentlemanly tertiary education of the Oxbridge type in which classics and mathematics were stressed. Later he recommended that normal schools and schools of engineering be kept apart from the rest. But there were those attached to the university who wanted an expanded and more modern curriculum. In Britain, as in Upper Canada, professional education was still largely private and only later in the century did the state begin to play a serious role in funding medical and engineering programs. In Toronto the medical faculty was reestablished in 1887. The Law Society, which had a monopoly on legal education, set up the Osgoode Hall Law School in 1889 and the University only won the right to fully train lawyers in 1957. A School of Practical Science was opened in 1878. These professional schools came into being after Confederation when responsibility for education passed to the new provincial governments. I would like to have read a little more about engineering education than Friedland provides. Ontario saw itself as a province with great potential, but one in need of development--roads and railways to be built, mineral deposits to be exploited, timber to be harvested, land to be farmed, manufacturing to be promoted and, later in the century, electricity to be generated and distributed. Well-trained technical people were needed. The first professor of engineering, John Galbraith, was a railway engineer. Like Galbraith, most of the science and engineering professors of the 1870s appear to have had Scottish training. The School of Practical science did train some mining and civil engineers; but we are not told how far this new school went in providing the talent used in developing the infrastructure of the province.

Friedland details the history of the university's buildings well. University College was housed in an impressive new building by the 1860s and other buildings followed. But the new university still had to survive the attacks of sectarian interests. According to Daniel Wilson it narrowly avoided extinction after a Royal Commission, appointed by John A. Macdonald, and designed to be friendly to the denominational colleges, filed its report in 1863. The report recommended endowment monies be taken from the university and shared with the colleges. But, in the end, after university supporters came out in force to oppose the report, the colleges received higher grants without any loss to the university. Wilson, a Scot, was a major force in the university from his appointment, in 1853, as professor of English history and literature--an appointment that marks a modern curricular turn from classics. By the late 1860s University College had a credible group of professors and about 250 full- time students, including a few from visible minorities and First Nations. James Ross, grandson of an Okanagan chief and later chief justice in Louis Riel's provisional government at Red River, was one. Even though there was nothing in the University of Toronto Act to exclude women, President McCaul was against their admission. Until he retired in 1880, and was succeeded by Wilson, few women were admitted. Women entered by painfully slow degrees from the 1870s, despite the fact that the need for women teachers in high schools was widely recognized. The first women to be admitted were not allowed to attend lectures with men and had to be separately tutored - though Henry Croft, the chemist, was an exception in allowing a few women to attend his classes. Only one of the twenty-

It would appear that government investment in expensive practical science laboratories was the most important factor in encouraging integration of the denominational colleges. Keeping up with the new was expensive and the separate colleges could not easily afford to do so. Queen's, in the end, rejected federation because the government was not prepared to pay for it to move to Toronto. Victoria College was in debt by the 1880s and did not wish to wither into a strictly theological college. The government encouraged federation but Daniel Wilson was concerned that this was part of some plot by Methodists to take control of University College. In the event, Victoria College moved from Cobourg, and with two smaller theological colleges, Wycliffe (low-church Anglican) and Knox (Presbyterian) joined the University of Toronto in 1885. Victoria College's new building was opened in 1892. St. Michael's federated in 1890 and Trinity did so in 1903, moving into its present building in 1925. The Baptist College refused to join; with a bequest from William McMaster it was able to become an independent university and move to Hamilton in 1930.

Under the new legislation the Ontario government had greater control of university affairs, and it allowed the university to slowly expand. However, by 1904, University College and Victoria College between them only graduated about 400 students each year. By the late century local feeling was beginning to turn against professors imported from Britain. The first Canadian to be hired was James Loudon in 1875. As professor of mathematics and physics he introduced practical physics instruction in Toronto and later became president of the university. But, as a Canadian faculty member, he remained part of a tiny minority. In this connection, a dispute arose in 1888 around the hiring of the first professor of po