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The Larger McGill of Our Day

IN writing of the final epoch in McGill's first century, and the larger McGill of our day, we must of necessity be brief. We are too close to that epoch justly to judge its significance, or to give to the events and the incidents of which it is made up the fair and adequate reference which they doubtless deserve. Only the passing of the years can place them in their true perspective. Any estimate of them in our day would perhaps be proved false by time. Matthew Arnold said: “No man can trust himself to speak of his own time and his own contemporaries with the same sureness of judgment and the same proportion as of times and men gone by.” The growth and development of McGill, then, during the last quarter of a century will be here given in bare outline only. The details of that growth are vivid in the memory of living men.

In May, 1895, Dr. William Peterson, Principal of University College, Dundee, Scotland, was appointed to succeed Sir William Dawson as Principal of McGill University, and at the opening of the session in the following September he arrived in Montreal to begin his work. The new Principal was born in Edinburgh in May, 1856. He received his education at the Edinburgh High School and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated in 1875 with Honours in Classics. On his graduation he was awarded the Greek Travelling Fellowship, and after a period of study on the continent he entered Oxford University for further post-graduate courses in Classics. On leaving Oxford he was appointed Assistant to the Professor of the Humanities in Edinburgh University. Two years later, in 1882, he was appointed to the Principalship of University College, Dundee, which included among its other duties the Professorship of Classics and Ancient History. Thirteen years later he became Principal of McGill.

The twenty-four years during which Principal Peterson guided the destinies of McGill were years of steady growth and development. They were years, too, of notable and generous gifts from men of wealth and vision who believed in the value of education and of the beneficent influence of McGill in Canada and the world. Soon after Principal Peterson's appointment two projects for which his predecessor, Sir William Dawson, had planned were carried to completion. Both of these were made possible by the loyal aid of two benefactors who had already contributed greatly to the expansion of the University. William C. Macdonald had already given the Macdonald Engineering Building and the Macdonald Physics Building for the advancement of Applied Science. He now added to these the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building with full equipment for the carrying on of courses which, we have seen, Dr. Harrington had originated years before in the cramped and poorly furnished rooms in the narrow corridor of the Arts Building. The building was opened on December 20, 1898. The Faculty of Applied Science had now passed from small beginnings and inadequate accommodation to a complete organization and a modern home. On September 4th, 1899, the Royal Victoria College for women was formally opened. It was the gift of Lord Strathcona, formerly Sir Donald Smith, who, in 1884, had made possible the establishment of the first courses for women given in McGill, and who, in 1886, had made provision for the complete four years' courses in Arts, the Donalda courses leading to the B.A. degree. The former Principal, Sir William Dawson, lived to see realised the two dreams for the fulfilment of which he had worked so arduously—the completion of the Science Buildings and the erection of a women's College as part of the University.

Dr. Charles E. Moyse
Vice-Principal of McGill University
1903-1920

Over the period that followed since the turn of the century we may pass briefly. It was a period of continued development, not always, however, without its discouragements and problems which need not be here recorded. But disappointments and obstacles were met by Dr. Peterson with courage and energy and hope. The result was progress. The Medical Faculty, which had grown beyond its quarters, needed more room if it was to keep pace with modern research and with the increased number of its students. Lord Strathcona, who had given the first Medical endowment fund in 1882, again came to the rescue, and in September, 1901, a new wing to the Medical Building was opened. In October, 1904, the Conservatorium of Music was established. Later, by the will of Sir William Macdonald, it was left an endowment fund which placed it on an independent basis and enabled it to be expanded into a Faculty of the University. In 1903 Dr. Alexander Johnson, who had been Vice-Principal for seventeen years, retired and was succeeded by Charles E. Moyse, Professor of English. In the spring of 1907 two disastrous fires occurred; in April, within eleven days of each other, the Macdonald Engineering Building and the largest part of the Medical Building were destroyed. Again the University's two great benefactors came to its assistance. Sir William Macdonald replaced the Engineering Building with a new building which was opened on April 27th, 1909, and Lord Strathcona provided for the erection of the new Medical Building, which was opened on June 5th, 1911.

Meanwhile Sir William Macdonald had undertaken to provide in connection with the University an institution intended to meet the needs of the country at large, particularly the rural districts, and to afford better facilities for the training of teachers. With this object in view he founded, in 1907, Macdonald College, at St. Anne de Bellevue, twenty miles from Montreal. It was designed to include three schools, one for Agriculture, one for Household Science and one for Normal Training. The gift for buildings, grounds, consisting of nearly eight hundred acres, equipment and endowment amounted to over six million dollars. The College was incorporated in the University as the Faculty of Agriculture.

There were many other gifts from Sir William Macdonald during this period. In 1909 an attempt was made by a syndicate to purchase the block known as the Joseph property at the southwest corner of the College yard or campus, for the purpose of building an hotel. The Principal was alarmed. He appealed to Sir William, whose pride was great in McGill and in the buildings he had erected. Sir William had no desire that the grounds of McGill should become the backyard of an hotel, however exclusive. He at once purchased the corner, and presented it to the University, thus completing the McGill square and providing a home for the McCord National Museum. Two years later he purchased, as he said, “for a playground for McGill students, the grown-up children of all Canada,” the Frothingham, Molson and Law properties, consisting of twenty-five acres, just east of the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Medical Building. This property, known as Macdonald Park, is the athletic centre of the University. In October, 1920, the Stadium in this park was formally opened. It was the gift of Percival Molson, B.A., who graduated in Arts in 1901, and who was killed in action in front of Avion, near Lens, on July 3rd, 1917, while serving as a Captain in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The McGill Union, erected on Sherbrooke Street, as a centre of student activities, was also the gift of Sir William Macdonald, McGill's greatest benefactor, whose donations to the University during the Principalships of Sir William Dawson and Sir William Peterson amounted to over twelve million and a half of dollars. In 1912 the four affiliated Theological Colleges formed a co-operating Divinity School in affiliation with the University for the instruction of joint classes, and Divinity Hall on University Street was opened.

The last five years of Sir William Peterson's Principalship were the years of war tragedy. When the war came in 1914 the University gave all its energy to the allied cause. When the trumpet blew for freedom, the Principal, although he could not actually enter the combatant lists, gave all his strength unstintingly. The part taken by McGill in the war cannot be here detailed; it must be left for another story. Only the bare outline need be mentioned. When the war cloud broke, the Canadian Officers Training Corps already in connection with the University was reorganised, and grounds and buildings became centres of military activity. In the spring of 1915 the McGill General Hospital, known later as No. 3 (McGill) went overseas. It was a distinctively McGill unit. It was organised within the Medical Faculty. All its officers were members of the teaching staff or graduates of the Medical School. The nurses were graduates of either the Royal Victoria Hospital or the Montreal General Hospital, and practically all the men in the unit were drawn from the student body. Early in the following year a heavy artillery unit was organised within the University, and was permitted by the Militia department to use the name McGill until its arrival in France. It was also allowed to embody the McGill crest with the artillery badge. It was organised as No. 6 (McGill) Siege Battery, but after its arrival at the front it was known as No. 7 Battery, Canadian Siege Artillery. The Commanding Officer and the second in command were members of the teaching staff of the University; the other officers and non-commissioned officers were largely graduates, and more than half the gunners were McGill students. Because of rapid promotions and consequent transfers of officers and men, as well as of the usual circumstances and changes of war, this unit lost before the end of hostilities its distinctively McGill character. The majority of McGill men in the original unit received commissions. Five full companies of infantry and part of a sixth were recruited in the University. They were known as “The University Companies,” and were sent to the front as reinforcements for the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The majority of the officers of these companies and a large number of the men were graduates or students of McGill. The 148th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, recruited in Montreal, although not under the authority of the University, was affiliated with the McGill Canadian Officers Training Corps, and a large number of its officers and men were members of that organization. Later, two reinforcement drafts were organized in the University and each contained a large proportion of students. One was a heavy artillery draft, which on arrival in England in the autumn of 1917 was absorbed into the artillery pool and was used to supply new siege artillery batteries about to be organised or to reinforce field and heavy batteries already at the front. The other draft was recruited for the Tank Battalion raised in the universities of Canada. But apart from the men in the units and drafts organized in the University, McGill men, students, graduates and professors, were found in practically every branch of the service, whether army or navy. The attendance of students in the University was reduced to a minimum; the teaching staff was depleted. In all, over twenty-five hundred McGill men enlisted. Three hundred and forty-one were killed in action, or died of wounds or disease; five hundred and twenty-two were wounded; three hundred and eighty-two received decorations or honours, two of which were the Victoria Cross. In recognition of its services in the allied cause the University received a grant of one million dollars from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. McGill's war record, tragic but glorious, is one of her proudest possessions.

Principal Peterson's health had been impaired even before the war by the cares of an active and busy life spent unsparingly in the interests and the advancement of the University. Like his predecessor, his life at McGill was one of unremitting labour and ceaseless, strenuous tasks which drew in the end a heavy toll from his strength. Then the war came. With its activities and the continuous demands it made upon his time and energy, it severely taxed his already weakened constitution. During the summer of 1918 he had been urged by his physicians and friends to rest because of his failing health. He did not heed the advice; he felt, indeed, that he could not in that troubled and anxious time obey it. He refused to curtail his exertions, and he continued to give his great ability and his unstinted service in every way to help the allied cause. On Sunday, the 12th of January, 1919, although he was not then in good health, he presided at a meeting on behalf of a fund for the benefit of the dependents of Scottish soldiers and sailors killed or disabled in the war. While the meeting was in progress he was stricken with apoplexy and partial paralysis. In the course of a few weeks he recovered his speech almost entirely, and later he regained the partial use of his right leg. When it became evident that he could not recover sufficiently to resume his place at the head of the University he resigned, and after May 1st he ceased to be Principal of McGill. On July the 24th he sailed from Montreal for England, where he resided until his death in February, 1921.

Sir William Peterson was Principal of McGill University for a period of twenty-four years, one quarter of its century of life. During that time many honours came to him. He occupied the presidency of many learned societies; he was knighted in 1915; he received honorary degrees from the leading universities of Britain, America and Canada; he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; he won great distinction as a scholar and a writer. It would be unwise here to attempt to estimate the significance of his work as Principal of the University. We are perhaps too close to judge it with correctness or with justice. The McGill he left in 1919 was not the McGill he found in 1895. In the intervening years its development on the sure foundations that had already been laid was extraordinary and unprecedented for a university. Among the external evidences of growth during that time are the McGill Union, the centre of student activities; the Conservatorium of Music, with courses leading to the degree of Bachelor and Doctor of Music; the establishment of a Department of Dentistry, now grown to the stature of a Faculty; the acquisition of the Joseph property at the southwest corner of the Yard, and the new Molson and Law properties, consisting of 25 acres, the site of the Molson Stadium, and of the gymnasium and student residences of the future; the new Medical building; the establishment and development of the Graduate School, and of the Departments of Commerce, Social Service and Physical Education, and above all, the addition of Macdonald College with its vast acres at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where the work of the Faculty of Agriculture, Household Science and the training of teachers is carried on. In these twenty-five years the number of students more than doubled. Financially, too, there was a change. In 1895 endowments amounted to over a million and a half of dollars, in 1919 they were over twelve millions, a sum to which the citizens' response to the appeal for funds in 1911 largely contributed; the income in 1895 was two hundred thousand dollars and the disbursements one hundred and eighty thousand; in 1919 the income and disbursements each amounted to approximately one million dollars. In addition to these visible evidences of progress many new and improved courses were established; the teaching staff was greatly increased, and the reputation of the University was enhanced at home and abroad. Externally and internally the newer and greater McGill bears testimony to the energy and determination of Sir William Peterson during his twenty-four years' occupancy of the Principalship. With the criticisms of his administration—that as Principal Sir William was an Imperialist first and afterwards a Canadian, and that in making professorial appointments he did not often consider Canadian scholars, with at least equal qualifications—we are not here concerned.

In the spring of 1919 Sir Auckland Geddes, Minister of National Service in the British Cabinet, and formerly Professor of Anatomy in McGill, was appointed Principal. He never assumed the duties of his office and a year later he resigned to become British Ambassador at Washington, U. S. A.

In May, 1920, Sir Arthur Currie, formerly Commander of the Canadian Corps in France, was appointed Principal, and in the following August he took up his new duties. In June of that year Vice-Principal Moyse resigned after forty-one years of service as Professor of English. He was succeeded as Vice-Principal by Dr. Frank D. Adams, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science.

One of the first acts of the new Principal was the making of a general appeal, with the Governors, in the autumn of 1920, for public subscriptions to increase the endowment fund and revenues for the purpose of increasing professors' salaries and for the erection of new buildings or extensions. The response to this appeal was generous; a sum of over six million dollars was subscribed, of which one million was from the Province of Quebec. The renewed interest of graduates in their University was evidenced by the fact that they subscribed over half the amount raised. As a result of the increased endowment, two structures were at once undertaken, one an extension to the Library, and the other a new building for the Medical Faculty.

Sir Arthur Currie
Principal McGill University 1920

With an encouraging interest in its welfare by graduates and by citizens, with a large increase in students who last year numbered over three thousand, with forward face looking hopefully to the future, McGill University has rounded out its first century of life. The road over which it has passed, as we look back from the hilltop of to-day, has been long and arduous. It has been beset with many trials and difficulties. But the obstacles in the way of its advance were not unsurmountable; they were perhaps objects of discouragement, but never objects of total despair to the men of stout heart and firm faith and far-off vision who made McGill.

Dr. Frank D. Adams
Vice-Principal of McGill University
1920