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The Dawn of McGill

DURING the discussion in the Legislature of educational conditions in Lower Canada which resulted in the establishment of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning under the Act of 1801, one of the most prominent members of the Provincial Parliament was James McGill, a merchant and fur-trader who represented the West Ward of Montreal in the Legislative Assembly. Only meagre facts about the life of James McGill are available and the documentary evidence bearing on his career is scanty. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on the 6th of October, 1744. His parents were natives of Banffshire. After an elementary school education in his native town he entered Glasgow University at the age of twelve, in accordance with the custom of those days which permitted attendance at a University at a very early age. The Matriculation Album of Glasgow University contains the following entry:

1756, Jacobus McGill, filius natu maximus Jacobi mercatoris Glasguensis.

Nine years later, his younger brother Andrew entered the University, as indicated by the following record in the Matriculation Album:

1765, Andreas McGill, filius natu quintus Jacobi mercatoris Glasguensis.

Like so many other adventurous Scotchmen of that period, after completing his education James McGill determined to seek his fortune in the new land beyond the horizon, from which wondrous stories of the wealth and romance of the fur-trade were drifting to the old world. He emigrated to the American Colonies, where he remained for some years, and where he was later joined by his younger brother, Andrew. But before the American Revolution the brothers moved to Canada and in 1775 they were firmly and prosperously established in business in Montreal, where the older brother became connected with the famous fur-trading North-West Company. That he was at that time regarded as one of the leading citizens is evident from the fact that he was selected for many important and responsible civic duties. During the American Revolution when Canada was invaded and General Guy Carleton withdrew all the troops to Quebec and left Montreal to its fate, James McGill was one of those who saw the folly and uselessness of resistance. He preferred to save the city from unnecessary destruction and he was one of the twelve citizens,—six French and six English,—who were selected to sign the capitulation of the city to General Richard Montgomery on November 12th, 1775. His five associates were John Porteous, Richard Huntley, John Blake, Edward Gray and James Finlay. On December 2nd, 1776, he married Mrs. Marie Charlotte Guillemin, a French Roman Catholic lady, the widow of a French Canadian gentleman, Joseph A. T. DesriviÈres. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. David Charbrand Delisle, Rector of the Protestant Parish of Montreal and Chaplain of the Garrison. The Church record reads:—“1776, James McGill, Esq., and Mrs. Charlotte Guillemin, widow, were married by Licence the 2nd December, 1776.” Mrs. James McGill was born in Montreal in 1747, the daughter of William Guillemin and Claire Genevieve Foucault. She married Joseph A. T. DesriviÈres in Montreal on the 19th of September, 1763, at the age of sixteen.

Soon after his arrival in Montreal James McGill acquired the Burnside estate of forty-six acres, with the Burnside Manor, in which he resided during the remainder of his life. He took into partnership, under the name of “McGill and Todd,” his friend, Isaac Todd, a man of keen business ability and of civic prominence.

James McGill is described by his contemporaries as of “a frank and social temperament,” in figure “tall and commanding, handsome in youth and becoming somewhat corpulent in his old age,” and in his leisure time “much given to reading.” He was a prominent member of the Beaver Club, the members of which were all fur-traders who had amassed considerable wealth in their calling. A contemporary had a memory of him in jovial mood at one of the festal meetings of this Club, “singing a voyageur's folk-song with sonorous voice, and imitating, paddle in hand, in time with the music, the action of the bowman of a canoe ascending a rapid.”

Because of his pleasing personality, his prosperity and business strength, and his marriage connections with another race and religion, he was held in respect and popularity by all classes, irrespective of nationality or creed. It was therefore but natural that he should enter political life after the granting of the Constitutional Act by the Home Government in 1791. He was selected, with J. B. Durocher as his colleague, to represent the West Ward of Montreal in the first parliament of Lower Canada which met on the 17th of December, 1792. Later he became a member of the Legislative Council, and in 1812 he was appointed one of the commissioners for removing from the city the old walls which had been built in 1724. He took a prominent part in the Militia organisation; during the war of 1812 he was honorary Colonel of the Montreal Infantry Volunteer Regiment; later and before hostilities ended, although he was too old for active service, he was promoted to be Brigadier General, and he seems to have had a large part in directing the administration of the various Militia units. After a busy, active and strenuous life of unselfish service for his community and of devoted efforts for the promotion of tolerance and harmony between races and creeds as the one sure foundation for a united Canadian nationality, he died in Montreal on December 19th, 1813, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried on December 21st. The official record of his death reads: “On the nineteenth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirteen, the Honourable James McGill, Colonel, Commandant of the Montreal Militia, died, and was buried on the twenty-first following.” The certificate of death was signed by his partner, Isaac Todd, and by Thomas Blackwood, a native of Lanarkshire, Scotland, who was at one time employed in the firm of McGill and Todd, and who later formed a business partnership with Francis DesriviÈres.

Montreal as James McGill knew it

Mrs. James McGill survived her husband less than five years. She died in Montreal on the 16th of April, 1818, aged seventy years and nine months, and was buried on the 18th following. There were no children from the marriage.

James McGill was born of Scotch Presbyterian parents and he grew up in the church and religion of his fathers. When he settled in Montreal there was no Church of Scotland in the city. The first Presbyterian congregation in Montreal consisted of a small group of Scottish settlers. It was organised without a church building in 1786 by the Rev. John Bethune, who ministered to its members from March 12th in that year until he moved to Upper Canada in May, 1787. But it was but a temporary organisation and had no continuous status. From 1787 to 1790 there is no record of the holding of a strictly Presbyterian service in the city. The only Protestant body holding service regularly was known as “the Protestant Congregation of Montreal,” the pastor of which was the Rev. David Charbrand Delisle, one of the three clergymen who had been employed by the Church of England to labour among the French-Canadians. He was Rector of the Parish of Montreal and Chaplain of the Garrison. This congregation worshipped until 1789 in the Church of the Recollet Fathers, which with great tolerance and courtesy was for twenty years at their disposal; in 1789 they were given the Chapel belonging to the Jesuits' College, then Government property; they opened it for public worship in December under the name of Christ Church.

Like all the young Protestant Scotchmen living in Montreal at that time, James McGill became by necessity a member of the Protestant Episcopal Congregation. The adherents to the two Protestant creeds were tolerant and harmonious in their relations one with the other and they were content to worship together. In 1789 when the Bishop of Nova Scotia visited Montreal an address was presented to him by the Church Wardens, and by “a committee of the Protestant inhabitants of Montreal,” irrespective of their former creed. The majority of the latter were Scotch Presbyterians. The Bishop was met at Pointe aux Trembles by the reception committee. One of the “Protestant inhabitants” who signed and presented the address was James McGill. There is no doubt that the larger number of this “committee of Protestant inhabitants,” at that time identified with the Protestant Episcopal Congregation of Montreal, returned to the Church of their fathers as soon as a Church was built, several of them becoming office-bearers. The precise action taken by James McGill is uncertain. He seems to have divided his allegiance between the two communions; while not severing his connection entirely with the Church of England he gave his support to the establishment of a Church of Scotland and later became identified with it. When the St. Gabriel Street Church, the first Presbyterian Church in Montreal, was built in 1792, he subscribed ten guineas towards the construction of the building. He signed the call to the first pastor of the Church, the Rev. James Somerville; he thereafter contributed three pounds a year to his stipend and occupied pew No. 16 in the Church. His brother Andrew later contributed five pounds towards removing the remaining debt from the building. The Rev. Mr. Somerville, the pastor of the Church, officiated at Andrew's funeral. There is little doubt from the records that James McGill regarded himself as of the Church of Scotland although he was for a time, in those days of somewhat surprising religious harmony and tolerance, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Montreal.

One of James McGill's most intimate friends and confidants in Canada was the Rev. John Strachan, afterwards the Right Reverend Bishop of Toronto, who was thirty-four years his junior. He was a native of Aberdeen, Scotland. He received his M. A. from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1797, and then attended for some months Divinity Classes at St. Andrew's University, near which he had a post as a Parish schoolmaster. Towards the end of 1797, he came to Canada by invitation to organise a seminary of learning in Upper Canada, but the plan was abandoned and he became tutor in a private family in Kingston, Ontario. He offered himself as a candidate for the pastorship of the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1802, but before his letter was received another applicant, the Rev. James Somerville, had been accepted. Later he took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed to the Church at Cornwall. He opened there a school and his fame as a teacher was soon widespread. Among his pupils were the three sons of the Rev. John Bethune who had established the first Presbyterian Congregation in Montreal, one of whom afterwards became Rector of Christ Church and acting-Principal of McGill University. In 1807, he married the widow of James McGill's younger brother, Andrew, formerly Miss Wood of Cornwall, and he was thus brought into closer relationship with the McGill family. His enthusiasm for education and for its advancement in Canada was unbounded and it is evident that he impressed his ideas as to ways and means and methods on the mind of his wealthy merchant friend. James McGill was a believer in the value of education; he knew what it had done for his own home-land, and what Scotland, educationally, was doing for the world. He determined that the torch which for him had been lighted in Glasgow University should burn likewise for those who would succeed him in the land of his adoption. He had indicated that determination during the consideration of the subject in the Legislature. But on the question of method he sought advice from his young teacher friend, Strachan, whom he frequently visited in the latter's home in Cornwall. During these Glengarry visits there was many a happy and roseate night of mingled sociability and high seriousness, after the custom of their race and time, when the two friends, the young educationalist and the older man of wealth, with similar vision, sat late in discussion of the Canadian educational problem and of plans for its solution.

In a letter to the other surviving executors of James McGill's will, written from York [Toronto] on May 31, 1820, seven years after James McGill's death, the Rev. Dr. Strachan gave interesting information on these discussions and their bearing on the circumstances leading up to the practical working out of James McGill's dreams on education as evidenced later in his will. He wrote: “It was, I believe, at Cornwall during one of the visits which Mr. McGill made to Mrs. Strachan and me that his final resolution respecting the erection of a College after his name, endowing it, etc., was taken. We had been speaking of several persons who had died in Lower Canada and had left no memorial of themselves to benefit the country in which they had realised great fortunes. And particularly I mentioned a University, as the English had no Seminary where an Academical Education could be obtained. We had repeated conversations upon the subject, and he departed determined to do something and with some inclination to leave twenty instead of ten thousand pounds, together with Burnside, and even to make some preparations before his death, expressing at the same time a wish that if he did anything I should take an active part in the proposed College.”

It was soon after the visit referred to that James McGill made his will,—on March 8, 1811. He bequeathed to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, in trust, the sum of £10,000 and his Burnside Estate of forty-six acres, together with the dwelling house and other buildings, for the erection on the estate, and the endowment, of a University or College on the express conditions,—and these were the only conditions imposed,—that the University be erected and established within ten years of his death and that one of the Colleges to be comprised in the University should be called “McGill College.” If the College was not erected in the time specified the conveyance to the Royal Institution was to be null and void; and the estate and endowment were to revert to his widow, and after her death to her first husband's nephew, Francis DesriviÈres and to his legal heirs. He named as executors of the will John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and James Dunlop.

These executors were all close personal friends of the testator. The career of John Strachan has already been outlined. Although it was not specified in the will that he should be connected with the proposed College, it may be assumed that because of his close friendship, his marriage connection, and his established reputation as a brilliant and successful educationalist with definite ideas on Canadian nationality, James McGill desired that he should have a prominent part in the organization of the College and that possibly he should be its first Principal. That this desire was stated to the trustees seems certain. In a letter written from Toronto some years after James McGill's death, while the trustees who knew the circumstances were still living, Bishop Strachan said:

“If it had been my desire, it was certainly in my power to have been at the head of it [McGill College] for it so happened that I had some difficulty in prevailing with my friend, Mr. McGill, to forbear annexing it as a condition to his bequest that I should fill that situation;” and he added that “a Professorship in McGill College was never desired or thought of by me, nor could any situation in that institution have formed an inducement to me to leave this Province to which I have been for so many years devoted.”

The three trustees associated with the Rev. Dr. Strachan as administrators of the will were all prominent in civic and provincial affairs. They were all Scotchmen and were connected with St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. John Richardson, partner in the mercantile house of Forsyth, Richardson and Co., was a native of Banffshire, Scotland. He represented the East Ward of Montreal in the first Parliament of Lower Canada, which met in 1792, and he took his seat at the same time as James McGill, his colleague from the West Ward. With the latter, he was one of the commissioners appointed for the removing of the old city walls in 1802 and it was through his influence that the bill providing for the construction of a canal to Lachine was passed. The firm of which he was a member contributed £20 towards the building of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and he personally subscribed £3 a year towards the minister's stipend; he occupied pews No. 6 and No. 47. He was one of a committee of three formed to purchase the land on which the General Hospital now stands; he was chairman of the committee which superintended the construction of the Hospital and was later chosen as its first president. He died in 1831, aged seventy-six.

The Honourable James Reid, the second trustee named, was admitted to the Bar of the Province in 1794; he was raised to the Bench as a puisne Judge in 1807, and later in 1823 he was made Chief Justice of Montreal. He subscribed one guinea a year to the stipend of the first pastor of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and occupied pew No. 14. He died in 1848 at the age of seventy-nine. After his death, his widow erected to the memory of her husband the southwest wing of the Montreal General Hospital.

James Dunlop, the fourth trustee named, settled in Montreal in 1777 and established a general store in St. Paul Street. He took an active part in the military organisation during the War of 1812, and served as Major under Brigadier General James McGill. He subscribed ten guineas towards the building of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and his name appears for ten pounds on a special subscription list for liquidating the debt on the original building; he signed the manifesto in favour of the first pastor of the Church, the Rev. James Somerville; he contributed five pounds annually towards his salary and occupied pews No. 19 and No. 99. He died in 1815 at the age of sixty.

James McGill's estate sloped from the base of Mount Royal towards the St. Lawrence River. It consisted of forty-six acres of fertile land extending south to what is now Dorchester Street and reaching from the present University Street on the east to what are now McTavish and Metcalfe Streets on the west. St. Catherine Street and Dorchester Street were not then in existence and Sherbrooke Street was but a narrow road running through the farm. East, west and south of the estate were open fields and a few scattered houses, and the city proper lay a long distance away, beside the water-front. A small stream of water passed through the farm. It entered from the east near the present Milton Street entrance on University Street; it then turned south and was increased in volume by the water from a spring near the site of the Macdonald Engineering Building. It passed on through the present tennis courts in “the hollow” by the Physics Building, crossed Sherbrooke Street where it was joined by another small stream from the southwest, and then flowed close to Burnside House and on towards the city. It is recorded that the name Burnside was given to the estate because of this stream or “burn” as the Scotch called it. James McGill's home, Burnside House, a large stone building, was situated on the present McGill College Avenue, about midway between the present Sherbrooke and Burnside Streets on the left-hand side looking south; it was demolished in 1860 to make room for the buildings now in that locality. A narrow road led from near the front of the house to what is now St. Antoine Street. The estate was divided into small sections which were later rented for purposes of cultivation or pasture. It contained numerous trees and shrubs, and was at that time regarded as one of the most valuable and desirable parts of the district of Montreal.

In the days of James McGill, Montreal was a small town of from twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants, and of these the large majority were French. Indeed, the whole province had but a scanty population. One-third of the houses were wooden huts. The town stretched out along the water-front in a series of narrow blocks and straggling streets. The trade with foreign countries was exceedingly small. The entire carrying capacity of ships annually arriving at Quebec did not exceed 12,000 tons, and only a few of these ships went on to Montreal. In 1813, the year of James McGill's death, only nine vessels entered Montreal from the sea, and their total capacity was but 1,589 tons. At the end of the 18th century, the exports of furs and other products from the entire province was little more than half a million pounds sterling. Strange and primitive customs were still in vogue in the city. The price of bread was regulated by “His Majesty's Justices of the Peace,” and bakers were required to mark their bread with the initials of their name. Slavery was not unknown, and a sale advertisement towards the end of the century included in the articles to be sold “a stout, healthy negro man about 28 years of age,—an excellent cook, and very fit for working on a farm.” A mail for England was dispatched about once a month. It went by way of New York and took from three to four weeks to reach that city; it was then forwarded by packet-ship to England, and usually at least four months passed before an answer could be received. The incoming mail was put off the New York packet at Halifax; it came overland from Halifax to Montreal, this part of the journey alone taking nearly four weeks.

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