McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning, Volume II, 1895-1971 9780773560949

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McGILL UNIVERSITY VOLUME II

McGILL FOR THE

UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

VOLUME II 1895-1971 STANLEY BRICE FROST

McGILL- QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY PRESS KINGSTON AND MONTREAL

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1984 ISBN 0-7735-0422-2 Legal deposit second quarter 1984 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Design by Naoto Kondo Printed in Canada by T. H. Best Printing Company

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Frost, Stanley Brice, 1913McGill University, for the advancement of learning Contents: v. I. 1801-1895 -v. 2. 1895-1971. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-0353-6 (v. l ) . - I S B N 0-7735-0422-2 (v. 2). I. McGill University - History. I. Title LE3.M22F76

378.7i4'28i

G8o-6o69-5

To the Students of McGill University who disturb its calm stimulate its professors win its laurels become its graduates and justify its existence this volume is hopefully dedicated

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S CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONSS

xi

FOREWORD

xvii

PREFACEE

xix

ABBREVIATIONSS

xxiii

PART ON E

The University 1895-1960

CHAPTER!

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS The Institutional Scene. The New Principal Successes and Impediments. The Royal Victoria College. Strathcona 's Benefactions to Medicine. Macdonald's Benefactions to Science. Macdonald's Other Benefactions. The Greatest Benefactor. Student Affairs. Notes

3

CHAPTER 2

ADVANCES ON MANY FRONTS The Humanities and Social Sciences. Initiatives in Summer Schools. Beginnings in Music. The Sciences in Arts. The Faculty of Applied Science. The Faculty of Law. Developments in Medicine. McGill University Magazine. Administrative Developments. Notes

27

vm

CHAPTER 3

CONTENTS

PETERSON: THE MIDDLE YEARS

59

Education in Canada and Quebec. Macdonald College. Macdonald School for Teachers. The School of Household Science. The Faculty of Agriculture. The McLennan Travelling Libraries. McGill University College of British Columbia. Graduate Studies. Financial Anxieties. The Theological Colleges. Decades of Achievement. Notes

CHAPTER 4

THE YEARS OF WORLD WAR I

95

Imperial Loyalties. The McGill Provisional Battalion. The Long Haul A New-Style Contribution. The Khaki University. Major Endowments. The End of the Peterson Era. Notes

CHAPTERS

HERO ON CAMPUS

113

Leader under Attack. The Eighth Principal The 1920 Financial Campaign. A Program of Construction. Community Developments. Portents of an Age to Come. Imperial Occasions. Notes

CHAPTER 6

D E V E L O P M E N T S BETWEEN THE WARS

139

The Pulp and Paper Research Institute. The University's Libraries. Evolving Faculties. The Emergence of the Social Sciences. The Social Science Research Project. The Faculty of Law. Matters Pedagogical Agriculture, Parasitology, and Household Science. The Faculty of Medicine. Women in Medicine. The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. Notes

CHAPTER 7

THE DECADE OF A C H A N C E L L O R 187 Captain of Industry. Economic Depression. The Morgan Affair. The Chancellor's Choice. The End of Deficits. Positive Policies. A Well-considered Program. The Plan Implemented. The Issue of Free Speech. A New Appointment in Commerce. A Continuing Policy. Notes

CHAPTERS

THE YEARS OF WORLD WAR II The Eleventh Principal. A University Gearing for War. The University and National Policies. Contributions to Armed Services. Contributions on Campus. Contributions to Research. Preparations for Peace. A Very Special Convocation. Providing for the Veterans. An Unwelcome Aftermath. Notes

211

CONTENTS

ix

CHAPTER 9

YEARS OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENT: 1945-1960 247 Private and Governmental Aid. Federal Government to the Rescue. Provincial Problems and Solutions. An Enlargement of the Mind. The Enlargement of McGill The Continuity of Student Life. Notes

PART TWOO

Faculties and Departments in the Postwar Years

CHAPTER 10

THE H U M A N I T I E S A Time of Self-Searching. The French Milieu. A Third Inheritance. A University Press. Divinity and Religious Studies. The Faculty of Music. The Department of Extension. An Integrated Library System. The Graduate School of Library Science. Notes

273

CHAPTER ii

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Differentiated Disciplines. Economics and Political Science. Sociology and Anthropology. The Faculty of Law. The Department of History. The University's Museums. Notes

309

CHAPTER 12

THE PHYSICAL AND A P P L I E D SCIENCES Old Worlds Become New. Old Sciences Reinvigorated. The Faculty of Engineering. The School of Architecture. The Faculty of Agriculture. The School of Food Science. Notes

CHAPTER 13

THE BIOLOGICAL AND M E D I C A L SCIENCES Fruitful Untidiness. The Old Biology and the New. The Department of Psychology. The Faculty of Medicine. Medical Education. Orientation towards Research. The Department of Psychiatry. The Montreal Neurological Institute. Quinstitute and Anatomy. The Department of Physiology. The Department of Medicine. Other Departments, Other Names. The School of Nursing. The School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. The Faculty of Dentistry. Notes

333

365

X

CONTENTS

PART THREE The University 1960-1971 CHAPTER 14

THE QUIET REVOLUTIONSS A Different Quebec. The McGill Reality. The Parent Commission. The Institute of Education. The Faculty of Education. The End of the James Era. The Surgeon Principal A Chancellor for All Situations. The Modest Benefactor. Another Crisis, Another Solution, The Not-So-Private University. The Year of the Commissions. The Need to Rebuild. The Campus Revisited. Changing Academic Structures. Developing Administrative Structures. The Principal's Team. Notes

CHAPTER 15

TURBULENCE AND CELEBRATION A World-wide Phenomenon. Plans and Counterplans. Preliminary Skirmishings. The Issue of Indecency. The Principal's Office Occupied. Reform of University Government. New Senate, New Board. Continuing Disruptions. The Gray Case. Unanswered Questions. Return to Normality. Sesquicentennial Notes

INDEX

403

443

473

ILLUSTRATIONS

McGill campus, 1900

2

Notman Photographic Archives

Principal Sir William Peterson

6

History of McGill Project

The Royal Victoria College, 1900

9

Notman Photographic Archives

Evolution of Medical Buildings, 1872—1903

12

From McGill University Calendar 1903-4

Donald A. Smith, Lord Strathcona; Sir William Macdonald

17

History of McGill Project

Sports activities, 1898

22

From Old McGill 1898

Clara Lichtenstein

32

Notman Photographic Archives

Charles Harriss

32

From McGill Music Month, 1975

Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building

36

Notman Photographic Archives

Ernest Rutherford at McGill

42

By John Gilmore

Eugene Lafleur McGill University Archives

42

Xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Veterinarians' class, 1898

46

From Old McGill 1898

The Children's Memorial Hospital, c. 1908

48

Public Relations Department, Montreal Children's Hospital

Sir Thomas Roddick

52

From Sir Thomas Roddick

Charles Ebenezer Moyse

52

By E. Wyly Grier

Macdonald College, c. 1908

65

McGill University Archives

James Wilson Robertson

67

McGill University Archives

Sinclair Laird

67

From McGill Journal of Education, 1961

Household science class, c. 1910

70

McGill University Archives

McGill College British Columbia

78

From Old McGill 1908

Henry Marshall Tory

81

Notman Photographic Archives

Frank Dawson Adams

81

History of McGill Project

Strathcona Medical Building, c. 1912

84

McGill University Archives

William Massey Birks

88

History of McGill Project

Stephen Butler Leacock

97

McGill University Archives

No. 2 University Company, 1915

loo

From McGill at War

Percival Molson

102

From The Molson Family

General and Dean H.S. Birkett

102

From McGill at War

Principal Sir Arthur Currie

117

History of McGill Project

Molson Stadium with Field House and Pathological Institute

121

By Percy Nobbs, Blackader-Lauterman Library

Montreal population by ethnic origin

126

History of McGill Project

The stone-laying, Montreal Neurological Institute

132

McGill University Archives

Sir Arthur Currie's funeral McGill University Archives

134

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Pulp and Paper Research Institute

xiii

140

Blackader-Lauterman Library

Carl Dawson McGill University Archives Leonard Marsh

154 154

From Saturday Night, 27 March 1943

Dorothy King

154

From The Dorothy King Memorial Lectures

Elizabeth Monk

154

McGill University Archives

A.W. Thornton, 1920-27; A.L. Walsh, 1927-48

168

From A History of the McGill Dental School

Edward Archibald

172

From McGill News, 1946

James Bertram Collip

172

From Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1943

Jessie Boyd Scriver

172

History of McGill Project

3480 University Street

175

From In Caps and Gowns

Arthur Stanley Eve

179

McGill University Archives

Chancellor Beatty and Principal Morgan

191

McGill University Archives F.R. Scott McGill University Archives

194

Principal Lewis Douglas; Dean Percy Corbett

204

McGill University Archives

Principal F. Cyril James

212

McGill University Archives

Arthur Lismer's cartoon of Dorothy McMurray Courtesy of Professor P.F. McCullagh Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium

215 218

McGill University Archives

Student harvesters

224

McGill University Archives

Otto Maass

228

McGill University Archives

James Sutherland Thomson

233

Courtesy of Margaret Thomson Houston

Convocation at Quebec City By Richard Jack Cyril James greets returning veterans McGill University Archives

236 238

XIV

ILLUSTRATIONS

John Wilson McConnell

249

McGill University Archives

John Stuart Foster and the McGill cyclotron

254

McGill University Archives

The vestibule, Moyse Hall

257

McGill University Archives

Student enrolment

259

History of McGill Project My Fur Lady From Old McGill '57

263

Dawson College, St. Johns, Quebec

265

McGill University Archives

English lecture, Moyse Hall

275

McGill University Archives

Reception for Professor Files

279

McGill University Archives

Islamic Institute seminar

283

Canada Wide Photo

University chapel Courtesy of Dean J.C. McLelland McGill String Quartet Courtesy of Dean Paul Pedersen The McLennan and Redpath libraries History of McGill Project Richard Pennington Courtesy of Elizabeth Lewis Vernon Ross McGill University Archives Arts faculty enrolment History of McGill Project Redpath Museum Notman Photographic Archives The Joseph house, Sherbrooke Street McGill University Archives Cyril James with 'Old George'; and at the Italian Exhibition, 1952 McGill University Archives The McGill-Jacobsen Axel Heiberg Expedition Courtesy of Professor J.B. Bird The early days of televised teaching McGill University Archives Radar Weather Observatory, Ste. Anne de Bellevue Courtesy of E.H. Ballantyne Carl Winkler's laboratory McGill University Archives

288 291 299 303 303 314 322 324 326 335 340 340 344

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mechanical engineering class

XV

348

McGill University Archives

Macdonald Princess Oleander III

357

Courtesy of Hazel Clarke

Food science laboratory Courtesy of Professor Helen Neilson Alan Ross with students McGill University Archives Donald Hebb From Old McGill '70 The anatomy class McGill University Archives Ravenscrag Notman Photographic Archives Wilder Penfield Public Archives Canada David Landsborough Thomson McGill University Archives The Wellcome Camera and Osier Library McGill University Archives Dr. David Munroe; Dean Wayne Hall McGill University Archives Muriel Roscoe; Helen Reynolds History of McGill Project Le Devoir cartoon From the issue of 21 December 1961 Principal H. Rocke Robertson McGill University Archives Chancellors R.E. Powell, Howard Ross, Bertie Gardner McGill University Archives The old Arts Building and the new McGill University Archives Map of campus, 1975 McGill Information Office Student protests From Old McGill '69 Student audiences From Old McGill '72 Professor Michael Brecher with striking students McGill University Archives Students disrupt the board of governors' meeting McGill University Archives Academic calm From Old McGill '71

359 368 371 374 378 380 391 395 410 414 416

418 421 428 434 448 451 457 461 466

XVI

ILLUSTRATIONS

Sesquicentennial

469

From McGill News, 1971

Front endpaper: Bird's-eye view of McGill University By Eugene Harberer and engraved by Desbarats and Co., 1897

Back endpaper: Aerial view of the McGill campus From McGill Reporter, 1972 Acknowledgements Many colleagues have readily responded to requests for illustrative materials for this volume, but particular acknowledgement is due to Stanley Triggs of the Notman Photographic Archives, to Gary Tynski of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library, and to Robert Michel and Brian Owens of the McGill University Archives. The staff of the Publications Service redrew the maps and graphs, and Rolf Selbach and Jack Goldsmith of the Instructional Communications Centre provided the photographic services. Illustrations research has been the especial province of Cecilia Danysk of the History of McGill Project.

FOREWORD

he present volume dealing with the history of McGill from the closing years of the nineteenth century through to the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the granting of McGill's charter in 1971 completes Dr. Stanley Frost's commission. There is, I think, no other academic history in Canada which covers so much of our nation's development, from James McGill's first visit to Montreal in 1766 to the October Crisis of 1970, or so much of Canada's geographical immensity, from Pictou County and Harbour Grace to Victoria College on Vancouver Island. Between those dates and across that wide territory, Dr. Frost has told the story of McGill in fascinating detail and yet with a commendable economy of words and illustration. Principals and professors, benefactors and students, administrators and revolutionaries, they crowd these pages and add their individual contributions to the increasing complexity of a story which nevertheless retains a remarkable unity. The McGill community emerges strongly from these pages as a university, and not as one president despairingly described his own institution, 'a number of discrete entities bound together by a common heating system'. McGill remains a unity, and does so largely because it shares a common history and a common purpose, the pursuit of excellence. In so far as Dr. Frost's two volumes increase awareness on campus of that history, and help to sharpen that sense of purpose, his achievement

T

XVIII

FOREWORD

will greatly assist us in our attempts to cope with contemporary problems, and those that await us in the future. Some of those who read the manuscript in its penultimate form have drawn my attention to one serious omission. Dr. Frost has described the creation of the McGill University library system in the 1960s, the reorganization of the university's non-academic staff to bring equity into its structure and the possibility of career development into its terms of employment, and also the reform of the university's budgeting procedures by means of the Principal's Advisory Budget Planning Committee. He neglects to say that as chairman of the University Library Committee, as vice-principal (administration), and the first chairman of the Budget Planning Committee, he was the moving spirit in all these developments. I am happy to have an opportunity to make good this omission, and to place on record what he was not free to mention. In this service, as in the writing of McGill's history, Dr. Frost personifies the qualities of excellence which are so rooted in McGill's tradition and which inspire it today. The proposal to produce a history of McGill which would be worthy of the university's reputation and achievements originated with my predecessor, Robert Edward Bell, and it was he who found the resources to commence its implementation. The decision to embark on the project was not undertaken lightly, but even so the magnitude and complexity of the task could not be foreseen—only those who have worked at it over many years can have a true understanding of its immensity. Dr. Frost is the first to insist that its completion has been a team effort, and I want to congratulate most sincerely all who have participated. For myself, I have valued greatly the opportunity to encourage its completion. In these two volumes, we have, I believe, a history of McGill in which all members of the university community can take pride; but because our history concerns so much that lies beyond our campus boundaries, I am confident that this work will also be recognized as a major contribution to the history of education in Canada and North America.

DAVID LLOYD JOHNSTON Principal

PREFACE

hen it was first proposed that I should attempt a history of the university, words like 'authoritative' and 'definitive' were used to indicate the serious intention of the undertaking. Eight years later I have to express profound appreciation of the unflagging perseverance of the university authorities in that intention. The support I have consistently received from Principals Bell and Johnston, from Chancellor Conrad Harrington, and from the board of governors has made it possible for me to devote all my energies to this task, but even with that splendid backing I could not have produced the two volumes without the willing and generous assistance of hundreds of colleagues, academic and non-academic, in every part of the university. Those who have written departmental histories, or compiled for me notes on particular subjects, or contributed memories of former colleagues and friends are far too numerous to mention by name. Others have read various parts of the succeeding drafts, and my major embarrassment has been to leave so much excellent material apparently unused, simply because of space limitations. I say 'apparently unused' because all these contributions, whether taken into the text or not, created the background studies which provided criteria for judgement, and allowed me to make an informed rather than an arbitrary choice.

W

XX

PREFACE

Writing volume one was a good exercise in preparation for writing volume two, which proved a much more difficult task, but the nearer I came to our own times, the more I realized that those words 'authoritative', 'definitive' were becoming less and less appropriate. R.G. Collingwood and the Old Testament had long since taught me that any 'definitive' history is a mirage, but the experience of trying to write the story of one's own times reinforced the teaching in no uncertain manner. Volume two is certainly neither 'authoritative' nor 'definitive'. It is one man's view of McGill, and its many personalities in a time of exciting developments; another writer would have chosen other viewpoints, included different incidents, mentioned other colleagues, and distributed the emphases very differently. McGill dates are themselves a good instance of the choices which confront the historian. The story can be said to have begun in 1744 with the birth of the founder, James McGill, or 1766 when he first passed through Montreal, or 1813 when he died and left Burnside and an endowment for the founding of McGill College, or 1801 when the measure establishing the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning was enacted, or 1821 when the college received its royal charter, or 1829 when at least one faculty began to teach. The university chose to celebrate a centennial in 1921, which suggested 1971 as the appropriate date for a sesquicentennial fling and also provided me with an obvious stopping point in a story which happily has no foreseeable ending. But while I have used the sesquicentennial festivities as the finale for this particular libretto, in the section devoted to the faculties and departments in the postwar era I have worked with a very ragged ending. Where a particular departmental story had significant developments in the mid-seventies I have not hesitated to record them. The result may be somewhat untidy, but it is true to life at McGill, and no doubt to life at any lively university. In this study of a major western university I have been strongly confirmed (if confirmation were necessary) in the recognition that, in the postwar years, mankind entered upon a renaissance which has already dwarfed the achievements of all earlier advances, and which is probably still only in its initial stages. We are at present caught up not merely in a quantitative, technological change of human life-style, but in a qualitative, existential development, the outcome of which no one can predict McGill is one relatively small spotlighted area of the global stage on which the human drama is being played, and we see it best as a microcosm of the larger whole. There are some names which must be mentioned. Dr. R.V.V. Nicholls of chemistry and Dr. E.H. Bensley of humanities and social studies in medicine have read the whole manuscript and corrected a multitude of

PREFACE

XXI

errors. Dr. Marcel Caya and the staff of the University Archives have been unfailingly generous of themselves and their resources. The McGill Libraries and their staffs have been constantly helpful. I must especially mention Elizabeth Lewis of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and Elizabeth Silvester of the McLennan Reference Department because with their staffs they constitute perennial sources of information and library expertise. I have been fortunate beyond measure in my own office. First, I have to thank Alison Cole, librarian of the Humanities and Social Sciences Area, that I have had an office in the McLennan Library—it is a privilege for which I have been constantly grateful. Susan Button was my secretary for five years and only I know how great is my debt to her; Wendy Aitken Smith has been most helpful in the last stages of preparing the manuscript for the printer. My research assistants were Eleni Bakopanos and Cecilia Danysk and each has contributed not only much hard data, but also invaluable advice and scholarly expertise. McGill is, like another admirable institution, a many-splendoured thing, and one observer is fascinated by one facet and another by something quite different. If I have succeeded in bringing to mind something of McGill's remarkable past and something of its present richness and promise I shall be well content Stanley Brice Frost

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ABBREVIATIONS

Advancement I

McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning, vol. I, 1801-1895 (Montreal, 1980).

AR

Annual Reports of the Principal of McGill University to His Excellency, the Governor General of Canada, Visitor to the University.

B

Followed by Dewey Decimal Catalogue number; refers to files of the History of McGill Project to be found in the University Archives.

McGilliana

Bulletin of the History of McGill Project; no. I, Sept. 1975, and published twice yearly thereafter. MUA 2172.

M-Gov.

'Minutes of the Meetings of the Governors of the University of McGill College Situate at McGill', June 1829-November 1871, MUA 68i/3a, and continuing series.

MUA

McGill University Archives.

Theses I or 2

McGill University Thesis Directory, prepared for the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, ed. Frank Spitzer and Elizabeth Silvester, vol. I, 1880-1959 (Montreal, 1976); vol. 2, 1960-1973 (Montreal, 1975).

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PART ONE

THE UNIVERSITY 1895-1960

McGill campus, 1900

CHAPTER

I PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

n the month of September in the year 1895, after a anninterregnum of two years, McGill University welcomed a new principal. The times were propitious. The nineteenth century, the most remarkable yet in terms of human progress on every front, was almost ended, but the twentieth promised even greater achievements. The British Empire had attained unrivalled prestige and the pax britannica mediated the blessings of civilization to almost a quarter of the human race. When the old Queen died, as sadly before too long she must, the days of mourning could only herald a new age of even greater brilliance.

I

THE INSTITUTIONAL SCENE

If there were any who did not share in the general euphoria, they were not to be found on the McGill campus. To realize how splendid the university's own achievements had been, one had only to contrast the scene of wild desolation, which had so depressed his predecessor forty years earlier, with the present 'noble prospect' (to use a contemporary newspaper's phrase) spreading itself attractively before the new principal's eyes. On the east side of the campus the two new Macdonald buildings benefited from the clean lines of grey limestone. The Physics Building had been scientifically planned in every detail, yet the design was architecturally attractive. The

4

C H A P T E R ONE

impressiveness of the large Engineering Building was further increased by its important annex, the excellently equipped Workman technical shops. Between the Physics and Engineering buildings lay the site for a new chemistry building, whenever McGill's most generous donor should declare himself ready to provide it On the west side were the two Redpath structures, the museum and the library, the one exhibiting the austere restraint of a Roman temple, and the other equally successful in the ornamental style of 'Gothic Revival'. Standing on an elevation and stretching between the two sets of newer buildings, Molson Hall, the Arts Building, and Dawson Hall1 were neatly joined by single-storey classrooms and fronted by a terrace which provided the university with a pleasant promenade. A little further to the rear on the east side, the recently extended Medical Faculty buildings, equipped with the latest in modern apparatus, stretched up the mountain slope towards the splendid new Royal Victoria Hospital. The university not only presented a pleasing scene physically, but also gave the promise of greater developments. McGill College, in its five faculties, medicine, arts, law, applied science, and comparative medicine and veterinary science, registered over one thousand students and employed a teaching staff of approximately one hundred professors and their assistants. It was a prospect calculated to quicken the pulse of all who came to the university, whether to study or to teach, and surely not least to stir the enthusiasm of the fortunate man chosen to lead the advance into the new era. THE NEW PRINCIPAL

For his part, the new principal must have appeared equally promising. In appearance the first impression that William Peterson made was one of strength, and those who knew him well also spoke of his 'persuasive grace and charm', a formidable combination of personal qualities.2 His reputation had, of course, preceded him, and it was impressive. He had made his mark early in life as a scholar of international repute. He graduated from Edinburgh with first-class honours in classics and spent several months at Gottingen before proceeding to Oxford. There he gained a first class in classical moderations, but had to be content with a second in the final examinations. From Oxford he returned to teach classical languages at Edinburgh, and even after having become involved in administration, he found time to produce two major works, an edition of Quintilian's Tenth Book in 1891 and two years later a revised text of Tacitus' Dialogues de Oratoribus. He was also known to be a gifted administrator, with more than ordinary skills of the kind required in university situations. He had been

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

5

appointed the first principal of Dundee College at the early age of twentysix, and in spite of considerable opposition he succeeded in gaining acceptance of his college by St. Andrews University.3 It was these diplomatic skills and abilities in academic management which in 1894 attracted the attention of the chancellor of McGill University, who was then in Britain looking for a successor to John William Dawson. The chancellor was Donald A. Smith and the fact that he was conducting his search in Britain was significant. When Chancellor James Ferrier, the last link with the Bethune days, had died in 1888, the board of governors had passed over (it was said at his own request) the senior governor, J.H.R. Molson, a generous benefactor of the university and a staunch Montrealer, and had elected Smith as his successor. Smith had a home in Montreal, but the northern States and the whole of Canada were his habitat. Moreover, he was already a personage of some imperial significance. In 1896 he was to be appointed the Canadian High Commissioner in London, and, a year later, made a baron of the United Kingdom with the tide of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, with a seat in the House of Lords. In 1894 these honours were still to come, but as member of Parliament for Montreal West, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a principal shareholder in the Canadian Pacific Railway, and president of the Bank of Montreal, he had his eye on the imperial scene as the stage on which to play his final role. In consigning the task of finding a new principal to Smith, the McGill governors had implicitly accepted the idea that the search should be conducted in Britain and that the man chosen would be highly representative of the culture and tradition of imperial institutions. William Peterson, graduate of Edinburgh and Oxford, classical scholar, and skilled academic administrator, answered admirably to this prescription. SUCCESSES A N D I M P E D I M E N T S

Peterson was, however, not easily persuaded to accept the appointment. Dawson resigned in May 1893 and it was not until May 1895 mat Peterson, after at least two visits from Smith and much further negotiation, finally announced his acceptance of the post. He entered upon the principalship in the fall of 1895 anc^ continued in office until the spring of 1919. During those twenty-four years he consistently fulfilled the expectations which had determined his appointment. As a classical scholar Peterson not only maintained but enhanced his reputation, while as an administrator he showed considerable skill in the engagement of staff and in the management of finance.4 Over the years he

Principal Sir William Peterson

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

7

retained the confidence of the board of governors, and particularly of those two most important members, Donald Smith and William Macdonald. He played a major role in McGilTs relationship with other Canadian universities, and knew how to conduct business with government and how to serve with distinction on international bodies. When World War I broke out in 1914, his strong imperial sympathies inspired the university to make an outstanding commitment to the Allied cause. It has to be entered, however, on the other side of the ledger that Peterson never became a Canadian. Others have entered into the life of a new country and have made it their own. Peterson never did. Throughout his career, he seems never to have forgotten that he was a patrician in exile, selflessly serving 'on the outskirts of the Empire'/' After twenty years in Canada he remained a courteous stranger, and colleagues, students, businessmen of the city, even the strong supporters of McGill, were always aware of an element of distance. He made a point of returning to Britain each year, the moment the summer vacation began, and he came back to resume his duties only in the fall, at the beginning of term. Canadians saw at best an able administrator, devoted and austere, with whom they found it difficult to relate. It is a measure of the character of the man that he persevered, despite his personal difficulties, and made an immense contribution both to McGill and to academic life in Canada.6 It is ironic that Peterson was never able to accomplish what lay nearest to his own interests, the development of an outstanding humanities school. The reason is not far to seek. A university dependent on the benevolence of a mercantile community can gain support for medical, scientific, and societal activities, but finds it difficult to procure the means for those activities less immediately related to social goals. Peter Redpath had shown a welcome catholicity in his interests, but in his support of the humanities he stands apart from McGill's other major benefactors.7 If the university had been receiving public funding, it could have designated more support for undernourished areas. As it was, Peterson the classicist found himself presiding over a university which was gaining international recognition for its medical and scientific achievements, but which lacked the resources to do more than keep the humanities respectable. His strongest academic support in this area came from the theological colleges, which provided a notable proportion of the male students in arts, but financially the theological institutions were in competition with the university, and some funds which might have been available for the humanities undoubtedly found their way to the colleges.8 As we shall see, the various departments in this area of the university did receive some assistance, but not on the same scale as the science departments or the Faculty of Medicine.

8

C H A P T E R ONE

THE ROYAL V I C T O R I A COLLEGE

One of Peterson's major problems was maintaining a good relationship with the chancellor, who was not the easiest of benefactors to deal with. The task called for all the diplomatic skills with which the principal had been credited, and on the whole he was remarkably successful. When he arrived, one event which had been long awaited was the establishment of the Royal Victoria College. In 1884 Donald Smith had provided the financial support necessary for an educational program open to women, but attached the qualification that the women be educated in classes separate from those of the men. Dawson had accepted the $120,000 endowment provided to support the 'Donalda' program, as it was called, and had used it to supplement the teaching strength in a number of hard-pressed departments, for the segregated classes obviously made heavy demands. But it had always been understood that the program was temporary and that Smith intended to found a women's college, having its own endowment to support fully its own teaching program. In 1888 Smith's only child, Margaret, married the son of Robert Palmer Howard, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and this connection strengthened Smith's interest in the faculty, which became the recipient of large sums of money. He also became involved about the same time with his cousin George Stephen in the building and endowment of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which was not opened until 1893, so the proposed college for women was further delayed. In 1896, however, a start was made on a building located on land facing Sherbrooke Street, just east of University Street From the beginning there was some anxiety that the university might find the new college a costly burden. By March 1897 some members of the board suspected that the income from the Donalda endowment was not meeting the cost of the current women's program and that it was becoming a liability to the university. By the following July it was reckoned that the Donalda deficit had risen to more than $2,000. Lord Strathcona (as Smith had now become) remitted $4,000 to meet the deficit and some other costs, but said he was still not ready to proceed with the endowment of the college. In December he finally announced that the college would be ready for occupation the following year, and that the endowment, inclusive of the $120,000 given earlier, would be established at $i million. In the event, he never did transfer the endowment during his lifetime, but remitted annually amounts equivalent to the interest on the capital sum, a practice continued by the trustees of his estate until finally on 31 May 1924 the conveyance was made in the amount of $1,202,500. In the financial values prevailing at the turn of the century, it was indeed a magnificent benefaction.

The Royal Victoria College, 1900

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Strathcona had a very clear notion of the kind of education he wished his college to provide. Writing in 1899 to Hilda Oakeley, the first 'Lady Principal' (a title which under Oxford influence she changed, somewhat unfortunately, to 'Warden'), he expressed his confidence that 'your supervision of [the college] will be of the most beneficial character, not alone in teaching its pupils to become clever and even learned women, but also in instilling into their minds those principles and sentiments without which they cannot be true gentlewomen.'9 The original cost of land and building was $400,000, in itself a large capital outlay. The interior furnishings were correspondingly elaborate. Carpets were specially woven in Scotland, linen in Ireland, and all linen, silver, glassware, and crockery bore the college crest. The official opening took place on I November 1900, and Miss Oakeley reported: 'On that evening, their Excellencies, the Governor-General and Lady Minto, having signified their willingness to be present, Lord Strathcona gave a large reception in the College, to the University and friends of the University. The statue of Queen Victoria was unveiled by Lady Minto, standing on the gallery below the brilliantly illuminated buildings, in the sight of a crowd of interested citizens, and to the sound of the National Anthem sung by the choir of the College.'10 As a social occasion, the opening of the college was a great success, but it quickly became a matter of comment that despite the large sum of money expended, only some thirty-two women could be accommodated. Peterson wrote to Strathcona in 1902: 'As to the accommodation available, I fear your architect must have led you to believe that the building is more elastic than actually appears to be the case.'11 In 1906 interior alterations were made which increased the number of residents to fifty-two, but the later story of the college is a constant one of annexes and new wings to increase the available accommodation.12 Nor were the interior facilities designed for easy or economic operation. A report in 1919 speaks of them as 'planned with a magnificent disregard of human limitations'.13 The designers evidently assumed that the college would always employ a large staff of servants and, indeed, maid service in the bedrooms and waitress service at the tables were the normal order of the day until the late 19505. Nevertheless the part played by the Royal Victoria College in the life of the university was very considerable. Since all women students, resident or not, were considered members of the college, there are thousands of alumnae whose fondest memories of 'Old McGilT are in fact recollections of the college. The contribution of women like Hilda Oakeley, Clara Lichtenstein, Susan Cameron Vaughan, and Ethel Hurlbatt was outstanding in the early days, and over the years their successors, particularly those who held office as warden, have maintained a remarkably high standard.14

P E T E R S O N : THE E A R L Y Y E A R S

II

STRATHCONA'S BENEFACTIONS TO M E D I C I N E

Before Peterson arrived, Strathcona had contributed $50,000 to a faculty endowment fund and shared in the erection of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which greatly strengthened the clinical teaching and research opportunities of the faculty. In 1893 he had given $100,000 to establish two chairs, one in pathology and the other in hygiene. But this welcome increase in activities left the faculty very short of space, and J.H.R. Molson, in a last characteristic gesture before he died, supplied the funds for a considerable expansion of the medical buildings. As a result, these now constituted an impressive group, beginning with the original 1872 building on the site of the present F. Cyril James Administration Building, the extension to the north added in 1885, the pathology wing, consisting of existing property acquired and converted in 1893, and the fine new Molson premises, opened in 1895. They consisted of a lecture room to seat 450, a large chemistry laboratory and provision for physiology, pharmacology, histology, and a dissecting room. The new structure joined the pathology wing to the older buildings and the whole constituted a suite of medical facilities excellently equipped in every department. But the increase in the student body continued undiminished, and even with the additional space the accommodation was quickly becoming as crowded as ever. Within three years of Peterson's arrival, the number of students in the four years of the undergraduate course had gone beyond the 400 mark and not only the available space but also the financial resources of the faculty were consequently under severe strain. At the annual faculty dinner in 1898, Strathcona announced, without previous indication, that he would make further gifts to the faculty in the amount of $100,000. The students present stood on their chairs and exuberantly sang Tor He's a Jolly Good Fellow'. It was the kind of benevolent bombshell to which Peterson was to become accustomed over the next few years. But the faculty concluded that space was more urgent than financial stability and decided to use the new donation for further building extensions. The 1885 extension came down and a large cross-section was erected, joining the original 1872 building and the 1895 Molson extension. Each wing had two handsome cupolas and the latest architect succeeded in matching the style of his predecessors to the extent that the whole complex had a remarkably unified appearance. Maude Abbott, the internationally renowned cardiologist and indefatigable medical historian, did not hesitate in 1902 to describe the suite of buildings as 'the faculty's pride and joy'.15 Certainly the successive Strathcona benefactions had given immense encouragement and support to an enterprise whose only problems were, it appeared, the embarrassments of success.

Evolution of Medical Buildings, 1872-1903

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13

MACDONALD'S B E N E F A C T I O N S TO SCIENCE

If relationships with Strathcona were at times somewhat delicate, those with the university's other major donor also made considerable demands on Peterson's diplomatic skills, but here he had the advantage of meeting William Macdonald frequently, since they were neighbours in the Prince of Wales Terrace on Sherbrooke Street. The major Macdonald development in Peterson's early years was the provision of the much-needed Chemistry and Mining Building, together with an endowment for two professorships in chemistry. Standing between Engineering to the north and Physics to the south, it was built in the same clean-cut stone, and made generous provision for both chemistry and mining. At this stage, these two disciplines were closely related. Mining occupied the basement and first floor, organic and physical chemistry each had an upper floor, and there was also a laboratory for Frank Dawson Adams' work in microscopic petrography. A feature of the building was the number of small laboratories set aside for professors' personal research, and both mining and chemistry were supplied with specialist libraries. Bernard Harrington, the first Macdonald Professor of Chemistry, took great care to see that the building was designed and equipped in accordance with the latest theories and practices.16 He worked closely with the architect, Andrew Taylor, and the result was recognized as one of the finest chemistry buildings in any country. Macdonald also provided the endowment for a chair of mining and metallurgy to ensure a first-class staff in both aspects of the building's function. The cost of the building, its endowment, and the endowment for the three professorships amounted to some $700,000. The building offered one other special provision, a significant sign of the times. The Montreal Gazette in its report of the opening, dated 20 December 1898, commented that there was 'a snug little room set apart specially for the comfort and recreation of the women students'. It was to prove a worthwhile investment. While the new building was being erected and equipped, developments in other areas were not being neglected. Macdonald was already contributing some $11,000 annually to the deficit on the accounts of the Faculty of Applied Science. In 1896 he increased the endowment on the Engineering and Physics buildings to $150,000 and provided for a new chair of agriculture at a cost of $50,000. A new Department of Architecture had been established in the Faculty of Applied Science the year after Peterson arrived, and two years later Macdonald was subscribing $10,000 towards its costs. The same year he gave $30,000 for the Electrical Engineering Laboratory and another $12,500 for the additional endowment of the Engineering Building. In that outstanding year of 1898, he supplemented all his other

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CHAPTER ONE

gifts by an auxiliary fund of $225,000, the purpose of which was to maintain all his various endowments at a minimum level of 5 per cent income, a very satisfactory rate in those days. With the three science buildings completed, staffed, and financed, Macdonald's major intentions in this area had been achieved. But his interest did not flag. Over the next ten years, in the general area of science, his benefactions included the Dawson Chair of Geology, a professorship in botany, supplies of equipment for the engineering laboratories, and designated donations to his endowment funds as well as the elimination of the constant annual deficits of the Faculty of Applied Science. The total sums he made available for these purposes amounted to well over $800,000. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, William Macdonald almost single-handedly financed and maintained the science departments of McGill University on a scale which gave them first-class potential throughout the world. M A C D O N A L D ' S OTHER B E N E F A C T I O N S

While in these years his greatest interest was in the sciences, Macdonald was not altogether unmindful of other areas of the university. On one occasion at least Peterson was even able to engage Macdonald's interest in his own discipline. Dr. Otto Ribbeck, a German philologist of considerable renown, had accumulated a classical library of outstanding value, and when it came on the market at his death in 1898, Macdonald was persuaded to buy it for McGill at a cost of $50,000. It has remained part of the University Library's classical holdings to the present time, and its collection of reprints of journal articles has proved particularly valuable. But for the most part, Macdonald's benefactions had some social end in view. When William Kingsford died in 1898, Macdonald saluted the achievement of the self-appointed historian of Canada by endowing a chair in history in his name. He approved of Kingsford's patriotism and wanted to see his work continued. The Frothingham Chair of Moral and Mental Philosophy had been held by John Clark Murray since 1872, but when he retired, the Frothingham chair became the chair of philosophy simplidter, and Macdonald established in 1903 a new chair of moral philosophy. Again, the social relevance of the subject is not far to seek. Of the more than 10,000 volumes he contributed to the University Library, many were of a scientific or practical nature; some were rare volumes, or, like the Ribbeck library, specialized collections, but most were the general works any good library should contain. There can be no doubt that along with his particular concern for science Macdonald had a strong regard for the university as a whole.

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15

There were numerous evidences of this. One example concerns the land on which the McLennan Library now stands. It was not part of James McGill's estate, of which the boundary line ran some fifty yards to the east of McTavish Street. The northern part of this strip, south of the Presbyterian College, had been bought for the university by J.H.R. Molson in order that the Redpath Library might be built upon it. South of the library, on the corner of Sherbrooke and McTavish Streets, stood the Joseph residence, and in 1909 this house and its land were put on the market. A syndicate bought it for $142,000, intending to build a hotel. When Peterson informed Macdonald of this threat to the university's amenities, Macdonald offered the syndicate a profit of $500 to relinquish the property so that he might present it to McGill. The university's Sherbrooke Street frontage was saved, and a grateful board of governors spread over a page of its minutes a resolution of thanks far more effusive than those that had greeted his previous and much more cosdy benefactions.l7 Another instance of Macdonald's interest in the university as a whole was his farsighted acquisition of additional land northeast of the original Burnside estate. In the mid-nineteenth century, the board of governors had been forced to sell off some twenty-five acres of land below Sherbrooke Street. By coincidence, it was the same number of acres which Macdonald secured by purchasing three estates, a Molson one, and those of the Frothingham and Law families, at the eastern end of the mountain. These he presented to the university to provide space for its growing sports activities. That area, which today houses the student residences, the Currie Gymnasium, and the Molson Stadium, is still known as Macdonald Park. In a rare moment of self-revelation, Macdonald said that this area was to be 'a play-ground for McGill students, the grown-up children of all Canada'. For him, McGill was the university of all Canada, rather than of one city or province, and its students were the children he had made his own by adoption, to take the place of the family which circumstance and his own personality had denied him. THE GREATEST B E N E F A C T O R There was indeed much that was unusual about William Christopher Macdonald.18 He was descended from a line of Scottish chieftains, bearing the territorial tide of Glenaladale. In the third quarter of the eighteenth century his grandfather had immigrated with his people to Prince Edward Island. There William's father had continued the family tradition for leadership by serving on the Executive Council for fifteen years, and for two as its president. On his mother's side, William descended from an influential Loyalist family, which on arriving in the island also quickly took

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C H A P T E R ONE

a prominent part in its public affairs. John Brecken, his maternal grandfather, had in fact been a member of the Executive Council at the same time as his father. The unusual circumstance in this family background was that whereas his mother's family was Protestant, the McDonalds were ardent Catholics, and indeed had emigrated from Scotland to escape religious persecution. Anna Brecken presumably converted at the time of her marriage, for all her children were raised in the Catholic faith, and William served for a while as an acolyte in the parish church. Later in life Anna reverted to her former allegiance, and one of William's sisters followed her mother out of the Catholic fold. Whether these events brought about an estrangement from the father, or whether they followed shortly after it, is not clear. But there undoubtedly was dissension in the family. Another significant fact is that William, who felt himself intellectually superior to his brothers, was not sent away to school. His two older brothers had been sent to England and his four sisters to Quebec City for their schooling. William had to be content with what education was available in the island. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a merchant in Charlottetown, and there is much evidence that he resented this treatment bitterly. He revolted strongly against the ancestral religion, and turned, not to his mother's Protestant faith, but to an antipathy to all forms of religion. At seventeen he set out from home to make his way in the world alone. The violence of his language at that time in referring to his father, and his ready reconciliation with him when the older McDonald came unexpectedly to visit him in Montreal, some six or seven years after the quarrel, suggest that William felt the alienation keenly. Ironically, the reconciliation did not have time to blossom, for as the father was returning to the island, with the intention of selling off and joining William in business in Montreal, he caught cholera in Quebec and died there. The date was 1854 Three of William's sisters became nuns and all four died unmarried. Of his two brothers, John stayed on the family estate and raised a considerable family. The other, Augustine, joined William in business in Montreal, but was soon demoted from partner to clerk and served William in that capacity for several years. Then he left Montreal to venture on his own in the United States, and the two brothers had no further relationship.19 In 1868 his mother and his sister Helen accepted William's invitation to come to Montreal and make their home with him. For their comfort he bought and furnished a house on Sherbrooke Street. Here the trio lived quietly for many years, the two women at first attending St James' Methodist Church and later St George's Anglican. Mrs. McDonald died in 1875, but Helen continued to live with William until her death in 1899. A young niece, a daughter of the brother who had stayed on the island estate, came

Donald A. Smith, Lord Strathcona Sir William Macdonald

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CHAPTER ONE

to keep house for William, but after a short while she announced her intention of leaving to marry one of her cousins. William strongly objected to the marriage on, as he said, religious grounds, since the bridegroom was from the Catholic side of the family, and he withdrew support not only from her, but also from the rest of his brother's family.20 From this time on, his life-style became eccentric. He lived alone in his large house, attended by a man and his wife located in the basement rooms. The dining room and drawing room, furnished for his mother, and library, fitted up to please himself, were kept unaltered on the first floor. In the library there were few bound volumes, but everywhere stacks of magazines, journals, and reports, which he read omnivorously. It was his only pastime. He was consequently well informed on market matters, such as the progress of industry, the application of science, developments in agriculture and education. His business was the manufacture and sale of tobacco, mostly plug tobacco for chewing. The profits he accumulated—there were no other partners or shareholders—mounted steadily, and of course there was no direct taxation. What Macdonald Tobacco earned was his to spend as he would. Not the least extraordinary fact was that he himself disapproved of smoking, and McGill staff working in his buildings had to hide pipes and cigarettes whenever he visited the university. Chewing was confined to the labouring classes, and so long as they had the habit he would provide the means, but preferably in faraway places where he need not see. His interest in the university was one of strong personal commitment. 'When the student body got out of hand in those days, and removed the Star bulletin boards, or fell foul of the police, the old gentleman was inclined to take the matter almost as a personal affront... the motive of Sir William's generosities was a very human and quite tremendous emotion of responsibility and affection for the young men of his time and country Impersonal charity was not in him. He delighted in the sight of the crowded campus, more especially so long as the crowded campus behaved with decorum.'21 His business associate was David Stewart. Stewart began with Macdonald as little more than office boy, and through forty years he served him as secretary and business confidant. When Stewart was felled by a stroke in 1913, Macdonald himself began to lose interest in his business affairs. The following year he agreed rather reluctantly to become chancellor of the university in succession to Strathcona, and he maintained his interest in the university, deploring the decimation of its ranks by the insistent demands of the European war. But his greatest personal contributions had already been made. He did not live to see the end of the war; he died in 1917. He included among his bequests a legacy for the Department of Music in the

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

19

amount of $300,000 and another of $500,000 for the Faculty of Medicine. His total giving to McGill amounted to more than $14 million. The remainder of his estate he left to David Stewart's two sons. Walter M. Stewart took over the direction of the company and continued not only Macdonald's business practices but also his tradition of using the ensuing profits to support good causes in general and McGill University in particular. The Stewart benefactions were to be by no means negligible, even in comparison with those of Macdonald. When we take into account his major benefactions of which as yet we have said nothing, notably his long-term concern for the Faculty of Law and his immense provision for agriculture, education, and household science at Macdonald College, it will be evident that there was hardly any part of the university's operation which William Macdonald did not vitalize by carefully planned assistance on the most generous scale. This campus-wide interest and involvement gave him his unique place in university history, so that he must be ranked with James McGill and William Dawson as the three men who, each in his generation, 'made McGill'. But at the end of Peterson's first decade a great part of his contribution was still to come. STUDENT AFFAIRS

The students for whom Macdonald was prepared to provide so generously were perhaps more ready than most other elements in the university to indicate that with the passing of Dawson and the coming of Peterson, the words of the most popular poet of the day were being exemplified: the old order was indeed changing and yielding place to new. In 1897 the first of the annuals Old McGill appeared, and when its contents and those of subsequent numbers are compared with the issues of the previous student publication, the University Gazette, which had been maintained from 1873 to 1890, it is obvious that the mood had changed from the sober and somewhat ponderous character of the earlier production to a more adolescent and frivolous one. McGill had during the intervening years conformed more closely to the normative patterns of North American college life. Football contests with Toronto, Yale, and Princeton loomed large; there was a McGill 'yell' for use upon such occasions, and even from time to time separate 'year yells'. College 'rags' are mentioned as involving various forms of hooliganism, and Theatre Night was the great event of the year.22 The students turned out in force and demonstrated noisily outside and inside the theatre, and the players were expected to tolerate interruptions of the action by many outbursts. One leading lady overwhelmed all opposition by appearing entr'acte in the red and white of the McGill colours and singing appropriate student songs, which the audi-

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C H A P T E R ONE

ence took up vociferously. Perhaps discretion rather than generosity led the academic board to offer the students refreshments after the show in the Engineering Building and to permit dancing until three o'clock in the morning. In line with these developments was the arrival of Greek-letter fraternities on campus, and the annuals list the location of chapters on other campuses, mostly in the New England states. The social life of the students was largely catered for by the class-year organization in their various faculties. The homogeneity of religious, social, and ethnic background was as yet largely undisturbed, and in the early years of the new century the YMCA and the YWCA still catered successfully to most students. But that something more was needed was shown by the fact that in 1895 Mrs. John Clark Murray organized the University Club, which provided a dining room, reading room, 'and other conveniences' for about seventy 'boarders'. Since lodging was available for ten residents, one presumes that the other 'boarders' lodged nearby and came in for meals. 'The cuisine is directed by a competent chef, and the appointments and services are excellent throughout', proclaimed the annual of 1898, and it advertised 'a square meal for 25$'. At that price it is not surprising that Peterson was reporting at the end of the session that Mrs. Murray had lost money on the operation of the club, but the board of governors declined to come to her rescue, and in October 1899 the principal announced its closing with a heavy deficit. Further developments were not long delayed. In the 18906 the McGill YMCA had access to a building on Sherbrooke Street, but as these premises were proving inadequate for the heavy use made of them, a new building was erected on a site facing the campus gates. The new premises provided 'an open social lobby', offices, small meeting rooms, a kitchen, 'a large hall, which could be used as a gymnasium or for social gatherings or suppers', and bedrooms for some forty students. Since Strathcona gave most of the cost it was called Strathcona Hall. When Macdonald announced he would give the land and assist with the costs of building a Student Union, there was some indication that his action was by way of riposte. The architect Percy Erskine Nobbs quoted him as saying 'Lord Strathcona and his friends are putting up a building for the Christian young men of McGill. I want a building for all the young men of McGill.'23 The story, apocryphal or not, indicates the changes in the character and constitution of the student body that were beginning to occur. Despite his own frugality, Macdonald surprisingly wanted the first Student Union to be built in the style of a gentlemen's club and provided for it to be furnished in costly fashion. 'No University building in Canada was equal to it when it was opened; few buildings in Canada had ever been so thoroughly designed; even the draperies, furniture, cutlery and so on were

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

21

made to the architect's taste.'24 Possibly he wanted to avoid invidious comparison with Strathcona's Royal Victoria College two or three hundred yards further east. There had been hopes that graduates would contribute handsomely and indeed they did raise $65,000 for the original project But when Macdonald stepped in, the readiness of graduates to contribute was considerably blunted, and he was left to provide the $220,000 needed to complete the project. The Student Union opened its doors in 1906 and became the centre for student activities for the next sixty years. When student numbers outgrew its facilities, the building was skilfully adapted to house the McCord Museum. Another development in student life was the growing importance attached to athletic and sporting activities. Until his resignation in 1904, the young physician R. Tait McKenzie continued as the medical director of physical training, a responsibility broadened in 1902 to include supervision of services for women in the Royal Victoria College.25 The physical fitness classes available to women since 1887 were taken into the organization of the college when it began to function in 1900. The women had very adequate facilities in the college assembly hall, which also served as a gymnasium, but the men were poorly supplied until 1905 when a five-year lease of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association gymnasium was obtained.26 Before Peterson arrived, Corporation had set up the University Athletics Committee, towards which all students agreed to pay $2.00 a year, and this body was to manage the university athletic facilities, such as the playing fields and tennis courts. It was composed jointly of academic staff and student representatives, who came from the five major clubs: athletics, football, cricket, tennis, and hockey. Courts for handball and 'fives' were erected in 1900 and in 1903 the McGill Calendar added basketball to the list of university clubs. These sports clubs, the fraternities, and the Undergraduate Literary Society drew students from different faculties together, but the organization of the curriculum by years made them particularly conscious of their faculty and 'class', and their loyalty to the university reflected itself primarily through these commitments. The one university issue on which some students, at least, felt deeply was the need to promote the concept of 'greater McGill', and of a loyalty to the institution as a whole. As late as 1912, when it was first proposed that the affiliated theological colleges should be organized into a divinity faculty, student editorialists welcomed the idea that the theological students would thus acquire a commitment to 'greater McGilP, an indication that the issue was still very much alive. Peterson was sufficiently aware of the problem to propose early in the new century that all McGill students should be enrolled in one society, formed on the model of the Scottish students' associations. As a result, the

Sports activities, 1898

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

23

following announcement appeared in the Montreal Gazette on 28 February 1901: A very important meeting will be held tonight at McGill in the Arts Building at 7:30 to draw up the constitution of the Alma Mater Society. This body was formed this winter at the suggestion of the Principal, to organize the students as a University regardless of faculty lines, for those occasions when it is desirable that they should act as one body. At present each faculty has a prefect system and can work together by means of officers elected by the students themselves, but the University has been divided into five bodies each independent of the other for all social purposes and has found great difficulty in uniting for such functions as Theatre Night, or the reception to Lord Strathcona. To get over this division, Dr. Peterson proposed that a representative council of the students of all faculties and all years be formed. The idea was taken up, the Vice-Presidents of each year in each faculty were appointed representatives and meet tonight to formulate plans for the creation of a body to manage the common affairs of the students. This meeting duly resulted in the Alma Mater Society. Its main purpose seems to have been the organization of the annual Theatre Night, and occasional balls, but as a university-wide institution it was never a great success. Peterson himself admitted as much in 1910: 'I think the Alma Mater Society was looked upon as some new-fangled invention. Anyhow, it never seemed to me to do anything and certainly never assumed to speak in the name of the whole body of students.'27 But it was the first attempt by McGill students to organize themselves in one body, and, inadvertently, it came to exercise a remarkable degree of student self-government In March 1907 an incident occurred which caused much unfavourable comment both on and off the campus. While a number of first-year students were enjoying a smoker concert in the Student Union, some secondyear students turned out the lights and tried to pour ammonia down the ventilation shafts. In the melee, fluid was splashed about and some freshmen were burned and some received serious sight injuries. Peterson asked the student society to conduct the investigation and to propose appropriate penalties. Thirteen students were suspended from the university for the rest of the session and a further two, judged to be less culpable, were censured. Probably the most important consequence of this incident was the abolition of the Alma Mater Society and the organization of the McGill Students' Society, of which the Student Council would be the operative unit. The

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report of John Hackett, president in 1907-8, shows how surprisingly for McGill was prepared to go in giving students the power to govern themselves: The Students' Society of McGill University, better known in its executive committee, the Students' Council was called into existence by a vote of Corporation on April 27, 1908. Like most new forms of government its raison d'etre was found in abuses. The students had been brought into disrepute with the public; their failure to meet their creditors in undergraduate enterprises, and their apparent acquiescence in the charges of vandalism which were periodically brought against them, rendered absolute the necessity to reform— The Students' Society includes every male student of the University who pays the athletic fee of $3 In financial matters the executive is responsible to the Society—to the students themselves and not to a non-student body, as was formerly the case. In matters of discipline the students appoint their own court and any delinquent is amenable to its jurisdiction. In theory the university authorities have waived none of their rights, but it is generally understood that a finding of the Students' Court of Honour will meet with ratification in the Committee of Corporation on Morals and Discipline.28 Apart from the degree of self-government which these arrangements provide for, there are two further comments to be made. First, that the Students' Society was unabashedly a male affair, and it was not until the 1930s that the question of women members of the Student Council became a serious issue. The other is that Peterson obviously took a close interest in student affairs, as he did in everything affecting the university. Yet he never became the father-figure on campus that Dawson had been. This was evident at convocations, which often developed into rowdy affairs. Student catcalls drowned out the voice of the speaker, occasionally with remarks imitating the principal's English-Scottish accent, said to have been easy to mimic. It was perhaps another way in which the student body, steadily growing in numbers and importance, was beginning to assert its emergence from Victorian tutelage. The principal undoubtedly deserved more generous treatment, for he favoured the students, and gave them a remarkable measure of self-discipline and self-government. Principals enjoy many privileges but justice from lively students is not one of them.

NOTES I. It was not so named until Cyril James' time; it was formerly called the East Wing.

PETERSON: THE EARLY YEARS

25

2. Ethel Hurlbatt, who became warden of RVC in 1907 and who knew Peterson in his most active years, commented on his 'broad shoulders fit to carry burdens'. See McGillNews 12, no. 4 (1939): 23-26. It was Rachel Wedd, one of his early students, and in later life herself a distinguished classical scholar, who referred to his attractive personality. Men were not always similarly impressed. 3. The alliance was sufficiently successful that it lasted until 1968, when Dundee became a separate university. 4. Peterson enhanced his scholarly reputation when he discovered a ninth-century manuscript of Cicero's Verrine Orations, which he published with a short history and facsimiles in 1901 and full critical apparatus in 1907. 5. Peterson let this phrase escape him in 1904 in connection with the impending visit by the British politician John Morley. See Montreal Gazette, 19 September 1904. 6. Mrs. Peterson often did not accompany him to Canada, and his two sons were educated in England. W.M. Birks, seeking to raise money in 1911, found the principal's lack of popularity in the city a considerable impediment. See McGillNews 31, no. 4 (1950): 7-8. Hugh Graham (Lord Atholstan) also offered to raise funds for McGill, but only if Peterson would stand aside and let Graham do it his own way, an offer that was not accepted. 7. See Advancement i: 251. The first Molson Chair in English was given to relieve general university funds; the second (Greenshields) chair in English was originally given for chemistry, and transferred by action of the board. The second chair in philosophy was designated for moral philosophy, with its strong social content, and the same interest motivated the Kingsford Chair in History; the Hiram Mills Chair in Classics was so assigned by the board, after the city of Montreal had declined to accept part of the bequest for a 'bread charity'. 8. During the first decade of the century, the number of theological students enrolled in arts varied from approximately one-third to one-quarter of the total male registration in the faculty. The proportion in the humanities courses must have been considerably higher. Toronto historian G.M. Craig commented on the similar importance of pre-theological students to University College, in a lecture, The Provincial University, 1850-1900', given in October 1977. 9. Strathcona to Oakeley, 4 September 1899, MUA 1323/2. 10. Hilda D. Oakeley, The Royal Victoria College', McGill University Magazine I, no. i (1901): 87—88. As to whether the occasion was truly the official opening, see McGilliana, Special Issue, February 1980. The statue had already been 'unveiled' once by McGill students celebrating the relief of Ladysmith, the Boer War being then in progress. See Oakeley, 'Early Days at RVC', McGillNews 31, no. 3 (1950): 26. 11. Cited in Muriel V. Roscoe, The Royal Victoria College, 1899-1962', a report to the principal (1964), p. 51. For Peterson's role in securing RVC for McGill, see McGilliana as cited in note 10. 12. A rule that women students must either live at home or in the college, introduced in the late twenties, was not rescinded until the early 19606, which during the intervening years made the matter of increased accommodation particularly important. 13. Cited in Roscoe, 'Royal Victoria College', p. 103.

26

CHAPTER ONE

14. Clara Lichtenstein was the music tutor, and figured largely in the story of the Conservatorium. Susan Cameron was tutor in English; she remained until 1921 and then returned to become warden 1931-36; Ethel Hurlbatt was warden 1907-29. 15. Maude E. Abbott, 'An Historical Sketch of the Medical Faculty of McGilP, Montreal Medical Journal (August 1902). 16. Advancement i: 274. When the building was no longer used for chemistry, it was renamed the Macdonald-Harrington, 17. This volubility of gratitude may have been due to a sense of guilt, since several governors were also members of the syndicate. Macdonald is also said to have threatened to ruin them if they did not accept the meagre profit he offered: see the article by Percy Nobbs mentioned in note 21. Macdonald's comment on his gift of playing fields is cited in Cyrus Macmillan, McGill and Its Story (London and Toronto, 1921), p. 260. 18. The family spelt its name McDonald, but shortly before he received his knighthood William changed his own spelling to Macdonald. The most complete account of Macdonald is that of Maurry H. Epstein, 'Sir William C. Macdonald, Benefactor to Education' (M.A. thesis, McGill, 1969). 19. J.F. Snell, 'Sir William Macdonald and His Kin', Dalhousie Review 23, no. 3 (i943): 3!7~30. Snell says that Augustine got into financial difficulties and was imprisoned. It is not clear whether William came to his rescue; there are conflicting family traditions. 20. He had already paid for the education abroad of his brother's numerous sons and daughters, and had put some $50,000 into the Glenaladale estate. 21. Percy Nobbs, 'Sir William Macdonald', McGill News 4, no. 3 (1923): 2. 22. See D. Lome Gales, 'The Evolution of Student Self-Government at McGill University', a paper read to the James McGill Society, December 1977, 82.13.0. The hooliganism sometimes went beyond bounds and involved serious clashes with the police. See chapter 15. 23. Nobbs, 'Sir William Macdonald', p. I. 24. John Bland, 'The Story behind the Buildings of McGill', McGill News 40, no. 2 (1959): 24. 25. Advancement i: 291. Robert Tait McKenzie also practised in the Montreal General Hospital and lectured in the Department of Anatomy. He wrote an article, 'The Facial Expressions of Violent Effort, Breathlessness and Fatigue', Journal of Anatomy and Physiology 40 (1905): 51—56, and to illustrate his thesis modelled four faces in clay. These were afterwards cast in bronze and this began his outstanding career in sculpture. See Douglas Riley, 'Art and Athletics: The Work of R. Tait McKenzie', McGill Journal of Education n, no. I (Spring 1976): 64-73. McKenzie left McGill in 1904 to become professor of physical education at the University of Pennsylvania. 26. 'The gymnasium of 1864 remains in 1901, a relic of early days and obsolete methods, yet useful as our only provision for the student's physical welfare.' R. Tait McKenzie, 'A Modern Gymnasium', McGill University Magazine i, no. i (1901): 49. 27. Peterson to Charles Gushing, II March 1910; cited in Gales, 'Evolution of Student Self-Government', p. 4. 28. Old McGill 79/0, pp. 174-75

CHAPTER

II ADVANCES ON MANY FRONTS

eterson's first decade was a time which saw new developments and programs, many of which were to affect the further evolution of the university profoundly. Under the principal's vigorous leadership, and constantly stimulated by the bounty of Strathcona and Macdonald, as well as of a number of other less well known benefactors, McGill went forward during these years on a broad front, achieving considerable advances in many sectors. One major development was initiated soon after Peterson's arrival. The arts curriculum in 1895 was s^ heavily biased in favour of the classics. All students had to take both Latin and Greek for two years and with few exceptions take one or the other in the final two years. Even a classicist like Peterson could see that some relaxation of the classical requirement was long overdue. The new proposal, adopted in 1896, allowed the student a choice between Latin or Greek for two years and the opportunity to drop the classical language in the final years. Provision was also made for a wider range of electives, allowing a heavier concentration in the sciences. The new curriculum was undoubtedly a measure of much-needed liberalization.1

P

THE H U M A N I T I E S AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Although the principal had a very ready understanding of the place to be given to science, pure and applied, in the university curriculum of the

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C H A P T E R TWO

twentieth century, he had a deep concern for the humanities, and, despite the difficulties mentioned earlier, he was able to increase the resources available in this area considerably. In his own department, for example, a second chair was opened up, together with an additional assistant professorship and a tutorship in the women's college, so that from a staff of three the department doubled its size. The former Department of French and German, staffed by a professor and two lecturers, was now the Department of Modern Languages, which had a staff of four lecturers to assist the professor, and which offered, in addition to the original languages, introductory courses in Italian and Spanish. History, which had been provided for by a single lectureship attached to English, had become a separate department with a full professor and a lecturer of its own. English itself had been strengthened by the acquisition of a second professor and an additional lecturer. Philosophy also received a second chair, as well as a second lectureship. What had formerly been described as mental and moral philosophy was now divided into philosophy proper, which embraced metaphysics, logic, and psychology; and moral philosophy, which covered ethics and social philosophy. Psychology had developed from the older mental philosophy and the approach was naturally of a subjective, personalist character. But the interest was sufficiently strong for J.W.A. Hickson, who had been serving as tutor in philosophy since 1901, to be promoted within the department to assistant professor of psychology. A different emphasis, however, was already becoming noticeable. In 1904 William Macdonald included in his benefactions to the library $250 for books on experimental psychology, and when William Dunlop Tait was appointed in 1910, still within the Department of Philosophy, it was as lecturer in experimental psychology. This appointment was largely to determine the character of the future Department of Psychology. As early as 1848 the Board of the Royal Institution had stressed the need for courses in political economy, but no appointment was made until 1900 when a visiting scholar was invited to give lectures in economics in the first half of the session, and a promising young man from Toronto, just completing a Ph.D. degree at Chicago, was appointed temporary lecturer in political science for the second half of the session. His name was Stephen Butler Leacock. The following year the Misses Mary and Jessie Dow endowed a chair of political economy in memory of their father, William Dow, and A.W. Flux from Owens College, Manchester, was appointed its first occupant. The establishment of the chair marked the emergence of the discipline, but it is characteristic of the close relationships still prevailing that the new department at first shared Leacock with history, he having been given a regular appointment as lecturer in history and political science. In 1902

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Leacock was appointed lecturer in political science only, and when Flux resigned in 1908, Leacock succeeded to the Dow chair. He taught the subject with great vitality and interest in economics grew to the point where in 1912 R.B. Angus was persuaded to endow a second chair. J.C. Hemmeon was appointed, and the Department of Economics and Political Science grew steadily. A closely related development met the need of Montreal as a metropolitan commercial centre with a program concentrating on the practical skills required in the business community. In 1907 a two-year Diploma of Commerce was instituted. The courses emphasized the need to use English effectively, both in correspondence and in public speaking, and especially in the written and oral presentation of reports. They also aimed to impart a facility in spoken and written French, with particular attention to commercial correspondence. According to the 1907 Calendar, 'descriptive economics or commercial geography' sought to familiarize the student with 'the most important features of modern industrial and commercial organizations, including trade and transportation, the great wholesale markets, joint stock companies, monetary and banking systems'. Accounting was taught 'to provide students with a sound knowledge of the science of accounting rather than to train them in the craft of keeping books'. Teaching was done by staff of the Economics and Political Science Department, and by colleagues in law, geology, French, and other departments, as their courses could be utilized or adapted to the new program. Both men and women were admitted to the course. In 1911 the new department was renamed the School of Commerce, and the following year a number of more narrowly commercial subjects were being given in the evening. Some of the university's long-expressed desiderata were at last being realized.2 As the various departments and their programs were expanding, so they brought to McGill some of the men and women who were to make major contributions to the university in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The Department of Philosophy was particularly fortunate. Alfred Ernest Taylor, the Frothingham Professor of Philosophy, was well known as an interpreter of Plato and was later to achieve international standing at St. Andrews and Edinburgh; Hilda Oakeley, the first warden of the Royal Victoria College, had achieved a sound reputation in philosophy at Oxford, which she enhanced while at McGill and carried further in Manchester and London; the young J.W.A. Hickson, a McGill graduate, had taken the philosophy gold medal in 1893 and had completed his studies in Germany, earning his Ph.D. at Halle.3 With William Caldwell in the Macdonald Chair of Moral Philosophy, the department could boast a strong team. In political science Leacock's appointment was to prove of greater significance for the university as a whole than for the development of his

30

C H A P T E R TWO

discipline, and the appointment in 1907 of Andrew Macphail to the sinecure professorship of the history of medicine gave McGill another personality of national dimension.4 J.L. Morin and Marie-Louise Milhau in modern languages and Susan Cameron in English were among other influential newcomers in Peterson's early years. Not all the early appointments proved fortunate. Charles W. Colby was appointed first as a lecturer in English and history, then in 1894 as a lecturer in history only, and finally a year later as the first Kingsford Professor of History. This appointment completed the recognition of history as a separate discipline, and Colby at first looked very promising. But in retrospect his performance can hardly be considered to have constituted a great advance. 'His desire seems to have been to popularize historical knowledge and render it dramatic; indeed his approach to the subject bordered on the shallow.'5 In the later years of his long tenure he was frequently absent for lengthy periods, engaged in directing a family firm he had inherited. He continued to hold his chair until 1919 when he finally resigned, presumably much to his dean's relief. The work of the department was largely carried on by Charles Edmund Fryer, who joined in 1907. Fryer, who had received his Ph.D. from Harvard, seems to have been lecturing in the department for some years before his regular appointment, and he also collaborated with Benjamin Suite and L.O. David in producing the two-volume History of Quebec, which appeared in 1908. He was to prove a dependable and continuing member of the department, the kind of colleague who is described as 'the work-horse', and who largely determines the department's character.6 But major developments in the discipline had to wait until after Colby's departure. I N I T I A T I V E S IN SUMMER SCHOOLS Two further developments of considerable importance for the Faculty of Arts took place in the summer of 1904 One concerned the University Library. From the original single case of books in 1843, to the 3,000 volumes which had stood so forlornly on the shelves of Molson Hall twenty years later, to the major collection of 70,000 volumes, which more than filled the Redpath stacks in the early years of the new century, the library had developed very handsomely, keeping pace fairly well with the growth of the student body and academic staff. The offer by Grace (Mrs. Peter) Redpath in 1900 to enlarge the stack space was accepted with warm appreciation. As the holdings grew, so, too, modestly but significantly, did the library staff. Charles Henry Gould, who had assumed his duties in 1893 after a year of travel to learn about libraries and their management, could fairly be described as a professional librarian, but in Canada at this time

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there were no formal qualifications or training facilities.7 In 1901 Gould had as assistants one man and three women, and the women's salaries were raised in that year to $750, $540, and $360 a year—a newly appointed male demonstrator in chemistry or a lecturer in philosophy could expect to receive $500 a year, so these salaries were not as discriminatory as they sound. But the need for library assistants, whether men or women, to have some training for their duties was becoming increasingly obvious. Gould's first attempt to meet this need was with an ingenious scheme of library apprenticeships—that is, on-the-job training in return for three or six months' unpaid employment. The scheme proved so successful, attracting many more applicants than he could cope with, that in 1904 he instituted a summer school in library training. It was the first of its kind to be organized in Canada. Although only of three weeks' duration, the school constituted a beginning of professional training and status for librarians, and was continued annually until the outbreak of war in 1914 Later it was resumed and developed into the Graduate School of Library Science. The other initiative came from the Department of Modern Languages. The university was already active in inviting outstanding authors and personalities from France to visit Montreal and to give public lectures on French cultural themes, but Professor Hermann Walter recognized the importance of providing more in the way of a French ambiance for his students. He therefore devised the residential French Summer School at which, by means of what would later be described as 'a total immersion program', and with the help of visits to lectures, theatres, churches, and concerts, he provided the opportunity for his anglophone students to undergo a truly French experience. The experiment, again the first of its kind in Canada, proved so successful that it continued, apart from wartime interruptions, until the 19808 when its program was in greater demand than ever. B E G I N N I N G S IN MUSIC A similar new development was one which strictly speaking did not take place within the Faculty of Arts but was closely related to it. From 1884 the Donalda program gave women access to the same curriculum for the Bachelor of Arts degree as was available to men, but, in response to requests from early women students, instruction in music, both vocal and pianoforte, was added from 1889. This seems to have been intended purely as a social accomplishment, not as an elective in the college curriculum. The program was maintained with part-time instructors but proved sufficiently popular for a full-time appointment to be made ten years after its introduction. At the opening of the Royal Victoria College Strathcona

Clara Lichtenstein Charles Harriss

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engaged Clara Lichtenstein, a former pupil of Liszt and a teacher in a private academy in Edinburgh, to direct the music program. A year or two later she received an assistant to help meet the growing demand. The role of music at McGill would probably have remained at this level for many more years had it not been for Charles Albert Edwin Harriss. He was an extremely energetic musician, church organist, choral conductor, and concert impresario, who had large ideas and the independent means with which to promote them. A fervent imperialist, he wished to increase the musical bonds among the countries of the British Empire. As Peterson's brother was a professor of music in Melbourne, he was particularly susceptible to this style of thought and persuaded the board of governors to accept Harriss as honorary director of a system of musical examination centres. These were to be established across Canada and sponsored jointly by McGill and the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, both of London, England. The Associated Board had been trying to introduce its examinations into Canada for some years. With McGill's name attached and under Harriss' energetic direction the examination system quickly became a reality, literally from coast to coast. At one time there were as many as sixty local centres, and when McGill discontinued the arrangement with the Associated Board and instituted its own organization, the system continued to operate very satisfactorily. Standards of performance and musicianship were greatly improved even in remote areas. There were, and are, other such examination systems in Canada, but the strong feature of Harriss' plan was that he wanted to link the McGill examination system with a preparatory school of music, also under McGill sponsorship. The idea was basically sound. Just as Dawson, in order to achieve high standards at the university level, had paid great attention to the elementary.and secondary school teaching and organization, so, too, Harriss saw that if ever music was to prove a subject worthy of inclusion in a college curriculum, there must be sound instruction at the beginner's and intermediate level. Again Harriss' imperialist connections served him well, for Strathcona approved his idea and gave the new McGill Conservatorium the use of the former Workman residence at the corner of University and Sherbrooke Streets, conveniently near to the Royal Victoria College.8 A number of competent teachers were engaged part-time and teaching began in 1904. Montreal music teachers had resisted McGill sponsorship of the Associated Board's examinations, particularly because all the examiners were British, brought from overseas, and transported across Canada. But the organization of the Conservatorium was readily welcomed, and when McGill terminated its connection with the Associated Board, local acceptance of the Conservatorium became even more cordial.

34

C H A P T E R TWO

For four years Harriss was honorary director of the Conservatorium concurrently with his direction of the examinations. He resigned in 1908 to pursue his wider interests, which he characterized as 'imperial musical reciprocity', and did so for the next twenty years with great flamboyancy and success. Before departing, he presented a report recommending the appointment of a professor of music and of a smaller staff of instructors, to be more closely involved with the direction of the Conservatorium. By this time the interest of the university had been aroused strongly. A sponsor was found in the person of Jeffrey H. Burland, a McGill graduate and successful Montreal businessman. He offered to guarantee a salary of $4,000 for three years, which indicates that the appointment was intended to be prestigious. The man appointed in 1908 was indeed a prestige candidate, Harry Crane Perrin, at the time organist of Canterbury Cathedral. The Conservatorium curriculum had from the beginning set out the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Music and a further degree of Doctor of Music. Under Perrin's competent direction, the school presented its first graduate in 1910. She was Beatrice Donnelly, who kter joined the teaching staff. The first Doctor of Music degree was given a year later to Charles Henry Mills, who later became dean of music at the University of Wisconsin. As early as 1884 Harriss had written to the governor general, urging him as Visitor of McGill to persuade McGill 'to open its portals to music, whereby something might be done in the interest of the [musical] profession'.9 It was to be more than forty years before those doors could be said to have opened fully, but at least enough of a crack appeared in Peterson's early years for the persistent applicant to squeeze his, or more often her, way through. THE S C I E N C E S IN ARTS

On the science side of the Faculty of Arts, the achievements were even more visible. Dawson's old chair of natural history was still self-dividing in almost cellular fashion, and its first progeny in Peterson's time was a chair of zoology, to which Ernest William MacBride was appointed in 1897. MacBride, who would not have disclaimed the description 'philosophical biologist'—he used it of his mentors Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley— stayed until 1909 when he became professor of zoology in the Imperial College of Science. By that time he had given his discipline major stature on the McGill campus. The botanist David Penhallow, the earliest product of Dawson's natural history chair, continued to importune the governors for relatively small sums, with which he was able to extend and give depth to his activities—for example, he obtained funds to reserve a 'table' for advanced students at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole,

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35

Massachusetts, and in April 1901, as recorded in the minutes of the board, $400 (approximately half a year's salary) for his lecturer Carrie Derick 'to prosecute research in foreign laboratories'. The Botanical Garden on the Trafalgar property on Cote des Neiges became a constant anxiety because it was on annual lease and the cost was continually increasing. Finally, a dream which went back from Dawson certainly to John Strachan, and possibly to James McGill himself, had to be surrendered: in 1902 the Botanical Garden was closed. But it was also decided to build a conservatory on the campus, at a cost not to exceed $5,000. A year or so later Penhallow was reporting to the board that the results had been 'most gratifying'. He had discovered the advantage of a controlled environment in a northern climate. The teaching of chemistry gained immensely by the provision of the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building in 1898, but it still suffered somewhat from its early entanglements with medicine on the one hand and mineralogy on the other. In the Faculty of Medicine the grand old man, Gilbert Prout Girdwood, who had been first appointed in 1870, was still teaching 'chemistry' (without further description), but since 1886 he had been assisted by Robert Fulford Ruttan, who was teaching practical chemistry. In the Faculty of Arts Bernard Harrington, the first Macdonald Professor of Chemistry, was assisted by J.W. Walker, the second Macdonald Professor of Chemistry, and by a young lecturer, Nevil Norton Evans. Harrington and Evans were also teaching chemistry in general, and metallurgical chemistry in particular, in the Faculty of Applied Science. The confusion was to sort itself out in 1912 by the establishment in the Arts Faculty of a Department of Chemistry chaired by Ruttan, and later by the recognition as separate disciplines of biochemistry in the Faculty of Medicine, and of chemical engineering and metallurgy in the Faculty of Applied Science. However, the cooperation of the different kinds of scientists continued to be close as is well illustrated by the reaction to the news of Roentgen's discovery of X-rays late in 1895. Evans is credited with producing some of the earliest 'skiagraphs', and Girdwood, the old chemist, physician, and surgeon, with notable contributions to the new clinical technique which the discovery made possible. But it was John Cox, the Macdonald Professor of Physics, who, acknowledging the help of his colleague Professor H.L. Callendar and two young demonstrators in his department, Howard T. Barnes and Frank H. Pitcher, published in March 1896 the first Canadian report of the use of the 'new photography' in connection with a clinical case at the Montreal General Hospital. The surgeon involved, and the junior author of the report, was Robert Kirkpatrick, who died only one year later of tuberculous meningitis. An anonymous writer (almost certainly Cox

Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building

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himself), in the Old McGill annual published in the spring of 1897, described how 'a large number of experimental tubes, designed and made in the Laboratory' had been successfully employed in 'scores of surgical cases', which indicates that once the new technique was mastered, its clinical application was rapidly exploited.10 Even more momentous news was to come out of the Macdonald Physics Building a few years later, and in these events also the chemists played a large part11 Callendar resigned his professorship in May 1898 and Peterson was guided by Cox to seek a successor in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Three months later Ernest Rutherford, aged twenty-eight, was appointed to the vacant chair. Only four years earlier, hearing that he had gained an 1851 Exhibition scholarship to Cambridge, Rutherford had thrown down his spade on the family farm in New Zealand declaring that he had dug his last potato. He enjoyed four productive years in England, and when he arrived in Montreal in September 1898, he immediately embarked on a series of experiments to determine the nature of the new phenomenon of radioactivity. He began to think that it involved the disintegration of the atom itself—the hitherto indivisible unit of the universe. In need of a chemist, he naturally approached his colleagues in the next-door building. Walker was interested but declined Rutherford's invitation on the grounds that he had his own program. A young graduate, Harriet Brooks, was available, and a paper, 'The New Gas from Radium', presented by Rutherford in 1901 to the Royal Society of Canada, bore her name as junior author.12 But she was not a chemist and the next year she left Montreal to take a teaching post at Bryn Mawr. Meanwhile Frederick Soddy had arrived at McGill. Trained at Oxford, he had heard that a professorship was vacant in Toronto. Impetuously he had applied by telegraph and taken ship, only to find when he arrived that the vacancy had already been filled. On his way home he passed through Montreal, and was warmly welcomed at McGill by Harrington, who however could only offer a lowly demonstratorship at $500 per annum. Soddy accepted and so became cognisant of Rutherford's research. In March 1901, despite the discrepancy in their university status, he vigorously debated the nature of the atom with Rutherford at a meeting of the McGill Physical Society. 'Possibly Professor Rutherford may be able to convince us that matter as known to him is really the same matter as known to us, or possibly he may admit that the world in which he deals is a new world demanding a chemistry and physics of its own, and in either case, I feel sure chemists will retain a belief and a reverence for atoms as concrete and permanent identities, if not immutable, certainly not transmuted.'13 Rutherford is said to have been 'visibly shaken' by Soddy's onslaught; the young chemist had summed up very accurately the enormity of the change

38

CHAPTER TWO

Rutherford was proposing in man's understanding of the physical universe. It was indeed 'a new world' he was postulating. But he rallied his resources and put forward his most telling arguments. The question was, he said, whether the mass of the electron is apparent or real, and he continued: 'It is not yet settled what proportion of the apparent mass is electrical. It may possibly prove that the mass is altogether electrical in origin. If such should prove to be the case (and it does not seem improbable), it would be very strong evidence in support of the view that all mass is electrical in character.'H The discussion continued at the next meeting, with interventions from Cox, Barnes, and Walker. One senior member of the Chemistry Department is said to have cautioned Rutherford against publishing his views too hastily, the implication being that this would bring discredit upon McGill. The issue was not to be settled by one or even two debates, but Soddy was at least sufficientiy impressed to attend Rutherford's advanced course on 'the discharge of electrification by Rontgen rays, ultraviolet, uranium and thorium radiation'. Rutherford now made to him the invitation to collaborate he had previously made to Walker. On 12 October 1901 Soddy abruptly 'abandoned all to follow him'.15 The collaboration went forward through 1902, and the main outlines of the theoretical statement were completed by Christmas of that year. At this point Soddy accepted a research appointment in London, and the final and definitive paper of the collaboration, 'Radioactive Change', appeared in the Philosophical Magazine in May 1903. Its central affirmation is, like all epochal statements, very simple to formulate once the principle has been grasped. Already in the April issue Rutherford had stated that 'the radio-activity of the elements is a manifestation of sub-atomic chemical change.' The May paper, presented jointly by the two researchers, provided the theoretical exposition: It is not possible to regard radioactivity as a consequence of changes that have already taken place— there is every reason to suppose, not merely that the expulsion of a charged particle accompanies the change, but that this expulsion actually is the change— Since radioactivity is a specific property of the element, the changing system must be the chemical atom, and since only one system is involved in the production of a new system and, in addition, heavy charged particles, in radioactive change the chemical atom must suffer disintegration.16 Under the subheading 'The Energy of Radioactive Change and the Internal Energy of the Chemical Atom' the two authors made a closing comment:

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All these considerations point to the conclusion that the energy latent in the atom must be enormous compared with that rendered free in ordinary chemical change— there is no reason to assume that this enormous store of energy is possessed by the radio-elements alone. It seems probable that atomic energy in general is of a similar high order of magnitude.17 Soddy had begun by accusing Rutherford of trying to turn chemistry back into alchemy, and of postulating 'a new world'. He had then in his own words 'turned traitor to my own kind' and had helped Rutherford do the very thing he had accused him of, and together they had revealed not merely a new world but a whole new universe. Rutherford, who always acknowledged that in its later stages their collaboration had been one of equals, received the Nobel Prize (ironically and yet fittingly in chemistry) in 1908, but Soddy had to wait for his recognition until 1921. One of the most profound changes in all recorded history in man's understanding of his physical environment had taken place in the Macdonald Physics Building on the McGill campus in the years 1901-2. THE FACULTY OF APPLIED SCIENCE At that time few on the McGill campus were able to appreciate the magnitude of what had happened. More pressing concerns were those of the Faculty of Applied Science. This part of the university's operation had been going forward strongly, with the result that its facilities in the Macdonald and Workman Engineering buildings were severely overtaxed. The existing Departments of Civil, Mechanical, Mining, Metallurgical, and Electrical Engineering and of Practical Chemistry were extended in 1896 by the appointment of Stewart Henbest Capper as professor in the new Department of Architecture. This new specialty, like the other engineering options, proved popular and increased still further the demands for more staff and more space. Another constant source of complaint was the meagre support available to the Applied Science Library. As early as Peterson's first year, he was told the governors' annual grant of $125 was insufficient even to pay for the necessary journals. The need for space was crucial, but the need for the fees that the additional students paid was also great, and when in 1905 the staff of the faculty decided that a limit must be put on the student numbers and that the entering class would be held to a maximum of seventy-five, the board was quick to react. In March an extension to the Workman Building had been authorized and in June temporary space was promised in Molson Hall, but when September came, the faculty reported that even with the additional rooms, the engineering facilities remained extremely crowded.18

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Other developments further indicated that the faculty was responding actively to the new opportunities of the twentieth century. In December 1900 the Department of Electrical Engineering sponsored lectures by the Bell Company in the new technology of telephony. Two years later the university opposed the Marconi Company in its plan to use the Montreal mountain summit for a wireless telegraphy station. The grounds of the university's intervention were that the radio signals might interfere with activities and apparatus in the Physics laboratory—in view of Rutherford's continuing experiments, and the degree of available knowledge, a not unreasonable consideration—and that the indiscriminate diffusion of such waves might interfere with poorly insulated electrical installations in the city and cause widespread fires, an argument less scientific but probably more effective.19 At the same time the university was vigorously engaged in reviving an old proposal, that of a Department of Railway Engineering. The scheme required the cooperation of the major railway cornpanies for both the financial support and the technological expertise which would be required. Candidates would follow the civil, mechanical, or 'executive' options for two years and specialize in the railway aspect of their chosen course in the third and fourth. A professor, two assistant professors, three lecturers, and two instructors were appointed, all of them practical men, and some, of course, part-time and continuing their own railway careers. Principal Peterson was personally very active in the matter, persuading the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk, and (in view of the government's interest in the Intercolonial Railway) even the federal minister of railways, to support a budget of some $14,500 a year. To gain the cooperation of the federal minister, Peterson had to secure from other Canadian universities, including Toronto, Queen's, and Dalhousie, a statement that they approved of McGill receiving this support and further that they would not regard it as a precedent for any appeals of their own for financial aid from the federal government. Few incidents illustrate Peterson's immense diplomatic skills so clearly as his success in gaining these assurances from rivals who were already more than a little jealous of McGill's increasingly 'national' pretensions. The teaching of railway engineering, first attempted in 1857 and reluctantly surrendered in 1863, began again in 1904 with considerable enthusiasm. In 1908 the department graduated its first class of eleven students.20 A requirement of the program was that the students should enter into summer apprenticeships with one of the railway companies, and accept an obligation to enter the service of the company after graduation. This proved to be a weakness of the scheme and constituted a constant irritant; another was the uncertainty attached to the annual funding; the program was already beginning to lose favour with its sponsors when the outbreak of war in 1914

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hastened its demise. The University Calendar for 1915-16 announced that the course might end with the 1916-17 session, and this was what happened. In all forty-four men graduated from the program, which was never revived, and so remains Canada's one and only railway engineering course.21 THE FACULTY OF LAW The older professional Faculties of Law and Medicine had their own developments during this period. Law had been placed upon a sounder basis by the establishment of the Gale chair in 1884 and by the Macdonald $150,000 endowment of 1890, which not only made for a greater degree of financial stability, but also permitted two more-or-less full-time appointments.22 But many of the former difficulties remained. The majority of law teachers were still part-time lecturers; most of their teaching income came from the fees of students in their classes, and their connection with the university was little more than formal. The fact that the faculty classrooms and library were located on Dorchester Street in the old Burnside Hall, by this time renamed the Fraser Institute, did nothing to lessen the sense of aloofness from the rest of the university. Coincident with Peterson's arrival, the situation began to improve markedly. The remodelling of the interior of Dawson Hall made possible a new home for the faculty on the campus. At the same time, the law books were relocated in the University Library, and the faculty contributed $200 to provide for the care of its collection. Lectures were given on campus from 8 to 9:30 A.M. and from 4 to 6:30 P.M., and 'the courses of lectures on commercial subjects have been so arranged, that young men engaged in banks or other business houses can attend them without interference with their regular duties.' Students in other faculties were also encouraged to take these lectures as 'beneficial to all... who may desire to know something of the constitution and laws by which they are governed'.23 The cost of the building renovations had, like so much else, been paid for by Macdonald. In 1897 he increased his original endowment by a further $50,000. This new benefaction enabled a fresh attack to be made on the problem of part-time teachers. In November of the following year the board accepted the dean's proposal that the law professors would be 'remunerated in the same manner as the Professors in the other Faculties', that is, having a recognized scale of salaries in return for an agreed teaching load. Thus a professor was to receive $750 and give not less than fifty lectures; lecturers were to receive $500, $400, or $250 and were obligated to give not less than fifty, forty, or twenty-five lectures respectively. Obviously most law teachers, including the professors, would continue to hold part-time appointments, but it was

Ernest Rutherford at McGul Eugene Lafleur

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hoped that these measures would increase the faculty's sense of participation in the university. The dean himself, F.P. Walton, did indeed commit the greater part of his energies to the study and teaching of law, and he has rightly been described as McGill's first career professor in that discipline. His principal work, The Scope and Interpretation of the Civil Code of French Canada, was published in 1907 and was a major contribution to legal scholarship. MacdonakTs continuing interest in the faculty was shown in 1903 by the provision of three travelling fellowships at $600 each and four of the same value the following year. His benefactions to the sciences, and to agriculture and education at Macdonald College, were so great that the university has tended to forget the immense interest he took in other areas. In 1898 the Faculty of Law recognized its indebtedness to him by passing a resolution, subsequently approved by the board of governors, that it should bear his name and be known thereafter as the Faculty of Law-Macdonald Foundation. The title has not persisted, but if there were not so much else in the university bearing the Macdonald name, it would have been an appropriate designation, for no other donor has done more to integrate the teaching of law into the life of the university. It was in this period that the faculty began to develop its reputation in the area of international law. The interaction of civil and common law in the Province of Quebec created a natural interest in comparative law, so that the subject had formed part of the curriculum since 1856. But with the appointment of Eugene Lafleur to teach in this area in 1898 the subject began to grow in stature. Described as Tinegalable' and 'the most notable international lawyer of his time', Lafleur was an outstanding theoretical jurist and a long-time editor of the Revue Legale. He taught at McGill from 1890 until 1921 and during those years his participation in the faculty gave it considerable distinction.24 Other colleagues were also well qualified in their areas of expertise, and the faculty's reputation grew steadily, but the student numbers remained disappointingly small and fluctuating. In the session preceding the reform of the faculty in 1890, there were only eighteen students in all three years, and five of those were partials. By 1895, Peterson's first year, the number had risen to forty-three and by 1900 to sixty-three; but by 1905, at the end of his first decade, the law enrolment had dropped again to twenty-six.25 The faculty plainly had a long way to go before it could be considered a vigorous and healthy operation. DEVELOPMENTS IN MEDICINE

During the first Peterson decade the area of medicine underwent considerable organizational development. The first item does not strictly concern

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the Medical Faculty or its internal operation, but an activity closely related to it. The Montreal Veterinary College had been accepted by McGill in 1889 as its Faculty of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science. The moving spirit all through its history had been Duncan McEachran, and when he retired in 1903, there was no one to reorganize the school to make it competitive with other institutions or to embark upon a campaign of student recruitment. It was decided therefore to terminate its operation, and the last graduate received the McGill D.V.M. at the summer convocation in I903.26 A rather similar situation in another area had the opposite effect Francis Wayland Campbell graduated M.D. from McGill in i860. He was interested in medical education and had collaborated in 1864 with Dr. George Fenwick, McGill professor of surgery, in publishing the Canada Medical Journal and Monthly Record of Medical and Surgical Science. Campbell would have dearly liked an appointment at McGill, and when one was not forthcoming, he joined a number of other Montreal physicians in founding a rival school in 1871. In doing this he was not doing more than William Sutherland, McGilTs professor of chemistry from 1869, had done in 1843 at the time of the founding of the Montreal School of Medicine and Surgery— PEcole de Medecine et de Chirurgie de Montreal, or than Robert Palmer Howard, dean of the McGill faculty from 1882 to 1889, had done when he and some other 'young rebels' had founded the St. Lawrence School of Medicine in I85I.27 But whereas for Sutherland and Howard these activities gained them entrance to McGill, Campbell found the doors as firmly closed as ever. Because his school had to have university affiliation, he and his colleagues applied to Bishop's University at Lennoxville. As a result the Medical Faculty of Bishop's was located in Montreal, near what is now the Place des Arts. A number of McGill professors taught classes in the Bishop's faculty, and its students 'walked the wards' of the Montreal General, which was the McGill teaching hospital, but the relations between the two schools were never very cordial. Even the Fenwick-Campbell journal divided into the Canada Medical and Surgical Journal, edited by McGill men, and the Canada Medical Record, edited by Campbell and his Bishop's colleagues, thus providing the two parties with platforms from which to fire off mutual criticisms. Campbell was first registrar and then dean of the school and for more than thirty years its main inspiration. It had little connection with its ostensible parent in Lennoxville, and when Campbell died in 1904, the faculty died with him. In the following year the Bishop's school was absorbed by the McGill Faculty of Medicine on condition that all Bishop's medical alumni be acknowledged as McGill alumni, and that any Bishop's students already in course be able to complete their studies at McGill. In this way the Medical Faculty also gained (but would not recog-

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nize) eleven alumnae, even though it was not prepared to admit women students to its own program.28 It also acquired a Department of Dentistry. Dentistry as a distinct medical specialty and the practice of it as a new medical profession may be said to have begun at Baltimore in 1840 when the first dental school was opened in that city. The first school attached to a university was at Harvard and dates from 1867, but in the year of Confederation Canadian dental practitioners were still either self-taught or at best trained in an apprenticeship system. Developments, however, followed swiftly. Ontario created the Royal College of Dental Surgeons in March 1868 and in September of that year fifteen dentists in Montreal formed the Dental Association of the Province of Quebec. This body secured incorporation from the legislature the following year and thereafter only persons licensed by the association were allowed to practise. The exception was that licensed physicians might continue to practise the care of teeth as they had done in the past. For the association's licensees, a uniform system of three years of indentured training and examination was quickly introduced. In 1883 a general education requirement was established for entry into this training, and nine years later the Dental College of the Province of Quebec was founded. Teaching was in English and French and the organizers of the school sought affiliation with both Universite Laval a Montreal and McGill. But the Medical Faculty in neither institution was very welcoming: the physicians would probably have preferred dentistry to develop, like ophthalmology for example, as a branch of general medicine. Laval's response appears to have been quite negative, and while McGill was prepared to allow some form of affiliation, it was to be only for the award of a diploma naming the recipient Graduate in Dentistry. Since, however, the Montreal Veterinary College had been admitted only three years earlier as a separate faculty, which could award the D.V.M. degree, the dentists felt that this proposal was discriminatory. Consequently negotiations were opened with Bishop's Medical Faculty, which accepted the dental school as one of its departments in 1896. The degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery awarded in that year was the first such degree given in Canada. The school building was located on Phillips Square and students were expected to gain 'tickets', that is, evidence of satisfactory attendance for two years at the requisite basic medical science classes at Bishop's, McGill, or Laval, and were then given a year of clinical training in the college. From 1902 this three-year course was lengthened to four by the addition of a second clinical year. But as we have seen, the Bishop's Medical Faculty collapsed after Campbell's death in 1904, and in accepting the remnants of its operation the McGill faculty was obligated to accept the Dental Department also. The terms of the agreement stated that dental students in course could continue

Veterinarians' class, 1898

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in thek old program and receive the Bishop's D.D.S., or they could begin wholly afresh in the new McGill program and receive the Master of Dental Surgery degree. Soon after the first class graduated M.D.S. in 1908, however, it was decided to make the degree D.D.S. and to raise the degree of its first graduating class retroactively to the doctorate.29 No reason was given for this change of policy, but we may surmise that since Laval gave the doctorate from the beginning, McGill found itself at a disadvantage in the competition for students. As background to this struggle for professional recognition we should note that the former dean and now chairman of the Dental Executive was still not a full-time appointment. All clinical instruction was given by parttime personnel. Even when the department was separated from medicine in 1920 and became a distinct faculty, this situation continued until as late as 1948 and undoubtedly militated against as strong a development as might otherwise have been possible. But as with so much else at McGill, it was a question of money. In the absence of either a wealthy donor or public funding, the Dental Department had to be operated as economically as possible. In fact another article of the 1904 agreement stipulated that the dental teaching staff were to be collectively and individually responsible for the financial affairs of the department, including any debts which might be contracted in its name. It says much for thek devotion to thek profession that the dentists were willing to accept such a responsibility. But at least a beginning had been made, the profession had been recognized, and in due time very notable progress would be made. Two further consequences of the McGill take-over of Bishop's Dental Department were not so commendable. Bishop's, as we have seen, had accepted women into medical school, including dentistry. At least one woman, Georgina McBain, graduated D.D.S. (Bishop's) in 1903. But after the Dental Department moved to McGill, the same embargo that was applied to women in medicine was laid upon thek entry to dentistry, and it was not until 1926 that McGill graduated its first woman dentist.30 Another consequence concerned the language of instruction. The Montreal Dental College had been bilingual, and this had continued through the Bishop's years. At the time of the transfer to McGill, three francophone instructors were on staff, but as it had been with the parent faculties, so it was with the Dental Department. The anglophone members of the staff joined McGill and the francophone members formed the nucleus of a new francophone school, which sought and obtained affiliation with Universite Laval a Montreal. The two linguistic communities were still tending to draw apart rather than more closely together.31 Another important development for the Medical Faculty in these years was in the area of children's care. The original chak of diseases of women

The Children's Memorial Hospital, c. 1908

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and children had long been divided into gynecology, and obstetrics and pediatrics. The Montreal Children's Hospital was proposed in 1902 by Dr. Alexander Mackenzie Forbes and received its first patients in 1904 The hospital early established a nursing school, the first graduates receiving their diplomas in 1907. From the beginning the hospital received the services of the leading members of the McGill medical profession. Although official recognition by the university as a teaching hospital did not come until 1920, the Montreal Children's Hospital quickly became a centre of clinical expertise and pediatric research which provided the faculty with access to new areas of exploration and understanding. 'No longer are young children treated medically as "small adults"; their specific physiology and biochemistry have been studied and appreciated; their particular requirements for growth and development have been recognized.'32 At the turn of the century the corporate body of professors of medicine still managed its own financial affairs.33 The professors had been doing so at the Montreal Medical Institution, and when it was engrafted in 1829 on to McGill College as its Medical Faculty, they continued the practice, which was understandable while the school had a separate location on C6te Street. This autonomy had persisted even after 1872 when they moved on campus into a building provided by the board of governors. When Peterson arrived in 1895, me medical professors were still negotiating their financial affairs with the governors as if they were a wholly independent institution. In October 1896 the board asked Judge Archibald to consider the relationship, and his opinion was that legally the Medical Faculty stood in the same relation to the university as any other faculty, but this pronouncement seems to have had little practical effect. The reason for the Archibald inquiry became clear the following year when the governors pointed out that all the faculty revenues from endowments and fees were spent on faculty's operations, and they asked the faculty to make some contribution to the general expenditures of the university, as the income of the other faculties was required to do. The Medical Faculty, constantly aware of its need for more money, demurred at this proposal, but finally agreed to surrender the income from graduation fees, together with the difference between that sum and $3,000. But in January 1902 the faculty had to borrow $25,000 from the governors in order to finance its latest building scheme, and agreed to pay the average rate of interest earned on general endowment investments, but in any case not less than $1,000 each year. At the same time the board provided $ll,ooo for an animal house, necessitated by the rising tide of research, but said the faculty must find any further sum required and must also be responsible for its upkeep. The following year, however, the faculty was back, confessing that it could not honour the previous agreement and asking to borrow a further $6,000. The

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writing was clearly on the wall. At the Medical Faculty meeting of 26 November 1904 it was agreed that in the opinion of the medical faculty its welfare and the interests of Medical Education in Montreal would be best served by the Faculty seeking full union with the University, and to this end a Committee be appointed to convey the above resolution to the Governors of the University, to discuss with them the conditions under which full Union could be accomplished, and to report to the faculty the result of the conference. The negotiations duly proceeded and in May 1905 the faculty further resolved: That this faculty, recognizing that the time has arrived when it is to its own best interests and that [sic] of the University that there should be full amalgamation with the latter body, herewith unreservedly places the management of its affairs in the hands of the University'. The board of governors received this resolution and responded with one of its own; the board desired 'to place on record in the minutes the expression of the great gratification with which it received intimation that the Faculty of Medicine had resolved to place the management of its affairs in the hands of the University, thereby securing complete union with that body, and with the said resolution the Board heartily and unanimously concurred'.34 The board was acting with considerable generosity in this matter, and with no little faith, for the faculty was at the same time proposing that the four-year medical course be lengthened to five years, and acknowledging that this would increase its yearly operational expenditures by some $10,000. But Strathcona gave $50,000 to cover for five years the additional cost of the extended course. This donation placed the affairs of the faculty on a much more satisfactory basis and the new arrangements undoubtedly were 'in the best interests of the faculty', but for the university they placed a new burden on a financial structure already beginning to show ominous signs of overloading. Those indications were not as yet very apparent, and there was no doubt the comforting reflection that if trouble were to develop either Strathcona or Macdonald would assuredly come to the rescue. The man who steered the Medical Faculty into its new relationship with the university was obviously a person of considerable diplomatic skills. He was to exercise those same qualities with equal success on a much wider scene. Thomas Roddick was born in Newfoundland in 1846 and received his early medical training in an apprentice situation in St. John's. Before leaving for Edinburgh for further training, he visited Montreal, but while he was paying a courtesy call on George Fenwick, the Montreal General Hospital surgeon, news was received of an immigrant train disaster at St. Hilaire, Quebec. The train ran through an open drawbridge and fell into

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the Richelieu River. The death toll exceeded one hundred. He volunteered his services and as a result of this experience Roddick decided to enter McGill rather than complete his journey to Edinburgh. Graduating with the Holmes Gold Medal, he was appointed assistant house surgeon at the Montreal General Hospital. His reputation grew steadily until in the years before World War I he was Canada's most prominent physician and surgeon. As a young surgeon in the iSyos he was a great advocate of 'Listerism' and the germ theory of medicine, and he encouraged the introduction of Lister's aseptic practices into Montreal hospitals, so that postoperative records improved dramatically. He was chosen as the first surgeon in chief of the Royal Victoria Hospital when it opened in 1893. He first came to wider public notice in 1885 when he served as chief of medical staff in the field during the Riel Rebellion, at which time he organized with great efficiency the first Canadian hospital train. Soon after his appointment to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Roddick became increasingly involved in the struggle to persuade the provinces to accept a common qualification for the practice of medicine in Canada. In 1894 he obtained a seat in the House of Commons to further a bill to secure this end, and he presented it for first reading in 1901. Much negotiation with the various provincial medical associations was required and the Roddick bill was finally enacted in 1906. Meanwhile Roddick had become dean of the Faculty of Medicine and had effected the new relationship of the faculty with the university. The 1906 Canada Medical Act was, however, only permissive legislation, and could not go into effect until each of the provinces had accepted its provisions. Many years of delicate negotiations followed, particularly with the medical associations of Quebec and Ontario, and to give this matter more attention he resigned as dean in 1908. By 1911 all difficulties had been overcome and an amendment to the original act established the Medical Council in Canada. The Canadian Medical Association recognized Roddick's immense achievement by conferring upon him at its meeting in 1912 by standing vote the position of honorary president for life. He was knighted by King George V in 1914 Throughout his career, Roddick was an early and earnest advocate of, as he expressed it, 'the confederation of Canada with Newfoundland'. That was something reserved for a future generation, but few Newfoundlanders have contributed so greatly to the welfare and progress of Canada.35 MCGILL U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E

These various developments in the faculties indicate that a healthy intellectual ferment was steadily at work on the campus, stimulating the whole

Sir Thomas Roddick Charles Ebenezer Moyse

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institution. From 1901 through 1905 the university was in the happy position of possessing a display window in -which contemporary thought could be given some exposure. This was the McGill University Magazine. It had no official connection with the university, but it served as a forum for debate, a gazetteer for community and alumni news, and a magazine for essays, opinions, and belles-lettres. 'In his first editorial, Charles E. Moyse—editor, Professor of English, Dean of Arts, and Vice-Principal—enunciated the magazine's three aims: first, to publish the serious non-technical, non-theological writings of members of the university; second, to provide a gazette and forum in which University activities could be publicized and debated (particularly undergraduate activities); and third to maintain contact with McGill graduates— ultimately, it was the first aim which came to dominate.'36 There were numerous editorials and articles on current affairs, which in general either advocated imperialism or occupied themselves with local McGill concerns. Peter McNally made a particular study of the Magazine, and he observed that it eschewed politics, in the narrower sense, either Canadian or British, and that this characteristic contrasts markedly with the practice of the contemporary Queen's Quarterly. We may comment that the difference in interests reflects the different relationships of the two institutions to the provinces in which they were located. The Magazine also included short biographies of bygone stalwarts such as William Robertson, John Bethune, and W.T. Leach, and belles-lettres in the form of essays, poems, and short stories. There are some very readable travel narratives, supplied by graduates, and various items of alumni news. But the first aim of the Magazine invited a more substantial range of contribution, in the form of papers on such subjects as education, science, philosophy, and history. With regard to child education, for example, Hilda Oakeley fought a rearguard action for an idealist-philosophical view, in response to the increasing invasion of American progressivist ideas, set forth in a guest article by James Russell, dean of Teachers' College, Columbia University. At the level of higher education, a somewhat similar debate developed. In England at this time university educational reform had not gone far beyond the stage of substituting a 'liberal' education for the former classical curriculum. The recognition that scientific and professional education had a legitimate role in the university still had to gain widespread acceptance. In Scotland, especially since the reform of university education in 1892, there had been a greater readiness to accept the German model of professional schools with their emphasis on research, and to engraft it on to the liberal arts program. The universities in the United States had been evolving their own 'German-American' patterns for over fifty years, and McGill, since the time of Dawson, had followed these Ger-

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man, Scottish, and American leads. The university had consistently sought to provide educational preparation for scientific and industrial careers through its programs in the Faculty of Applied Science; with the new School of Commerce and the railway engineering program, it could claim that it was progressing further along its chosen path. But the imperialist influence at McGill favoured conservative reaction on the subject, and two members of the Classics Department were sufficiently moved to raise their voices in protest. John Macnaughton contributed the annual university lecture for 1904, entitled 'A Modest Plea for the Retention in our Educational System of Some Tincture of Letters'. He had attended a lecture of Rutherford's and began with a satiric description of the experience. 'The lecturer seemed himself like a large piece of the expensive and marvellous substance he was describing. Radio-active is the one sufficient term to characterize the total impression made upon us by his personality. Emanations of light and energy, swift and penetrating, cathode-rays strong enough to pierce a brick-wall, or the head of a Professor of Literature, appeared to sparkle and coruscate from him all over in sheaves.' He had been so overwhelmed, he said, that he felt his own devotion to literary studies had been a great mistake—until he came to his senses and reflected, 'No,... there is room for both Rutherford and us'; but he then went on to attack 'crass utilitarianism' in no uncertain measure: 'it will be black shame to us if it can be said [of an engineer] in his epitaph that he was born a man, went through McGill University, and died a plumber— The railway men are coming, it seems, into the academic fold; the bankers may follow—who knows where the process will stop?'37 The following year his colleague Walter Scott contributed an article, 'The Place of Classics in Learning', which showed less irritation with the scientists and gave a broader discussion of the subject A.H.U. Colquhoun, a McGill graduate become journalist, had earlier contributed two rather more opinionated articles, decrying the presence on campus of professional training in general and explicitly contesting the idea of a school of journalism. The reply came appropriately enough from yet another member of the Classics Department—the principal himself. In 1905 Peterson contributed two articles: 'The Place of the University in a Commercial City', an address given to the Canada Club of Montreal, and The Earliest Universities and the Latest', a convocation address for the University of Chicago. To the first audience he prophesied: 'It will be with us just as it has been with Germany and the United States, where the phenomenal increase in the number of students enrolled in schools of technology, and in university faculties of applied science during recent years, is a good index of the marvellous development of the scientific and industrial activities of both nations.'38 To the second he said: 'The new departure which your Board of

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Trustees is now about to take [in setting up a school of technology] springs no doubt from the conviction that one of the most effective methods of strengthening industry by education is to provide the highest and most thorough scientific training for those who are to be the leaders of industry.' Of course he also pleaded in all sincerity for the cultural values: 'No university can be in a healthy condition which is not spending a large part of its energies on those subjects which do not offer any preparation for professional life... we must not accept a purely utilitarian theory of education.'39 The debate had profound implications for the future of McGill. It indicates that Peterson encouraged the growth of the sciences and the professions at McGill not merely from force of circumstance but also from conviction reached after much thought and experience.40 The McGill University Magazine terminated in 1906 when Moyse resigned as editor. The board of governors at its May meeting that year passed a resolution which expressed appreciation of 'his unselfish and unsparing efforts in the conducting of the Magazine for the past five years'. This resolution was well deserved, for the journal had met a serious need. During its short life, the Magazine had published some worthwhile prose and verse, some lively narratives, and had provoked some serious debate.41 Not the least valuable were the popular science articles like those of MacBride on evolution and Soddy on radioactivity. ADMINISTRATIVEDEVELOPMENTS

Since the reforms of 1854 the academic affairs of the university had been in the control of Corporation, a body composed of governors, the four deans, and elected representatives of the faculties, designated as fellows. These fellows were generally graduates rather than members of staff. Peterson, following as usual his Scottish models, instituted in his second year an academic board to deal with the day-to-day matters of curriculum and similar concerns. It consisted of the principal, four deans, and two members of the staff of each faculty, nominated by the faculty. The effect was to increase considerably the influence of the teaching staff in the operation of the university. Another pressing obligation was to make a permanent appointment to the position of secretary, bursar and registrar. In 1887 James Brakenridge had been the clerk appointed to assist Secretary-Bursar William Craig Baynes, and when Baynes died suddenly the following year, Brakenridge became acting secretary. Since he had a B.C.L. degree from McGill and since presumably he performed satisfactorily, there would seem to be no reason why he should not have been appointed to the position, but he was continued in his acting capacity for nine years. In 1897 Walter Vaughan was appointed to the position, and Brakenridge reverted to his former role

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as clerk, though he continued as secretary of the McGill Normal School until his final resignation in 1901. Vaughan was an English lawyer, who had joined the legal office of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1890. In this position he attracted the attention of Sir William Van Home, a member of the board who recommended him to McGill. Vaughan quickly took control of the university's financial and business affairs. It is significant that he was engaged at a salary of $1,800 a year, increased after one year to $2,000 and after a further year to $3,000, a full professor's salary, and in 1902, five years after coming to McGill, he was receiving $4,000, a dean's salary. He was the power behind the throne for almost a quarter of a century. Also in 1902 a separate registrar, Dr. J.A. Nicholson, was appointed. Peterson was building up a non-academic staff, having professional skills commensurate with their growing responsibilities. It was the development of a tradition to which McGill University was to become greatly indebted.

NOTES 1. The classical requirement showed remarkable persistence; it was not dropped until 1967, but even thereafter a 5 per cent lower overall performance in the matriculation examinations was accepted if it included a Latin or Greek credit. 2. Advancement i: 121. In 1916 R.M. Sugars was appointed director secretary of the school, which thus acquired staff of its own for the first time. 3. Hickson became a full professor in 1922 and sought early retirement in 1924. He was the son of Sir Joseph Hickson, general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway, and he left a substantial sum of money to the Fraser Free Library, since known as the Fraser-Hickson Library. 4. Andrew Macphail, a McGill graduate in arts and medicine, edited the University Magazine from 1907 to 1915, published many books and essays, and in his day was a major literary personality. See McGilliana, no. 3, March 1977, and S.E.D. Shortt, The Search for an Ideal: Six Canadian Intellectuals and Their Convictions in an Age of Transition, 1890-1930 (Toronto, 1976), pp. 13-38. 5. Michael Perceval-Maxwell, The History of History at McGill', a paper read to the James McGill Society, 2 April 1981, p. II, 62.6.2.12. 6. It is likely that Fryer's part in the History of Quebec was minor; it is a dull work, and the second volume consists solely of biographical sketches of contemporary businessmen. Fryer directed some twenty-six graduate students between 1910 and 1940, including in 1938 John Irwin Cooper, the department's first Ph.D. 7. Advancement i: 251. 8. Strathcona had for many years given a scholarship for young Montreal musicians wanting to study in London. Notable among the recipients was Pauline Donalda, who had an international career as an opera singer. Her adopted name 'Donalda' was derived, like that of the McGill 'Donaldas' from Strathcona's original name, Donald A. Smith. 9. Cited in Nadia Turbide, 'Charles Albert Edwin Harriss: The McGill Story' (M.M.A. thesis, McGill, 1977), p. 27.

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10. J. Cox and R.C. Kirkpatrick, The New Photography with Report of a Case in which a Bullet Was Photographed in the Leg', Montreal Medical Journal (March 1896): 661-65; 'X Rays at McGill', Old McGill 1896-97, pp. 81-82; R.V.V. Nicholls, 'A Century and a Quarter of Chemistry at McGill University', Canadian Chemistry and Process Industries (August 1944); see also Charles G. Roland, 'Priority of Clinical X-Ray Reports: A Classic Dethroned?' Canadian Journal of Surgery 5 (July 1962): 247-51. 11. Mario Bunge and William R. Shea, eds., Rutherford and Physics at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1979), gives the context of Rutherford's work at McGill, for there was much other work going forward. See especially John Heilbron's essay 'Physics at McGill in Rutherford's Time', pp. 42-65. 12. Harriet Brooks, B.A. 1898, M.A. 1901: her thesis 'Damping of the Oscillations in the Discharge of a Ley den Jar' was directed by Rutherford. She was appointed non-resident tutor in mathematics at RVC, but left to teach for a number of years in women's colleges in the United States before returning to Montreal to marry F.H. Pitcher, a former colleague in the Physics Department. 13. Cited from Soddy's papers in the Bodleian Library by Thaddeus J. Trenn, The Self-Splitting Atom: A History of the Rutherford-Soddy Collaboration (London, 1977), pp. 24-25. 14. James Chadwick, ed., The Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford of Nelson, vol. I (London, 1962), p. 408. 15. Trenn quotes Soddy's laboratory notebook for the date; for the words, see F. Soddy, 'Reminiscences of McGill, 1900-1902', Old McGill 36 (1933): 19. 16. Chadwick, Collected Papers of Lord Rutherford, pp. 598, 599, 604. 17. Ibid., p. 608. 18. The severe fire of 1907 required the Macdonald Engineering Building to be substantially rebuilt. The new building provided considerably more space, but was soon overtaxed by increasing enrolments. 19. Montreal Star, 30 January 1903. The Marconi Company subsequently established a station on the Westmount mountain, but only for receiving signals; its first transmitting station was located at Park Pier in the Montreal harbour, the early use of radiotelephony being confined almost wholly to shipping. 20. Advancement i: 187-88. 21. See MUA Fact Sheet, no. 8, 'An Unique Experiment in Canadian Engineering Education', R.V.V. Nicholls, June 1975. 22. Advancement i: 278-81. Also, D.L. Johnston and S.B. Frost, 'Law at McGill: Past, Present and Future', McGill Law Journal 27, no. I (1981): 31-46. 23. University Calendar 1895-96, p. 148. 24. R. St. J. Macdonald, 'Teaching International Law in Canada', The Canadian Yearbook of International Law, 1974, pp. 69-81. Lafleur was appointed counsel in a number of important international lawsuits and served notably as president of the tribunal to arbitrate the Chamizal boundary dispute between the United States and Mexico in 1911. 25. The numbers climbed again to sixty by 1910 and stayed around that figure until the outbreak of war in 1914. 26. Advancement i: 286—87. 27. Advancement i: 140, 148. 28. The outstanding personalities were Grace Ritchie (M.D., Bishop's 1891) and Maude Abbott (M.D., Bishop's 1894). See Advancement i: 286. For

58

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

CHAPTER TWO Ritchie, see Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal, 1981), pp. 280-91; for Abbott, see S.B. Frost, The Abbotts of McGill', McGill Journal of Education 13, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 253-70. Male, but not female, M.D.'s from Bishop's were given McGill M.D., C.M. degrees ad eosdem. Maude Abbott was granted the McGill M.D., C.M. honoris causa in 1910, and Mary Bird (n£e Runnells), M.D., Bishop's 1900, was granted the McGill degree as a wartime measure ad eandem in 1915. The first McGill women medical graduates were in the class of 1922; see chapter 6. The degree was Doctor in Dental Science and so remained until 1917 when the more normal Doctor of Dental Surgery was substituted. If there ever was a significance in the distinction of terminology, it has now been forgotten. Her name was Florence Johnston; see chapter 6. Advancement i: 140-44. Also Mervyn A. Rogers, A History of the McGill Dental School (Montreal, 1980). Jessie Boyd Scriver, The Montreal Children's Hospital: Years of Growth (Montreal, 1979), pp. 1-2. The item in the dental school agreement requiring its professors to be collectively responsible for any debts contracted by the department sounds very stern until one remembers that at this time the faculty as a whole was organized in that manner. M-Gov. 26 May 1905. H.E. MacDermot, Sir Thomas Roddick: His Work in Medicine and Public Life (Toronto, 1938). The Roddick Gates were erected in his memory by his widow in 1925. See Grattan D. Thompson, 'The Roddick Memorial Gates', McGill News 6, no. 3 (June 1925). Thompson was the architect of the gates. Peter F. McNally, The McGill University Magazine, 1901-1906: An Evaluation and Bio-Bibliographical Analysis' (M.A. research paper, McGill, 1976), pp. 3-4. McGill University Magazine 3, no. 2 (April 1904): 17-18, 26, 33. This may be the origin of the engineering students' proud designation of themselves as 'plumbers', and so by derivation of their publication The Plumber's Pot. McGill University Magazine 4, no. 2 (May 1905): 186. McGill University Magazine 5, no. I (December 1905): 42, 44 Sir Andrew Macphail, the arch-conservative, also resented these developments, and said so in a private letter, which was passed on to Sir Arthur Currie when he was appointed principal: 'McGill in these years has had hung upon it "faculties" of farming, commerce, music, education, dentistry, social service which is a kind of scavanging [sic]— At one time McGill set the standard; now it is a mere imitation.' The humour of the letter shows that Sir Andrew knew he was exaggerating grotesquely, but it does not obscure a persistent line of criticism from a respectable minority on campus. See MUA 614/282. Another more truly academic debate was carried on by E.W. MacBride of biology with J.W.A. Hickson and A.E. Taylor of philosophy: it became so involved that it probably contributed to the demise of the McGill University Magazine. Leacock commented that it 'died from sheer bulk, the kind of literary dropsy that attacks the writing of professors'. Stephen Leacock, 'Andrew Macphail', Queen's Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1938): 449.

CHAPTER

III PETERSON: THE MIDDLE YEARS

uring the years leading to World War I, major events continued to mark the pace of the university's development, but inevitably some of the euphoria evaporated. Financial concerns deepened into anxieties, all the more as the inescapable fact obtruded that neither Strathcona nor Macdonald was immortal. Nevertheless, institutional growth continued to be highly visible, and some of the achievements of this period were of major significance for future years.

D

EDUCATION IN C A N A D A AND QUEBEC

Socially William Macdonald may have been a recluse, but he was nonetheless very well informed on developments in Canada's economic and political evolution. A Maritimer himself, he maintained a considerable interest in happenings outside Montreal and Quebec, and even while he was doing so much for McGill, he developed other educational interests and put a great deal of money into them. His familiarity with current affairs brought to his attention the name of James Wilson Robertson. Robertson was a flamboyant personality, who had emerged from a farming background to become commissioner of agriculture and dairying for the federal government. In this capacity, he began in 1899 a program to interest farm children in submitting the best heads of grain from their fathers' crops in a competi-

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tion for small prizes; from the winning specimens Robertson hoped to produce superior strains.1 The simplicity of Robertson's idea appealed strongly to Macdonald and led to their collaboration in a number of projects over the next ten years. Macdonald also approved of Robertson's opinion that education should include manual training, and when he learned that the McGill Normal School had been attempting a similar program since 1887, but with poor facilities and volunteer teachers, he provided funds for modern equipment and trained instructors. Over a period of seven or eight years at the beginning of the century, Macdonald maintained a fund, administered by Robertson, whereby local authorities in a number of cities across Canada were encouraged to establish similar manual-training centres, staffed by trained instructors. It was estimated that by 1907 some 20,000 Canadian schoolchildren were receiving practical education in classes initiated under the Macdonald-Robertson schemes. There was also a bursary fund to enable rural teachers to receive specialized training in manual and 'school gardening' courses, but many of these teachers had to go to American universities because few Canadian programs existed. Another venture which attracted Macdonald's interest was initiated in 1900 by Adelaide Hoodless. She had been instrumental in establishing the Normal School of Domestic Science and Art in Hamilton, Ontario. Robertson and Macdonald negotiated on her behalf with the Ontario Agricultural College, and as a result the normal school moved in 1903 to Guelph and opened, with Macdonald's financial help, as the college's residential Macdonald Institute. It specialized in training teachers of nature study, manual skills, and domestic science.2 Macdonald's interest in education in general led naturally to a particular concern for education closer to home. Since Confederation a situation had developed in Quebec whereby the government had retreated from the field of education in favour of the church. Roger Magnuson has described the period after 1875, when the government discontinued the office of Minister of Education, as 'the triumph of Clericalism'. Educational concerns were remitted to a Council of Public Instruction, which never met, and virtual autonomy was given to two committees, one Catholic and one Protestant: French Canadians had Catholic schools, Catholic boards, Catholic teachers, Catholic inspectors and Catholic normal schools, while English Canadians had parallel institutions on the Protestant side. Even the levying of school taxes was denominationally divided, with Catholic taxpayers paying for the support of Catholic schools and Protestants paying for the support of Protestant schools— No less than French Canadians, English Canadians wanted a free hand in

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6l

the running of their schools... the long struggle for an educational arrangement suitable to both cultures had effectively been resolved, with each culture agreeing to go its own way.3 In the cities of Montreal and Quebec, and one or two other areas of enlightened interest, this freedom served the anglophone community fairly well, but in too many rural areas, school commissioners were concerned only to procure a teacher's services as cheaply as possible. In Quebec, as elsewhere, Macdonald's rural schools program provided funds to facilitate the consolidation of schools by bringing children from several districts into a centre where they could receive better teaching and of course manual training. But in many areas where it could have done most good, there seems to have been little disposition to take advantage of Macdonald's program. Because of the Dawson tradition and because of its normal school, McGill was conscious of a responsibility for anglophone education in Quebec, even though legally it was the concern of the Provincial Protestant Committee of Education. Also public dissatisfaction, as expressed in the anglophone press, was rising. In response William Peterson took the initiative in 1902 by suggesting to Macdonald that he pay the cost of a survey of the Protestant school system in the province. The survey was conducted by Professor John Adams of London University. He came to Canada in April 1902 and in three months visited 179 schools in Montreal and over a wide area of the province. His rep t was not very encouraging.4 It concluded that despite almost fifty years of endeavour in the McGill Normal School, and of some advances in the cities, conditions in the rural areas of Quebec had improved very little beyond what they had been when the normal school was established. With regard to the 'district' (local) schools Adams wrote: 'Speaking generally, these are very bad— almost always built of wood, generally clap-boarded, and often painted a dark purplish red— I saw several schools that let in the rain through the roof, and permitted the wind to make itself felt within the room....In very many cases the teacher with the aid of some of the girls, taken in turn, does the daily sweeping— in not a few cases the mistress, rather than tolerate the accumulating dirt, tackles the scrubbing herself.'5 Equipment was often limited to a single blackboard and one or two maps. Of the teachers visited by Adams only 36 per cent had received any training, another 54 per cent had diplomas by examination without training, and 10 per cent lacked even that dubious qualification. Of those who had received training, half had attended McGill Normal School for four months only. As for salaries, Adams quoted a report that some teachers in the province were paid as little as $7 a month, but said that $14 was the lowest monthly payment he encountered. However, as teachers were paid

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only for actual days of schooling, the annual income was seldom more than $150 and often as low as $i05-fi Rural teachers rarely stayed at a school more than one year. Where there were 'model' (demonstration elementary) or higher grade schools, conditions were often better. Adams commented, The average female Principal of a Model School is a capable, energetic and ambitious woman with respectable educational ideals, and a conscientious determination to realise them.' But then he added, 'The same praise cannot be given the average male Principal— the ordinary poorly paid Principal is at his post because he can find nothing better to do.'7 The report made numerous recommendations, but two which Adams emphasized touched McGill closely: teachers must be better trained, and as a step towards that end the university should appoint a professor of education. This would give the subject status on campus and provide a much-needed link between the university and the normal school. Adams often referred to the Protestant Committee as issuing commendable regulations, but lacking the ability to implement them: 'We must look to the University to maintain the status of teachers in the Province.'8 The report was considered by members of the Faculty of Arts, who recognized that any improvement in the standards of teaching in the schools would depend upon an upgrading of teacher qualifications. At first they were disposed to offer teachers what the Protestant Committee had called for, that is, special extramural courses whereby their teaching diplomas could be supplemented for the award of an arts degree, but on reconsideration they thought this might result in a lowering of academic standards. The faculty proposed instead that the university should offer teachers bursaries, tenable in the first two years of the B.A. course, and that male candidates for the teaching profession who had proved themselves in the first two years of the course should be guaranteed 'liberal assistance by means of special bursaries' for the third and fourth years. Female candidates could compete after the first year for the existing bursaries whereby 'substantial pecuniary assistance' could be gained. The faculty also asked that requirements for the 'model' diploma be so arranged that it prepared candidates for the university's matriculation examinations.9 It cannot be said that the faculty was generous in its response. Reviewing the subject, the university in its Annual Report for 1904-5 commented: 'We shall watch with interest the development of Sir William Macdonald's plans for benefiting the rural districts of the Province.' M A C D O N A L D COLLEGE Macdonald's plans were beginning to take shape in a proposal to found a college dedicated to the improvement of the quality of life in English-speak-

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63

ing rural communities. Despite his earlier collaboration with Robertson and his involvement in the Adams Report, it is clear that Macdonald thought first in terms of an agricultural college only and that he did not intend to associate it with McGill. William Van Home, at that time a McGill governor, wrote to Peterson in October 1905, 'I greatly fear you are in danger of permanently defeating your own wishes in pressing arguments on Sir Wm. at this time... you are not likely to secure any connection between his Agricultural School and the University in his lifetime— I feel sure he has certain ideas which he wishes to carry out without assistance, advice or suggestions from anybody, and any offer is... irritating to him.'10 No one knew better than Peterson that Macdonald was indeed a difficult person to deflect from his intentions, but he also knew that as a shrewd merchant he was always open to factual arguments. Consequently the principal accumulated evidence from the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom to show that agriculture needed the university connection and that conversely the university benefited greatly from the agricultural contribution. He argued his case in a long sixteen-page memorandum and concluded: 'It is important to bear in mind that, after inviting expressions of opinion from Agricultural experts both in America and England, I have heard no view advocated which in any way differs from the conclusions of this paper.'11 It is less clear how the proposal to move the McGill Normal School to Ste. Anne de Bellevue originated. Adams' inspection of the schools was followed in 1903 by an inspection of the normal school by G.H. Locke of the University of Chicago. His report was devastatingly critical of the Belmont Street building, for the purposes of both the normal school and its model schools. He suggested that it should be replaced or at least extensively repaired. The building in which the work of the Normal and Model Schools is carried on... in its original state may... have been useful and ornamental, but as it stands to-day it has neither of these virtues— The Library and Reading Room is a dreary place, uninviting and cheerless— I can hardly find words adequate to express the effect made upon me by my visit to the Model Schools— Poor ventilation, assisted by gas burning and gas escaping, makes a sorry environment for little children.12 Locke also argued that the teaching students should be given the opportunity to enjoy life in a cheerful dormitory, rather than be confined to the dreary boardinghouses which alone were available to them. Even though the university kept a list of recommended accommodations, complaints had

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been frequent in Dawson's later years, and as late as 1906 two young women found themselves inadvertently in a house kept by 'a woman of ill-repute' and had to be rescued from this predicament at some financial loss by the principal of the normal school, S.P. Robins.13 It may have been Locke's damning report which first suggested to Peterson the desirability of moving the normal school to Macdonald's new college; or, as has been suggested, the idea may have occurred first to James Robertson when he realized that he could not expect a first year in agriculture of more than thirty or forty students, and that he needed more bodies to make the college a viable operation.H Again, the idea may have arisen first in the Protestant Committee, but it was certainly Peterson who undertook to persuade Macdonald to incorporate a new beginning for teacher training into his developing plans. In the light of his involvement at Guelph, we may presume that Macdonald was not averse to the idea in principle, but again he objected to the university connection. He wanted his college, in all its subjects, to be able to develop its own ideas. Peterson persisted, however, in his efforts to secure the new institution for McGill. On the same day that Van Home warned him about Macdonald's resistance to a university connection with agriculture, Peterson was writing to Macdonald with regard to teacher training: 'Self-government... is, of course, in no way [incompatible] —as I am sure you will see when you come to frame the constitution of the College—with what the Protestant Committee [of Education in Quebec] and the McGill Corporation have asked for as maintenance, in some form or other, of university connection as regards the training of teachers.'15 There was no similar problem with regard to a third element in the program. The School of Household Science was included in Macdonald's proposal as an adjunct to the agricultural program: good farmers, he recognized, needed good wives and this is what the school set out to produce. It was probably Mrs. Hoodless who, in seeking Macdonald's help for her Ontario operation, first suggested to him that he should support a similar venture in Quebec.16 The Homemakers' Courses proved immediately popular with farmers' daughters and thereby showed that they met an evident need. Peterson's arguments and diplomatic skills were finally successful, and in June 1906 Macdonald entered into an agreement with the university providing for the incorporation of Macdonald College at Ste. Anne de Bellevue as a constituent college of McGill. Macdonald followed James McGill in wanting the college to bear his own name. The purposes of the endowment were carefully spelled out: I. For the advancement of education: for the carrying on of research work and investigation, and the dissemination of knowledge: all

Macdonald College, c. 1908

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with particular regard to the interests and needs of the population in rural districts. 2. To provide suitable and effective training for teachers and especially for those whose work will directly affect the education in schools in rural districts.17 Macdonald had at first considered Ormstown for the site of his college, but he later decided on the area around Ste. Anne de Bellevue at the western end of Montreal Island because of its proximity to the metropolis and because the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk railways connected the area with all the major cities, both east and west. Once committed to the scheme he poured money into it. The estate bordering the little towns of Ste. Anne de Bellevue and Senneville grew steadily in size over the years; early announcements of the college quoted the figure of 561 acres, but this was increased by further purchases, during Macdonald's lifetime, to some 600 acres.18 When the first students registered in 1907, the Main Building, including classrooms, offices, library, and assembly hall, had been erected, together with the Biology and Chemistry buildings and two residences, one for men and one for women.19 Each residence had a gymnasium and there was a common refectory. Houses had also been purchased as homes for the staff and an imposing residence, Glenaladale, was erected for the principal. The Agriculture Building and the Poultry Building were under construction and the high school (needed for teaching practice) was in an advanced state of planning. The operation of the college was provided for by an endowment of $2 million. In the first year there were 115 teachers in training, 62 students in household science, and 38 in agriculture. There were thirty-seven members of staff. It was indeed a magnificent benefaction. M A C D O N A L D SCHOOL FOR T E A C H E R S As the Adams and Locke reports had shown, a new development in teacher training was long overdue. The McGill Normal School had been established in the old Belmont Street high school building in 1857 with William Dawson as principal.20 Dawson introduced imaginative ideas into teacher training and curriculum building, many of which he had derived from Egerton Ryerson. He retired from the principalship of the school in 1879, but his successor, William Hicks, had been with him from the beginning and carried on in his tradition. Hicks was followed in 1884 by Sampson Paul Robins, who had been recommended to Dawson by Ryerson in 1857, and so again the Ryerson-Dawson tradition was maintained. Robins was still principal in 1906, having given almost fifty years to the one institution. Perhaps that was the problem. Ideas and practices which

James Wilson Robertson Sinclair Laird

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were progressive in 1857 appeared far less attractive in the twentieth century. Criticisms appeared in the newspapers, attacking both the system of teacher training in the normal school and the university's participation in its administration.21 Locke had also criticized the curriculum as inflexible and not responsive to new ideas. When, therefore, Macdonald was persuaded to offer a new home for the school, and at the same time to endow in the university the professorship of education which Adams had recommended, it was widely felt that a new beginning could be made. The university agreed to cooperate and established a Department of Education in the Faculty of Arts. The provincial government which had the responsibility for the normal school program was also ready to facilitate new arrangements. On 14 March 1907 an act in the legislature ratified an agreement between the parties. The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning undertook, as trustees of Macdonald College, to be responsible, financially and educationally, for the training of teachers conformably with the regulations of the Protestant Committee of Education; the provincial government reserved the right to authorize the curriculum for the teaching qualification and to grant the diploma. In addition, it agreed to convey to the Protestant Committee of Education the annual grant of $16,666 with which it had previously supported the McGill Normal School. This, it was hoped, would enable that committee to effect much-needed improvements in rural schools. In his history of Macdonald College J.F. Snell described this agreement as 'incredibly short-sighted financially'.22 The time was soon to come, as early as 1914, when the Macdonald endowment did not suffice to meet the rising costs of teacher training. In 1915 and for long years thereafter the university argued vigorously that the agreement obligated it to meet the expenses 'according to the present requirements of the Province'; since those requirements had greatly expanded, the province should meet the additional expenses. But successive governments held the university to its bond, and made either token payments or none at all. This matter gave rise to a sense of injustice which was to rankle for fifty years.23 It also frustrated what might have been a considerable step forward; the Protestant Committee had previously appointed the staff to the McGill Normal School, but now that responsibility rested with the McGill board of governors.24 Deprived of proper funding for the teacher education operation, the university never felt able to take full advantage of this new development. Indeed, the first attempts to provide the leadership for the education program were not very successful. George Locke, of Chicago University and author of the report on the McGill Normal School, came with excellent credentials to be head of the new School for Teachers, but resigned after eighteen months to become librarian of the Toronto Municipal

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Library. It was said that he could not work with Robertson. His successor stayed three years only. Sinclair Laird, however, who was appointed in 1913, continued in office for thirty-six years. After a brilliant student career at St. Andrews and some junior teaching appointments in Scotland, he came to Canada to join the staff of Queen's University. From there he removed to Macdonald College. Aided by a ready facility in French and a lively interest in music, Laird quickly became a notable person not only in the Macdonald community but also in the neighbouring municipality. He laid particular emphasis on teaching practice, but otherwise his contributions to teacher education do not appear to have been outstanding. A great many of the reforms effected during his long period in office were initiated by others, and came only in his later years.25 One adverse circumstance was that he was not appointed the Macdonald Professor of Education in the university. That position was given in 1908 to J.A. Dale, whose major reputation is not in the field of education but of social services. He founded the McGill School of Physical Education, the first of its kind in Canada, and he also helped to establish the McGill Department of Social Service. When he left in 1921, it was to become professor of social science at Toronto.26 The professorship was left vacant until 1928, and although the educational services required were supplied by the Macdonald College staff, the closer connection of teacher training and the university that Adams had called for was not realized. The McGill Normal School had performed well within its limitations, and the prewar years of the Macdonald School for Teachers undoubtedly constituted a notable advance, but until the province was prepared to reform the school system, the incentive for further developments in teacher education was seriously inhibited.27 In the matter of physical accommodation the new premises at Ste. Anne were an infinite improvement on the old Belmont Street property. In lecture rooms, laboratories, and the library, and in the Macdonald High School which replaced the old model schools for teaching practice, the surroundings were as bright and cheerful as the Locke report had wished for. The residences were an equally great improvement. The fact that Macdonald College provided residential accommodation for a substantial proportion of its students, both men and women, encouraged the evolution of a sense of community in the college which over the years was to prove one of its strongest assets. THE SCHOOL OF H O U S E H O L D S C I E N C E

The School of Household Science also had its difficulties. Helen Bainbridge, who had been engaged as art instructor in the teacher-training program, was transferred to the headship of the School of Household Sci-

Household science class, c. 1910

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Jl

ence, a position for which her artistic skills proved an inadequate qualification. A more experienced leader was Miss A.B. Juniper, who had trained and taught in England, but she remained for two years only. Katherine Fisher was appointed in 1910. She had been trained in Mrs. Hoodless' Normal School of Domestic Science and Art in its Hamilton days, and for the seven years during which she directed the school she made a considerable contribution. Fisher was the first to propose that household science should acquire a sufficient intellectual content as to make it the subject of a degree program. This goal, however, was not to be achieved until 1918. Yet another brief appointment intervened before the arrival of Bessie M. Philp in 1920, and these frequent changes in the headship of the school did not make for effective direction. Miss Philp, however, remained in office until 1939, winning respect for her program and a good deal of affection for herself. THE FACULTY OF A G R I C U L T U R E

In agriculture the early appointments proved to be, with one notable exception, very satisfactory. Macdonald's long-time collaborator James Robertson was appointed principal of the college in 1907. He quickly brought in F.C. Harrison as professor of bacteriology, William Lochhead as professor of biology, L.S. Klinck to be responsible for cereal husbandry, W. Saxby Blair as horticulturalist, F.C. Elford as manager of poultry, and John Fixter as manager of the farm. The first two came from the Ontario Agricultural College, Klinck from Iowa State College, Blair from the Nappan Experimental Farm, Elford and Fixter from the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa. These were men of experience and ability and the later success of the Macdonald agricultural enterprise owes much to the quality of the initial group, who shared constructively in the early planning. The notable exception was the principal himself. Robertson's contribution to the college in its early days should not be minimized. Many of the basic ideas of the Macdonald-Robertson movement were indeed his, and his flak for publicity gained for the college an early reputation with Quebec farming communities which might otherwise have taken long years to build. His nominations for the Faculty of Agriculture were particularly well informed and proved their wisdom over many years. His proposals for the college curricula, worked out in association with the faculty members, and his programs for the Macdonald Farm, were farsighted and well orientated. On the other hand, he seems to have chosen to ignore the essential character of William Macdonald. The cardinal rule of all Macdonald's business dealings was settling on a figure and keeping to it. He avoided debts, made his payments in cash if at all possible, and he abomi-

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nated overspending. All this Robertson must have known, yet he persistently allowed the college accounts to run beyond budget, indulged in unauthorized expenditures, and generally behaved in what Macdonald would inevitably consider a financially irresponsible fashion. Macdonald shrank from publicity and Robertson revelled in it, and it was inevitable that the two men should come to a parting of the ways. The surprising thing is that they were able to collaborate productively for so long. The incidents which disturbed the benefactor were accumulative. In May 1909 Robertson produced $10,000 of his own money to balance the college books, with promise of a further $5,000 if more money was needed. In October he gave $1,000 for bonuses he considered were due to the college staff and he also agreed to pay for some Scottish livestock he had imported without authorization. In accepting the May donation the board of governors had expressed appreciation but had added a rider that in future the college expenditures must not exceed income; the October incidents appeared flagrant indications that Robertson had not taken the admonition to heart. Macdonald wrote to the board, expressing his disapproval. There is little doubt that his amour propre was hurt; Robertson was making it appear that Macdonald had not provided generously enough for his college. In great alarm lest Macdonald should be permanently alienated, the governors appointed a committee of their own members 'to be associated with' the principal in the control of all college expenditures, with the inevitable result that Robertson resigned. In accepting the resignation the board expressed its 'high appreciation of the energy and vigorous initiative which he threw into all the preliminary work of the construction and establishment of the College, as well as its great admiration for the forceful qualities which have made him one of the pioneers of scientific agriculture in Canada'.28 It was a testimony well deserved. The quality of the staff assembled by Robertson was speedily recognized by the university, which gave the agricultural departments the status of a full-fledged faculty in 1908. Harrison had been active in research before coming to Macdonald, and he continued publishing significant papers in agricultural bacteriology. In 1914 he undertook a study of Montreal's milk supply and published on that subject the college's first technical bulletin. This work led to some much-needed reforms in land management, milk collection, storage, and delivery. Klinck was one of the pioneers in cereal breeding, and developed the Pontiac variety of barley and the Banner 44 variety of oats. The Department of Animal Husbandry was quick to establish a dairy herd, with excellent early results, the forerunner of greater triumphs to come. A flock of South Country Cheviot sheep was imported from Scotland. This experiment led in 1913 to the formation in Pontiac

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County of the first Cooperative Wool Growers' Association, a movement destined to become significant at the national level. These and similar early initiatives quickly gained for Macdonald College an enviable reputation for agricultural research. THE MCLENNAN TRAVELLING LIBRARIES

William Macdonald was not the only member of the McGill community to be concerned for scattered English-speaking communities. In 1901 the University Library Committee considered the cultural plight of these isolated groups in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, and decided that only 'travelling libraries' could meet the need. The librarian, Charles H. Gould, interested the family of Hugh McLennan, a wealthy Montreal merchant who had recently died, in founding in his memory the McLennan Travelling Libraries. McLennan had been a director of the Fraser Institute and its free library, as well as a McGill governor, so the memorial chosen was appropriate as well as imaginative. The endowment allowed the university to acquire books specifically for dispatch to isolated communities. These were sent by freight in large boxes, each containing a 'library' of thirty to fifty books, which on arrival could go into local circulation. Each book thus had many readers before the box was returned and replaced by a new supply. The service proved so popular that it soon went far beyond provincial boundaries. In the Yukon, Dawson City was supplied by rail; in Newfoundland, Battle Harbour by rail and sea; northern Ontario, the Gaspe Peninsula, and the area north of Ottawa were regular beneficiaries. A local church, a Women's Institute, a rural school, a logging or mining camp, a hydroelectric dam site, were typical recipients of the boxes and often the McLennan Travelling Libraries of McGill University were the only lifeline connecting isolated men and women with something beyond the physical necessities of existence. From the Magdalen Islands to the far west, the travelling library service reflected McGill's sense of responsibility for all of Canada, and of its role as a national institution.29 MCGILL U N I V E R S I T Y COLLEGE OF BRITISH C O L U M B I A

Another instance of McGill's Canada-wide interests was the provision of a matriculation examination which could be taken by high-school students in their own localities. Schools prepared their students according to an announced curriculum, and their examination papers were marked uniformly in Montreal, a procedure that guaranteed academic standards in even the remotest areas. In 1904, for example, some fifty-four schools were participating, from Nanaimo, British Columbia, to Charlottetown, Prince

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Edward Island. Together with the provision of local music examinations, the school examination system familiarized teachers and students in faraway places with McGill University and its educational ideals. Affiliated colleges included the four theological colleges in Montreal; Stanstead Wesleyan, Quebec; King's College, Nova Scotia; Vancouver College and Victoria College, both in British Columbia. In 1906 colleges in Alberta and Saskatchewan were added to the list. In 1909 Mount Allison and Acadia universities were affiliated in respect to engineering. These affiliated colleges taught the first one or two years of the McGill curriculum, and their students could complete the degree by attending the university.30 As the provinces strengthened economically, they established educational systems of their own, but during the pioneering years, the need for help and guidance was often recognized, and McGilPs assistance valued. This was well illustrated in British Columbia. The province had attempted to establish a university in 1890, but the initiative had been frustrated by long-standing jealousies between the island and the mainland communities. A member of the Vancouver School Board, A.H.B. MacGowan, shortly afterwards travelled east on business, and canvassed the major universities for assistance in establishing a university in British Columbia. He returned with the report that only McGill was in a position to help because it was able to offer the status of affiliation to both schools and colleges. The university also possessed a royal charter rather than a provincial one; it was already engaged in educational endeavours beyond provincial boundaries; it was, albeit Protestant, avowedly non-sectarian; and it had an excellent reputation in Canada and abroad as an academic institution of merit There were, however, some preliminary steps to be taken in British Columbia. An enabling act was passed in 1894, permitting high schools in the province to affiliate with any recognized Canadian university and in 1896 collegiate institutions (such as Vancouver High School had now become) were given similar authority. The Vancouver School Board then raised the level of instruction in Vancouver High School to college standards. Thus the way was clear for Vancouver College to affiliate with McGill, and in 1899 courses were begun, preparing students for the first year of the arts curriculum. Three years later the college introduced lectures for the second year of arts. Developments remained at this level for some time. Victoria College similarly grew out of the high school in that city, and it too was affiliated with McGill and began in 1902 to teach the first year of arts. Because of his personal interest in the matter, Peterson took the trouble to go out to British Columbia and see for himself the situation in these new furthest outposts of the McGill operation. He found that in the colleges in both Vancouver and Victoria a good start had been made with university-level

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teaching but that something more substantial was being called for. Few students could afford to make the long trek from British Columbia to Montreal to finish their degrees. Lemuel Robertson, a McGill graduate teaching in the college, returned to McGill for further studies, and while in Montreal discussed with H.M. Tory, a professor of physics, a plan to provide more adequately for the higher education needs of his home province. If McGill would incorporate Vancouver College, the stronger of the two affiliated institutions in British Columbia, as a full college of the university, local rivalries would be bypassed and the whole province would, he believed, welcome the move. British Columbia would thus be given the university institution it needed. He had appealed to the right man. Henry Marshall Tory was a Nova Scotian who had come to McGill to train for the Methodist ministry. But he found science more to his liking, and though he continued loyally on to ordination, he readily accepted a teaching appointment offered him by William Dawson in 1891. He enjoyed teaching and academic administration and, quickly establishing a special relationship with the venerable principal, he inherited Dawson's missionary zeal for education.31 When Robertson shared his ideas with Tory, the latter became their advocate. He presented the proposal to Corporation in the fall of 1904 and that body thought well of the scheme. So did members of the board of governors when Peterson made the proposal to them.32 Robertson had prepared a paper on the subject, which was made available to the Montreal press. Editorial comment was favourable. McGill, it was said, by such action would strengthen the bonds of Canadian unity. But before any steps could be taken, someone must go to Vancouver and assure himself that Vancouver and British Columbian authorities were truly in favour of the proposal. Tory was the obvious person to undertake this commission and in the spring of 1905 he set off by train for Vancouver. The journey took four and a half days and Tory must himself have wondered at the temerity of McGill seeking to promote university-level education at such enormous distances. On 15 May he wrote to Peterson: 'I think I have talked school and college matters with every man in British Columbia whose knowledge would help me to gauge opinion on such subjects, and as a result have now a fairly clear view of the situation.'33 His conclusion was that Robertson's view was correct Local rivalries were so strong that they would defeat any internal move, and the only hope was for an institution like McGill to make its own choice of location. By establishing itself in the province, it would provide a secure foundation for adequate college-level development in the future. Tory had two sessions with members of the Executive Council of the British Columbia government, who welcomed the McGill scheme and were prepared to help modestly with its

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realization. He also reported that Dr. Alexander Robinson, the superintendent of education, had said to him, 'If you take the initiative and the responsibility of saying when, where and how an institution is to be undertaken, you will have the whole province in your hands, and give a most satisfactory solution.' Tory warned that denominational colleges were beginning to appear. The Methodists had established one at New Westminster, which was affiliated to Victoria University, a constituent of the University of Toronto. But he believed that 'a strong step taken now... would in all probability settle this question for all time, not only by making such efforts unnecessary but by making competition impossible.'34 The governors of McGill were ready to approve the proposal, but cautiously added that they had no funds with which to support it. The promised government grants, however, would not be sufficient to meet the annual costs envisaged, and McGill could only carry the scheme in the province if it could be seen to be providing a healthy contribution towards the necessary expenditures. In this critical situation, Peterson appealed to Sir William Macdonald; after an initial refusal, he agreed to provide $15,000 over a three-year period. A further difficulty was a legal question as to the university's franchise to operate in any province other than Quebec. By reasons of its royal charter, McGill believed it could affiliate schools and colleges wherever located, but to incorporate a college in another province as an integral part of itself was a radically new departure. The situation was complicated by McGill's double character—a creature of the crown by reason of its charter, but a creature of the Quebec legislature in its esse as the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning. It was decided to seek enabling legislation in Quebec to permit 'colleges situate beyond the limits of the Province of Quebec to become colleges of McGill University, provided such Colleges are authorised to do so by the law of the province of Canada, in which they are situated'.35 The passing of this measure in March 1906 forestalled any problem arising from the operation of the Royal Institution in a province other than the one by whose legislature it had been established, and it also deferred to the need for enabling legislation in British Columbia, thus avoiding any appearance of overriding the legislature in that province. All that remained, then, was the action of the government of British Columbia. Those who had said that McGill's move would receive universal approbation proved, of course, too sanguine. Opposition developed from three groups—those in Victoria who were disappointed at the choice of Vancouver, those who were supporting the Methodist College in New Westminster, and a number of Toronto graduates in British Columbia who were jealous of the preeminence given to McGill. The opposition from Victoria was mollified by the assurance that the affiliation of Victoria Col-

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lege with McGill University would be left undisturbed. Indeed in 1907 the college was further authorized by McGill t prepare its students for the second year of the arts course, as well as the first.36 The Methodists in New Westminster appealed to the General Council in Toronto to pass a resolution calling upon the lieutenant governor of the province to veto any measures the legislature might pass in support of the project. This action caused a good deal of resentment in British Columbia and probably assisted rather than delayed the passage of the legislation. The opposition of the Toronto graduates centred on the advantage given to McGill by the plan. Peterson met this criticism with the comment: 'We intend to help the Vancouver people to do good university work, and we hope that the friends of education will agree with us in regarding it as none the less McGill work because it happens to be done in the City of Vancouver. The University will control the curriculum, assist in providing the staff and confer the degrees. The whole project is the best possible illustration that Canada can have cooperation in higher education, and I regret very much that it should appear to be criticized from the point of view of rival commercial concerns.'37 'Rival commercial concerns'—it was a nice touch and effectively silenced Torontonian carpings. When the legislation was introduced, a forceful speech by the premier, Richard McBride, put the case squarely: 'The proposal did not in the slightest degree clash with other universities. The government would hold out both hands to anyone who would offer similar advantages. But that was no reason for mistrusting McGill. Her reputation was second to none, and she had done more than all other Canadian institutions put together to give the Dominion a status in the eyes of the educational experts all the world over.'38 There were two acts: the first gave McGill University of Montreal the right to establish a college in British Columbia; the second established the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia and authorized it to establish a college or university to be called McGill University College of British Columbia. The second measure was strongly opposed, but both bills were finally passed late in February and received royal assent 12 March 1906. ^ The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia met for the first time just one week later. Tory was present, representing Peterson; he must have experienced a considerable sense of achievement that day. Vancouver College was taken into McGill University College of British Columbia forthwith and a year later Victoria College also became part of the same institution. Teaching for the McGill degree in an independent self-examining institution began in the fall. The venture developed very satisfactorily and plans were quickly made for a new building, estimated to cost $100,000. A site was secured and by

McGill College British Columbia

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1908 with the aid of a $50,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation the necessary funds were gathered together. At that point, however, the passage of the University of British Columbia Act halted the drive, although no further steps were taken by the government. For the next seven years the two branches of McGill College B.C. were forced to mark time and made little progress. Vancouver was offering three years of arts and applied science, and Victoria was offering two years of arts. Both had intended to push forward to the full four years of instruction, but everything was now left in abeyance, waiting for the University of British Columbia to be inaugurated. This was not achieved until 1915, at which time McGill College B.C. handed over both its assets and its responsibilities to the new institution. The chancellor wrote a final letter of gratitude to Peterson: 'The benefit our Province has derived from your University's connection with it would be impossible to estimate. Many young people have received a university education for whom otherwise it would have remained an unaccomplished dream.'40 By its disinterested action McGill had shown the way forward for the people of British Columbia, and would no doubt have accomplished much more had the original plans been allowed to proceed until such time as the government was ready to implement its own program. As it was, solid achievements were realized. 'In the session 1913-14, 45 British Columbia students were attending McGill University [in Montreal]... success in their studies in McGill B.C. whetted the mental appetite and ambition of large numbers of students who, as always, were ready to make every effort of thrift and sacrifice to attain the goal of a degree— The great majority, quite naturally, attended McGill University, whose songs and slogans they had learned as undergraduates in British Columbia.'41 In the field of medicine, the association proved exceptionally enduring. 'Early in the history of the medical profession in the province, the predominance of McGill graduates in rural practice was established. This arose partly from the fact that it was then the largest and best established medical school in the country, but more immediately... from the early educational link of the two-year McGill arts colleges in Vancouver and Victoria. To most people in country districts before the Second World War, McGill was not only the bestknown Canadian university, but frequently the only one they had ever heard of.'42 The educational foundations McGill had laid proved firm for others to build upon. The University of British Columbia and, in due time, the University of Victoria were able to continue with great distinction the mission first begun by Lemuel Robertson, H.M. Tory, William Peterson, and their colleagues in that unique venture, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia,43

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GRADUATE STUDIES

As we have already observed, in the latter half of the nineteenth century the higher education scene had been characterized by the intellectual dominance of the German universities. As early as the l82os, some young Americans, who after graduation had continued their studies in Gottingen, tried on their return to introduce the idea of graduate programs to Harvard. By 1850 some 200 American students had made the pilgrimage to Germany and pressure was beginning to mount for the transformation of some existing American colleges, or the founding of new institutions, so that graduate studies might be available in North America. Johns Hopkins University was intended at its founding in 1876 to be a wholly postgraduate school, but economic, geographic, and political circumstances forced it and other institutions in the United States into a new concept—a graduate school subsisting upon and derived from an undergraduate school operating in one institution. Such an arrangement offers strengths and weaknesses, but for good or ill it has become the typical North American pattern. The degrees given by a graduate school are the master's and the doctorate. The difference between the two, as representing two distinct levels of attainment, has not always been easy to discern, especially when the development spread to Canada where a respect for the master's degree as something of value in itself, and not merely as a sign of failure at the higher level, has maintained itself strongly. The master's degree has lent itself to subject differentiation—the Master of Science being the first deviation from the original Master of Arts—but at the doctoral level, under German influence, the designation Doctor of Philosophy quickly ousted its rivals, the Doctor of Science and the Doctor of Letters. Only recently have other earned professional doctorates begun to gain favour: they include such degrees as Doctor of Civil Law, Doctor of Music, and Doctor of Education. But as a research degree the Doctor of Philosophy, harking back to the older concept that philosophy is the sum of all human knowledge, and that therefore all disciplines are subsumed within it, now stands unchallenged.44 Developments in Canada were understandably somewhat slower than in the United States. In 1890 it was still true that no Canadian institution had awarded an earned Ph.D.; Queen's included a program in its curriculum from that date, but it was not activated until the first decade of the new century and then only sporadically. Toronto approved a doctoral program in 1885, but did not activate it until twelve years later.45 McGill was awarding an earned doctorate from 1881, but was using the designation LL.D.46 In the l88os two were given in divinity and one in philosophy. The earned M.A. by thesis was first given in 1896; in 1899 Corporation enacted new

Henry Marshall Tory Frank Dawson Adams

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rules for both the M.A. and the M.Sc., and from 1901 there was a steady stream of theses for master's degrees. In 1902 a committee of the Faculty of Arts reported in favour of setting up a graduate school at McGill, largely on the grounds that demographic trends showed that the English-speaking population of Quebec was on the decline and that students would therefore be harder to come by; since a graduate school drew its students from a wider area, the university should establish such a school as soon as possible. But while there were half a dozen master's theses each year, no more doctoral degrees were given, and it was not until 1906 that a graduate school was finally established and a Ph.D. program initiated. The school was administered by the Committee on Graduate Studies, the first chairman being Frank Dawson Adams. He served for six years, 1906-12, and was brought back into office as the first dean when the school was formally constituted as a faculty in 1922. The first Ph.D. was awarded (it was in physics) in 1909 to R.W. Boyle; three were awarded in 1910, the first to be given in chemistry going to a woman, Annie Louise MacLeod; the others were in geology and botany.47 McGill continued to award the D.Sc. as a career award in some disciplines, but as in other universities the Ph.D. was recognized more and more as the highest earned award, and applicants for the D.Sc. became increasingly rare. The postdoctoral appointment was not long in making its appearance, though the number of these appointments grew slowly since they waited necessarily on the .availability of research funds.48 Originally the Graduate Studies Committee was responsible only for work undertaken in the Faculty of Arts; then the committee took responsibility for graduate work in the Faculty of Applied Science, and in 1922 in the Faculty of Agriculture. Subsequently, all work after a first degree in all faculties and schools, whether of a professional or research nature, was controlled by the committee or its successor, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. FINANCIAL ANXIETIES

As Principal Peterson entered upon his second decade, the university was apparently continuing to go from strength to strength, but behind the scenes financial anxieties were beginning to develop. The final consummation of full union of the Faculty of Medicine with the university in 1905 was, it will be recalled, brought about by the faculty's financial difficulties. One of the causes was the building program it had undertaken, but ironically only two years after the building costs had forced the faculty to forgo its independence, a severe fire destroyed everything other than one of the northern annexes. This immense loss was followed within the week by the destruction of the Macdonald Engineering Building by another fire, and

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the two disasters struck a major blow at the whole university. Macdonald came speedily to the rescue of the Faculty of Applied Science and rebuilt the Engineering Building; it was reopened in 1909. The Medical Faculty was not so fortunate. It had to make use of temporary accommodation for another two years before its new building was ready. It cost $i million, a large sum in those days, and was paid for half by insurance funds and half by Lord Strathcona. When the building was finally opened in June 1911, it was at once apparent that his lordship had characteristically produced a sumptuous edifice. 'It was described in the local press as "unsurpassed for efficiency" and much praised for its architecture and fittings. It was the first public building in Canada to be awarded to an architect solely by competition. The exterior was of grey limestone and the interior made lavish use of marble and polished tile. In the reception areas, the floors were of mosaic with marble borders, and the oak woodwork was handsomely crafted. Steel window frames were introduced throughout the building, which even boasted in some areas electric elevators.'49 But splendid as the new premises were, they somehow failed to capture the imagination the way the 1901 complex had done. Maude Abbott who knew the Strathcona Medical Building well over many years never enthused about it as she had done over the earlier buildings, though many people admired the library and found it a good place in which to work. Moreover, the new Medical Building was expensive to operate. Taking full responsibility for the affairs of the Medical Faculty, though a development warmly welcomed by the board of governors, had laid considerable new burdens on the university. The additional costs of the five-year program of medical instruction introduced in 1905 had been assumed by Strathcona for the first years of its operation, but that assistance came to an end just before the opening of the new building. As chancellor, Strathcona maintained from London his interest in the Medical Faculty and in the Royal Victoria College, but he was not present in Montreal sufficiently often to n ure a continuing concern for the day-to-day operations of the univ ity. In his absence, William Macdonald had been persuaded to act as chairman of the board of governors, but after the founding of Macdonald College his interests were understandably drawn away to that institution. He did indeed rebuild the Macdonald Engineering Building and in 1911 he contributed the magnificent Macdonald Park for university playing fields. He also agreed to become chancellor in succession to Lord Strathcona when the latter died in 1913, but it was for Macdonald, as it had been for Strathcona, a largely titular office. In these ways, he maintained an interest in the university until his death in 1917, but after 1907 that interest was never as continual and close as it had been in the earlier years.

Strathcona Medical Building, c. 1912

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One consequence was that in 1907 Macdonald intimated that he did not wish to continue as chairman of the board, and Strathcona, on one of his visits to the university, proposed that when he himself could not be present, the chair at governors' meetings should be taken by the vice-chancellor, that is to say, by the principal. This was agreed, the principal expressing some reluctance: 'He would have preferred that the tradition could have been continued by which a representative of the business community should fill the office of Chairman, yet so long as it might meet the practical convenience of the Board, he was quite ready to act'50 It proved to be an unfortunate development Peterson was so very able and had imperceptibly taken over the direction of the university to such an extent that the lay members of the board began to lose interest. For the first time since the reorganization of the Royal Institution in 1845, me remark occurs in the November 1907 minutes that attendance of governors was irregular and that it was becoming difficult to establish a quorum. It is against this background that the financial campaigns of 1906 and 1911 have to be viewed. Andrew Carnegie had set up in 1905 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching with an endowment of $15 million, and Peterson was appointed one of the twenty-five trustees.51 This suggested a possible new source of funds. The board of governors dined and wined Andrew Carnegie on I May 1906. Later that month, in reply to an inquiry from the Carnegie Corporation, which made a point of giving grants only to non-sectarian institutions, the board replied that McGill was free from the taint of denominationalism, except that the governors must by statute be Protestant laymen 'but such bylaw may be at any time amended or repealed by another statute or bylaw of the Board'—one is tempted to add 'if the price is right'. At the time, these overtures came to nothing, but one result of the Carnegie dinner was a challenge offer from Robert Reford, a shipping merchant, of $50,000 if the citizens of Montreal would raise a total of $i million for the McGill General Endowment The condition was not met, despite some generous promises of contributions, and McGilTs financial difficulties were not solved. A McGill Relief Fund was instituted—whether this was regarded as the same as the 1906 challenge offer or a new effort is not clear—but it, too, did not gather the support hoped for. Reford in 1909 contributed the $50,000 he had previously offered, this time without conditions, but specifying that it should be used to raise professors' salaries. The kind of problem Peterson was facing is illustrated by correspondence coming from so late a period as 1912: Professor J.G. Adami of pathology, who was receiving a salary of $3,500, had received an offer from Chicago of $9,000, but could perhaps be retained if his salary was increased to $5,000. Peterson's problem was how to respond to not one but many pressing calls of this kind.

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One reaction was fully in the tradition of Charles Dewey Day and John William Dawson in the middle years of the nineteenth century. It was to make 'the McGill case' to the provincial government.52 The situation, however, had changed considerably since Dawson's days. Whereas in earlier generations the government would plead with some justification that it was not in the business of helping college-level education, this was no longer true. The appeal to the government in 1911 pointed out that $1.75 million had been expended in establishing the Ecole des Etudes Commerciales in Montreal and the Ecoles Polytechniques in Montreal and Quebec City; also that statutory grants accorded in previous years to Laval University had totalled $36,000, but those to McGill only $3,000. Yet McGill was performing a role for its province and for Canada equalled only by that of the University of Toronto. That institution was in receipt of $750,000 annually from the Ontario legislature; McGill had hitherto maintained its effort, including that of the training of teachers for the Protestant school system, almost wholly on private funds, thus saving the provincial government each year very considerable sums. It was not true, the argument ran, that McGill served only a Protestant minority; between 200 and 300 of the students were Catholics, most of them francophone Canadians. Of a total student body numbering 2,000, some 150 came from west of Winnipeg and between 60 and 70 came from the British Isles. 'When the great Congress of the Universities of the Empire is held in London next year, it may be prophesied that to no University in the over-seas dominions will a higher place be accorded than to this Quebec institution.' The time had come when McGill must ask for more government support. Endowments in support of ordinary expenditures had increased only $400,000 in the last ten years; successive annual deficits in 1906-10 amounted to over $200,000. It was imperative that the province should come to the aid of the university which had done and was doing so much for Quebec.53 But the appeal fell upon deaf ears, and, as in 1856 and in 1865, the board of governors, having failed to gain the support it needed from the government, turned to the anglophone community of Montreal. One difference between earlier appeals and that of 1911 was that appeals could now be directed to a larger circle of interests: for example, the widely dispersed graduates, many of whom could be counted upon to respond generously to an appeal on behalf of 'Old McGill'. Another difference was in the organization of the campaign. Peterson had been much impressed with the success of a new type of community approach. It had recently been conducted by the younger members of the business community on behalf of the YMCA and had been patterned after the latest American models. A member of one of Montreal's foremost merchant families, William Massey Birks, had been chairman of a citizens' committee for special names, and a

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rising financial executive, John Wilson McConnell, had been chairman of the businessmen's division. His division had been divided into ten teams, each with its own captain and each with definite assignments. In thirteen days the whole community had been covered, and by means of large donations and small the target of $200,000 was not only reached but exceeded. Peterson persuaded the board to invite John Ross, president of the YMCA, George Drummond, a strong supporter, and Birks to join the board of governors for the express purpose of conducting a similar campaign on behalf of the university. It proved to be an even greater success. In five days in November 1911 the appeal raised $1/4 million from some two thousand donors, the list again being headed by Reford with a donation of $100,000. The funds subscribed constituted an immense sum in those days, but even more importantiy the campaign gave English-speaking Montreal once again its sense of proprietorial pride in 'our university', and forged new links with the Montreal business community. The recruitment of Birks, Ross, and McConnell, in particular, was to prove of immense significance.54 THE T H E O L O G I C A L COLLEGES

Birks and Ross were in fact to be heard from very soon. Since the i88os the theological colleges, that is, the Anglican, the Congregational, the Methodist, and the Presbyterian, had played an important role in the university not only because they provided a considerable proportion of the men registered in the Faculty of Arts, but also because they offered them opportunities for residence. In the Annual Report for 1904—5, the principal, commenting on the need for a men's dormitory, said that 250 medical students and 140 applied science students had intimated their desire to live in a residence, and that in addition there were some 50 students wanting to do so in arts—though there, the principal added, the need was not so great, since the majority of the students lived either at home or in one or other of the theological colleges.55 The colleges had, however, remained strictiy segregated religiously, each one within the walls of its own denominationalism. The experience of what has since come to be called ecumenism, as already practised in the YMCA, was beginning to make these segregations less meaningful when in 1912 the principal of the United Theological College in Ceylon visited Montreal. Birks was struck by the fact that on the mission field in Ceylon seven denominations were able to join forces: why should they not do so, he asked, in Montreal? 'With Birks writing much of the scenario, events moved with a most unecclesiastical celerity.'56 Because of the obvious pedagogical and financial advantages, a scheme was worked out whereby the

William Massey Birks

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Joint Board of the Theological Colleges Associated with McGill University was incorporated, and this body was made responsible for drawing up a common curriculum in the academic subjects, while church polity and liturgy remained to be taught separately by the four colleges, so that they might retain their denominational emphases. In 1913 Birks and his friend Ross raised yet another $500,000 to provide a 'divinity hall' to house the library, lecture rooms, and administrative offices of the Joint Board. Birks wanted Divinity Hall to be on the campus and proposed a building to be shared jointly with the university, but Peterson strongly opposed the idea. He 'was not in sympathy with any plan of a theological faculty in the university or even a divinity hall on its grounds'.57 No doubt Peterson was thinking of the antireligious attitudes of Chancellor Macdonald, and perhaps even more cautiously of the undenominational regulations of the Carnegie Corporation. A property close to, but not part of, the campus was purchased on University Street, and after some legal delays joint classes were held there for the first time in the session 1915-16. ^ The major ecumenical movement among Christian denominations was still a whole generation and two world wars away, but Montreal had pointed the way to a new spirit of Christian unity. That was something of which even Sir William might have approved. DECADES OF A C H I E V E M E N T As Peterson's ship made its way down the St. Lawrence in June 1914 carrying him on his annual pilgrimage 'home', he may well have reflected with some satisfaction on the state of the university. On his return, he would enter upon the last year of his second decade with the knowledge that the perennial problem of operating funds had been solved, at least for the next few years. Bernard Harrington had died, Ernest Rutherford had long since gone to Manchester, but Frank Dawson Adams in geology, Arthur Stanley Eve in physics, Robert Fulford Ruttan in chemistry, Stephen Butler Leacock in economics, Charles Moyse in English, Harry Crane Perrin in music, Herbert Stanley Birkett and John George Adami in medicine, F.P. Walton and Eugene Lafleur in law were foremost names in their disciplines and were supported by competent, in many cases excellent, colleagues. Student enrolments were healthy—776 in arts, 416 in medicine, 685 in applied science, 408 at Macdonald College, 116 in graduate studies, for a total of almost 2,500. The board of governors had been revitalized by the recent appointments and by the new relationships established with the graduates and the English-speaking community of Montreal. But when Peterson looked beyond the bow of the ship to the Britain and Europe to which he was returning, he could not but recognize that there were heavy storm clouds gathering. The time of the Breaking of Nations

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was approaching with a dreadful inevitability, and no man could tell how fierce or how demanding the conflict would be.

NOTES 1. From this modest beginning developed both the Seed Branch of the federal Department of Agriculture and the Canadian Seed Growers' Association. 2. Robin S. Harris, A History of Higher Education in Canada, 1663-1960 (Toronto, 1976), pp. lly, 169, 276. See also John Ferguson Snell, Macdonald College of McGill University: A History from 1904-1955 (Montreal, 1963), pp. 35-40. 3. Roger Magnuson, A Brief History of Quebec Education: From New France to Parti Quebecois (Montreal, 1980), pp. 49-50. 4. John Adams, The Protestant School System in the Province of Quebec (London and Montreal, 1902). 5. Ibid., pp. 7-8. 6. Ibid. One commissioner is reported (p. 23) as saying: Three or four of the candidates offered to come for nothing more than would pay their board', which suggests that sometimes the position went to the lowest bidder. Often the teacher had no permanent accommodation but was boarded around, i.e., she lived with each family in the district in turn. See also Magnuson, History of Quebec Education, p. 65. 7. Adams, Protestant School System, p. 28. 8. Ibid., p. 137; see also pp. 39—43. 9. Minutes of the Faculty of Arts, 30 October 1903, II March 1904, 12 June 1904, MUA 43/32/I/5A; Minutes of Corporation, 24 February 1904, 13 April 1904, MUA 639/7. 10. Van Home to Peterson, 24 October 1905, MUA 16/188. 11. 'On the Relationship of the Agricultural College to the University', August 1905, MUA 641/5/18. 12. G.H. Locke, 'Report of a Visit to the McGill Normal School', 8-IO December 1903, MUA 614/9/4413. Advancement i: 288. Robins' letter to Peterson concerning the house of ill repute is MUA 641/9/18. 14. A memorandum, prepared by the principal's secretary in 1942, attributed the idea to Robertson, but the sources quoted are biased and unreliable. MUA 16/188, 'D. McMurray's Brief re School for Teachers and University's Responsibility for It'. 15. The copy on file reads 'compatible', but the context makes it clear the original must have read (or intended) 'incompatible'. MUA 59/9/10. 16. Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal, 1981), pp. 347-48. 17. M-Gov. 18 June 1906. Harris, Higher Education in Canada, p. 277, quotes 'the stated purpose' of Macdonald College to make the point that 'education rather than agriculture was at the heart of the enterprise.' But the 'education' in question was 'rural education', which for Macdonald included agriculture. In the event, agriculture tended from the beginning to dominate the college scene, partiy because it got off to a good start, whereas teacher training ran into staffing problems.

PETERSON: THE MIDDLE YEARS

9!

18. Various minor additions and subtractions by gift, purchase, and governmental appropriations have taken place over the years. In 1945 the acquisition of Stoneycroft Farm added some 900 acres, 350 of which were devoted to the Morgan Arboretum. The total holdings in 1980 were approximately 1,600 acres. 19. The opening of the college had been scheduled for September, but was delayed by a fire until November. 20. Advancement i: 188-93. 21. See George Flower, 'A Study of the Contribution of Dr. E.I. Rexford to Education in the Province of Quebec' (M.A. thesis, McGill, 1949), pp. 26-32. Also, John Calam, 'McGill Trains Teachers, 1857-1964', The Teachers' Magazine 45, no. 223 (September 1964): 18-32. Robins was an energetic principal and effected many reforms, but the university pleaded a lack of government funding as the reason for effecting 'some most undesirable economies'. Thus despite the improvements implemented by Robins, die criticism continued into the new century. See AR 7905— 6, pp. II—12. 22. Snell, Macdonald College, p. 59. 23. In 1915-17 the province made a grant of $5,000; 1917-24 $10,000; 1924-27, no grant; 1927-42, $15,000. From 1942 to 1949 the annual grant was $35,000, by which time the university reckoned that it had subsidized teacher education by an amount of $1.2 million. MUA 16/188 (McMurray Brief). 24. Flower, 'Contribution of Rexford to Education', p. 142. 25. See Calam, 'McGill Trains Teachers', pp. 26-27. 26. Dale was chairman of the committee which founded the University Settiement in 1910. 'The Social Workers' Federation began in one of Prof. Dale's classes. This federation paved the way for the present department of social service, which was brought about by the joint efforts of Sir William Peterson and Prof. Dale.' 'Prof. J.A. Dale Leaves McGill', McGill News I, no. 4 (September 1920): 26. 27. In the fifty years from 1857 to 1907 the McGill Normal School trained 2,988 teachers and granted 4,118 diplomas in the four grades: kindergarten, elementary, model, and academy. Adams, it will be remembered, spoke well of the women in the schools and criticized the educational system, rather than their training, for the poor quality of the men. 28. M-Gov. 10 January 1910. Before his resignation Robertson had been appointed chairman of the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education, so he was not without occupation. Thereafter he served in the Canadian Red Cross and the federal Department of Agriculture. 'Though distasteful to Sir William Macdonald, his visits to the College were welcomed by members of the staff, especially diose who had served under him.' Snell, Macdonald College, p. 62. 29. At least one destination was in New York State; Newfoundland was also not part of Canada at this time. As alternative services in other provinces were established, the distribution area became more limited; after 1934 libraries were sent only to eastern Canada, and after World War II only to Quebec locations. Quebec's first library legislation was passed in 1959. See Elizabeth G. Hall, 'The McGill Travelling Libraries', McGill News 6, no. 3 (June 1925): 19-20. Also, Kay Clynes, 'Books on the Move', McGill University Library News I, no. 7 (December 1973).

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30. See Advancement i: 195-97. Morrin College in Quebec City surrendered its affiliation in 1899. 31. In 1908 Tory was appointed the first president of the University of Alberta. He later became the executive head of the Khaki University in Britain, the first president of the National Research Council, and finally in 1942 the first president of Carleton University. He was still in office when he died, aged eighty-three, in 1947. See E.A. Corbett, Henry Marshall Tory, Beloved Canadian (Toronto, 1954); Wilfrid Eggleston, National Research in Canada: The NRC1916-1966 (Toronto, 1978), pp. 35-89. 32. M-Gov. 20 January 1905. 33. Tory to Peterson, 15 May 1905. See 'McGill University in British Columbia', a report made to Principal Peterson, May 1906, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library. Tory includes copies of correspondence and newspaper items. 34. Ibid., p. 12. Tory strongly disapproved of church-related colleges, and being at this time still a Methodist minister he could fight the battle from a position of strength within the denomination. 35. 6 Edward VII, 1906, c. 82. 36. The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia was authorized in 1907 to establish colleges in cities other than Vancouver; taking advantage of this provision, Victoria College became a part of McGill College, B.C. It lost its collegiate status in 1915 when McGill withdrew from British Columbia, regained it in 1920 in association with UBC, and became an independent foundation as the University of Victoria in 1963. See Harry T. Logan, Tuum Est, A History of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, 1958), pp. 21-29; and Peter L. Smith, Come Give a Cheer! One Hundred Tears of Victoria High School, 1876-1976 (Victoria, 1976), pp. 26-27, 39-45. One of the boys attending this school was Arthur Currie, the future principal of McGill; see Smith, Come Give a Cheer! p. 29. 37. Vancouver Province, 9 February 1906. 38. The Daily Colonist, Victoria, B.C., 21 February 1906. 39. Statutes of British Columbia, 6 Edward VII, c. 28 and 38. 40. The letter was quoted in full in the AR 1915-16. 41. Logan, Tuum Est, p. 27. Significantly, when these young men heard the call of wartime duty, thirty joined the First McGill Company, and another twenty-five followed the next year, an extraordinarily high proportion of their total numbers. 42. John Norris, 'The Country Doctor in British Columbia, 1887-1975, An Historical Profile', B.C. Studies, no. 49 (Spring 1981): 37. 43. Robertson continued to teach in the University of British Columbia as head of the Department of Classics until his retirement in 1941. He was well described as the 'pioneer of pioneer professors' in Logan, Tuum Est, p. 165. 44. See Bernard Berelson, Graduate Education in the United States (New York, 1960), pp. 7-24. See also S.B. Frost, The Ph.D. Degree', The Bulletin of Educational Procedures, no. II (February 1967), MUA 1058/1. 45. See Harris, Higher Education in Canada, p. 311. 46. The D.C.L. degree, which had been awarded with fair consistency since the earliest days of McGill College, was a recognition of professional attainment, rather than of intellectual achievement. The award fell into disuse in

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47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

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the late decades of the nineteenth century but was revived as an earned professional degree in 1967. Theses I and 2. Otto Hahn and M. Levin who studied with Rutherford in 1905 were probably the first postdoctoral fellows to come to McGill from abroad. Hahn built upon Rutherford's work and became in 1939 with Lise Meitner the discoverer of neutron-initiated nuclear fission. He received the Nobel Prize in 1944. 'Medical Peregrinations', McGilliana, no. 7, March 1979. M-Gov. 18 January 1907. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching concentrated on helping professors to retire with a modest pension; it did not offer help to institutions. That would have to come from the Carnegie Corporation. The correspondence with the Corporation is reported in M-Gov. May 1906. Advancement i: 214-19. 'The Provincial Government and McGill University', MUA 641/1/18. This was McConnelFs first association with McGill, but he did not join the board of governors until 1928. Strathcona Hall, the YMCA centre opposite the campus entrance on Sherbrooke Street, was the only other alternative to boardinghouses. See H.W. Trott, Campus Shadows (Hemlock, N.Y., 1946), for a lively account of the residence problems of McGill medical students in the years before and after World War I. H. Keith Markell, The Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, 19481978 (Montreal, 1979), p. 2. W.M. Birks, memorandum dated 5 November 1912, Birks Papers, MUA 1866, file 'Papers Concerning Divinity Hall'. This building was a house numbered 3480 University Street, a site now occupied by the McConnell Engineering Building.

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CHAPTER

IV

THE YEARS OF WORLD WAR I

jS^Ej!??^ y the time Peterson returned to Montreal in September 1914, jg Jp|*^|y the cataclysm of war had flooded far across Europe. In those p fcwpllw days of empire, there could be no doubt that Canada would be giBk-gfta deeply involved, and that McGill, a centre of intense loyalty, would respond wholeheartedly to the challenge. I M P E R I A L LOYALTIES

James McGill had himself been staunch for the crown,1 and the Montreal merchants of the nineteenth century who supported McGill College had always, apart from their one flirtation with the Annexation Manifesto of 1849, highly prized the British connection. Set in the midst of a francophone population which had no great enthusiasm for things English, the McGill community, partly perhaps by reaction, had always been strong in the loyalist tradition. It was typical that the first item in the student songbook of 1895 nad been the royal anthem, 'God Save the Queen'. But with Strathcona as chancellor and Peterson as principal something more was added. Strathcona may have seen the British Empire as a larger stage on which to play his splendid role, but Peterson revered it as an ideal: I do not object to call myself an imperialist. For to me imperialism is not militarism, or jingoism, or megalomania... it is the expression of

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an aspiration which may be cherished in full sympathy with democratic ideals—the aspiration namely, and the desire that, for the high and noble purposes of its world-wide mission, the British Empire may be enabled to hold together in all coming time... we ought to be—and we are—proud of our imperial connexion. For we know that in the world as we find it to-day, the strength and prosperity of our united Empire affords one of the best possible guarantees of order and freedom, justice, peace and progress In their combination in the British Empire they are the highest that has as yet been attained in the social and political development of the world.2 In those convictions, Peterson by no means stood alone. Most of his McGill colleagues shared the same ideals. Charles Moyse, dean of arts and editor of the McGill University Magazine, 1901-6, had regularly provided loyalist editorials. In the second number he wrote: 'In our opinion there is no question of greater moment to the younger generation than that of British Imperialism, and it is the duty of every thoughtful young man to make himself acquainted with its bearings on that part of the Empire in which he lives.'3 When Andrew Macphail succeeded to the editorial chair, and the publication changed its name to the University Magazine, there was no change in its imperial allegiance: 'Our affection is to the spirit of Empire. Our loyalty is to the King who holds headship over our race, and to its ancient tradition of "truth, pitie, freedom and hardiness".'4 One of the most influential men of the McGill campus in those years was Macphail's friend Stephen Butler Leacock. He later became famous as Canada's great humorist, and on that subject pretty well everything that can be said has been said many times. But in giving rein to that great facility, Leacock obscured his substantial contribution to the evolution of Canadian thought in the prewar decade. 'In the years between his arrival at McGill University in 1901 as a sessional lecturer in economics and 1910 when his rollicking Literary Lapses appeared, the public recognized Leacock as the author of some articles on government and politics, a widely used text, Elements of Political Science (1906), and a book on Canadian history, and also as a spokesman of imperialism.'5 This last activity was sufficiently effective to attract attention overseas. Lord Grey, Britain's foreign secretary, said of Leacock, 'He has all of Parkin's enthusiasm for the Empire, and in style, matter and general effectiveness, is Parkin's superior.'6 It was Lord Grey who arranged for Leacock to tour the Empire during 1907-8, lecturing on imperial organization. How strongly the university shared the young professor's sentiments is indicated by the fact that in a penny-pinching period the board of governors not only gave him his year's leave, but even continued $1,000 of his salary, roughly one-third, an almost

Stephen Butler Leacock

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unprecedented act of generosity. Before he left, Leacock published in the University Magazine an article entitled 'Greater Canada'. Behind its rhetoric there was a serious argument; Canada is a country of immense resources—'What think you, little river Thames, of our great Ottawa, that flings its foam eight hundred miles?' This strong, resourceful Canada must be given a place of shared responsibility with the Mother Country in the counsels of Empire. 'I am an Imperialist because I will not be a Colonial The tenor of our politics... is the voice of the black-robed sectary, with narrow face and shifting eyes, snarling still with the bigotry of a by-gone age. This is the spirit we must purge... that must be burned from us in the pure fire of an Imperial patriotism, that is no theory but a passion. This is our need, our supreme need of Empire—not for its ships and guns, but for the greatness of it, aye for the very danger of it.'7 With Lord Strathcona, the High Commissioner of Canada to the Court of St James, as chancellor; with Peterson, the exiled patrician, as principal; with Moyse, Macphail, and Leacock as its prophets, there could be no doubt or hesitation in McGill's response when the call came. Peterson returned in September 1914 to a university already geared for war. THE MCGILL PROVISIONAL BATTALION

Indeed, McGill had been preparing for many years. As far back as 1903 facilities had been made available for students to practise rifle-shooting; in 1907-8 courses were offered which qualified successful students for commissions either in the Canadian militia or in the British army. These courses were accorded credit towards the B.Sc. degree from 1909 and this had led in 1912 to the establishment of the first Canadian Officers' Training Corps in a Canadian university. The Joseph house, which stood on the present site of the McLennan Library, became the COTC armoury and the McGill campus became the contingent's parade ground. Jeffrey Burland, who had assisted in the creation of the Conservatorium of Music some years earlier, took a great interest in the work of this unit and became the first honorary colonel in 1913. Strathcona contributed generously to the equipping of the headquarters. Thus the university had already several years of preparatory service behind it when war was declared on 4 August 1914 The principal was still in England, term would not begin until late in September, but the Graduates' Society spontaneously stepped into the breach and began to organize the McGill Provisional Battalion, a unit intended to give volunteers a basic knowledge of drill and military procedures, prior to their joining the regular Canadian forces when recruiting offices opened. On I October the governor general, the Duke of Connaught, visited the university to review

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the battalion. It must have been a strange, indeed moving, sight. The officer commanding was Major Auckland Geddes, in civilian life a professor of anatomy. In the ranks were returning students, side by side with freshmen who as yet hardly dared to call themselves students of McGill; there were younger men of the university staff and graduates who had returned to the campus for this new purpose, and there were a number from the city who had never attended university at all. But also, falling in beside the other volunteers, were older men, who had gained a leading place in society but who now readily joined the ranks, men like Adams, dean of applied science, the highly regarded Adami, professor of pathology, and inevitably, from the Faculty of Arts, the well-known professor of economics and political science, Leacock. A little drill and a few route marches were enough to weed out the willing but unfit, and the older professors did not stay long in the ranks, but all who had volunteered found a way, sooner or later, to make their personal contribution to the war effort. As the McGill Provisional Battalion stood in line to be reviewed on the first day of October 1914 the gesture was no empty one, but indicative of a spontaneous and genuine commitment, which for many was to cost them their lives.8 THE LONG HAUL After a month or so the Canadian Department of Militia and Defence took over the battalion and merged it with the university COTC, and raised it to a strength of l,ooo officers and men. This training battalion formed the basis of the Canadian Universities Company, which provided reinforcements for the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry Regiment at a highly critical period in 1915. At the same time two siege batteries of artillery were organized and largely officered by McGill men, and another 26 officers and 186 men joined the Universities Tank Battalion. Altogether over 3,000 McGill graduates and students served in the fighting forces, representing, it was estimated, 60 per cent of all eligible graduates and 65 per cent of all eligible undergraduates. The first flush of enthusiasm soon dissipated, and was replaced by a grim obstinacy which endured four years of senseless slaughter. One of the most notable contributions to the war effort was that of the Faculty of Medicine. Dean H.S. Birkett had been in peacetime an officer in the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Restored to the active service list on the outbreak of war, he met Peterson on his return with the proposal that McGill should raise, equip, and staff a complete 'line of communication' general hospital, of the standard 520 beds, officered by men chosen from the staff of the Faculty of Medicine and with the other ranks includ-

No. 2 University Company, 1915

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ing a high percentage of medical and other students. The nursing personnel would be selected from graduates of the training schools of the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria hospitals. Peterson placed the plan before Corporation and the board, where the dean's proposal was readily approved. In January 1915 the military changed the size of these standard units from 520 to 1,040 beds. When a telephone inquiry came through from Ottawa, asking anxiously how this would affect the McGill plans, Birkett replied immediately that the offer still stood; a 1,040-bed unit would be organized. No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) sailed for Britain in May 1915, landed in France in June, and was fully operative in the fall. It was to continue in active service until 12 May 1919. During those years more than 100,000 patients suffering from wounds or disease passed through its care; 11,000 surgical procedures were performed. In 1918 the hospital, like every other medical institution in Europe, was ravaged by influenza, which alone caused ninety deaths, but yet throughout its lifetime it managed to keep its mortality rate down to less than I per cent. Behind that single statistic stands a tale of courage, sacrifice, and professional skill on the part of a great company of men and women. Originally all were from McGill and its hospitals, but the first volunteers were later joined by others from many backgrounds but equally imbued with high resolves. It is a story in which not only McGill but all Canada can take pride.9 World War I took a grim toll of western civilization, and McGill suffered great losses: 363 men, some 12 per cent of all who served, were killed or died in active service, but many more were wounded and some maimed for life. Of them all, two names have a particular significance, and may represent all others, too numerous to mention. In 1914 Dr. John McCrae was no stranger to war. He had served as a volunteer artilleryman in the South African War, and in 1914 had no illusions about the honour and glory of battle; nevertheless he volunteered for active medical service in 1914. He served as medical officer with the artillery and from 1915 with the No. 3 General Hospital. He had long been known to his friends and colleagues as a poet and one who possessed a remarkable inner buoyancy. But through three long years of service in France, his bright spirit was dimmed. He once described shell shock as a 'bankruptcy of the nervous system'. His own spiritual reserves were exhausted when pneumonia struck. The man who had written, on behalf of the dead, the most evocative poem of the war died in the small hours of a cold winter's night in January 1918. For him, too, the poppies now blow in Flanders fields, as they do for so many of his comrades.10 The other name is that of Percival Molson. A member of the family which had played so great a part in McGill's development, he entered the university in 1897 and graduated B.A. in 1901. He interested himself

Captain Percival Molson General and Dean H.S. Birkett

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greatly in sports and is said to have won 'every athletic honour that the University had to offer'. But he was also a thoughtful and attractive personality, and one of his contemporaries said of him, 'We felt that there was not a devious thought nor a hidden or obscure motive in any of his actions.'11 This character fitted him admirably for command in the Canadian Universities Company, and he served with such distinction as to gain the Military Cross. He was severely wounded in the notorious Sanctuary Wood Battle of June 1916, but after convalescence returned to the front in July 1917, only to be killed almost immediately by a direct shell hit. His will left $75,000 to the university to provide the sports facility McGill lacked. Work on the stadium began shortly after his death and was completed before the war ended. The dedication took place in the fall of 1919, when the facility was named the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium. It stands as an inheritance from a generation which served a bloody war with the very highest of ideals.12 It was not only those who fought in battle or served in front-line hospitals who rallied to the cause. The McGill News in its first number carried an article entitled 'McGill Women's War Work'.13 It paid tribute not only to a large contingent of nurses and workers in the Canadian Red Cross, but also to ambulance and car drivers at home and abroad, organizers for the Canadian Patriotic Fund, lecturers in the Royal Victoria College program in aid of the Prisoners of War Fund, and a great host of others who worked almost unnoticed at a multiplicity of tasks, rendering invaluable service. By the time peace was finally achieved in November 1918, women had liberated themselves from many Victorian taboos and disabilities, not so much by propaganda as by demonstrating that they were capable of taking a full share of the load. The women of McGill had come a long way since that first class, segregated and chaperoned, graduated only thirty years before. A NEW-STYLE C O N T R I B U T I O N

The 1914-18 war, which brought one age to an end and gave birth to another, witnessed a new phenomenon which was to prove of the utmost significance to all universities and to McGill in particular. For the first time in human history, the combatants on both sides not only used technology to the full extent of its current capabilities, but deliberately encouraged its further development by organized investigations. This meant that for institutions of higher learning throughout the world, the pace of research was greatly quickened. The goals were more clearly defined, and the application of new discoveries was eagerly canvassed. Scientists and technologists were now recognized as highly important members of society, too valuable indeed to be used as fighting men. Despite their patriotic instincts, these

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individuals were asked to stay in their lecture rooms, teaching selected young men the skills that technological and scientific warfare demanded, and to continue working in their laboratories, conducting research relevant to the war effort. A case in point was that of A.S. Eve, the Macdonald Professor of Physics. In 1916 he left Canada as second in command, I48th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, and saw service in France, but in 1917 at the request of the British War Office he was seconded to the Admiralty Research Station at Harwich. Here as Major Eve he assisted Professor William Bragg in submarine detection research, and when Bragg was called to the Admiralty in London, Eve was appointed to succeed him as the director of the Harwich operation. His work was necessarily a closely guarded secret, but its value was indicated when he was promoted to the rank of colonel and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. As with all work of this nature, a good deal was undertaken with disappointing results, but some lines of exploration were extremely productive. Professor Louis King of the Physics Department did valuable work in acoustics for submarine detection, and R.W. Boyle, who will be remembered as McGill's first Ph.D., was assigned to follow up King's activities, but in the sphere of asdics, or electronic rather than acoustic detection. Professors L.A. Herdit and R.B. Owens developed the idea of the leader, a cable laid in a channel leading to a harbour or river mouth and detectable only by specialized gear installed in Allied shipping. Until the invention of radar, it proved invaluable in busy harbours in times of fog or blacked-out navigational aids. The location of enemy gun sites by sound-ranging was the specialty of another McGill scientist, Dr. J.A. Gray, also on leave from the Department of Physics. The Department of Chemistry was particularly busy with the problems of high-explosive manufacture, and Professor F.M.G. Johnson was seconded to a munitions plant at Dragon, Quebec, where he served as assistant general manager. In that plant he had the help on weekends and during the long vacation of McGill students and graduates. A laboratory equipped for the study of explosives was also set up within the Macdonald Chemistry Building. Further valuable work was undertaken in the department on the development of defences against the dreaded phosgene gas. The German chemical industry had been the most advanced in the world, and on the outbreak of war it was quickly discovered that Allied access to extremely important materials was either very limited or wholly cut off. A number of McGill chemists were called upon to supply some of these deficiencies and did so with remarkable success. One effort related to the production of acetone. With hints derived from German patents, two McGill graduates, H.W. Matheson and H.S. Reid, set to work to design

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the basic process and the methods of large-scale production. 'In 1917, twelve hundred long tons of acetone were shipped out of the plant; in the same year, when a demand for acetic acid arose even more urgent than the demand for acetone, approximately ten thousand long tons of acid were produced and hurried to England.' A.F.G. Cadenhead, director of chemical development at Shawinigan, Quebec, later wrote: 'While the figures seem puny in the light of present day production schedules, they constituted a signal achievement thirty years ago. In less than nine months, a most complex and difficult job of work had been done—one which under ordinary conditions would have required eight to ten years.' Another such venture concerned the production of magnesium, the world supply of which had come solely from German industry. Professor Alfred Stansfield and E.R. Williams, a Toronto graduate, headed a team, largely staffed by McGill men and also located at Shawinigan, which was in very short order producing 'what was then the almost unbelievable total of four hundred pounds... a day— In the operations of the British signal and photographic services by land, sea, and air, it filled a desperate need.'14 A third vital deficiency was that of cadmium-copper alloy, needed in the manufacture of field telephone cables. Professor Godfrey Burr and S.W. Werner, a lecturer in metallurgy, found the answer to current manufacturing problems by inventing a process whereby the cadmium was distilled into the copper at a controllable rate. The process remained secret during the war and thereafter was carefully protected by patent. An unexpected outcome of activities of this kind, at McGill and elsewhere, was the creation of an independent Canadian chemical industry, an asset which in the postwar years was to prove of great value to Canada as the country evolved from an almost wholly natural-resource economy to one including a large industrial base.15 Within the university the wartime experience of research had given these activities a new status, and from this time forward engagement in research was recognized as a necessary, and regular, part of professorial duties. The difference between a college teacher, however gifted and erudite, and a university professor was now firmly established in the fact that the latter was engaged not only in the communication of knowledge, but also in its ever-increasing expansion. THE KHAKI UNIVERSITY

An important part of Canada's war effort was channelled through the Canadian YMCA, of which the overseas director was Gerald Birks, a member of the Montreal merchant family. In varied theatres of war the YMCA units performed outstandingly, providing comforts, recreation, and entertainment at the bases and forward into the fighting lines. In 1917 a new

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development was the organization of some educational classes in one or two staging areas where there seemed to be a demand, but when the numbers began to show rapid growth, Birks recognized that he was faced with something larger than could be left to local initiatives and amateur enthusiasms. He needed the help of a skilled, imaginative, educational administrator, but knowing something of the problems of army inflexibility, Birks realized that he would also have to be a fairly undauntable character. The man to whom he turned was the former McGill professor who had acquitted himself so commendably in British Columbia, and who had since 1908 been the president of the University of Alberta, Henry Marshall Tory.16 Birks invited him to visit the Canadian camps in England and to report on the situation to the council in Montreal. Tory responded immediately, and on his return to Canada submitted a report which fell basically into two parts. A scheme should be devised to coordinate existing classes into organized curricula, giving serving men and women instruction in subjects relating to the course of the war, its geography and economics, with particular emphasis on the history of the British Empire and its political relationships. Tory wanted men and women to know why, how, and where they were serving. Also, in answer to their own requests, courses should be provided to enable them to re-enter civilian life better equipped than when they had left it. Here Tory laid great stress on agriculture and on the new technologies, such as electrical and chemical engineering, radio telegraphy, and the airplane industry. But it was the second part of the report which took Birks and everyone else by surprise. It dealt with the problem of demobilization. When the war ended, thousands of men and women would be wanting to get back to Canada and out of the forces as fast as possible. Inevitably, discipline would have to be relaxed and grave problems could be foreseen. Tory proposed a Khaki University, the basis of which would be a central camp organized to prepare its students for entry into Canadian universities, or, in its senior courses, to give credit transferable to university programs. Instead of being left with wasted months while waiting for transport, men and women in the forces would be engaged in constructive studies. With the imaginative work of the first part of his scheme, we are not here so immediately concerned. It may be enough to report that one unlookedfor development was that over 3,000 men were taught to read and write. With the second part, however, McGill became intimately involved. Looking for a second in command to assist him in the huge task he had undertaken, Tory turned to McGill and asked Vice-Principal Adams to join him. Herbert Ross of the Classics Department, James Robertson, the former principal of Macdonald College, and Elson Rexford and other professors of the Joint Board of the Associated Theological Colleges at McGill were

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I0y

also closely involved in the venture, along with colleagues from all the universities of Canada. It is reckoned that between 400 and 500 Canadians were placed by the Khaki University in regular first-year courses in British universities; some 700 professors were employed teaching in Britain, France, and Germany; in all, over 650,000 men attended lectures and some 50,000 enrolled in regular classes. When the university was established after the Armistice in its own home in Ripon, Yorkshire, over 2,000 students were registered in first-year programs. At one point, when the scheme seemed likely to founder on military intransigence and lack of vision, General Sir Arthur Currie, commanding officer of the Canadian Corps, sent for Tory, heard what the difficulty was, and intervened personally to solve the problem.17 Neither man could guess at that time that dime's own postwar employment would be as the head of Canada's best-known university. The great achievement of the Khaki University was to encourage many Canadians to continue the education they otherwise might have abandoned. The last point may be emphasized by comparing prewar student registration figures with those of the postwar period.18 While McGill lost many students and potential students to the forces during the war years, nevertheless when they returned they brought with them comrades who would never have thought of attending college if they had not been given the taste for it in the lecture rooms of the Khaki University. Postwar McGill was some 50 per cent larger than the prewar institution. The veteran students were older than freshmen from high school, and they were more mature. The university was also to discover in the next few years that the war had brought great changes to Montreal, and that McGill itself was at the threshold of major developments. MAJOR E N D O W M E N T S After the war was ended, seeds which had been sown many years earlier came to fruition. The'Carnegie Corporation announced on 25 February 1918 that in recognition of McGill's outstanding contribution to the Allied war effort, it was making available to the Royal Institution the sum of $1 million. Peterson had worked with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching long and arduously since his appointment in 1905. For many years he had served as its chairman. It was said that originally the administrators of the Carnegie Corporation had intended to provide the endowment in recognition of Peterson's personal contribution to higher education, and that it was he who asked that the public announcement should associate the award with the university's wartime effort rather than his own.19 Unfortunately, but understandably, this aroused some

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resentments among other Canadian universities, notably Toronto, which also had made great contributions to the war effort and had paid a great price in doing so. But the Carnegie Corporation administrators knew that Toronto and other universities had provincial funds to support them. McGill alone had to live by the bounty of its friends, and both Strathcona and Macdonald had passed from the scene. A grant to the Faculty of Medicine, also of $i million, was announced in 1920 by the Rockefeller Foundation, and again mention was made of McGilTs contribution to the Allied cause.20 These funds made it possible for the university to regroup its forces and prepare for the uncertain years ahead. THE END OF THE PETERSON ERA During the years of conflict, there was understandably little opportunity for academic development, but at least three projects came to fulfilment. The first was the athletic stadium to which we have already referred. It was agreed that the newly organized McGill School of Physical Education should have regular access to the stadium's facilities, an indication that some of Tait McKenzie's ideas were beginning to bear fruit, and that the development of the body was beginning to be considered a proper subject for educational study. Another important project which began modestly was a proposal at the beginning of 1914 for a forest products laboratory. It was established with the approval of the industry by the federal government and located on the McGill campus. Liaison with the Department of Chemistry, though unofficial, was naturally very close. Despite the outbreak of war, the laboratory was completed in time for a formal opening in May 1915. This Forest Products Laboratory was the precursor of the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada which was to follow ten years later, and was to prove significant for the industry and for the McGill Department of Chemistry.21 A third development was the result of a motion in the board of governors in April 1918 to establish the Department of Social Service. This was the beginning of both the social sciences and of professional training in social work at McGill, since it led on the one hand to the founding of the Department of Sociology and on the other to the establishment of the McGill School of Social Work. Thus the war years were not wholly devoid of promising developments, but they were nevertheless years of great strain. Public-spirited men and women were devoting all their energies to the war effort. Peterson visited France to encourage the McGill units stationed there, and he served on innumerable war committees, patriotic associations, and fundraising organizations. His services to the Empire in its great struggle were recognized by the bestowal of a knighthood, as early as 1915, but his many

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involvements grew, rather than diminished, as the years dragged on. In the United States he continued as chairman of the Carnegie Foundation, and at McGill he found himself left more and more to direct the management of the university alone. Governors' meetings became less frequent; in 1918 from May until December there were none. In March of that year Walter Vaughan, so long and so efficiently the university's secretary and bursar, retired to Britain to work for Auckland Geddes and the British government, and in April Vice-Principal Adams departed, as we have seen, to the Khaki University. The strain on Peterson finally proved too great. In January 1919, a bare two months after the war ended, while presiding at a Sunday afternoon meeting on behalf of the dependants of Scottish war victims, he suffered a stroke from which he only partially recovered. He resigned in April and departed an invalid for Britain, where he died two years later. For almost a quarter of a century he had served the university with complete dedication. His obituary in the London Times ended with the words 'such love as his for an institution knew nothing of self.' It was a true judgement. He had given himself unstintingly for the betterment of McGill and he had achieved remarkable progress. His diplomatic skills had secured Macdonald College and the Royal Victoria College for the university, when they might well have gone independent ways; his ability to retain the confidence of Macdonald and Strathcona had secured a rich succession of further benefactions; the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building, the Conservatorium of Music, the Student Union,the Strathcona Medical Building, Macdonald Park, and the Molson Stadium were among the visible monuments of the university's development; the Department of Dentistry, the program in graduate studies, and the greatly improved courses in all faculties were academic achievements less visible but equally significant. He had brought the university through four grinding years of war and it had emerged bruised but intact. During his principalship, the number of students had doubled, and the endowments had risen from $154 million to over $12 million. The reputation of the university at home and abroad had increased immeasurably. If Peterson never succeeded in surmounting the shortcomings of his own personality, he certainly devoted without reserve his outstanding strengths of character and intellect His was an immense contribution. The board of governors did not hesitate long over a new appointment. Dr. Auckland Geddes had come to McGill in 1913 from Edinburgh by way of Dublin to be professor of anatomy. During the war he at first served in the British forces and was later appointed director of recruiting; after serving in other government posts, he became a member of the British Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade. He was now the Right Hon-

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ourable Sir Auckland Geddes, and McGill had no hesitation in inviting him back to the university as its principal. In March 1919 he accepted the appointment, but he was at once urged to continue in government service, and he asked to be given a year's leave of absence. He was then appointed the British ambassador to Washington, and he resigned his university position without returning to Montreal. Thus in 1920 McGill was again looking for a principal. The governors' choice surprised themselves, the academic community, and indeed the Canadian nation. It was to prove, however, one of the most popular decisions the board had ever made.

NOTES 1. Advancement i: 12. 2. William Peterson, 'Canada and the Empire', in Canadian Essays and Addresses (London, 1915), pp. 63, 67. The book is divided into two parts: the first contains eleven addresses on the Empire; the second, fourteen on various aspects of education. 3. McGill University Magazine I, no. 2 (April 1902): 175. 4. 'What Canada Can Do', University Magazine 6, no. 4 (1907): 397-411. 5. Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto, 1970), p. 43. 6. Cited in Berger, The Sense of Power, p. 46. George Parkin, born in New Brunswick in 1846, served as the first secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust from 1902 until his death in 1922. He described himself in 1908 as 'a wandering Evangelist of Empire'. McGill gave him an LL.D. in 1903. 7. 'Greater Canada: An Appeal', University Magazine 6, no. 2 (April 1907): 132-41. 8. For a detailed account of the experiences of McGill in both world wars, see R.C. Fetherstonhaugh, McGill University at War (Montreal, 1947). 9. R.C. Fetherstonhaugh, No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill), 1914—1919 (Montreal, 1928). 10. Among the many accounts of John McCrae, author of the poem 'In Flanders Fields', see two articles by Edgar Andrew Collard in the Montreal Gazette, 4 and 11 November 1978, 'A Voice for the Dead' and 'McCrae of Flanders Fields'. Also see Fetherstonhaugh as cited in the previous note. 11. Bernard K. Sandwell, The Molson Family (Montreal, 1933), p. 146. 12. The Percival Molson Stadium', McGill News I, no. I (December 1919): 34-36. 13. 'McGill Women's War Work', McGill News I, no. I (December 1919): 7-8 and 55. 14. Fetherstonhaugh, McGill at War, pp. 86ff. See also full-page articles in the Montreal Star: 'McGill Achievements in Research', 10 July 1920; 'War Record of Old McGill', 17 July 1920. 15. For an example of a McGill contribution to the nascent Canadian chemical industry, see R.V.V. Nicholls, 'One Hundred Years of J.T. Donald and Company: A Brief History', Chemistry in Canada 33, no. lo (November 1981): 16-21. 16. E.A. Corbett, Henry Marshall Tory, Beloved Canadian (Toronto, 1954), pp. 138-56.

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17. Ibid., pp. 149-50. Canada's initiative in armed forces education was quickly followed by Australia and New Zealand, later by Britain, and finally by the United States. 18. See the graph Student Enrolment. 19. See the letter of Henry Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation, to Peterson, 8 February 1918: 'The endowment will not have the name Carnegie attached... if I had the naming of it I would call it the Peterson Fund, for it is your scholarly leadership and far-seeing patriotism that has made McGill what it is and made it possible to do this.' MUA 641/1/46. 20. See H.E. MacDermot, The Rockefeller Benefactions', McGill News 13, no. I (June 1932): 21-26. The article lists Rockefeller benefactions to McGill from 1920 to 1932. 21. See Charles A. Sankey, Paprican: The First Fifty Years (Pointe Claire, Quebec, 1976), pp. 3ff.

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O

|?f|f||^ n 2° May 1919 General Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the f (H^llo Canadian Corps in France, was the guest of honour at a dinner P§fc|j|j|yl given by the London branch of the Canadian Club. The sig-

MBni|S*TOi nificance of the occasion was underlined by the fact that Field Marshal H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught presided, and that he was accompanied by the Prince of Wales and Prince Arthur of Connaught. Six days later Currie was again the guest of honour, this time at a luncheon given by the Lotd Mayor of London. The following month, after taking a prominent part in victory parades staged by the Allies in Paris and London, he travelled to the University of Cambridge where, in the company of Admirals Sturdee, King-Hall, and Wemyss, and of Generals Pershing, Home, and Wilson, he received an honorary degree. In Europe Arthur Currie was a man whom kings and commoners delighted to honour. LEADER U N D E R ATTACK Less than a month later Currie returned to Canada for the first time in five years. 'He came back to Halifax a world-famous general', read the description of his return, 'yet his home-coming compared rather with the burial of Sir John Moore than that of a welcome to a conqueror. The Caronia stole

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in during the night as if to conceal her entry.'1 On the docks there were no bands or cheering crowds, but simply a group of local officials. The reason for this strange contrast lay in the campaign waged by Sam Hughes, the former minister of militia, who had been dismissed by Prime Minister Borden as not sufficiently competent. Hughes had lobbied for the elevation of the Canadian Corps commanded by Currie to the status of an army composed of two corps, one of which was to be commanded by Sam's son Garnett. Currie successfully resisted what he saw as a needless interference with something working very well, but because of their previous relationships, the two Hughes construed this as black ingratitude. The father in particular became Currie's bitter enemy and accused him in the House of Commons of having squandered the lives of men fighting under his command, simply to gain for himself the glories of war. Currie was still overseas and as a serving officer could make no reply. The Canadian government of the time, which alone could have adequately defended Currie, or have launched an investigative commission to clear or condemn him, adopted an ambivalent attitude. It chose to ignore him, and then to offer him the sinecure of inspector general of the Militia Forces of Canada. 'Ottawa, neither by government nor Parliament, gave Sir Arthur Currie any official vote of thanks... the only case of the kind in connection with any of the high commanding officers of the war.'2 The politicians seem to have hoped that he and his deeds would soon be quietly forgotten. It is not one of the finer moments of Canadian history. There was, however, one place where even in the postwar years the idealism of an empire served and an honour upheld shone as brightly as ever. Whatever may have been the private doubts of individual members of the university, McGill as a community believed as firmly in 1920 as in 1914 in the cause of British righteousness and the ancient loyalties due to the crown. If others doubted the returning hero, McGill did not. Currie may not have been an academic, or even a university graduate, but he was a leader of men and in April 1920 the board of governors invited him to become principal. It was ironic that the chancellor at this time, who had of course to concur in the appointment, was the prime minister, Sir Robert Borden. It was not likely that he would balk at this opportunity to relieve his government of a major embarrassment He gave his assent, and Sir Arthur Currie became the eighth principal of McGill University 31 May 1920. As recognition of McGill's national status, Borden had been asked in 1918 to accept the chancellorship after Sir William Macdonald's death. He had agreed to serve, but for two years only, so that in the event he had actually retired before Currie arrived on campus. But with the governor general as Visitor, the prime minister as retiring chancellor, and the war

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hero as principal, the attachment of McGill University in the immediate postwar years to Canada, the crown, and the Empire could not be in doubt. The subsequent election of the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company as the new chancellor replaced the political member of the triumvirate with one who, in most people's eyes, and certainly in his own, was as truly representative of Canada as the prime minister himself. Edward Wentworth Beatty was to prove a dominant figure at McGill for the next twenty years. THE EIGHTH P R I N C I P A L In conventional academic terms, Currie was a strange choice as principal. He was born in Adelaide, Ontario, a small settlement halfway between London and Sarnia. His grandparents, pioneers from Ireland, were deeply religious and had shown their originality by choosing Methodism as the resolution of their contrasting Anglican and Roman Catholic inheritances. They also changed their name from Corrigan to Curry, probably as another expression of the desire to have done with the dissensions of their native land. Their elder son, William Garner Curry, inherited the farm created out of the wilderness and with his own first-born son he continued to increase its modest prosperity. His second son, Arthur William, born in 1875, was considered a delicate child, having frequent sick spells, and as a result experienced a sheltered childhood. When he was due to go to the collegiate or secondary school at Strathroy, six miles away, his entry was delayed for two years until he was older and stronger. He intended to train for medicine or law, but his father died when he was sixteen, and, deprived of parental support, he chose to train at the nearby model school to become a public school teacher. He could not, however, find employment as a teacher, and he returned to the collegiate school to gain the honours standing required to enter the university. The examinations were only a month away when, with every prospect of success in view, he suddenly succumbed to the lure of the West and boarded a colonist train for British Columbia. He was then nineteen years old. In Victoria Curry found that teaching was again the only opportunity open to him. He had to obtain a new teaching certificate, but soon he was serving in a one-room, one-teacher school at Sidney on the Saanich Peninsula. After one year he was appointed to the staff of the Boys' Central School in Victoria where he stayed four years. But then he was again 'sick' and spent several months in hospital. According to one friend, it was 'the recurrence of a stomach trouble to which he was predisposed'. This friend also recalled that the doctor concluded that 'the patient should leave for an

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open air occupation', and we are left with the possibility that the problem had a psychological rather than a physiological basis.3 On leaving hospital, Curry forsook teaching and entered business as an insurance agent. He married and for eight years he prospered. He was appointed provincial manager for one of the big insurance companies. In 1908 he added a real estate partnership to his other activities and soon was buying and selling properties not only for clients but also on his own account. For the first few years his affairs progressed happily. But by September 1913 Curry was in financial trouble. Paper fortunes had been made and lost by international speculators, and he was involved in the interplay of forces beyond his control. The situation was complicated by his involvement in the local militia. Soon after arriving in British Columbia, Curry had joined the volunteer military organization, initially, it would seem, for its social activities. Here he found both congenial company and an employment for his particular combination of personal abilities. In 1900 he was offered a commission; in 1906 he was promoted major. Finding himself the butt of typical ranker humour because of his name ('Major Curry is hot stuff?), he is reported to have said, 'We can soon put a stop to that', and thereafter spelt his name 'Currie'.4 By 1912 he was commanding his regiment with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Among his militia friends in British Columbia was Garnett Hughes, the son of Sam Hughes, the federal minister of militia and defence. Garnett furthered his friend's interests with his father; the volunteer soldier, after seventeen years of amateur but extremely conscientious military activity, had developed into a well-trained and well-respected officer; consequently, when war broke out in 1914, the minister offered him the tremendous opportunity of command of a brigade. But Currie knew that his private financial affairs were in no condition to permit him to leave civilian life and go off to the war. Garnett Hughes shared the problem with his father. The minister, anxious to secure Currie's services, suggested that the young would-be soldier should arrange matters with the help of 'a mutual friend', who was an active Conservative and very much in the counsels of the government. There were, it seems, two aspects to the problem—the aftermath of the land deals, and debts owing for Currie's personal expenditures, many having to do with his militia activities and involvements. The former problem was met, with the help of 'the mutual friend', by an arrangement with a certain William Coy, one of the land speculators with whom Currie had been involved. The terms of the agreement were very much to Currie's disadvantage, but he had little room to manoeuvre. The personal debts, however, were cleared by payment into his own bank account of a cheque for over $10,000, issued by the Department of Militia and Defence to cover debts incurred by the

Principal Sir Arthur Currie

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CHAPTER FIVE

militia regiment in Victoria. There is no suggestion that either 'the mutual friend' or anyone in Ottawa at that time knew that this had been done, but it enabled Currie to persuade himself that his affairs had been settled, at least temporarily, and that he was free to accept the appointment as brigadier. The course of Currie's outstanding career through four years of horrifying warfare has been told in full by his biographer and by military historians. The fact that for three of those years he stood in jeopardy of a charge of embezzlement was not revealed. During the war years it was a closely guarded secret, and even when he was under personal attack in the period after the war, this scandal was never allowed to emerge. In June 1917, when he was appointed to the command of the Canadian Corps in France, Currie finally borrowed funds from two fellow officers and repaid the missing sum into the regimental accounts. By June 1919 he had cleared his debt to his two friends, and when he came ashore in August, the whole incident was finally behind him.5 The charges levelled against him by Hughes in Parliament related wholly to his conduct during the war, and, on that score, McGill had no hesitation. In the eyes of the university, Currie was not only a heroic national figure, but he stood symbolic of all those who had made the great sacrifice, and had endured the mud and the misery and the hell of war because honour would allow them to do no other. The fact that Currie had been under attack for his battle conduct served only to increase the university's pride and admiration. The announcement of Currie's appointment as principal of McGill was to be made public, without any previous warning, at the May convocation. The academic authorities were not at all sure how the news would be received. The graduating class president, John O'Brien, received a note from the registrar, Dr. Nicholson, asking him to be prepared to lead a cheer when the new principal was named. 'As it happened, the news of the appointment, when announced, received a spontaneous outburst of applause and cheering. The concern of the administration had proved to be unwarranted.'6 The McGill community as a whole accepted the wartime hero with enthusiasm, and it was a sentiment which only became more respectful and more affectionate as the years passed. Currie commanded the confidence of the governors from the beginning and quickly won the warm esteem of the staff and students. Of all the McGill principals, the tall, heroic Currie, always a little larger than life, proved the most popular, on campus and in relationships beyond. Yet there were those who knew that McGill had gambled on a doubtful outcome. Currie had received, as we have seen, only a sketchy formal education, which had stopped well short of any university experience. His outstanding record as a battle commander on the western front was hardly

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evidence that he would perform well as a university principal. Obviously he would not be called upon to show expertise in any particular academic discipline, but he would have to make decisions regarding academic appointments and planning priorities in the faculties. Before he arrived on campus, Currie was already requesting that he be kept informed of all appointment proposals. In the same vein, he had within a few months of taking up residence firmly indicated that while in no way pretending to a learning he did not possess, he nevertheless intended to fulfil the responsibilities of his office. It is a measure of his outstanding gifts of personality and intelligence that he was able to assess in short order both his position and his ability to fill it. His foremost critic was Sir Andrew Macphail, but even he had to recognize the magnitude of Currie's achievement: 'In no long time he mastered every detail with a thoroughness that astonished even those who had spent a life-time within these walls. He entered into the inscrutable mind of the professor; and, most difficult of all, he discerned and dominated the mind of the student, who is equally alert for any sign of weakness, or of strength misapplied.'7 That is expressed with Macphail's characteristic poetic overstatement, but the testimony is to facts which need no exaggeration. Currie came to McGill accustomed to command and within a short while he had taken firmly into his hands the reins of his new assignment. Academically, he proved to be a sensible principal. He was not an educational creator and innovator like Dawson, nor did he possess the learning and diplomatic skills of Peterson, but he had a large measure of common sense, together with the ability to assess a situation and to decide how to deal with it. In his early years he faced difficult situations in the two older professional faculties: in medicine, he had to ensure that the university's interests were not overridden by the Royal Victoria Hospital, and he was able to make his views prevail in the face of determined and prestigious opposition; in law, he supported a policy unpopular with the majority of the professors but he failed to win their assent, so that the policy had to be abandoned.8 But in both cases he retained the good opinions of the academic staff. A professor who returned to McGill in 1924 after an absence of six years was moved to comment that 'strife had ceased', and that 'the faculties had complete confidence in and loyalty to' the principal.9 McGill gambled on Currie and won handsomely. THE 1920 FINANCIAL CAMPAIGN An early indication of the university's satisfaction was the success of a financial campaign launched very soon after Currie's arrival. Whereas Peterson had been something of a public relations liability, Currie was from the

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beginning a tremendous asset. The need to raise a considerable sum of money had been apparent since the moment the war ended. Student numbers were increasing sharply, from a prewar total of around 2,150 to approximately 3,000, and were showing signs of continued growth. Many disciplines were ready for new advances in teaching and research. The first objective was to raise funds so that facilities could accommodate the new numbers and the new ventures. The highly successful techniques first practised in the 1911 campaign were again adopted. Currie plunged into a series of high-profile public appearances, including Canadian Club and similar luncheon engagements, coupled with visits to Graduates' Society branches across Canada and in the United States. At the same time, E.W. Beatty, W.M. Birks, and John Ross were organizing captains and teams for the lightning strike scheduled for November. The military-style planning must have appealed to Currie, even if the terrain was unfamiliar. Within a week, the sum raised in cash and pledges amounted to $6,400,000. Relative to the worth of the Canadian dollar in 1920, this was a truly magnificent result; never in subsequent years was the university able to surpass it. A major item was a $1 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, designated for the general endowment of the Medical Faculty, given on condition that the university raise an equivalent sum to provide new facilities for the Departments of Physiology, Pathology, and Psychiatry, as had been proposed in the faculty's program of development Since the government of Quebec had contributed a generous million dollars for the university's endowment, and since the graduates' donations totalled yet another million, the Rockefeller condition could be met without difficulty. Students also took part in the campaign, and from parents and friends raised a very respectable $ 18,000. The rest of the money was described as coming from citizens of Montreal and friends of the university generally. The success of the campaign established Currie firmly in his new office, and gave the university the resources to launch upon a far-reaching program of reconstruction. A PROGRAM OF C O N S T R U C T I O N

Some of the reconstruction involved the provision of new physical facilities. It was decided that the undertakings for medicine would be honoured in part by the erection of a biological sciences building on the site of the 1872 Medical Building, destroyed by fire in 1907. The old structure had been replaced on a new site in 1911 by the Strathcona Medical Building. The undamaged northern part of the earlier building would be retained and new premises would be located on the southern portion of the site. These would house the Departments of Botany, Zoology, Physiology, Pharmacol-

Mlson Stadium with Field House and Pathological Institute

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ogy, and the new Department of Biochemistry. This provision would also ease the pressures on the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, which had been 'invaded' of recent years by a number of'lodgers', and could now expand the range of their own activities. The rest of the undertaking would be fulfilled by the erection of a new building for pathology on the upper part of University Street, across the road from the Royal Victoria Hospital. Other items in the building program included rehabilitation of space for the Departments of Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology. The stack area of the Redpath Library was again in urgent need of extension, and the longpromised gymnasium could be delayed no longer. Most important was the need for a new building to replace the Arts Building and its two wings, Molson Hall to the west and Dawson Hall to the east. These projects were to be undertaken as soon as possible and further projects would follow thereafter. But planning is one thing and accomplishment is another. The medical projects were fairly speedily realized because of the terms of the Rockefeller Foundation grant. The Biology Building was completed in 1922 and the Pathological Institute was opened two years later.10 The extension to the Redpath Library was also completed in 1922, which increased the bookstack area and provided additional reading-room accommodation. It had also been proposed that a capital sum of $300,000 should be set aside to provide income for the university's book fund, but the board decided that it preferred to increase the annual book allocation by the equivalent income amount. Either way the new funds were warmly welcomed, both by the librarians and by the academic departments using the library. For one reason and another, the replacement of the Arts Building was delayed until 1924 and there arose much hesitation over the plans. The original thought had been to demolish the existing structures and to erect a wholly new building, but the proposed front elevation roused considerable discussion, and it was decided to adopt a different approach: the architect was instructed to demolish everything except the three facades, and to build new areas behind the familiar frontage. This occasioned further delays. The new space was planned to include a convocation hall, which had been needed since the conversion of Molson Hall to teaching space in Peterson's time. Hugh Graham, the newspaper publisher from the Eastern Townships who had become Lord Atholstan, and a member of the McGill board, had contributed $100,000 to the 1920 campaign in order to provide this facility, and he asked that the new hall be named for Charles Moyse, in honour of the latter's forty-two years as professor of English at McGill. Molson Hall had been the first of the major benefactions since the original bequest of James McGill, and it was unfortunate that its replacement did

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not perpetuate the Molson name. However, a marble plaque high up on the western gable of the original facade still records in stately Latin the historic gift and its location. The rebuilding of the arts complex was finally accomplished in 1925—26. The long, broad, high-ceilinged corridor, stretching from one end of the building to trie other, is its most notable interior feature. A striking exterior feature is the heavy Greek portico, which did not at first commend itself to those who remembered Hopkins' more graceful wooden structure.11 But when the Roddick Gates were erected in 1925, the same Greek motif inspired the design and conferred unity upon the campus entrance, the long avenue of Dawson's elms, and the arts facade beyond James McGill's tomb.12 Together, for many graduates, they formed the most memorable manifestation of McGill, a visual summary of nostalgic student recollections. But some of the projects which had been regarded as most urgent found themselves even more delayed. The provision of a university gymnasium was a project particularly popular with members of the Graduates' Society. During the 1920 campaign they made gifts especially designated for this project. The federal government had indicated during the war years that it would contribute $100,000 to a McGill gymnasium if it also served as an armoury for the Canadian Officers' Training Corps. After the war the matter was repeatedly raised by the principal with various ministers and government officials; by the time the government finally decided against making the grant, the additional university funding designated for the gymnasium had leaked away to other projects. This did not end the proposal, but it did delay it for several years, and further postponements were occasioned by changes of plan with regard to site. The original proposal had been to house the gymnasium near the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium, but a small exchange of land holdings between the university and the city would be necessary to provide a sufficient area. The Department of Physical Education, however, which was to be one of the main users, wanted the new facility to be located on the lower campus, facing Sherbrooke Street In 1932 the acquisition of the Pine Avenue site was completed and the decision was taken to locate the gymnasium there in accordance with the original plans. By this time the economic depression had worsened considerably and the project had once again to be put aside. In the meantime accommodation for changing rooms was provided at Macdonald Park, and as early as 1922 a Field House had been erected at the west end of Molson Stadium. Since it later provided the substructure for a large football Scoreboard, this unpretentious building became one of the best-known features of the stadium. For many years it also included eating and even dormitory facilities for players and thus acquired an especial place

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in the memories of those who made it on the teams in the heyday of college football. But when Currie died in 1933, the university gymnasium was still an unrealized dream. Another project long considered urgent was a residence for men. One early thought had been to combine the gymnasium and the men's residence in one complex. The proposal for a separate men's residence had attracted the interest of James Douglas,13 a member of the board of governors. In 1915 he gave $115,000 for this project but wartime conditions prevented any start being made immediately, and by the time he died in 1919 the plans were still embryonic. The project remained inactive throughout the Currie period because the Douglas benefaction was not sufficient by itself, and funds which might have been made available were diverted to other projects which appeared to have greater urgency. The gymnasium had been a recognized need at least since the days of R. Tait McKenzie, and the provision of a men's residence had been urged as early as 1882 when the Faculty of Applied Science drew attention to the unhappy boarding experiences of out-of-town students; one has to conclude that the student still did not rank very high on the scale of priorities. The women students were, thanks to Lord Strathcona, in some ways more fortunate, in others perhaps less so. The rule had been established, and was now firmly applied, that out-of-town women undergraduates must stay in residence at the Royal Victoria College, which was very satisfactory for those able to gain entrance, but distressing for those who having received university acceptance were then denied registration because the college was fully occupied. Careful management of the Strathcona endowment had produced a healthy surplus and, in 1930, $390,000 was used to erect a west wing, comparable in style to the main building. But two annexes operating since 1925 were closed and all 114 residents were housed within the college. There is little doubt that this policy restricted the number of out-of-town women unfairly, and was to continue to do so until the rule was rescinded by Senate in 1963.14 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTS

The end of World War I brought changes to the McGill community, many of which were small in themselves, but indicative of larger developments in the society of which the university was part. In 1920, for example, soon after Currie's arrival on campus, an ordering of professorial ranks took place, which had been in process for some time but was now made explicit. Temporary or part-time academic appointments were designated by the term lecturer and were made on an annual basis. Junior, more permanent appointments, were designated assistant professor and were normally made

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for a three-year period, while the senior appointments were designated associate professor and professor. Both these last appointments were to be without term, but at the will of the board of governors. The associate professor was still thought of as equal in rank with the professor, but without the headship of a department. The time when the associate rank would be recognized as an intermediate achievement in a professorial cursus honorum had not yet arrived, nor had the concept of tenure. A proposal to define the vacation period (the term applied to the summer months only) was rejected, and the comment was simply made that the governors expected the academic staff to be available before and after the session, as they might be needed. A development of considerable importance for the academic staff took place with regard to pensions. The Carnegie Foundation continued to supply free pensions at age seventy, and the university made ex gratia payments to those who retired earlier. But the foundation was finding its program increasingly difficult to maintain and in 1929 terminated this scheme to establish the Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association. This association operated a pension scheme on a contributory basis and allowed professors to purchase into the fund by initial lump payments, followed by annual contributions of 5 per cent of salary. McGill was one of the few universities which came to the rescue of its older staff members by itself paying $225,000 into the association funds on their behalf. In addition, McGill entered in January 1930 into a contributory contract with the Sun Life Assurance Company, and professors were at liberty either to stay with the Teachers' Annuity Association or to participate in the Sun Life contract, either as an alternative or as supplementary to the older scheme. The pensidhs paid were in the order of $1,500 a year, or approximately onethird of salary at retirement. They were not, therefore, overly generous, but since these developments took place in the aftermath of the stock exchange crash of 1929, they indicate the growing sense of concern felt by the university for its senior staff. But it was to be another twelve years before similar benefits became generally available to the non-academic staff.15 However, no protection was afforded to anyone, in either category, when it was decided in 1932 to cut all salaries on a graduated scale of 3 to 10 per cent for married men, and of 4 to 10 per cent for unmarried persons. At the commencement of World War I the student body was still a compact and homogeneous group of young men and women, mostly from the middle economic strata of society, and of British, or at least anglophone, Protestant stock. The influx of veterans at the end of the war had, as one would expect, a disturbing and somewhat dislocating effect, but the wave passed through the university in two or three years, and it seemed at first that the old prewar patterns would be quickly re-established. But Montreal

Montreal Population by Ethnic Origin

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12J

was changing. British immigration was continuing at a steady pace, and was to do so until the beginning of World War II, but it was not keeping pace with the steep climb in the numbers of the francophone population. Whereas in 1911 the British-origin element had been roughly one-third as large as the francophone, thirty years later it was only one-sixth. But this change did not affect McGill registration as much as did sharply increased European immigration. The anglophone, non-British, Montreal population, which in 1911 had been one-third as large as the British, was by 1941 two-thirds as large.16 Moreover, in those thirty years the immigrants were consolidating their position to such good purpose that, by the midtwenties, their sons and daughters were applying in considerable numbers to enter the university. Total registration reached the 3,000 mark in 1923, fell back a little with the passing of the veterans, but then climbed again to persistently exceed that figure. Nearly 30 per cent of the students registered at McGill in these years came from provinces other than Quebec, but over 60 per cent came from Montreal and its environs, and many of these local students represented the varied ethnic and linguistic elements now intermingling in the city. The results could not be anything other than profound and permanent. Because McGill had its earlier roots in eighteenth-century notions of liberality, it remained all through the nineteenth century firmly committed to a policy of openness. Staff and students who came from backgrounds different from that of the British, Protestant tradition in which McGill and the anglophone community was rooted continued to be freely admitted to the life and work of the university. There were, without doubt, individual cases of antagonism and prejudice, but what may be described as ethnic students applied to the university in increasing numbers because they found that McGill as a Protestant institution was broadly open to them. This use of the term 'Protestant' needs some explanation. It has to be interpreted in the historical context of nineteenth-century Lower Canada. Members of the board of governors were originally appointed by the crown, and at first by deliberate design included some Catholics. But they were always only a token minority, the last resigning in 1846. Since 1850 or so the anglophone community had sought to have the word 'Protestant' inserted into the McGill Charter; but this the crown refused to do. It was only when the crown in 1864 surrendered its right to name members of the board, and the governors were free to nominate their own members, that they were able to enact a statute, ordaining that members were to be 'Laymen of some Protestant denomination, selected with a view to the representation at the Board... of the several Protestant denominations in Lower Canada'.17 This sounds very segregationist, but it has to be remembered that in the nineteenth century the term 'Protestant' had in Lower Canada

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not merely a religious but also a cultural and indeed a political connotation. It stood vis-a-vis 'Roman Catholic', the Catholicism of the time being that of Bishop Bourget and the Ultramontanists. 'Catholic' stood for ecclesiastical control of education. It also stood for a political majority in the legislature and a persistent attempt to control the cultural development of French Canada.18 The long struggle of the Institut Canadien with the power of the church is testimony that when 'Protestants' feared 'Rome', and believed that only 'Protestantism' would be able to defend liberality in politics and education, they were not tilting at windmills or inventing bogies that did not exist. We may find it strange in these years following the Second Vatican Council that nineteenth and early twentieth century spokesmen should claim, as they frequently did, that McGill was both Protestant and non-sectarian, but it made good sense in the context of the day. It was the liberality of McGilTs Protestantism which permitted the initial diversification of the student body, and even more rapidly that of the teaching staff. The same phenomena could be seen in Montreal's 'Protestant' school system. Many of the second-generation ethnic immigrants to Montreal were from Jewish families, who had fled from persecution, and in the early postwar years the number of students registering their religious affiliation as Jewish rose to 25 per cent in the Faculty of Arts, 15 per cent in medicine, and 40 per cent in law. The university, liberal as its tradition might be, was not ready for such a sudden change in its constituency, and measures were taken towards the end of the 19206 and through the 19305 to control the influx of Jewish students. The means employed in medicine and law was the institution of a rough-and-ready quota system, and in the Faculty of Arts it was a regulation requiring Jewish students to satisfy higher matriculation standards. By 1939 Jewish representation had dropped to I2.I per cent in arts, 12.8 per cent in medicine, and 15 per cent in law. But on representations by the Jewish community during the war period, at a time when university registration allowed deferment under the National Selective Service Act, these restrictive practices were ended, and were not reinstituted. The ethnic mix of both student body and academic staff has since that time been allowed to take its own course.19 Students were no more immune from the effects of economic depression than any other segment of society, but neither the lesser one of the early twenties, nor the greater one of the thirties, checked the steady growth of registrations. Students learned to live frugally, and worked hard to acquire the qualifications they hoped would prepare them for employment when more affluent times should return; it was better to be at university than to be unemployed at home, and even though fees were raised sharply, it was better for them and for their parents to make the sacrifices necessary to complete an education. In 1920 fees were raised in arts from $58 to $100,

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and in the other faculties proportionately. Twelve years later, when the staff salary cuts were instituted, fees were again increased, but, even so, fees in 1932 in arts for 'foreigners', which in practical terms meant students from the United States, were still only $200 per session. Perhaps the worst threat that depressed economic conditions aimed at the student body was a proposal by the board of governors in December 1928 to sell the Student Union because it was proving costly to maintain. Fortunately the pleas of the students, and the support of graduates who remembered the old, crowded Union with nostalgia, proved a combination strong enough to convince the board that the provision of modest social amenities for the university's students was a legitimate charge upon McGill's treasury, hard-pressed though it might be. For almost another forty years, despite the dramatic increase in student numbers after World War II, the old Student Union, hopelessly inadequate and overcrowded, continued to serve successive generations, and to win their tolerant affection. PORTENTS OF AN AGE TO COME Outwardly, the university probably appeared in the late twenties and early thirties to have changed very little. The board of governors was still composed of leading merchants and bankers and industrialists, all of them anglophone and professing some respectable form of Protestantism; to be elected to their number was the award of a blue ribbon that few could afford to decline, if it were once offered to them. Students poured in their hundreds into the Molson Stadium to cheer their team in the football games against Queen's and Toronto, they celebrated Theatre Night, and they had the occasional rampage around the town. The Students' Council still organized the fall formal and the graduation ball, and the elite minorities grouped themselves in Greek-letter fraternities and sororities. But nevertheless changes were taking place. Leacock was retired, loudly protesting in 1936, and Macphail's voice ceased to be heard about the same time. As they and their generation followed Currie into history, McGill's heroic and imperialist age passed away with them. The future lay with a small group of students and younger faculty who were dismissed at the time as having a nuisance significance only, but who were in fact the precursors of a new age. It was one in which English-speaking Canada ceased to think and behave as a colony of the British Empire, and began to recognize itself as something new—new, but not bizarre, because its origins were in a rich past, a multitude of rich pasts, of which the promise was a new synthesis, nurtured by the soils of the northern land in which it had been transplanted. Canada was that great stretch of north-

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ern North America that reached from Cape Breton to Vancouver Island, and the recognition was emerging that this physical geography had created the Canadian identity. What the Group of Seven were revealing in their painting, a scattering of poets and writers in various parts of the country were beginning to fashion in words, long before politicians and editorialists began to formulate their nationalist policies. It was a group of McGill students who were the first to cast off, consciously and publicly, the status of literary colonialism, and seek to express themselves in a truly Canadian fashion. The venture began, modestly enough, with a literary supplement to the McGill Daily in 1924-25, and when the brew proved somewhat too heady for sober student publishers, it gave birth to the McGill Fortnightly Review. This magazine ran for less than two years, 1925-27, but its consequences were wide and far-reaching. The leading spirits were Arthur Smith and Frank Scott, both from the British establishment, and many of their collaborators were also from traditional anglophone backgrounds—Allan Latham, son of a McGill professor; John ('BufFy') Glassco, son of the McGill bursar; Graeme Taylor and Douglas Adams, both sons of the Presbyterian manse—but others, like Leon Edel, A.M. Klein, Lew Schwartz, Leo Kennedy (who was never formally registered at the university, but was drawn into the Fortnightly group), were representative of the new breed of McGill students, children of the ethnic immigrants, who had adopted English as their Canadian language and had given it to their children as their mother tongue. One of them, Leon Edel, has recorded his memories of those exciting days: [Smith and Scott] had in them a quality of discreet rebellion: they could not tolerate sham; they were verbal 'activists'... they didn't have to blow up buildings. They simply wrote shattering verse. They deflated. They debunked. They expressed themselves in a manner proper to themselves and their time— The Fortnightly was an instant success, even on the news-stands, and many students who hadn't subscribed bought copies— We were called bohemians, rebels, Communists, smart-alecks. But we were read.20 But there was more to the 'Montreal Group' than student irreverence. There was an emergent sense of Canada as a land, and of English-speaking Canadians as a people, and of anglophone Canada as a society. In the poetry derived and developed from the McGill initiative, two characteristics were constantly in view—a sense of the Canadian physical reality, and a vision of Canadian social structures, as they were and as they ought to be. To his first student perception of this double helix of Canadianism, Scott remained faithful over a long and productive life, and whether he has been

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more influential on the literary or the political scene must be judged elsewhere. In the late twenties and thirties it was Scott the writer of political articles that attracted the most attention, as we shall see in later pages, but in retrospect it may be Scott the poet who looms larger. The fact that there was a third aspect of this major Canadian personality, Scott the constitutional lawyer, will also claim our attention at a later stage; but the McGill community between the wars was left in no doubt that as a student and as a young law professor Frank Scott was a sign of the times and a portent of the future.21 IMPERIAL OCCASIONS As long as Currie flourished as principal, the passing of the imperial age and the birth of the new Canadianism were not easily discerned. There were yet to come several major events which appeared to indicate that the old loyalties and mores continued undiminished. In the principalship of McGill, Currie possessed a platform on which he could stand as a person of national stature. At Canadian Club luncheons, at Canadian Legion rallies, at university convocations across the country, and especially at Armistice Day celebrations, McGill's hero-principal could speak with increasing authority as a fother-figure for all of anglophone Canada. And what he received from McGill, he gave back twofold: the university's national dimension had never been more visible. But this period of steady cultivation of the university's social resources was suddenly disturbed by a recrudescence in 1927 of the old charges that during the war Currie had squandered Canadian lives in a ruthless pursuit of military glory. The accusations had been made by Sam Hughes at a time when Currie had no right of reply, and then Hughes had died late in 1919, leaving Currie to fight only rumours and a ghost. Now the charge at last appeared in print and so was open to legal challenge. The irony of the situation was that the article appeared in a newspaper with a circulation of ony a few hundred copies in a small Ontario town. But small-town Ontario was Currie country. The Port Hope Guide circulated among the kind of people with whom he had grown up. After months of indecision, Currie decided to enter suit for libel, claiming $50,000 damages, not in hopes of winning such an amount, but as appropriate to the seriousness of the charges made. The trial was a lengthy affair and became itself a national event The examination for discovery lasted for nine days between lo March and 14 April 1928, and the main trial from 16 April to I May. The defence sought to destroy Currie's military and personal reputation, but his old wartime comrades rallied to his side. The weight of the evidence, the character of

Currie at the stone-laying, Montreal Neurological Institute, October 1933

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the testimony, and above all his own unequivocal affirmations, carried the day. The jury found for Currie, with costs and (at his request) a token award of $500 damages.22 On 2 May he returned from the trial to be met in Montreal by an expression of extraordinary enthusiasm. He was greeted at the station by vociferous crowds, composed of well-wishers and students, and his car could only make its way slowly through city streets thronged with cheering citizens. When he reached the United Services Club, the exuberant crowds blocked all traffic on Sherbrooke Street and demanded a speech. Currie responded by testifying to his confidence in the sense of justice inherent in the Canadian people. But a few days later, when newspaper reporters called for comments on the news that his opponents were going to appeal the verdict, he collapsed and was found unconscious at the telephone. Even though the legal appeal was dismissed in October after relatively little doubt as to its outcome, and with no further direct demand upon Currie, he was left emotionally exhausted. His popularity at McGill was now enhanced by that sympathy reserved for those who have suffered unjustly at the hands of cruel men. Currie had to take a year's leave to recover. When he returned the university was battling the effects of a world-wide economic depression of a severity never before known. Consequently, the later Currie years could never recapture the vitality of those prior to 1928. There were, of course, flashes of the old glory. In 1930 General Smuts of South Africa received an honorary degree and spoke in more than the customary honorific language: 'You are a link between one Canada and another—Canada in the field with Canada in thought— At the head of affairs here in the leading of this great university you have one, the old Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Army, who covered Canada with glory and who will remain one of your great title deeds to fame.'23 There was also the proud moment when General Sir Arthur Currie, Principal of McGill University, was chosen to head Canada's Mission of State, to represent the dominion at the opening of the vice-regal and parliamentary buildings in New Delhi, India, a journey which took him away from McGill from December 1930 to May of the following year. When he returned, he found it increasingly hard to fulfil his former role. But he had one last imperial occasion to offer, to McGill and to the Canadian people. He fell ill in early November 1933 and, after a severe battle, seemed to be making slow but steady progress. But pneumonia set in and after a renewed struggle he died on the last day of the month. Immediately a great wave of sympathy made itself felt in Montreal, emanating from all over Canada and the world: 'It is not possible', reported the McGill News, 'to list these messages, or even the names of those who sent them, but some indication of their far-flung origin may

Cunie's funeral passing through the Roddick Gates, December 1933

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perhaps be given.' The roll begins with the King in London and continues to include, among many others, the governor general, the prime minister, the premiers of all the provinces, the British government, the government of France, the viceroy of India, and of course the burgomaster of Mons. After a civil and academic service in Christ Church Cathedral the casket was brought to the Arts Building, and there the principal lay in state until his military comrades received him into their keeping, for conveyance to his resting place on Mount Royal. For the first time in the history of the university, the services of 'radiotelephony' were employed to enable graduates throughout Canada and the United States to share in the impressive ceremonies taking place on the McGill campus. The commentary was broadcast by the president of the Graduates' Society, who said in part: McGill graduates, and many others, will be able to picture the scene that now lies in front of us. We are in the Arts Building of the University, facing out on the terrace that constitutes the heart of McGill, and looking straight down the long avenue of elms that leads to the Roddick gates and Sherbrooke Street. Drawn up at many points throughout the grounds are squadrons of cavalry, infantry units, and the bands of the 2nd Montreal Regiment, Canadian Artillery, and the Canadian Grenadier Guards, all awaiting in silence the moment when, at the slow march, they will move off in escort to Sir Arthur for the last time. And as they move off, the guns will fire; and far away in the heart of the Empire, in Westminster Abbey, there will be a service in memoriam. Perhaps of those who are listening-in, there will be some who will ask why the sorrow that is felt in Montreal today is universal throughout Canada, and why it extends beyond the seas to England, and even to remote corners of the earth. Who is this man, they may say, whose loss is marked by the sorrow of a nation? And the answer might be: Arthur William Currie, a Christian gentleman and faithful servant of the King; Commander of the Canadian Corps in the Great War; and for the last thirteen years Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University; Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath; a man whom the King has delighted to honour; and who has been honoured also by many foreign governments; an honorary graduate of seventeen of the world's great universities; a builder of Empire; a steward found worthy of implicit trust; and a friend, whose passing leaves a great abyss of grief and sorrow.24

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Andrew Macphail's words fittingly sum up the university's mood that wet November day: 'In life he was a public hero; in death an approved martyr; he was buried with full military and academic pomp. In life and death he provided a spectacle with complete dramatic and emotional appeal.'25 Currie's monument stands in Mount Royal Cemetery, known and visited by few. His great achievements as war commander have faded with the years to become the concern only of historians. The Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium on the other hand is the home of the university's thriving athletic activities and the place of healthy resort for thousands of students. Few of them, it is true, have much idea of the principal for whom their gymnasium is named. But it is the gymnasium rather than the monument which testifies more appropriately to his most distinctive qualities: the ability to comprehend the essentials of a complex organization, to discern its proper goals, and to direct firmly its further progress towards them, and at the same time to convey a sense of concern for the individuals who must live and work and express themselves within its structures. It was these qualities which made Arthur Currie an outstanding general on the battlefield and a very worthy successor as principal of McGill to those who had preceded him.

NOTES 1. Hugh M. Urquhart, Arthur Currie: The Biography of a Great Canadian (Toronto, 1950), p. 279. 2. Port Hope Guide, editorial, 13 June 1927. This was the article which gave rise to the libel suit discussed later in the chapter. 3. Urquhart, Arthur Currie, p. 15. 4. Ibid., p. 14, n.2. He did not wholly escape. When as principal he suppressed the radical paper The Black Sheep, students proposed to republish the journal under the title The Curried Lamb. 5. R.C. Brown and Desmond Morton, The Embarrassing Apotheosis of a "Great Canadian"; Sir Arthur Currie's Personal Crisis in 1917', Canadian Historical Review 70, no. I (1979): 41-63. 6. Edgar Andrew Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew: An Anthology of Memories, 1920-1960 (Don Mills, Ontario, 1975), p. 224. The decision to make the announcement at the convocation on 12 May seems to have been a sudden one. 7. Andrew Macphail, cited in McGill News 15, no. I (December 1933): II. 8. The medical instance related to the hospital's attempt to appoint a chief surgeon, who would also be professor of surgery in the faculty, without securing the university's concurrence: the law instance had regard to the proposal to discontinue the teaching of common law courses. See chapter 6 for further references to these two incidents. 9. Urquhart, Arthur Currie, p. 315. 10. In 1965 the Biology Building was remodelled and became the F. Cyril James Administration Building. The Pathological Institute and the Redpath Library extension were both the work of Percy Nobbs and are reck-

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11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

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oned among his major architectural achievements. See Susan Wagg, Percy Erskine Nobbs: Architect, Artist, Craftsman (Kingston and Montreal, 1982). See Advancement i: 200 and n.33. J.W. Hopkins was the architect who in 1860 supplied the portico omitted from the 1843 building. Dawson's elms succumbed to disease in the 1970$ and had to be replaced with lindens and chestnuts. James Douglas served as governor of McGill 1911-19. For his grandson, Principal Lewis Douglas, see chapter 7. This rule never seems to have been enacted by Corporation or Senate, but was adopted administratively by agreement in 1927 between Ethel Hurlbatt, as warden, and Ira Mackay, as dean of arts, with Principal Currie's knowledge and concurrence. The rule was relaxed in the war years, but was reimposed with full rigour in 1948 and remained in force until Helen Reynolds, the warden then in office, proposed its abolition in 1963. See Muriel Roscoe, The Royal Victoria College, 1899-1962', a report to the principal (1964), appendix 3, pp. 3-5, MUA 183, box f. A group life insurance policy for senior non-academic staff had been established in 1926 with the Sun Life Company at a monthly cost of $1.11 per thousand, shared by staff members and the university. A voluntary pension scheme for higher-paid non-academic staff was introduced in 1929; secretaries and technicians, etc., became eligible in 1942, and then only after three years of service and if earning more than $900 a year. See Ian McKinnon, 'Pension Plan: Historical Development', 62.1.5.5. See graph Student Enrolment. Also, S.B. Frost and Sheila Rosenberg, The McGill Student Body', McGill Journal of Education 15, no. I (Winter 1980): 39-53McGill University Statutes, 1864, c. I, par. 2. In 1901 Andrew Carnegie's offer to fund public libraries in Quebec as in other parts of North America was declined because works listed in the Roman Catholic index of prohibited books might be made available to the public. For C.H. Gould's letter to Carnegie in 1905 asking that McGill might receive the grant and administer the libraries, see MUA 654/14. The change in the constituent elements in the student body first attracted attention during World War I. Jewish enrolment increased from the 1913 figure of 112, or 6.8 per cent of the registrations, to the 1917 figure of 233, or 22 per cent. The smaller numbers of Protestant students, owing to enlistment in the armed services, made the Jewish proportion appear larger. The mark differential employed in the 1930s was severe: at junior matriculation, the normal aggregate required was 600, but of Jews, 750. The Medical Faculty aimed at a 10 per cent quota, but tended to exceed it. None of these administrative practices appears to have had formal faculty or Senate sanction. See MUA 641/272, file 'Jewish Matriculation'. McGill was not alone in this situation. Many Jewish applicants were from the United States, and for the reactions of Columbia and Harvard to similar pressures, see Harold Wechsler, The Qualified Student (New York, 1977), pp. 131-85. Leon Edel, 'When McGill Modernized Canadian Literature', in The McGill You Knew, ed. Collard, pp. 114, 116. For a summary of Scott's achievements see Sandra Djwa and R. St. J. Macdonald, eds., On F.R. Scott: Essays on His Contributions to Law, Literature, and Politics (Kingston and Montreal, 1983).

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22. For the details of the trial, see 'Last Battle of Mons—in a Canadian Court', Canadian Lawyer 5, no. I (1981). The article is quoted from the memoirs of C.H.F. Carson, the junior assisting Currie's counsel, W.N. Tilley. 23. Urquhart, Arthur Currie, p. 326. 24. 'Sir Arthur W. Currie', McGill News 15, no. I (December 1933): 9-10. The Graduate Society president in 1933 was Philip Dansken Ross, B.A.Sc. 1878, a prominent Ottawa journalist. 25. Andrew Macphail, 'Sir Arthur Currie', Queen's Quarterly 41 (Spring 1934): 1—19. Subtitled 'The Value of a Degree', the article criticized severely the university's development under Currie. But it was at fault in many of its facts, and perversely anachronistic in its opinions. (Macphail had also deplored Peterson's principalship; see the letter quoted in chapter 2, n.4o.) Dorothy McMurray, then the young secretary to the principal, prepared a memorandum which seems not to have been circulated, but which effectively corrected many of MacphaiPs assertions. See 'The Changes at McGill during Sir Arthur Currie's Principalship, August 1920-November 1933', 62.4.8. Mrs. McMurray came in 1929 to assist 'for a few days' in the principal's office and remained for more than thirty years. See Dorothy McMurray, Four Principals of McGill: A Memoir, 1929-1963 (Montreal, 1974).

CHAPTER

VI DEVELOPMENTS BETWEEN THE WARS

here were considerable developments in the Currie period which were not part of the 1920 planning, but which were of great importance for the future growth of the university. In their variety they illustrated the complexity of the university; in their potential they anticipated the immense developments of the period which would follow a second world conflict.

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THE PULP AND PAPER RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The Forest Products Laboratories, made up of departments for research into timber testing, wood preservation and distillation, and into the pulp processes used in paper-making, were located on the McGill campus but were operated by the federal government. By 1925, however, having become dissatisfied with the interest taken by the government in its area of concern, the Pulp and Paper Association offered to take over the direction of the work, and support it financially for five years, on condition that the government maintain its current level of subsidy. About the same time the university received a bequest of $200,000 from Mrs. E.B. Eddy, which was used to establish the Department of Industrial and Cellulose Chemistry. Professor Harold Hibbert, then at Yale, was appointed to direct the new venture; the university and the Pulp and Paper Association undertook to be jointly responsible for his salary.

The Pulp and Paper Research Institute, 1927

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The next step was to propose the erection of a building to house in one location the university's Cellulose Chemistry Department, the Pulp and Paper Association's research activities, and the government's Pulp and Paper Division of its Forest Products Laboratories.l The university would supply the site, the industry would erect and equip the building, the government would share equally with the other two participants in the operating costs. When this proposal was accepted, the Pulp and Paper Research Institute effectively came into being, though formal incorporation was not to follow until 1950. The building was erected in 1927 on a University Street site, the architect being Percy Nobbs. From the outset, the new venture proved highly productive. Hibbert served from 1926 to 1943, and his department quickly gained a reputation for its outstanding contribution to wood chemistry. We cite one example out of many: 'The idea of an essentially specific aromatic structure of the bulk of the lignin led to Hibbert's belief that not merely trace quantities of vanillin could be made by alkaline oxidation of lignin (for which there are literature references dating back to 1904), but that it should be possible to make substantial quantities of vanillin, and that, as a result, vanillin could become a chemical of commerce and not just a flavouring agent, in limited supply, from the vanilla bean— Here is the rare but specific example of basic postgraduate work at the Institute and a dream of one professor maturing eventually to a significant new Canadian industry and, indeed, an international industry.'2 It was this liaison of basic research with practical application which made the institute effective, so that over the years, despite economic depression and war, industry support grew steadily.3 Nor did the university have cause to regret its own involvement in the venture. Care was taken to ensure that the Department of Chemistry and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research should not lose control of the students working in the institute programs. 'McGill University has, over the intervening years, always jealously guarded the facts that the graduate student program is a university program; that degrees have the full imprimatur of McGill standards and that these standards have always been high.'4 Over the next fifty years the institute was to nurture some 330 Ph.D. graduates, and the succession of outstanding scientists brought to the campus by the institute, including men like Hibbert himself, Clifford Purves, and Stanley Mason, strongly enhanced the research reputation of McGill. THE UNIVERSITY'S LIBRARIES

Unplanned developments also took place in the libraries, some greatly to McGilTs advantage, and one which can only be reckoned an unfortunate

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loss. Casey Albert Wood was a graduate of McGill by adoption. He graduated M.D. from Bishop's University in 1877, and when its Medical Faculty amalgamated with McGill in 1905, he, like the other male medical graduates of Bishop's, received the McGill degree ad eundem. Few graduates have so richly contributed to the well-being of their alma mater. Wood pursued a distinguished career in ophthalmology, editing the American Journal of Ophthalmology, 1908—14, and also the immense eighteen-volume work The American Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Ophthalmology, 1913-21. He wrote a number of scientific articles of considerable merit himself and collected a large number of rare editions of works on diseases of the eye. In 1886 he left Montreal and from 1898 to 1913 he held the chair of clinical ophthalmology in the University of Illinois. After serving with the U.S. Medical Corps during World War I, he constituted his legal residence in California.5 Although he never returned to Montreal, except on infrequent visits, he retained a strong interest in McGill. His first benefaction to McGill was made in 1911 when he presented a valuable ophthalmologic collection to the Medical Library, and in 1917 he gave the remainder of his specialized library on the eye and its diseases, thus greatly enriching the McGill holdings in the specialty, and in the history of medical science generally. Wood then gave full rein to a long-time interest, the scientific study of birds, and in 1920 he founded at McGill in his wife's name the Emma Shearer Wood Library of Ornithology. Until his death in 1942 he continued to contribute to the Wood Library (at his wife's request, the name was shortened), and because he was an indefatigable traveller, the collection quickly became enriched with rare and exotic items, as well as those of more strictly scientific interest He also persuaded a business friend in California, who had had no previous connection with McGill, to establish and endow the complementary Blacker Library of Zoology. Robert Roe Blacker continued his support very generously until his death in l93l.6The two collections have been administered together in the Blacker-Wood Library of Zoology and Ornithology and have constituted one of the great strengths of the McGill library system.7 In 1877 Wood had served as clinical clerk to William Osier, and from that time the two men remained friends, sharing their bibliophilic interests, particularly those relating to the history of medicine. Osier was a book collector all his life and, at the time of his death in 1919, his library contained many treasures. He left the major part of the collection to McGill, and the university commissioned Percy Nobbs to design an elegant room in the Strathcona Medical Building which would do justice both to the richness of the benefaction and to the reputation of the donor. Since the library had to be catalogued before it left Oxford, where Sir William had continued as Regius Professor until his death, it was not until 1929 that the

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catalogue-volume Bibliotheca Oslmana could be published and the library opened in Montreal. The collection was not left only as a memorial to a richly cultured mind, but was actively maintained as the university's library of the history of medicine, and has continued to grow in value and usefulness.8 Another special collection acquired in this general period was the Gordon Home Blackader Library of Art and Architecture. Alexander D. Blackader was professor of pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine and his son Gordon had graduated B.Arch. in 1906. Gordon volunteered for overseas service in World War I and died of wounds in August 1916. The family established in his memory a fund for (as the deed of gift specified) the purchase of architectural books 'for the use of architects, advanced students, and other suitable persons', but one-tenth of the annual income was to be 'employed in the purchase of practical books (working manuals), for the use of students'. The initial bequest of $5,000 was increased to $13,650, and this library provided the nucleus for a major resource, accessible not only to McGill students and professors, but also to the architectural profession in Montreal. The story which had the less happy ending is that of the Gest Library of Chinese Studies. Guion Gest, a businessman, had gathered a large and immensely valuable library of Chinese manuscripts, books, and illustrated materials. In 1925 he proposed to sell this library to McGill for the modest sum of $15,000, but added a proviso that allowed him until I May 1934 to repay the purchase price and repossess the library. The university agreed, and housed some 8,000 items in three rooms in the Redpath Library. But Gest was still collecting and within a very short time the number of volumes had risen to 130,000. A curator, Dr. Nancy Swann, was engaged and she soon required and was provided with an assistant. At the same time, McGill established a Department of Chinese Studies and Dr. Kiang KangLu was appointed professor in that discipline. But the world-wide economic depression materially altered the state of Mr. Gest's personal finances. It also depressed very seriously the university's endowment income. In 1934 Dr. Kiang's appointment had to be discontinued and the Department of Chinese Studies closed. Nor could Dr. Swann and her assistant be continued on the university's payroll. Gest then invoked the clause in the initial agreement which allowed him to buy back the collection for the original price. His intention was to find a purchaser who would pay him a sum nearer to the library's true worth. The Carnegie Corporation in New York and the Universities' China Committee in London were both approached in an attempt to raise sufficient funds to permit the collection to stay at McGill, but neither institution was able to respond. Since Gest in those difficult times could not find any purchaser, he asked that the option

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period be extended for two further years, and the university, now under no legal obligation, generously consented. On the last day of his extended option, 30 April 1936, Gest informed McGill that he would be able to produce the original purchase price and repossess the library. Abraham Flexner on behalf of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies had agreed to a purchase price of $130,000, and so McGUPs valiant attempt to establish a centre for Chinese studies came to an untimely end. Had the library stayed, it is extremely likely that the university's return to the field of Chinese studies would have come much earlier than it did. It was not until 1968 that sufficient funding became available to permit, with the establishment of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature and the Centre for East Asian Studies, the renewal of the program which had first been started over forty years before.9 EVOLVING FACULTIES

Currie's principalship saw the emergence of two new faculties, and the recognition of developments in two others, which called for changes of nomenclature and structure. The new faculties were dentistry, about which more will be said later, and music. The Department of Music had granted from the beginning its own degree, the B.Mus., yet anomalously it belonged to no faculty, but reported through its chairman directly to Corporation. There was considerable reluctance to accept it as a department of the Faculty of Arts, since it was felt not to be academically respectable, and the problem was only solved when in 1920 the department was elevated to an independent faculty, despite the small number of students registered. This did not overcome all academic suspicions; in 1922, when it was further proposed to make music an optional subject in the B.A. curriculum, the motion was adopted despite the opposition of Professor, later Dean, Cyrus Macmillan, who, so the legend runs, blandly asked, 'Since when has music been among the arts?' The Faculty of Arts has always been considered the basic faculty of the university. The Faculty of Medicine was indeed older, but that was due simply to the circumstances of history in the first half of the nineteenth century. No one had ever suggested that a university could function without a Faculty of Arts, and the University of McGill College had been a fiction until an Arts Faculty was established in 1843. In mat faculty, all primary education at the university level had its beginnings, and as new developments took shape they were first located in the Arts Faculty even if, like law and applied science and commerce, they later diverged and became independent. One of the strongest growths at McGill had been in the area of the sciences, originally mathematics, natural philosophy (which

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grew into physics, geology, botany, zoology), and chemistry. Chemistry, it will be recalled, had been a series of programs in the Faculties of Medicine, Arts, and Applied Science, until under R.F. Ruttan they became one department in the Arts Faculty in 1912. By 1931 these science departments in the Faculty of Arts had become a very substantial part of the faculty, and it was felt to be anomalous that they should continue to be regarded as arts. The science departments had needs peculiar to themselves; they were conscious of forming a community of interest. Yet because the old memory of McGill College and the unity of its intellectual interests were strong, the science departments did not wish to break away altogether. It was decided therefore to rename the faculty the Faculty of Arts and Science and to appoint two deans, one of arts and the other of science, either of whom could be the faculty dean as occasion might require. Both deans would consult with their departmental chairmen, and represent their interests in Senate and to the principal. This arrangement gave evidence of the growing strength of the science departments in those years, but it did not give much promise of proving a very workable one. However, the faculty continued to operate in this fashion until 1939, when further changes were introduced. The other faculty to change its name in 1931 was that of applied science. The courses offered had been rearranged in 1921 into divisions of architecture (which ranked as a separate school), chemical engineering, civil engineering and surveying, electrical, mechanical, metallurgical, and mining engineering.10 This arrangement was evidently rational and practical, for it was to persist more or less unchanged through to the 19706. But in 1931 it was felt that the designation B.Sc. Applied Science was no longer appropriate. The close association with the engineering profession, and the need to make it evident that the degree given was in fact a professional qualification, brought about a change of nomenclature: the B.Sc. in Applied Science became the B.Eng., and the master's degree, the M.Eng., and the faculty became the Faculty of Engineering. In preparation for the change, the faculty began in 1927 to require either senior matriculation or the first year in science courses in the Faculty of Arts as the entering qualification. Since engineering was a four-year course, this program now required five years from junior matriculation, a provision which meant that the McGill degree in this professional area came to be highly regarded in Canada and the United States.11 THE E M E R G E N C E OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES The years between the two world wars are extremely significant in the history of McGill if for no other reason than that they saw the completion

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of the academic quadrangle—the humanities, the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and, from that time forward, the social sciences. But first there was, as it were, some disentangling to be done. The study of history at McGill began, as we have seen, as an aspect of the study of literature, and after World War I few people at McGill would have regarded the subject as anything other than one of the humanities. But changes were beginning to take place in the discipline's view of itself, which were to make its exponents more comfortable with the designation social scientists. At McGill many of those changes were attributable to the influence of the second occupant of the Kingsford chair, who was appointed in 1921. The first occupant, Charles W. Colby, remained as Kingsford professor and chairman of the department until 1919, and during his frequent and long absences the work of the department had been maintained by Charles E. Fryer. From 1916 Fryer had the assistance of Vera Brown, one of his former students, who served first as a resident tutor in history in the Royal Victoria College and then as a lecturer in the department. She departed for Bryn Mawr in 1920.12 When Colby at last resigned, Currie recognized that the time had come for an infusion of strength into the department, and while promoting Fryer to a full professorship, he looked outside the university for a new chairman and occupant of the Kingsford chair. Although he wanted to appoint a Canadian, there was none of sufficient calibre available at the salary he could offer, and guided by advisers in Britain he recommended for the appointment Basil Williams, an Englishman who had gained a reputation as an historian of the eighteenth century. Currie still hoped that the department would add a chair in Canadian history and would develop closer links with the Department of Economics and Political Science. But Williams had his own ideas. Within three months of arriving on campus, he wrote a memorandum which amounted to a denunciation of the years of neglect and a call to make good the evident gaps in the current program. Medieval and Renaissance history, constitutional, 'pre-English Canadian', and American history were, he said, all noticeable by their absence. He visited Ottawa, Toronto, and Kingston (and, we hope, considered Quebec) and decided that the primary and secondary sources for the study of Canadian history were insufficient to justify a chair.13 Instead, he recommended the appointment of a medievalist from Manchester, William Templeton Waugh. 'The subject progression he proposed [for the department] was general ancient and medieval history in the first year, medieval and modern history to 1815 plus economics in the second year, 1815 to the present plus a special subject in the third year and in the fourth, European expansion and colonization, the history of Canada, political thought and a special subject for concentrated work.'14 After four years

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only, Williams departed for Edinburgh, but he had left his mark, and the serious study of history at McGill may be said to have begun with his appointment in 1921. Waugh continued in the direction Williams had indicated. He had written substantial works on Henry V of England and on German history, and in his teaching he maintained a high level of scholarship until his untimely death in 1932.15 As a parting legacy, Williams brought into the department a Tudor historian, Edward Robert Adair. An outstanding lecturer and a competent scholar, Adair was from the United States, but had studied in Cambridge and taught in London before coming to McGill. Like Fryer he developed in Canada a secondary interest iii French-Canadian studies, and he took a lively and very independent view of contemporary international affairs, being particularly critical of Britain's foreign policy. On campus he was a difficult and abrasive colleague, and when Waugh died, it was Fryer, not Adair, who succeeded to the headship of the department. In 1941 Adair became chairman, more or less by default, but such was his unpopularity that he was not promoted full professor until 1945. Williams, Waugh, and Adair were well read and serious historians, and Fryer made up in solidity what he may have lacked in flair. Together they laid the foundations for the major developments which were to take place in the discipline in the next generation. There was less emphasis on artistic insight and more stress upon a rigorous attention to the nature and the quality of the sources employed. While one discipline was thus moving steadily into the social sciences orbit, another was just as steadily moving out Psychology had begun as an aspect of philosophy, at first mental philosophy and then social philosophy. But with the appointment in 1910 of William Dunlop Tait the discipline took on a new direction. Tait's psychological laboratory was only the second such facility in Canada (the first had been established twenty years earlier in Toronto), and it offered opportunities for research in experimental, physiological, and applied psychology. His practical approach to the discipline was very different from the introspective interpretation of psychology which had hitherto prevailed in the Philosophy Department, and the two styles of thought lived in a strained relationship until 1924 when Tait was given his liberty to form a separate department. 'Tait did not lack vision about a future promise for psychology. His vision was that of the applied scientist. He saw flourishing applications for psychology in education, medicine, businesses, social work, physical education, and human relations. He showed little concern for psychology as a scientific discipline.'16 When he was joined in the new department by Chester Kellogg, the same practical emphasis continued; in 1925 the department established the School Service Bureau, to give 'aid and advice with regard to intelligence

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tests, classification of pupils, remedial treatment, standardized tests and measurements, and other psychological aspects of education'.17 One of Kellogg's students was Nelson Whitmore Morton, McGill's first Ph.D. graduate in psychology; the two men revised the U.S. Army 'Beta' examination, and after publication by the American Psychological Corporation it was widely used, both in the army and in civilian life.18 The new Department of Psychology kept to a busy schedule. At one point Tait wrote: 'At present I am teaching nineteen hours per week. This includes lectures in the Faculty of Arts, laboratory periods in the same Faculty, lectures in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Social Service, and the School of Physical Education. I also conduct a clinic in mental deficiency at the Royal Victoria Hospital, two hours per week. At this clinic medical students, nurses, social workers, and even physicians attend for instruction.'19 The department offered nine undergraduate courses and three, later five, graduate seminars. The early emphasis on graduate work resulted, in the years 1924-40, in the award of thirty-one master's degrees and four Ph.D. degrees. Despite their conceptual limitations and this heavy schedule of teaching, Tait and his colleagues had mounted a serious and commendable operation, and they were steadily overcoming the prejudices and suspicion which lingered around the discipline up to the beginning of World War II. However, because of the direction in which their interests had taken them, it was becoming doubtful whether psychology as practised at McGill was a social or a biological science. The years following the war were to settle that issue decisively. Certainly, the major developments in the social sciences were to take place in other disciplines. At the close of World War I, a new concern for the population as a whole, and a recognition of the need for more adequate social structures, began to make itself felt throughout European and North American society. There had, of course, been antecedents but it was in the postwar years that the ideas of Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Herbert Spencer, together with the input from Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, began to give form and content to the new discipline of sociology. Canadian universities were relatively slow to follow this lead, but at McGill small but significant developments were beginning to take place. As we have seen, in 1918 McGill established the Department of Social Service. That the emphasis was to be placed on training social workers rather than social scientists was suggested by the name chosen for the program, an inference supported by the fact that the courses were to be taken by theological students as part of their professional training. The Joint Board of the Theological Colleges had in fact agreed to meet half the cost of the appointment which would be required. The man appointed was John Howard Toynbee Falk, who was described as what his

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given names would suggest: 'our link with the nineteenth-century development of social awareness in Great Britain'.20 Falk was responsible not only for the beginnings of social work education in Montreal, but also for bringing the various social agencies in the city into a cooperative council. The Department of Social Service was authorized by Corporation to offer a certificate of 'proficiency as a social worker' upon completion of a one-year course. In 1920 Helen Reid, one of the original Donaldas, who had interested herself in the development of welfare services since graduation and particularly during the war, was invited to join the department to give a course entitled 'Public Health and Housing', while Professor Caldwell of the Department of Philosophy lectured on principles of sociology. The prospectus indicated that students would receive practical training in conjunction with the various welfare agencies. The new department was trying to combine social work and social science in one endeavour. After two years of this experiment, Falk reported that the theological colleges were asking that the courses might have greater theoretical content, but that he could not agree to the appointment of a theoretical sociologist. Not only the theologians but also others in the university wanted to explore the new social sciences in a more rigorous fashion, and Falk found himself being urged in directions he did not wish to go. As a result he resigned and Carl Dawson was appointed both assistant professor of sociology and director of social science. Significantly, he was also named chairman of a new Department of Social Science. Thus the two aspects of the subject were still closely conjoined, but the emphasis shifted to the theoretical considerations. The following year, 1923, saw the founding of the School of Social Work, with Warner Gettys named as assistant professor in that area. Dawson, however, was appointed director of the school, and there is no suggestion that during his nine years in that office he in any way neglected its interests; but in his department he embarked upon the exploration of the theoretical dimensions of his discipline. Inevitably the Department of Social Science (or Sociology, as it was named in 1925) and the School of Social Work moved steadily apart Even so, when Everett Hughes joined Dawson in the department in 1927, students in the school were still encouraged to combine work for a master's degree in the Sociology Department with their training for the professional social worker's qualification. By 1930, however, it was clear that the existing arrangements could not continue; the school needed its own qualified staff and a reorganization of its program. Dawson asked two alumnae for recommendations and they urged the establishment of a graduate school, offering the M.S.W. degree, following upon an appropriate B.A. or B.Sc. at the undergraduate level. The board of governors, being at that time hard hit by the depression, and

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not having any funds to expand the social work program, decided that it would be wiser to concentrate upon the social sciences and to withdraw from the field of social work. The decision was taken to close the McGill School of Social Work. Dawson was promoted to full professor of sociology, and he and the department were left free to devote all their attention to their fast-developing discipline. Carl Dawson was important for the development of sociology in Canada as well as at McGill. Born in Prince Edward Island, he was a candidate for the ministry and entered the Divinity School at Chicago. But there he encountered the new studies of society which were such a marked feature of university life in Chicago and he took his Ph.D. in that area. When he came to McGill, it was to be head of the first department of sociology in Canada, and to promote a discipline which hitherto had acquired little Canadian content. He had to face a good deal of suspicion from conservative colleagues in older and more established disciplines. However, he encouraged the study of sociological phenomena in Canada, and set the example himself by concentrating on two major themes, the settlement of the open areas in the West, and the drift to the cities, with the consequent urbanization of the population.21 One of his achievements was to recognize the importance of French-English relations in Canada, particularly in the Province of Quebec. He encouraged his young colleagues Everett and Helen Hughes to undertake their study French Canada in Transition, and Forrest Laviolette, who before coming to McGill had been working on the American-born Japanese, to continue his studies on the Canadian-born Japanese.22 It was said of Dawson that he 'belonged authentically to the founders of sociology He managed to create de now a department of sociology— He imparted to Canadian sociology the flavour of empirical research. Almost single-handed he secured funds for research, persuaded colleagues in other disciplines that research was an essential part of university life, and launched his students on research projects.'23 Before we go on to consider the remarkable developments in the social sciences proper, we must complete the story, in its own way equally remarkable, of the School of Social Work. Faced with the edict of the board of governors that the school must close at the end of the 1931-32 session, members of its Alumnae Society decided to make every effort to continue its work on their own resources. McGill, they learned, was prepared to give them rent-free premises and access to the University Library; individual members of the academic staff of the university offered teaching assistance; and the Montreal Council of Social Agencies helped with the raising of funds. But the main burden fell upon the alumnae. The Montreal School of Social Work came into existence in the fall of 1933. On an investment of 'faith and forty cents'—the cost of the taxi transporting her and her books

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to the house on University Street McGill had made available—Dorothy King, an experienced social worker trained both in England and in the United States, assumed the directorship. A board of trustees was appointed, one of them being Carl Dawson, who continued his personal interest in the venture. For the next seventeen years the school continued, living on the modest fees of its students, donations from professional and business interests in the city, and contributions from alumnae and alumni across Canada. They were hard years of constant struggle. Only the determination of former students, new members of their profession, and the warm, undauntable personality of King kept the venture alive through the years of depression and war. With the coming of peace, the future began to brighten. In 1945 the university permitted the school to present its students for Bachelor and Master of Social Work degrees, a solid testimony to the high academic standards which had been maintained. In 1950 the board of governors resumed responsibility for its operation, and, with a staff of twelve teachers and an enrolment of 150 students, the McGill School of Social Work was once again an integral part of the university. It was a fitting accolade to the career of Dorothy King, who well past the age of normal retirement could now relinquish her responsibilities with pride for the past and confidence for the future.24 THE SOCIAL S C I E N C E R E S E A R C H PROJECT Interest in research into the character and structure of society was by no means confined to the new disciplines, such as sociology, or to the new professions, such as that of 'social practitioner'. It was a medical man who took the first step towards the McGill Social Science Research Project. Upon the suggestion of Dr. C.M. Hincks, a director of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, to Medical Dean Charles F. Martin, McGill applied to the Rockefeller Foundation for a long-term grant for a study of the problems of 'social science and human welfare'. Principal Currie knew that at Yale the Department of Human Relations was funded by the kind of Rockefeller grant that McGill was seeking, but upon examination the Yale approach was thought to be too unstructured: a more definite objective should be chosen, towards which social science research could be oriented. The Rockefeller administration let it be known, however, that it wanted to encourage social science research in general rather than the investigation of a particular problem. The university therefore couched its application in broad terms, and when the Rockefeller award was made in the amount of $100,000 to be spent over five years, the McGill Social Science Research Council was set up to direct the development of the project.

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The council appointed an executive committee which was composed partly of industrial and commercial representatives and partly by the heads of interested departments. The departments represented were sociology, economics, law, public health and preventive medicine, philosophy, and psychology. The committee met for the first time early in 1930, with Currie in the chair, and agreed to appoint a director of the project to act as liaison with the departments and as co-director of graduates in their research assignments. Because of the prevailing depression and the urgent social needs resulting from it, it was quickly agreed that the common topic of this research should be unemployment, and particularly that of the Montreal area. Carl Dawson was the one dissentient; he thought it a mistake to force students in any department on to a particular line of inquiry, since he strongly believed that research should be unfettered. The majority opinion was, however, that the grant income should be used to establish assistantships in participating departments; the graduate students accepting them would work for two years on an approved subject, related to the general topic, and their research would be directed jointly by the professors of their department and the Social Science Research Council director. The man chosen for that position was Leonard Marsh, a brilliant young economist from the London School of Economics, a protege of William Beveridge, with whom he had already collaborated in a study of unemployment in London, and by whom he had been strongly recommended for the McGill appointment. The program as it took shape under Marsh's direction was of truly major proportions. It was based on an initial demographic survey of employment in the Montreal area. Included were such things as the industrial and occupational character of the city, the identification of industries together with the size of their work force, the types of labour employed, and also the scale of their operations. A statistical analysis of unemployment in the Montreal area was prepared and also an economic map of the city. In the first year four departments were directly involved, those of economics, sociology, psychology, and education, while the Faculties of Medicine and Law took part in the second year. Each participating department chose one topic or more on the general theme of unemployment. The study of immigrants of various nationalities on the rolls of Montreal social agencies, the occupational adjustment of British immigrants, and the location areas of British immigrants in relation to employment problems were subjects chosen by the Sociology Department; the Economics Department chose unemployment relief in western Canada and unemployment problems in railway transport; the Psychology Department chose juvenile placement and the industrial and qualitative character of the unemployed; and

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the Education Department decided upon the results of school-teaching in relation to employability. In the second year the medical Department of Public Health, the Faculty of Law, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering joined the project and some twenty-two studies were under way. The report to the Rockefeller Foundation for 1932 noted that 'graduate assistants have been enabled to acquire a special and superior research training— The number of graduate students acting as research assistants for this programme will comprise twenty in all as from next session, half of them being graduates of other universities than McGill.'25 In 1934 the first volume of published materials appeared: Employment Research: An Introduction to the McGill Programme of Social Science Research by Leonard Marsh; this was followed by Industrial Diagnosis: A Manual for the Employment Exchange, by N.W. Morton, 1935; The Railway Workers, by G.M. Rountree, J.C. Hemmeon, and Leonard Marsh, 1936; and The British Immigrant^ by L.G. Reynolds and C.A. Dawson, 1936. In addition some twenty to thirty graduate theses were in varying stages of completion. There can be little doubt that together the Rockefeller grant and the McGill Social Science Research Project gave strong momentum to graduate studies and research in the social sciences, and secured for them an enhanced academic status. In 1936 the Rockefeller grant was renewed in the amount of $50,000, and the program continued until 1940. Several further important, studies were published, including Health and Unemployment, by A.G. Fleming, C.F. Bladder, L. Marsh; Guidance for the High School Pupil, by E.G. Webster; and A Graphical Survey of the Canadian Textile Industry, by J.A. Coate. But enthusiasm for research organized along the lines of a single pattern was beginning to wane, and the coming of war a second time discouraged any proposals to seek further funding either inside the university or out. Moreover, the project had aroused some strong reactions which were to prove of immense importance for the subsequent history of McGill, and that part of the story must be told in another connection. The appointment of Marsh as director of the project and as sessional lecturer in the Department of Economics was terminated in 1940, but the influence of his commitment to rigorous research in the new field of the social sciences remained long after he had departed. THE FACULTY OF LAW In the last decade of the nineteenth century William Macdonald had been the benefactor of the Law Faculty, as he had been of so much else. As we have seen, the major endowment with which in 1890 he under girded its operations gave the faculty its first real opportunity to develop beyond the

Carl Dawson

Leonard Marsh

Dorothy King

Elizabeth Monk, B.A.'i9; B.C.L.'23; Hon. LL.D.'75

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level of a mediocre professional training school. But without supplementary benefactions the university's resources in law were still not enough to allow much progress to be made. Unfortunately these were not forthcoming, and for many years the faculty made little further progress. The offices and lecture rooms occupied the upper floors of Dawson Hall, and some sixty or seventy students were registered in its three years of courses. In 1900 the faculty graduated eighteen Bachelors of Civil Law; the numbers sank to under ten at the end of the decade but rose to eighteen again in 1914. In that year Frederick Walton retired and the university, in seeking to replace him, opted for a different style of appointment. All faculty members had hitherto been appointed from the Quebec Bar. It was therefore a departure of major proportions when in 1915 Principal Peterson recommended as professor of Roman law and dean of the faculty Robert Warden Lee, a jurist from Oxford. A distinguished legal scholar, Lee soon began to plan creatively for the development of legal studies at McGill. He recognized that the faculty enjoyed a unique position, seeing that it was an anglophone school training its students to practise within a civil system derived from French and Roman sources for property, familial, and commercial concerns, but for criminal matters within a common law system which it shared with the other provinces of Canada. He therefore provided an option for students to take the LL.B., or common law degree, either as giving a general legal background for those not intending to practise law, or as qualifying future lawyers for practice in provinces other than Quebec. An additional year of study enabled the student to gain both the B.C.L. and the LL.B. degrees. At the same time Lee improved the curriculum for the B.C.L., instituted an LL.M. degree, and clarified the regulations for the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. With the ending of the war and the return of the veterans, student numbers in the faculty rose precipitately. Some 90 students registered in the first year in 1919, and the total numbers rose to 135. The following year the registration maintained that level. This accession of strength encouraged Lee to write in 1920 a memorandum to the new principal, detailing the changes he had initiated and stressing the opportunity open to McGill to build a truly significant school of law.26 He had heard that Cunie was about to raise over $6 million, and he suggested that, of that total, $250,000 would be a modest allocation for law. With that kind of support, the faculty could move to what must indeed be its first goal, the provision of a basically full-time staff and the attraction of a basically full-time student body. How these developments might have fared had Lee remained to encourage them we cannot know, since a year later he returned to Oxford as professor of Dutch and Roman law. But while he was at McGill, there was opposition from those in the faculty and in the Quebec Bar who disliked

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the whole notion of a common law program. When he left, the opposition had that much more strength. Between 1920 and 1926, 24 LL.B. degrees were awarded as against 146 B.C.L. degrees. By the latter year the total student enrolment in the faculty had dropped again to 6l. It was decided to concentrate the school's resources on the civil law program and the common law program was terminated. At the same time, the standard of admission to the faculty was raised from one year of arts to two. However, the interest in law beyond practice within the Quebec Bar was by no means wholly lost, for before departing Lee recommended for appointment H.A. Smith of Oxford and Ira Mackay of Saskatchewan. Mackay was both a philosopher and a lawyer, and after two years of teaching constitutional law he transferred to the Frothingham Chair of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts, where he quickly became dean and exercised considerable influence in the development of the university. His impact upon the Law Faculty was not very great, and his colleague Smith stayed only seven years before returning to London to pursue a distinguished career as professor of international law. Nevertheless Smith left a legacy of ideas and persons which influenced later developments considerably. He wrote a paper on legal education which reiterated many of Lee's arguments, stressing the need for full-time appointments and for law teachers to be interested in the law per se, and not simply as a means to practising in a particular jurisdiction. He made much of American examples: 'Can anyone imagine that Harvard greatly concerns itself with the local requirements for practice at the Massachusetts Bar?' He called for 'a comprehensive library, reasonable leisure for study, and where necessary, university assistance in the publication of works which cannot be certain of commercial success'.27 Both the faculty and the university were thus fully informed as to the nature of the academic ideal in legal scholarship. In 1924 Smith was joined by Percy Ellwood Corbett, a McGill graduate who had also studied his law at Oxford. He had been Law Fellow of All Souls College for seven years and legal adviser in the International Labour Organization in Geneva for two years before returning to McGill. He stayed until the beginning of World War II when he left to undertake wartime responsibilities in the United States. Corbett taught courses in international law, which were continued after his departure by one of his former students, John Humphrey. A McGill graduate in arts, commerce, and law, Humphrey continued with graduate work in Paris before returning in 1936 to teach at McGill. He stayed until 1946, when he was appointed the first director of the Division of Human Rights in the United Nations Secretariat. Thus while the termination of the common law program ensured a priority of interest in the civil law system, the wider concerns of law as an academic subject continued to receive considerable

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attention. Another of Corbett's students was Francis Reginald Scott, who joined the faculty in 1928. He was recommended for his appointment by Smith, just as the latter was leaving McGill.28 In the 19208 and 19308 some seven or eight professors and three or four lecturers taught in the Law Faculty. The professors gave the greater part of their attention to their academic as distinct from their legal office responsibilities, and the University Calendar expressly stated that the timetable had been based on the assumption that all students attended full time. At least some of Lee's objectives had been approached, if not all were fully attained. Interesting light is thrown upon the evolution of Quebec society in these years by the experiences of women attempting to enter the legal profession. The story began in 1911 when Annie Macdonald Langstaff was admitted to the faculty, and graduated in 1914 with first-class honours. But when she attempted to take the Quebec Bar preliminary examinations, a test of general education to be taken by those not possessing the B.A. degree, Langstaff was refused permission to do so. When the matter was taken to court, the judgement then delivered ranks (despite the date) as a classic statement of the Victorian mythology of women: I would put within the range of possibilities, though by no means a commendable one, the admission of a woman to the profession of solicitor or to that of avouJ, but I hold that to admit a woman and more particularly a married woman as a barrister, that is to say as a person who pleads cases at the bar before judges or juries in open court and in the presence of the public, would be nothing short of a direct infringement upon public order and a manifest violation of the law of good morals and public decency.29 Since the Civil Code does not distinguish between the attorney, the solicitor, the counsel, and the barrister, but includes them all in the one term 'advocate', Mr. Justice Saint-Pierre was of the opinion that the petition could not be entertained and therefore it was dismissed. Costs were awarded to the respondent, the Bar of the Province of Quebec. Florence Seymour Bell had the courage to follow Mrs. LangstafPs footsteps and to enter the faculty in 1916. Upon graduating she also found that she would not be admitted to the Quebec Bar, but she could be admitted in Nova Scotia and then could transfer to Quebec. In this way she was able to practise her profession in her home province, though not to plead her cases in court. This course was followed by other women who succeeded her, notably by Elizabeth Monk. Miss Monk had graduated from McGill in 1919 with the Governor General's Gold Medal in modern languages, and had won a scholarship to Radcliffe where she obtained her M.A. She

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studied for a further year at Oxford and entered law at McGill to graduate B.C.L. in 1923. When finally in 1941 the last barriers crumbled, Monk at once applied to enter the Quebec Bar, and she and a graduate of the University de Montreal share the distinction of being the first women to do so. By this time, however, entry to the Bar also required the possession of a B.A. degree, so that Langstaff was still excluded. She continued working with great acceptance in her law office until far beyond the normal age of retirement Monk had an exceptionally distinguished career, being named Queen's Counsel in 1955 and continuing the practice of her profession until her retirement in 1979, sixty years after her first graduation from McGill. She was awarded an honorary LL.D. degree by McGill in 1975. In total, nineteen women graduated in law from McGill between 1914 when Annie Langstaff first received her degree, and 1941, when Elizabeth Monk was finally admitted to the Bar of Quebec. MATTERS P E D A G O G I C A L Sinclair Laird became head of the School for Teachers in 1913 and retained that responsibility until 1949, a period of thirty-six years. That the years between the wars were not a time of great educational advance was in large measure due to the fact that the Quebec community was not yet prepared to recognize the school teacher's professional status with appropriate remuneration. Teachers' salaries were still abominably low, often not more than $300 a year, and few able students were attracted into the training programs. In the years of the Great Depression, conditions deteriorated still further. In such a situation it was difficult to do much to raise academic standards. Some advances were made in 1920. The old practice of the Central Board of Examiners granting certificates without requiring training was terminated, and the minimum qualification for entry into the Macdonald School for Teachers was raised to successful completion of Grade 10. But the course for the elementary diploma still lasted only four months. After World War I the number of students registered reached 316, but then it declined steadily to 114 in 1934. Meanwhile the number of pupils in the Quebec Protestant school system had risen from approximately 47,000 in 1920 to over 80,000 in the late 19305. Even numerically the Macdonald school was not meeting the needs of the provincial system. Yet in 1935 Laird deplored the dearth of positions vacant and gloomily predicted that few of those receiving their diplomas that year would find employment. At the high-school level, matters were not much better. The necessary diploma could be obtained either by adding some courses in Latin, algebra, and geometry to an elementary qualification, or by taking a B.A. program

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at McGill or at Bishop's University which contained some pedagogical courses. McGill had the Macdonald professor and the Department of Education in the Faculty of Arts to provide these courses, but the registrants were not very numerous. Not everyone was prepared to let matters drift along in this unsatisfactory fashion. Walter Percival, a staff member of the Macdonald School for Teachers, left n 1930 to become director of Protestant education for the province und the aegis of the Provincial Protestant Committee of Education. From this position, and with the obvious benefit of inside knowledge, he freely criticized the training being given by the School for Teachers to the point where despite the depression some reforms were instituted. In 1935, for example, the course for the elementary certificate was lengthened to a full academic year. But more was obviously needed, and in 1937 the Protestant Committee invited the director of education for Ayrshire in Scotland, W.A.F. Hepburn, to conduct another inquiry into the operation of the whole system. The Hepburn committee invited briefs and conducted its own inquiries in many parts of the province. Its subsequent report urged the immediate provision of more funds for education, saying that 'a cheap system is certain to turn out a poor investment.' The report also advocated a rigorous raising of entry standards into the various training programs. Hepburn had administered intelligence tests to some of the teachers in training and reported bluntly, 'Beyond a doubt, an attempt is being made in the School for Teachers at Macdonald to make teachers out of young men and women who are of less than average intelligence.'30 This naturally did not commend the document to the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers, and a further recommendation that the Protestant Committee itself should be thoroughly reformed did not please the body which had set up the inquiry. The report was therefore not received very cordially. The university for its part had presented a brief recommending certain fairly modest changes, but had prudently added that these changes were desirable only so long as they did not increase costs. Hepburn recommended that the level of entry into the Macdonald programs should be immediately raised to Grade II, and to Grade 12 as soon as possible, and that a full degree, whether of arts or of another discipline, followed by a postgraduate year of pedagogical training, should be the sole means of obtaining the high-school certificate. Undoubtedly the number of bodies having some kind of control over the administration of the training programs increased the difficulty of implementing these reforms. Teacher education at this time was administered by the Protestant Committee, the Central Board of Examiners, and the Provincial Teacher Training Committee, on which the university through its Faculty of Arts had representation. Finally, there was the

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McGill board of governors, who of course controlled the finances. The division of the university's efforts between a department of education on the Montreal campus and a school for elementary teachers at Macdonald College continued to militate against the development of the Macdonald operation.31 The real problem was finance. William Macdonald had expected that his princely $2 million endowment would meet the university's expenditures for teacher training. But, as the Hepburn Report noted, even before World War I this income was not sufficient to meet the training school's operating costs, and the university had begun to argue forcefully that any cost above the figure of $16,666 (which was the amount the university had originally undertaken to provide) should be made up by the province. Recognizing in part the justice of the claim, the province, as we have seen, began in 1915 to make an annual contribution to the School for Teachers of $5,000 and this was increased in the fall of 1917 to $10,000. These grants were included year by year in the government's annual estimates. But in difficult times the item could easily be omitted. No contribution was made, for example, in the years 1924 through 1927. Renewed protests by McGill resulted in the fall of 1927 in the promise of an annual grant of $15,000, but the amounts owing for the years when nothing had been forthcoming were never made good. Even after 1927, when the $15,000 grant was regularly forthcoming, the university reckoned it was spending another $30,000 of its own income for the purposes of teacher training, over and above the income from the Macdonald endowment. The fact that the university was precluded by the 1907 agreement from charging education students any tuition fees further exacerbated the situation. The Hepburn Report was right to say the teacher-training programs needed greater financial support, but it was a fair reply from the McGill administration to argue that this responsibility lay squarely with the provincial government. The university was already spending relatively large sums on teacher training which were urgently needed elsewhere in its programs. What effect the Hepburn Report might have had on the education of Protestant teachers in Quebec must remain a matter of speculation; the outbreak of war in 1939 effectively removed the issue from public attention. But the teacher education costs were still an on-going problem for the university when Cyril James took over the administration in 1940, and were to remain so for many years thereafter. It would be wrong, however, to leave the impression that no good work was done in this area in the two decades between the wars. Individual professors made sincere and notable contributions, and many students who graduated from the Macdonald School for Teachers in those years went on to serve loyally and with considerable distinction in the schools. Moreover,

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they returned in large numbers year after year to Macdonald College to partake in summer schools to improve their teaching skills. Dean William H. Brittain of agriculture was appointed vice-principal of the college in September 1934; it is a commentary on the times as well as on the campus relationships that his dictum for student discipline is said to have been: 'Restrict the girls [who were almost all in education] and have no rules for the boys [who were almost all in his own faculty]. If the girls aren't allowed too much freedom, the boys won't get into trouble.'32 AGRICULTURE, PARASITOLOGY, AND HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE

From the outset of the Macdonald College operation, the Faculty of Agriculture had distinguished itself as the dominant element in the threefold partnership. This was due in part to James Robertson's own primary interest in agriculture; in part it was due to the nature of the discipline itself. Agriculture was closer to the natural sciences, and to the growing body of factual knowledge inherent in them, as well as to the empirical type of research which produces tangible results. Agriculture was also directly associated with Canada's largest and most productive industry, and thus the natural subject of government interest. From these relationships it derived not only valuable benefits in the form of research funds, but also an undeniable prestige. From the beginning, the pattern had been established that the dean of agriculture had customarily been appointed the senior administrator of the college, with the tide principal. In 1935 the title was changed to vice-principal, the principal of the university being also the principal of the college, and the office of vice-principal was formally combined with that of the dean. By 1928 the reputation of the faculty had grown to the point where the Nova Scotia Agricultural College sought affiliation. This institution agreed to design its two years of instruction in such a manner that its students could register for their third and fourth years at Macdonald and so gain the McGill Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree. In 1939 similar arrangements were made with Prince of Wales College in Prince Edward Island and with Memorial College in St John's, Newfoundland. The old affiliation strategy of William Dawson and H.M. Tory was proving fruitful in a new field. The interest of the faculty in graduate studies was marked by the inception of a master's degree as early as 1920. It was originally termed Master of Agricultural Science, but in 1930 this became the Master of Science (Agriculture), a change which the original B.A.S. degree was to copy five years later. Programs leading to the Ph.D. degree were instituted in the Departments of Bacteriology, Entomology, and Plant Pathology in 1922, and in

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other departments as staff appointments warranted. A steady flow of trained agricultural scientists emerging from the faculty during the interwar years resulted in a large number of senior positions being held by Macdonald alumni in research and teaching institutions across Canada and in the United States in the years following World War II. A faculty whose interests are as varied as those of agriculture will mark its triumphs with events of a more colourful nature than most other faculties. The year 1925, for example, was notable not only for the introduction of 'Macdonald rhubarb', a variety especially bred for northern climatic conditions, but also for the record productivity of a two-year-old Ayrshire cow named appropriately Macdonald Annie Laurie. In the 19205 and 1930s the Byng and Montcalm varieties of barley, developed by Emile A. Lods, and the Iroquois and Algonquin varieties of corn, developed by L.C. Raymond, were notable examples from a long list of successes in crop breeding. The faculty's seed farm, first taken over from the province at Ste. Rosalie and then later established at Ste. Marie, proved extremely productive in the areas of cereals, grasses, and clovers, and in roots and corn. A signal development was the organization in 1926 of an interdepartmental committee on animal parasites. The work produced was of such quality that the National Research Council in Ottawa and the Empire Marketing Board in Britain became interested, and the Institute of Parasitology was established. The Quebec Department of Agriculture gave funds for a building and the other partners shared the salary and the maintenance costs. Thomas W.M. Cameron, senior lecturer of helminthology at Edinburgh, was appointed director in 1932, and although the Marketing Board shortly thereafter went out of existence, provincial and federal interest was fully maintained. The institute proved extremely productive, both of research findings and of highly trained parasitologists, who served throughout Canada and in the many Commonwealth countries from which they had been sent by their governments to train at Macdonald. Among the minor achievements of the Institute of Parasitology was the introduction of the hamster to North America. The intention was to provide a small laboratory animal, easily cared for, genetically 'pure', and remarkably free from parasites; its wide adoption as a children's pet was not foreseen. In the School of Household Science the pattern of evolution was nearer, academically speaking, to that of agriculture than to that of education. At first the admission requirements to the one- or two-year Homemakers' Course were almost non-existent; candidates were simply required 'to read and write the English language acceptably'. In 1920 completion of Grade 10 was demanded, but this was quickly lowered to Grade 7 and was not cautiously raised again to Grade 8 until 1945. Katherine Fisher had intro-

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duced a two-year Housekeepers' Course before World War I and with increased professional content this became the Institution Administration Course after the war. From 1920 entry to this program required completion of Grade II. The course continued to be offered until 1936, when enrolment fell off because of the growing popularity of the four-year program for the Bachelor of Household Science degree. First offered in 1918, this program provided third and fourth years at Macdonald after two junior years in science courses in the Faculty of Arts. In 1929 it became possible to take all four years at Macdonald College. The fourth year offered dietician or teaching options. The school was steadily feeling its way towards a more technical and professional program because it was responding to changes in food technology, both in industry and in the home, and in so doing it was moving progressively nearer to the nutritional and technological interests of the Faculty of Agriculture. Consequently, the revised university statutes of 1935 placed the school under the aegis of that faculty, making its director a member of the faculty meeting. This association provided valuable assistance academically, and resulted in improved enrolment figures. Numbers climbed quickly beyond the 100 mark, and during the 19208 and 1930s seldom fell below that figure. In 1938 they rose as high as I5433 The community at Macdonald College in the decades between the wars was a closely knit and happy one at the personal level, but was not so happy at the administrative level. The principal of the college, F.C. Harrison, was described as having 'a somewhat arbitrary manner', and as 'inclined to treat his colleagues rather as inferiors than as equals'.34 Cur lie reported discontent among the staff to the board of governors in 1922: he upheld Harrison and said that with his own assistance the Macdonald head 'would be able to stamp out any disloyalty'.35 But in 1925 he appointed G.S. Barton to the deanship, and left Harrison as principal; this did not solve the problem, and a year later Currie removed Harrison to a professorship of bacteriology on the Montreal campus and left the principalship of the college vacant. In 1935, in accordance with the revised statutes, the governors appointed William H. Brittain (who had followed Barton in the deanship in 1934) to the dual office of dean and vice-principal. This proved a happy arrangement as. far as agriculture and household science were concerned, but it still left the School for Teachers (which at this time was not responsible for degree work in education) liable to resentments as the poor and somewhat neglected relation on campus. As we have seen, this was neither the university's fault nor intention, but the feeling was there, and successive deans of agriculture showed little sensitivity to the problems involved. William Macdonald had founded his college to touch rural life at three essential bases—the farm, the home, the school. The college diploma

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courses, whether in agriculture, domestic economy, or education, were never intended to demand or to impart high academic expertise; they were designed to meet the needs of the working men and women of the Quebec countryside. Working for academic degrees was a secondary development. The courses for the diplomas served very adequately for those who could come to Ste. Anne de Bellevue, and for those who must stay in their villages the college organized local classes taught on a weekly basis by Macdonald staff. The college also used local newspapers and other journals to disseminate new ideas in agriculture, food technology, and arts and crafts. In the years between the wars the effort was fairly modest, but the relationship between the college and its primary constituency was being carefully nourished, and foundations were being laid for the much larger programs which were to follow. Women's Institutes, The Journal of Agriculture and Horticulture (in both French and English), the Macdonald College Soil Testing Service, the Canadian Seed Growers' Association, the Canadian Cooperative Wool Growers' Association, the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturalists and its journal, Scientific Agriculture, these were but a few of the many ways the faculty was reaching out into the community. During these decades the McLennan Travelling Libraries organization was continuing its work with unabated zeal. Writing in 1925, Elizabeth Hall, after referring to services to other provinces, reported: Our own province presents special problems in this as in other phases of education and library work, but we are glad to report that an increasing number of places have asked to be supplied with libraries this year. One of the most hopeful signs is that our three [sic] public libraries in the province, those at Sherbrooke, Knowlton and Waterloo, take our libraries all the time and in this way, at minimum cost, provide their readers with newer books.36 This comment not only reveals the parlous state of public libraries in Quebec in these years and the great need for the travelling libraries, but also the effectiveness of the service in supplementing the out-reach activities of Macdonald College, and so assisting in the fulfilment of the intentions of its founder. THE F A C U L T Y OF M E D I C I N E

No part of the university had acquitted itself with greater distinction in World War I than the Faculty of Medicine. But hardly had the war ended and the medical officers returned to Canada when the question was raised

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of much-needed reforms in the faculty's organization, structure, and facilities. The initial impetus came in a letter from Sir William Osier, who though many years removed from McGill still maintained from Oxford an almost proprietary interest in his old medical school. He wrote to the dean so soon after the war that he addressed him as 'General Birkett': The situation is this—McGill simply cannot afford to fall behind other first-class schools in the development of modern clinics in Medicine, Surgery, and in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. New conditions have arisen, to meet which it is essential to have sympathetic and active co-operation of University and hospitals. Medically Montreal occupies a unique position—a school with a record of splendid work, and two of the best equipped hospitals on the Continent; but a new departure is needed which will involve a change of heart as to methods, etc. and a realization of the full responsibility of the hospitals in this matter.37 He proposed that two university clinics should be set up, one in the Montreal General Hospital, the other in the Royal Victoria. These clinics would provide a focus for the university's interest in clinical medicine, and conversely would attempt to integrate the rapidly developing basic medical sciences into the fabric of clinical medicine. To do this they should be given control of medical appointments in the designated areas. This would enable the hospitals and the university to share jointly in planning the upgrading of the staff, while individually they would pledge to rehabilitate the assigned space and equipment. New funding would be needed by all three participants, and the major part should be sought from the Rockefeller Foundation. The close association of teaching, research, and clinical care envisaged in this plan was in the tradition of Osier's personal legacy to McGill, since he had always stressed this approach to medical training and practice, but the basic philosophy was now to be given more formal structures. The faculty's ready acceptance of Osier's advice constituted a renewed commitment to medical research, and this was to characterize all further development of medicine at McGill for the next half a century. As we have seen, this decision strongly influenced the university's building program. The 1922 Biology Building was designed to house new Departments of Physiology (replacing the old Institutes of Medicine) and Biochemistry (replacing Biological Chemistry) and the 1924 Pathological Institute to house both pathology and bacteriology. When it was agreed to build the pathology-bacteriology facilities on the east side of University Street close to the Royal Victoria Hospital, the hospital offered to con-

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tribute $100,000 towards the cost, on condition that it have some share in the management of the departments and their staffs, and that the hospital would receive pathological-bacteriological services (for which it would pay unit charges) from the departments. Furthermore the hospital agreed to invite Professor Jonathan Meakins to return to Montreal from Edinburgh, and to institute the RVH University Medical Clinic. To assist the venture, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded McGill a further $500,000. This reorganization of the hospital's resources has provided since 1924 a major facility for clinical research, very much on the lines that Osier had originally suggested. The Montreal General Hospital, at this time on Dorchester Street, could not easily have the same intimate relationship with the university; although there were some research-minded individuals, there was no similar organization of research-oriented clinical operations until after World War II. There was, however, a significant step forward in the area of community health. From 1925 the Industrial Clinic, established with a five-year grant from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, pioneered a valuable program directed by Drs. Frank Pedley and Vance Ward. In 1931 the clinic undertook what was probably the first mass chest survey in the city of Montreal, involving some 5,000 employees, and it also assisted in the establishment of individual health services in various local plants. This work gave rise to the Industrial Medical Association, one of the first bilingual medical groups in Canada.38 The RVH University Clinic proved very productive. Meakins' own chief interest was in the field of respiration, and he was joined from 1928 to 1935 by Ronald V. Christie; E.H. Mason built up a successful clinic for diabetics; Maude Abbott continued her work on congenital heart disease; G.R. Brow, C.N.H. Long, and John Beattie studied cardiac irregularities and their relationship to the sympathetic nervous system. J.S.L. Browne established a laboratory for endocrinology in which he was joined by Eleanor Venning, who opened up new fields in the study of metabolites of pregnancy and the hormones of the ova and placenta. 'From these small beginnings came a group organization which, under the direction of J.S.L. Browne, attracted an ever increasing number of workers, with the result that the clinic became one of the great centres in the field of endocrinology and investigative medicine.'39 When, however, the question of joint university-hospital control of staff appointments arose, Sir Vincent Meredith, president of the board of the Royal Victoria, declined to cooperate, saying that the hospital would never relinquish its sole right to make appointments. In accordance with this view, and without prior consultation with the university, he invited in 1923 a distinguished surgeon from Edinburgh, Sir Henry Gray, to occupy the

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position of head of surgery, but the university did not respond by creating him professor. Gray found his position untenable and, much displeased, left the Royal Victoria to establish a private clinic. Sir Arthur Currie firmly maintained the university's position, despite the opposition not only of Meredith, but also of some of the leading members of the medical profession. The university appointed Edward Archibald professor of surgery and chairman of the university department, but the hospital in turn did not appoint him head of surgery. The position was left vacant for three years. On Meredith's departure from the scene in 1929, however, Archibald was appointed chief surgeon and he swiftly restored harmony in the hospital and in relationships with the university. Archibald was in his own day a rarity in that he was a brilliant surgeon, accomplished in most areas but particularly renowned for his work with pulmonary tuberculosis, and also a keen scientific investigator, who published a steady stream of significant scientific papers.40 Of his profession Archibald said: To gather knowledge, and to find out new knowledge, is the noblest occupation of the physician. To apply that knowledge with understanding, and with sympathy born of understanding, to the relief of human suffering, is his loveliest occupation; and to do both with an unassuming faithfulness sets the seal upon the whole.'41 Many years later, Principal Robertson commented that in those words Archibald was not only urging an ideal upon others but also expressing his own philosophy, or, better, describing the personal objectives that he himself had long achieved. Despite Archibald's success in restoring normal friendly relationships between the university and the Royal Victoria, the desired consultation in the matter of appointments above the rank of assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine, or assistant physician or surgeon in the teaching hospitals, was not fully achieved until 1942. The teaching hospitals at that time were the Montreal General, the Royal Victoria, the Montreal Children's, and the Montreal Neurological. It was further agreed in 1942 that no major change in the structure or operations of any of the hospitals which was likely to affect the work of the Faculty of Medicine should be made without first notifying a Joint University Hospitals Committee of the proposed development. So the excellent working relationships between the teaching hospitals and the McGill faculty were provided with the necessary machinery to allow them to function harmoniously. The Montreal Children's Hospital did not formally join the committee until 1944, but these arrangements have subsequently proved their worth, to an extent far beyond what was originally envisaged. In those same years after World War I, the internal organization of the Medical Faculty was itself undergoing close scrutiny. In 1921 the faculty

Dental Deans A.W. Thornton, 1920-27, and A.L. Walsh, 1927-48

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proposed a thoroughgoing reform of its structure. All members of faculty would constitute the faculty meeting, but its actions were to be subject to the approval of a faculty council. The day-to-day business was to be the concern of the council's executive committee. A permanent assistant dean would be appointed, and the deanship would become a one-year office, to be filled by the heads of departments in turn. A short experience of this arrangement speedily convinced all observers of its undesirable character. In 1923 Currie announced the appointment of Charles F. Martin as dean of the faculty, without limitation on the term of appointment. Martin was in fact to remain dean until 1936, and he guided the faculty through the most trying years of the depression with great skill. It was probably in anticipation of this faculty reorganization that the Department of Dentistry was recognized as a distinct entity and became in 1920 a separate faculty. The number of students had grown considerably, so that the class size increased from approximately ten in 1913 to around thirty in 1922. By 1931 there were some twenty-one instructors with dental qualifications, but only one, W. Gordon Leahy, held a full-time appointment. Leahy was the director of clinical activities and served in that capacity for thirty-two years. In 1918 the University of Alberta established its own dental school but for six years it taught only the first two years of the program. Students could proceed either to Toronto, to the Royal College of Dental Surgeons, or to McGill, the university with which the Alberta school was affiliated. Ten such Alberta candidates received the McGill D.D.S. between 1923 and 1927, when Alberta's own graduates began to come on-stream. By this arrangement, the McGill policy of college affiliations had again encouraged educational advance in a developing province.42 When dentistry was free from the restraints of the Faculty of Medicine, it took the opportunity to resume its former practice and admit women students into its classes. The first was Florence Johnston, who graduated in 1926.43 Other women followed only at rare intervals and until World War II there were never two women in the same class. It was not until the postwar years that more women entered the faculty and the profession. Within the Faculty of Medicine itself, three areas of activity deserve especial notice, though excellent work was being done in most if not all departments. In the l88os, the Department of Pathology had secured recognition as a major discipline because of the attention paid to it by Osier himself. This had been reflected in the appointment in 1892 of J.G. Adami, but by the end of World War I the discipline and its facilities were ready for major developments. Horst Oertel was, as his name indicates, from a German background, but he had graduated M.S. from Yale, and had done graduate work at London as well as at several German universities. In

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September 1914 Adami had proposed his appointment in the department and he received the rank of assistant professor of pathology. He served as acting head of the department during Adami's absence on war service, and on the professor's retirement in 1919 he was named to succeed him as professor and head of the department. J.M. Elder was the noted surgeon who had rendered outstanding service in the famous No. 3 General Hospital (McGill) in France during the war, and had succeeded to its command in 1917. Returning to the Montreal General Hospital after the war, Elder objected strongly to a member of 'the enemy race' being named to such an important position as head of pathology, and when he could not gain his point, insisted on resigning his own academic rank in protest. In the ensuing publicity, he received considerable support from other veterans, but the faculty gave Oertel, whom they regarded as the North American he clearly was, a strong vote of confidence. The board of governors asked Elder to reconsider his resignation, and when he declined to do so, the board accepted it with regret and confirmed Oertel in his appointment. It says much for the good sense of the university community at that time that it withstood the pressures of the widespread postwar antipathies. Oertel went on to plan and administer the Pathology Building, which was opened in 1924, and continued to direct his department with distinction. In fact he continued to do so until 1938. By that time he was already four years past the normal retirement age, but Chancellor Beatty thought so highly of him that he would not hear of his being retired. Principal Lewis Douglas, however, realizing that the department was again beginning to suffer, insisted that Oertel resign and that a new appointment be made. It was the only matter on which Douglas and Beatty did not see eye to eye; it is ironical that the man whose appointment had caused so much disturbance in 1919 should also be in 1938 a cause of controversy when he was retired. However, in the intervening years, under his direction the Department of Pathology made a solid contribution to the growing reputation of the McGill medical school. The second area requiring particular notice is that of neurology and neurosurgery, which provides a good example of the influence of the University Clinic. A clinical professor of neurology had been appointed in both the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria hospitals, but as Dean Martin said, while the clinical teaching had always been fairly satisfactory, there was a feeling that scientific work was being neglected so that the intention behind the establishment of the University Clinic in the Royal Victoria was not being fulfilled in this area. To remedy this situation a brilliant young neurosurgeon in New York, Wilder Graves Penfield, was invited in 1928 to come to Montreal, and he brought with him William Cone, who had also gained a reputation in neurosurgery. The Departments of Neurology

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and Neurosurgery were combined into one new department with Penfield as chairman and professor of neurosurgery, the existing staff, Colin Russel and F.H. Mackay, as professors of neurology, and Cone as assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery. There were also lecturers, demonstrators, and research fellows. Penfield immediately began to speak of an institute, organized to serve both as a clinical hospital and as a research facility. Despite the rigours of the economic depression, the university was successful in obtaining substantial grants. Quebec subscribed $400,000, Montreal $300,000, and the university provided $125,000 from various research funds. Land was obtained north of the Pathology Building, and the Rockefeller Foundation made yet another grant of $i million. The Montreal Neurological Hospital and Institute of McGill University was opened in 1934. From the beginning it was 'the Institute', but there were always two parts—the hospital, responsible for patient care, and the institute, responsible for research and training. They had separate budgets, and from the first were separate entities incorporated in the same building. This was a new concept—a neuroscience centre, where patients with various neurologic disorders were looked after alongside research laboratories, and where students, both graduate and undergraduate, were learning the art of patient care, and the skills necessary for research. To the regular staff were added consultants from the leading English and French hospitals of the city.44 The building, though separate and independent, was attached by a bridge across University Street to the Royal Victoria Hospital. This bridge was symbolic as well as practical, for the relationships of the institute with the hospital and the university were from the beginning close and constant. Penfield's own personality was a blend of intellectual rigour with a rare capacity for the philosophic, if not the mystical. Taking its cue directly from him, the institute speedily won recognition as a centre where the neurosciences were practised with therapeutic skills and intellectual insights of the highest order, and where healing and research were closely identified to the greater excellence of both. In the third area to claim our attention, other painstaking studies were also producing results which gained international attention. Before he came to McGill in 1928, James Bertram Collip was already well known as a member of the Macleod-Banting team at Toronto engaged in the investigation of insulin. It was he who devised the ethanolic method for the purification of insulin, so that it could be made available to human patients; the process was patented in the names of Banting, Best, and Collip. At McGill

Edward Archibald

James Bertram Collip

Jessie Boyd Scriver, B.A.'i5; M.D., C.M.'22; Hon. D.Sc./79

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he was the Cheney professor and directed the Institute of Endocrinology in which he could pursue his major interest, the biochemistry of animal hormones. In 1930 his discovery of an ovary-stimulating hormone of the placenta not only advanced the understanding of physiological processes, but also offered a wide range of therapeutic applications. Endocrinology and bacteriology were extremely promising fields at this time, and McGill researchers were among the foremost scientists of North America in their eager exploration. Despite the stringencies imposed by the economic depression, the reputation of the faculty was greatly enhanced by its stream of publications, a fact which resulted in the increasing number and value of grants by individuals, foundations, and governments for the support of medical research.45 WOMEN IN M E D I C I N E

Another medical story from the years between the wars is at first sight somewhat removed from the faculty's prestigious research activities, but it testifies to a vision and a determination of a remarkable quality. In 1917 Grace Fairley was lady superintendent of the Alexandra Hospital in Montreal and Mabel Hersey was superintendent of nurses at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Together they became urgently aware of the need for higher standards in nursing education in Canada. In particular they had in mind further education in the way of advanced nursing skills and training in administrative functions which would enable nurses to fill more adequately the supervisory roles becoming available to them. McGill had just inaugurated a degree in household science; the two women began to hope for a university degree in nursing. They succeeded in interesting Charles Martin (he was not then dean) in their proposal, and with his blessing the idea went before the Faculty of Medicine in June 1920. It received general approval both in that body and in Corporation. Fairley and Hersey enlisted the help of Helen Reid, who was also involved in the program of the Department of Social Service. She had displayed exceptional skills and energy in community development, particularly during the war, and proposals for the improvement of the nursing profession appealed to her strongly. Since in recognition of her work for the Canadian Patriotic Fund she had been appointed a Governors' Fellow of the university, and thus a member of Corporation, she was herself influential in the university. She agreed to become chairman of the principal's Advisory Committee on Nursing Education, and largely through her efforts the Quebec chapter of the Red Cross agreed to provide $5,000 a year for three years to finance the project The board of governors welcomed the new venture, but as usual decreed that it must be at no cost to the university. On this understanding

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the McGill School for Graduate Nurses was established in June 1920, the name indicating that it would offer advanced-level training to those who had already gained the R.N. qualification in a hospital nursing school. The curriculum offered a one-year diploma for a course either in public health nursing or in teaching and supervision in schools of nursing. Flora Madeline Shaw, a registered nurse who held teaching qualifications from Columbia University, was appointed the first director. She herself lectured in many subjects, and she received help from interested departments such as social service and the School of Physical Education, and also from individual members of the Medical Faculty, including the distinguished cardiologist and medical historian, Dr. Maude Abbott. The curriculum was further enriched in 1925 and a two-year diploma course was offered. These pioneer ventures in advanced nursing education were at that time only just beginning to be copied elsewhere in Canada, and in 1927 the school could begin to record its successes: of its graduates, twenty-one were superintendents or assistant superintendents of schools of nursing, seven were supervisors of nursing in institutions, and thirty-two were nursing instructors. The executive secretary of the Canadian Nurses Association was also a graduate of the McGill school. It was an astonishing record of achievement in so short a period for a venture with such slender resources. The proposal for a university degree, however, seemed still to have little prospect of fulfilment. Discussion of a six-year course for a Bachelor of Nursing degree moved very slowly, and in 1929 the onslaught of the depression put the whole operation in jeopardy. The McGill governors gloomily reckoned that since its inception the school had cost the university $74,772.07—one cannot but admire the exactitude of the accounting. After a number of warnings, the board announced that unless it could meet its own annual charges, the school would be closed at the end of the 1932—33 session. Its supporters appealed to their friends and despite the depression raised some $17,000, and with these meagre resources the venture managed precariously to survive. Over the next five years the nurses of Canada raised more than $20,000 to maintain the program, and this was at a time when salaries of nurses everywhere were scandalously low. In 1935 the tide began to turn. The revised university statutes gave recognition to the school insofar as they provided that instead of being an ad hoc organization reporting directly to the principal, the McGill School for Graduate Nurses would constitute a regular, if unattached, department, reporting through Senate; but it was only in 1940 that the school was finally placed under the aegis of the Faculty of Medicine. Two years earlier, when the depression was at last showing signs of lifting, the governors had relented their former negative attitude sufficiently to assign $3,000 per annum to help the school to balance its budget. Those who believed in its

The original home of Nursing, Social Work, and Divinity, 3480 University Street

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worth knew that they could not relax their efforts on its behalf, but they were entitled to feel that they had at last achieved permanent recognition in the university's organization. The story of the beginning, and continued growth and sheer capacity for survival of the McGill School for Graduate Nurses is, like that of the McGill School of Social Work, a remarkable testimony to the vision and tenacity of a group of enlightened women. Their contribution to the effectiveness of the medical profession complements by no means unworthily the achievements in teaching and research in the older departments of the faculty.46 The admission of the nursing profession to university status was complemented by a parallel development in the admission of women to medical education. It will be recalled that the McGill faculty had been obdurately conservative on this point, ever since the first women's class valedictorian, Grace Ritchie, had raised the matter in i888.47 The Montreal Council of Women passed a resolution in March 1917, asking the board of governors to open all medical classes and courses to women because of the great need for physicians and surgeons at home and at the war front, but the faculty tabled the matter, even though the board returned it to the faculty for reconsideration. In August, however, two women, Lilian Doris Irwin and Mary Christine Childs, applied for entry to the medical first year, so that they might be able to continue their training in Toronto. They were accepted, but very clearly only for that one year. The pressure continued from a number of sources, inside and outside the university, and the faculty agreed to reconsider the matter at a meeting called for that purpose on 16 April 1918. It was moved by Professors Blackader and Ruttan: That the Faculty recommend to Corporation that women be admitted to the study of medicine, provided they have taken a degree in Arts from a recognized university, or that they take a double course of B.A., M.D. or B.Sc., M.D. at McGill University and thus give evidence that they are sufficiently mature and otherwise qualified to take up the study of the professional branches'. Amended to allow for entry after only two years in the Arts Faculty (which still did not put them on the same basis as men candidates), the resolution was passed, and the way for women to enter medicine at McGill was opened at last. The first class of women graduated in 1922, and numbered five: Winifred Alice Blampin, Jessie Marion Boyd (who became Jessie Boyd Scriver), Mary Christine Childs and Lilian Doris Irwin (the two who had pioneered in 1917), and Eleanor Susan Percival. They were carried off to celebrate by Dr. Maude Abbott, Grace Ritchie's friend, who like her had been denied acceptance by McGill more than thirty years earlier: 'It was a lovely party in the Ritz and was attended by the elite and mighty of University circles. Doctor Abbott was very proud that her beloved Alma Mater was at last bestowing the medical degree on five women undergraduates

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and I do not believe that she ever exhibited one of her rare congenital cardiac specimens with more enthusiasm than she displayed over her human exhibit that day.'48 There was an element of revenge in her triumph which must have tasted very sweet. THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH The most significant educational initiative, however, in the period between the two world wars was undoubtedly the organization of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research because this development greatly benefited the university as a whole. It will be recalled that McGill's first Ph.D. was awarded in physics in 1909. Between then and the end of World War I there had been modest activity at the graduate level directed by the Committee on Graduate Studies. On the average one doctorate and some twenty master's degrees were awarded each year. In 1922, in order to give greater direction and encouragement to this work, and particularly to attract more students, it was decided to create, on the American model, a faculty wholly devoted to graduate studies. The major consequences of this development were threefold. First, because the faculty was given the oversight of graduate work in all undergraduate and professional faculties, it ensured common standards of high academic level across the whole university. Only programs of sufficient merit were authorized to receive the hallmark of a McGill graduate degree; they were to be based on an undergraduate honours program, rather than on a general degree, and they were to require one year of further study and a research thesis for the master's degree, and an additional two years of study and a thesis for the doctoral degree. Second, the faculty established McGill's reputation as a graduate school in all the other universities of Canada, and together with Toronto offered Canadian graduates an alternative to going to the United States or the United Kingdom for further studies. In 1926-27, for example, Nevil Norton Evans in chemistry could point out that 90 per cent of the graduate students in his department had taken their first degree at universities other than McGill. Also, he noted that one in two of those who gained National Research Council scholarships chose to come to McGill.49 As these young scientists graduated and gained posts in other Canadian or American universities, they naturally encouraged their students to apply to their own graduate school, so that the university's national and international reputation grew rapidly. The third benefit McGill derived from the new faculty was that it fostered, more perhaps than any other university structure, a sense of unity among the best minds on the broadening campus. Over the next half a century the university was destined to grow enormously and its fields of interest to

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expand even more broadly, embracing everything from Urdu to transcultural psychiatry and from urban planning to high-energy physics. The danger was that McGill would cease to be a university and become a 'multi-versity' on the American model. In the third quarter of the century there was considerable danger that the various faculties would lose touch with one another, intellectually and emotionally; but the shared forum in which the agriculturalists and musicians, economists and neurophysiologists, met with the rest of the Graduate Faculty to consider each other's degree programs and research proposals preserved the sense of a common enterprise and of a common loyalty. It is from such intangibles that enduring values rise. The membership of the faculty was initially determined as the heads of departments and certain other professors who taught at the graduate level and directed research and who were nominated for this honour by the principal. The faculty could then nominate as associate members other members of the academic staff also active in graduate teaching. It was undoubtedly an economy measure which dictated that no specific appointments would be made to the Graduate Faculty—Principal Currie assured the board of governors that the new venture would not cost above $500 per annum—but this, too, worked in practice to McGill's advantage. All professors, however research-minded they might be, had to hold their primary appointments in undergraduate or professional faculties. In many departments, notably psychology and economics, the practice grew up of having first-year classes taught by senior professors, to ensure that entering students were given the more experienced teaching at the beginning of their course. The result was that a division of the university's academic staff into undergraduate and graduate professors, or teaching professors and research professors, never occurred. Inevitably, some professors paid more attention to research than to teaching, and some undergraduates may have suffered as a result; but most members of the academic staff emphasized the close connection of their two functions and their students gained immensely by being in classes taught by men and women who were themselves working on the growing edge of human understanding. The success of this initiative may be readily seen in the records of the physical science departments. When A.S. Eve returned from service in Britain, he became chairman of the Department of Physics; at the junior level Norman Shaw, who had been appointed to the department in 1908, was soon joined by David Keys and in 1924 by John Stuart Foster. Eve's own work continued to be impressive; between the time the Graduate Faculty was founded and his retirement in 1935, he directed some twentysix master's or doctoral theses. The younger men were also researchminded. In the years 1923-39 the department produced sixty-two theses,

Arthur Stanley Eve

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of which over half were for the award of the Ph.D. The vitality of the department was greatly increased when Foster spent 1926-27 at Niels Bohr's institute in Copenhagen and returned with news of the latest international developments in the discipline. Foster readily accepted the new quantum physics and the developing use of the general theory of relativity, and, after 1928, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, to explain the phenomena of radiation. His senior colleague, L.V. King, made a valiant attempt to develop an alternative theory of gyromagnetic electrons, in conformity with the mechanistic theory of classical physics, inherited from JJ. Thomson. King remained convinced of the adequacy of classical physics until his retirement in 1938, but after 1930 it was becoming evident that it was Foster who had chosen correctly. In that year W.H. Watson, a theoretical physicist who fully accepted the quantum theory, joined the department. By 1936 the McGill cyclotron was already more than a gleam in Foster's eye.50 In the Department of Geology seventy-one theses were accepted in the interwar years. The majority were submitted for the professional M.Sc. degree, which points to another important aspect of the Graduate Faculty: its oversight of master's degrees indicating professional qualifications in various specialties. Some of these degrees were awarded by examination, without the submission of a thesis, and were designated as M.Sc.(Applied). The major success story in graduate studies during these years belongs, however, to the Department of Chemistry where no less than 272 graduate degrees were earned, of which 198 were for the doctorate. This represents an average of thirteen senior awards each year. This achievement was largely due to the example of Otto Maass, who joined the department in 1916 and quickly established himself as an outstanding director of research. More than one-third of the chemistry graduate degrees during the years between the wars were gained under his direction. His own interests were in the phenomena of molecular association between hydrogen halides and organic compounds, particularly the olefins. This work led to fundamental studies of molecular structure in the critical state, and to development of special methods for determining specific heats through adiabatic calorimetry. 'Any layman', wrote R.V.V. Nicholls, 'can appreciate the versatility of his work; only a scientist can appreciate its true value.'51 However, the reputation of the department did not depend on Maass alone. One colleague during the years 1920—29 was George Stafford Whitby, who made fundamental contributions to an understanding of the structure of rubber and of the nature of its vulcanization. He was one of the pioneers in the attempt to produce a synthetic rubber. Whitby left McGill to become the first director of the Division of Chemistry at the National Research Council. When he resigned in 1939 to accept a parallel post in the United Kingdom, he was followed in his Ottawa position by E.W.R. Steacie, a McGill

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graduate who had joined the Chemistry Department in 1928. During the intervening eleven years Steacie had investigated the chemical kinetics of reactions in the gas phase, and also the mechanisms of free-radical reactions, especially those initiated by photosensitization. There were other colleagues who excelled in teaching or research or administration, such as F.M.G. Johnson, who became chairman of the department and successively dean of science and dean of graduate studies; J.B. Phillips, who operating in the Faculty of Engineering modernized the courses in chemical engineering; and W.H. Hatcher, who initiated a thorough revision of the Chemistry Department's undergraduate and graduate curricula. The contributions of scientists such as these made the years between the wars highly productive, so that when the call came for Canadian scientists to share with the British and Americans in the race for the atom bomb, the numbers of those trained by McGill and the quality of their contribution testified, as we shall see, to the good work done in the various departments under the aegis of the Graduate Faculty. But it was not in the sciences alone that the new faculty was able to encourage graduate studies or to foster the research on which they were based. The original departments of study for the M.A. degree were listed as history, political economy, Greek and Latin, French, German, English, Semitic studies, constitutional law, and mathematics, and these departments took their place in the Graduate Faculty alongside the physical, biological, and applied science departments, whose students worked for the M.Sc. degree and then continued their studies for the Ph.D. degree. The humanities and social sciences, however, for a long time retained their preference for the M.A. degree and much of the work produced in these years for the master's degree in arts was in fact of doctoral standard. The sciences, on the other hand, exhibited a decided preference for the Ph.D. degree, though they never allowed the master's degree to degenerate into a 'failed Ph.D. award', as it tended to become in some American universities. The steady growth in the work of the Graduate Faculty is shown by the figures of 34 awards in 1923, comprising 7 doctorates and 27 master's, in comparison with 92 awards in 1939, 34 doctoral degrees and 58 master's. Over these sixteen years approximately 320 Ph.D. degrees had been awarded and some 900 master's. Since in 1939 the total student population of the university was still only 3415, of which 228 were graduate students, the faculty had obviously become a serious part of the enterprise, and was making a notable contribution to the academic life of Canada.52

NOTES I. The other divisions were moved to Ottawa to become part of the research activities of the National Research Institute, which later became the National Research Council of Canada.

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2. Charles A. Sankey, Paprican: The First Fifty Years (Pointe Claire, Quebec, 1976), p. 39. See also G.H. Bindon, 'Output Measures of Cooperative Research: The Case of the Pulp and Paper Institute of Canada', Scientometrics 3, no. 2 (1981): 85-106. 3. The federal government continued its support of the Pulp and Paper Research Institute by providing in 1958 a second and more commodious building at Pointe Claire, and then in 1966 by doubling its size and by leasing these premises to the institute for the traditional dollar. Title to the Pulp and Paper Building on campus was transferred in 1966 to the university, but the premises continued to be used for the institute's research and training program. 4. Sankey, Paprican, p. 29. 5. Casey Wood's tenure of the clinical ophthalmology chair in the University of Illinois was interrupted 1906—9 while he held a similar appointment in Northwestern University, Chicago. 6. Blacker seems to have contributed the money (in total about $100,000) and Wood had the spending of it. 7. See Casey A. Wood, 1856-1942, A Bio-Bibliography, compiled by Effie C. Astbury and circulated by the Graduate School of Library Science, Occasional Paper no. 7 (Montreal, 1981). See also McGill Reporter, 19 November 1975, and McGill News 59, no. 2 (Fall 1978): 14-17. Wood also published Introduction to the Literature of Vertebrate Zoology (London and New York, 1931; rpt. New York, 1974). 8. See Osier Library Newsletters, no. I, June 1969, to no. 40, June 1982, and continuing. See also The Osier Library (Montreal, 1979): 'From the standpoint of gifts of books and manuscripts, Dr. Casey Albert Wood was one of the greatest benefactors of both the Osier and the McGill Medical Libraries— Another of the great benefactors of the Osier Library has been, and remains, the McGill Medical Library itself, because all books published before 1850 have been transferred to it from the Medical Library' (pp. 45, 47). In 1965 the Osier Room was moved intact to the Mclntyre Medical Sciences Building, and enlarged by the addition of the Wellcome Camera and adjacent offices and stack areas. In 1978 it was further enlarged by the W.W. Francis Wing, including the H. Rocke Robertson Room. 9. Between the years 1925 and 1936 the university expended in this venture some $60,000, at a time when student fees were being raised and salaries were being cut. It can hardly be said (as has often been charged) that the university did not make a serious effort to retain the Gest Library; it certainly did not have at that time (quite apart from the niceties of the situation) the resources to service the collection as it deserved. 10. Metallurgy was treated as a separate subject from metallurgical engineering 1899—1921; mining and metallurgical engineering became one department in 1973. See 82.6.5.7. 11. The School of Architecture followed its own rules and continued until 1941 to admit its students directly from junior matriculation. See chapter 12. 12. Vera Brown, B.A. 1912, gained her M.A. in 1913 under the direction of Fryer and Walton, the dean of law; she was appointed resident tutor in history at RVC 1916-17, and lecturer in the Department of History 1916—20; she graduated Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1922 and was professor of history, Smith College, 1924-58. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellow-

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13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

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ship 1931-32, and an honorary D.Litt. in 1960. Her specialty was SpanishAmerican history. This unfortunate decision was made good, at least in part, by the appointment of J.I. Cooper in 1934. Michael Perceval-Maxwell, 'The History of History at McGill', a paper read to the James McGill Society, 2 April 1981, p. II, 82.6.2.12. Perceval-Maxwell quotes a former student writing in the Manchester Guardian, at the time of Waugh's death, that the appointment of Williams and Waugh 'opened a new era in the study of history at McGill— It became not only possible but easy, for a keen student to obtain a first rate undergraduate training, fitting him to rank with the best history schools in England.' Rushton Coulborne, Manchester Guardian, 19 October 1932. George A. Ferguson, 'Psychology at McGill: The First One Hundred Years', a draft of a departmental history, April 1976, p. 20, 82.6.12.10. Ibid., p. 21. Currie was not overly well disposed towards the department ('Are there no simple words in the English language that psychologists might use to make their meaning clear?') and objected to earlier drafts of the tests being labelled McGill University Tests; he thought the reputation of the university was not enhanced by this association. Further revisions were used in the Canadian forces in World War II, under the slightly disguised appellation Revised Examination M. Ibid., pp. 28, 37. Ibid., p. 20. 'The Alumni Book', McGill University School of Social Work (Montreal, 1975), P- L Falk's title was director of social study and training, but the department was the Department of Social Service; in 1922 it became the Department of Social Science and in 1923 gave birth to the School of Social Work. Carl Dawson contributed to Lloyd Reynolds, The British Immigrant: His Social and Economic Adjustment in Canada (1935). His other publications included The Settlement of the Peace River Country: A Study of a Pioneer Area (1934); Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (1936); Pioneering in the Prairie Provinces: The Social Side of the Settlement Process (1940, with R. Younge); and The New North-West (1947). Everett and Helen Hughes, French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943). Forrest Laviolette joined the department in 1940 and stayed until 1948. Oswald Hall, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology I, no. 2 (May 1964): 115-17The Dorothy King Memorial Lectures, McGill University School of Social Work (Montreal, 1971). 'Report to Rockefeller Foundation... Session 1932-33', MUA 641/289, file 'Social Sciences Research Correspondence and Memoranda to Rockefeller Foundation'. Dean Lee's memorandum is undated, but he sent the first draft to Acting Principal F.D. Adams 30 October 1919, and then sent a revised version to Currie, soon after his appointment as principal. MUA 641/293. H.A. Smith, 'The Functions of a Law School', Canadian Law Times 41 (1921): 27-32. In his letter of recommendation Smith described Scott as 'unquestionably the best student who has graduated here in my time'. MUA 641/293, file

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

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'Law Appointments, 1919-26'. For other references to Scott, see chapters 5 and 7. See also D.L. Johnston and S.B. Frost, 'Law at McGill: Past, Present and Future', McGill Law Journal 27, no. I (1981): 31-46. Rapports judidaires de Quebec 47 (1975): 131-45. W.A.F. Hepburn, Report of the Quebec Protestant Survey (Quebec, 1938). See also Statement Concerning the Report, issued by the Protestant Committee (Quebec, 1939), especially pp. 89-98. Wayne Hall, 'Education through the Macdonald Years', a paper presented to the James McGill Society, 4 May 1976, 82.64. Helen R. Neilson, 'Macdonald Had a Life of Its Own', in The McGill You Knew, ed. Edgar Andrew Collard (Don Mills, Ontario, 1975), p. 204. Summary of registration in John Ferguson Snell, Macdonald College of McGill University: A History From 1904-1955 (Montreal, 1963), p. 164. Ibid., p. 63. M-Gov. August 1922. Currie originally told the dissidents that their own future employment depended on their 'loyalty' to Harrison, but it appears that he later revised his judgement of the situation. Elizabeth G. Hall, 'The McGill Travelling Libraries', McGill News 6, no. 3 (June 1925): 19-20. MUA 641/297, file 2, 1920-26. See H.E. MacDermot, The Years of Change, 1945-1970, printed privately for the Montreal General Hospital (1971), p. 13. See D. Sclater Lewis, Royal Victoria Hospital, 1887-1947 (Montreal, 1969), p. 177. Archibald was not only a scientist and a surgeon of great innovative ability, but he also encouraged many younger men. Norman Bethune worked under him 1928-32, during which time Bethune developed the rib-shears which later became standard operating equipment. See also Wilder Penfield, No Man Alone: A Neurosurgeon's Life (Toronto, 1977), pp. 351-55; D. Shephard and A. Levesque, Norman Bethune and His Legacy, Canadian Public Health Association (1982). Foreword to Neurological Biographies and Addresses (London, 1936); cited by H. Rocke Robertson, 'Dedication of the Archibald Amphitheatre', Canadian Journal of Surgery 24, no. 5 (September 1981): 447-48. Mervyn A. Rogers, A History of the McGill Dental School (Montreal, 1980), PP- 33-37Florence Johnston practised first in Montreal and then in Westmount where she specialized in children's dentistry. She later moved to British Columbia and dealt very successfully in real estate. She died in 1970, leaving her estate to the university, which devoted the proceeds to the Florence Johnston Dental Research Fund. J. Preston Robb, 'Institute and Hospital', a paper given at the Wilder Penfield Memorial Meeting, 29 October 1976, MN1Report, no. 1272, 'Wilder Penfield: His Legacy to Neurology'. See also Penfield, No Man Alone, and Jefferson Lewis, Something Hidden: A Biography of Wilder Penfield (Toronto, 1981). Collip 'may fairly be called our most eminent Canadian biochemist'. E.G. Young, The Development of Biochemistry in Canada (Toronto, 1976). See also Michael Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin (Toronto, 1982). During Collip's directorship, the Institute of Endocrinology published some 200 papers.

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46. See further Barbara Logan Tunis, In Caps and Gowns: The Story of the School for Graduate Nurses, McGill University, 1920-1946 (Montreal, 1966). The term 'graduate nurses' was never very appropriate in a university setting, and when the school began to offer a basic nursing program to high-school graduates, it became more anomalous. But the change to McGill School of Nursing was not made until 1973. 47. Advancement i: 285-86. Also, S.B. Frost, 'The Abbotts of McGill', McGill Journal of Education 13, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 253-70. 48. Jessie Boyd Scriver, in The McGill You Knew, ed. Collard, p. 135. See the same author's 'McGill's First Women Medical Students', McGill Medical Journal 16, no. 2 (April 1947): 237-43. Also, Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal, 1981), pp. 280-97. 49. Leo Yaffe, 'A History of the Department of Chemistry: McGill University', a paper given to the James McGill Society, 13 April 1978, 82.6.12.3. 50. Not all the judgements on physics between the wars are laudatory. Yves Gingras, 'La physique a McGill entre 1920 et 1940: La reception de la me"canique quantique par une communaute' scientifique p6riph6rique', HSTC Bulletin (Journal of the History of Canadian Science, Technology and Medicine) 5, no. I (January 1981), says that Watson in his thirteen years directed only two theses and that he 'ne laisse derriere lui aucune trace'. But this is less than fair to Watson, who directed at least six theses, and during the war years was responsible for important contributions to radar antenna research. His book On Understanding Physics, C.U.P., 1938, was well received and reappeared in a new version Understanding Physics Today, C.U.P., 1963. Gingras also faults Foster for continuing to study the Stark effect, which he says for theoretical physics had become a matter of secondary importance after 1930. Lewis Pyenson, 'The Incomplete Transmission of a European Image: Physics at Greater Buenos Aires and Montreal, 1890-1920', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122, no. 2 (April 1978), contends that there was a decline in physics in Canada generally in the 19205 and 19308. Given the economic circumstances of the times, and especially the scarcity of research funds, this judgement is hardly surprising; but when we recall that in those decades the McGill physics team included Barnes, Eve, Keys, King, and Shaw, in addition to Foster and Watson, and that at least three of these men were elected F.R.S. London, we may think that the department maintained its quality surprisingly well. 51. R.V.V. Nicholls, 'A Century and a Quarter of Chemistry at McGill University', Canadian Chemistry and Process Industries (August 1944). 52. 'McGill and Toronto continued to be the only institutions providing a fully developed Ph.D. program; in 1940 they granted 32 and 33 degrees respectively and loo and 140 students enrolled at the doctoral level. The Ph.D. was now available at McGill in economics and political science, history and psychology, but there were few candidates, and Toronto continued to be the only institution with substantial doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences.' Robin Harris, A History of Higher Education in Canada, 1663—1960 (Toronto, 1976), p. 431. But note the comment in the text on the preference of the humanities departments at McGill for the M.A. degree rather than the Ph.D.

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CHAPTER

VII

THE DECADE OF A CHANCELLOR

fter Sir Arthur Currie's funeral, the university needed a little time to recover from that experience and to take stock of its situation. The last five Currie years had themselves not been without strain and tension. After the libel trial in 1928, Currie was absent for a year on sick leave. Hardly had he returned when the crash of the New York stock market threw the finances of the university into confusion, but even before that dire event expenditures had shown an alarming tendency to rise out of control. While Currie was still absent, Chancellor Beatty decided to survey all the departments to determine where costs could be cut back. From his convalescence in England, Currie wrote to Beatty protesting this action as one showing a lack of trust in his leadership. Beatty replied that if he were away sick from his company, and he heard that one of his vice-presidents had instituted a similar survey, he would have been delighted—a statement which Currie may have had some difficulty in believing. The fact is that from this time onward, Beatty began to play an increasingly active role in the day-to-day administration of the university.

a

CAPTAIN OF I N D U S T R Y

Edward Wentworth Beatty was a man of unusual force of personality, a strange mixture of the pragmatic, indeed ruthless, business executive and

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of the community-conscious idealist. He graduated from the University of Toronto in political science in 1898, read law at Osgoode Hall, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1901. His father had been one of William Van Home's most dependable lieutenants in the great enterprise of building a railroad across a continent and young Beatty had grown up in an atmosphere of loyalty to the Canadian Pacific. He did not require persuading therefore to join its legal department Long before he emerged as president, his identification with the initials CPR was complete; it was to become an oft-repeated cliche that he never married a woman because he had early married a railway. It was also to become his proud boast that he carried a privately owned transportation system through the great slump and emerged with it intact and solvent, an achievement which no other major railway system in the world could match. But Beatty was no mere moneymaker. He had an almost mystical faith in the company as a socially beneficent influence in Canadian life. 'Canadian corporations', he once said (he was, of course, speaking primarily of his own), 'are good citizens, and so long as they are guided by men of ability and with ideals, they will not only continue to be good citizens, but will develop from within themselves thousands of men whose standards of citizenship are unconsciously elevated through that association.'1 That was not a casual remark; it was the statement of a deeply held principle, as is shown by his retrospective comment on his choice of a career: I thought if, as a result of the efforts of myself and other officers of this company, I could persuade the people of Canada that there was something in the institution, some propelling force which was even stronger than the mere desire for gain and earn something more than the respect which is naturally accorded to success, to gain admiration for the company as a Canadian citizen, from other Canadian citizens, my work and their work would not be entirely in vain.2 It was soon remarked that when Beatty gave himself to a cause, he gave without reservation. When he became chancellor of McGill, it was natural, therefore, that he would begin to exhibit the same deep loyalty he had previously reserved for the CPR, and it was inevitable that in a period when McGill lacked an effective academic head, Beatty should step into the breach and exercise his own brand of benevolent dictatorship. Consequently, as long as he was chancellor, the principal either had to be a man who could work closely with Beatty or he had to resign. Beatty joined the McGill board in 1919, just a year after he had succeeded to the presidency of the CPR, and when Robert Borden resigned as chancellor, he was, although a Toronto graduate and a governor of

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only a year's standing, elected to succeed him. This occasioned some ill feeling at Queen's University, where he had previously accepted the same office, and there was some lively correspondence between the two universities. Queen's naturally thought it had secured Beatty's loyalty and financial support, and had been particularly pleased because being located in Kingston, it did not have the same ability to capture captains of industry as did McGill, situated in the metropolis. Now Queen's felt with some justice that McGill had stolen its man. Beatty tried to ride out the situation by saying that he saw no clash of interests in being chancellor of two universities at the same time, but Queen's was not to be mollified and indicated that a fairly early resignation would not be out of order. In later years ruffled feelings were forgotten, and Queen's gave Beatty an honorary degree in 1937ECONOMIC DEPRESSION

In 1920 the new chancellor and the new principal had many affinities, and liked one another personally, so that at first they worked well together. In his prime Sir Arthur Currie was not a man to be manipulated by anyone, and until the principal's illness in 1928 the chancellor's role was a properly supportive one. But when Currie went on leave, Beatty secured the appointment of Dean Charles F. 'Martin of medicine as acting principal. Then he let it be known that he would make himself constantly available. This he did, despite his many business preoccupations, and when Currie returned, obviously not fully restored to health, Beatty remained a dominating figure. Currie's further absence on the long voyage to New Delhi and the Far East ensured that Beatty's influence would strengthen rather than diminish. The stock market crash further emphasized the need for the best business acumen to rebuild the university's endowment. In December 1929 the governors were assured that the university had taken advantage of the opportunity to buy into dependable equity stocks at attractive prices, an action which in the long run materially strengthened the McGill investment portfolio. But no one could foresee how long and severe the worldwide depression was to prove, and immediate income needs were not as easily accommodated. Investment income which in 1927 had totalled more than $700,000 sank by 1933 to $437,000 and in 1934 to $392,000. Expenditures had to be held to a minimum. Salaries could be cut, vacancies could be left unfilled, student fees could be raised, and these measures were all employed to ameliorate the heavy deficits being incurred each year, but no appeal to government or to the public, the only possible sources of new endowments, could in the prevailing circumstances be contemplated.

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McGill could only batten down the hatches and wait for better times to come. Beatty's survey of the university had not proved productive of the kind of economy for which the governors had looked. On his return in 1929, partly perhaps to retrieve his own position of leadership, Currie undertook a further, even more extensive survey of all the university's departments and activities, with the same aim in mind but in view of the deteriorating financial situation with an even greater sense of urgency. The replies from the departments make interesting reading, for they all uniformly seized the opportunity to show how with more staff and facilities they could perform more effectively and attain new heights of academic excellence. Hope springs eternal in the academic breast. The governors did indeed find two or three departments and ancillary operations, which they believed to be dispensable, but we have already seen how two of those groups, the School of Social Work and the School for Graduate Nurses, fought back and insisted valiantly on their own continuance. Despite the heroics the first half of the thirties was unavoidably a time of penny-pinching and niggardly administrative economies. It says much for the institution, its staff, academic and non-academic, its graduates, and its loyal supporters that McGill not merely held together, but finally emerged with its ideals intact and its hopes unabashed. THE MORGAN AFFAIR A great deal was to happen before those years could be forgotten. When Currie died in November 1933, Beatty as chancellor again took over the administration of the university. This time he announced that there would be no need to appoint an acting principal, since he would make himself available on a daily basis. He was closely assisted by another of the governors, George McDonald, senior partner in one of Montreal's most prominent accounting firms. McDonald appears to have been the moving spirit behind a thorough overhaul of the university's business structures which took place about this time. In the finance office there was now a bursar and a comptroller, and in the administrative office a secretary and a registrar, each with his own small staff. In 1935 Dr. F. Owen Stredder was appointed bursar, an office he was to retain until the beginning of World War II; since he was McDonald's choice, it was clear that the governor would remain extremely influential in the conduct of the university's business affairs. At the time of his appointment it was particularly stressed that Stredder would have control of the investment portfolio and would report directly to McDonald as chairman of the board's finance committee. Any new principal coming into office was going to find it difficult to discover his own position of authority.

Chancellor Beatty and Principal Morgan

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The year 1934 and the early months of 1935 passed in this way, and by June everyone was more than ready for an announcement that a new principal of McGill had been appointed. True to form, two members of the board of governors had been sent to Britain, charged with securing from the educational and administrative hierarchy the names of persons to be considered. Beatty's biographer tells a story that Sir John Reith, the patrician creator and ruler of the British Broadcasting Corporation, was approached by the McGill emissaries and had decided to accept the appointment, when Beatty intervened and negated the proposal.3 If the story is true, it can only be said that Beatty deserved the man who in June 1935 was finally appointed. Arthur Eustace Morgan was an Englishman who had made a name for himself in the administration of what was then a minor academic institution, Hull College, England. He was a man of the highest ideals, and like Beatty sincerely community conscious. But whereas the chancellor was a man of the right, the new principal was more than a little inclined to the left. It is said that on their first introduction, the two men took an instant dislike to each other. That may be just campus legend, but there is no doubt that they were early in disagreement. One instance of divergent views concerned the attitude the university authorities should adopt towards the small but vocal group of socialist professors and students. The beginnings of their activities can be traced back to Currie's time. On 10 January 1933, for example, the McGill Daily announced that The Alarm Clock would make its debut the next day. The first issue was aptly entitled 'Time to Wake Up'. The editors were all members of the McGill Labour Club, a student socialist organization which had been investigated by the RCMP in 1926. The editors, like some of their professors, believed in change through parliamentary action and they adhered to much the same political principles. They wrote in their first editorial: 'We are adherents, therefore, on the political side, of the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, on the educational side, of the League for Social Reconstruction.'4 Satirical and informative articles appeared, describing the effects of the depression and criticizing the established system. Protest from the Montreal business community was swift and men like J.W. McConnell, the prominent McGill governor, were soon complaining that the university's reputation was being jeopardized. The publication was immediately banned from sale on the campus, although it continued to be sold in neighbouring stores, and a second issue appeared in November 1933. Another student publication also made its appearance in 1933: this one was called appropriately The Black Sheep, for it was published by a group of suspended McGill Daily students. The Black Sheep was even more critical of the established McGill community, to the extent that even the McGill

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Daily attacked it, accusing it of mud slinging' and 'yellow journalism'. Like other publications which had preceded it, The Black Sheep was soon banned because, according to a Montreal Star article of 9 March 1933, 'the second number has aroused a storm of protest from parents, certain of the clergy of the city and even of McGill students themselves.'5 We have already discussed the McGill Fortnightly Review. The moving spirits were A.J.M. Smith and Frank Scott and the Review ran successfully for two sessions. Then, as student groups do, the members went their various ways and the magazine terminated. But Scott was given a junior appointment in the Faculty of Law, and so remained a permanent influence in McGill affairs. He came of very respectable ancestry. His grandfather had been a surgeon on the staff of the Montreal General Hospital and professor of anatomy at McGill. His father, who had been an extremely popular padre in World War I, was archdeacon of Quebec and was well known as a writer of religious verse. His brother was at this time a rising member of the Quebec Bar—he later became a judge. While still a law student, Frank Scott had not only repudiated the current literary standards as a legacy of the Victorian era, but also many of the moral standards of the prevailing capitalism of his age. As a student poet and a political revolutionary, Scott could be indulgently disregarded; as a junior staff member writing mordant attacks on the Canadian establishment and on the practices and ethics of big corporations headed by men who were the governors of McGill, he could not be so easily overlooked. By the time Morgan arrived on campus, Scott was often appearing in print, writing such letters as the one published in the Canadian Unionist in February 1936. In it he complained that the trade unions were not sufficiently political; that they teach the workers that politics and the struggle for a higher standard of living are separate things; in reality they are both part of the same thing. The fight must be carried on all fronts If the theory of the Canadian Unionist is wrong and capitalism cannot produce plenty (and personally I do not need another hundred years of social injustice, periodic depressions and wars to prove the point) then nothing short of hard clear thinking will lead us into a better society— The workers will get what they want when they know what they want and how to get it.6 Beatty sent a copy of this letter to Morgan, commenting that Scott makes it clear that he is directly opposed to the attitude... of trying cooperation between labour and capital as the best solution of our difficult problems, and urges Canadian labour leaders to turn in the

F.R. Scott

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direction of socialism. Professor Scott is, of course, not guilty of any impropriety in expressing these views and there cannot be the least question of his right to express them; neither should his frankness prejudice anyone against him in any way. I am venturing to submit the evidence to you, however, to show that no exaggeration is made when it is alleged that our university socialists are not only preaching socialism constantly, but are more active in trying to induce others to accept their doctrine than any other class of propagandists in the country.7 Scott, of course, was not alone. In the Department of Economics there was Eugene Forsey, who like Scott contributed in 1935 to Social Planning for Canada, a publication of the League for Social Reconstruction. In 1936 Forsey also contributed to Towards the Christian Revolution. Both he and Scott were in close touch with J. King Gordon, a professor of Christian ethics at the United Theological College. The YMCA movement, which had been so strong at McGill at the turn of the century, had given birth to the Student Christian Movement. At McGill, and especially with Gordon as a leading spirit, the organization had become very politically minded, and was considered by Morgan's time a centre of socialist propaganda. The fact that the socialism claimed to be Christian rather than Marxist was a distinction that seemed to many to be negligible. But none of these teachers and movements were as much of an embarrassment to the board of governors as was the Social Science Research Project, for this was an activity conceived and sponsored by the university itself. That story has already been told in some detail. When Morgan arrived the project was five years old. Leonard Marsh and his collaborators were producing a stream of studies and reports, many relating directly to social and employment conditions in and around Montreal, and others relating to the western provinces or to Canada in general. With titles like Employment Research, 1934, Industrial Diagnosis, 1935, The Railway Workers, 1936, and The British Immigrant, 1936, the studies gave the appearance of being more socialistic than perhaps they were, especially (since each ran to several hundred pages) to those who were content to know them only by the titles. In his reply to Beatty on the matter of Scott's letter to the Canadian Unionist, Morgan wrote: It may well be that university teachers, readier with the tongue and the pen, are more prone to expression of their ideas. Yet I doubt whether they are really as prolific verbally as the politicians. I am glad you write to me, although I have no solution to offer for a problem which will I hope always be with us. I hope, because

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as I see it the only condition of its solution is the establishment of an authoritarian state, which God forbid!... All that we can actually do is to impress on them at all seasons that rights imply responsibilities.8 This was cold comfort to the chancellor and his fellow governors. Beatty had just established the governors' guarantee fund, whereby for four years, 1935-39, the members would agree to subscribe among themselves sufficient funds to balance the university's books. The agreed amount was $186,000 annually, and though the total sum was not needed each year, the governors covenanted according to their ability and made their contributions pro rata. Seeing that they were carrying the university financially, it seemed to the governors only just that some of its professors should be presenting the capitalist view of society as vigorously as the socialists were advocating theirs, and that their chief executive officer might bestir himself to see that a balance of views was more nearly achieved. With some justification they began to suspect that their new principal was himself somewhat leftward leaning. Had they looked a little more closely into his record of service with the Workers' Educational Association in England, they might have known better what to expect. Whereas Beatty had in a number of speeches stressed the university as the place where outstanding individuals were nurtured, Morgan declared in one of his first speeches to graduates: 'The problem before the universities is to produce great societies, not great men.'9 The contrast pointed to a basic difference in life philosophies. The actual parting of the ways was reached, however, on the more practical matter of finance; who should control the university budget? McDonald as chairman of the board's finance committee and Stredder as bursar directed the university's finances, and when early in April 1937 Morgan wanted to discuss the disposition of a particular fund and its income, McDonald replied that he was prepared to discuss such matters only with the bursar. Morgan, he said, should attend to the academic affairs of the university, and leave finances to the bursar and to the finance committee of the board, to whom the bursar reported.10 Morgan repeated this conversation to Beatty, complained of McDonald's 'incomprehensible attitude' and of his 'puerile bad manners', and added 'something has to be done to put an end to a state of affairs which is becoming intolerable.'11 A week later the matter was raised at a meeting of the executive committee of the board and there was a heated exchange between Morgan and McDonald. The principal recognized that the committee was not prepared to give him its support, and, after four days of deliberation, he wrote to the chancellor, submitting his resignation. Beatty accepted it with the comment, 'The

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action you have taken is in accordance with [the governors'] views as communicated to you in our interview.'12 It is fairly obvious that Morgan had been left with little choice in the matter. On campus there was only a general awareness that Morgan and the governors had failed to cooperate with each other; had the actual point of disagreement become public knowledge there might have been considerable support for Morgan. As it was, there was very little. He had unfortunately succeeded in alienating the sympathies of almost all who had any personal contact with him. This was particularly true of the members of the academic staff. Too many stories are told of an almost incredible insensitivity for them all to be apocryphal. His kindest critic was perhaps his secretary, Dorothy McMurray, who had served Currie with great admiration and with immense ability, and was willing to give the same loyalty to Morgan; but even she noted that 'he often appeared arrogant and he was in fact a somewhat strange mixture of the autocrat and the socialist.'13 His one major achievement was that he oversaw the building of the first men's residence, Douglas Hall. But to many on campus, nothing was more typical than that he should change the colour of the McGill letterhead from the traditional red to pale blue. Blue was the colour of Hull College from which he had come—but it was also the colour of the University of Toronto. In university life large mistakes of policy can be understood and in time forgiven, but relatively small mistakes of insensitivity are not readily forgotten; even the students (who saw him at his best and were generally disposed to like him) realized that a man who could paint McGill blue simply had to go. For the university the Morgan episode was a painful, but short-lived, experience, which was best soon forgotten. For the man it was a blow from which he never recovered.u As Morgan departed for England, the board of governors was appointing the Macdonald College vice-principal, W.H. Brittain, acting principal of the university. The board then charged the chancellor with the responsibility of finding a new principal, which is another way of saying that Beatty had decided this time to see to the matter personally. THE CHANCELLOR'S CHOICE By October Beatty was ready with the name of his candidate. He was Lewis Williams Douglas, an American, but the grandson of James Douglas, who had served as a governor of McGill, 1911-19, and who had been a major benefactor of the university. Of the more than $300,000 which James Douglas had given to McGill, a large part had been designated for the building of the first men's residence, which had just been opened with the

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name Douglas Hall. James Douglas' father, Lewis' great-grandfather, had been a very respected physician in Quebec City and a pioneer in the medical treatment of the insane.15 He had also been closely connected with Morrin College, the institution affiliated with McGill in Dawson's time for the award of degrees in arts and law. Both the grandfather and the greatgrandfather had received honorary degrees from McGill, so that though not a Canadian, Lewis Douglas could be looked upon as standing very much in the McGill tradition. His own curriculum vitae was impeccable. A graduate of Amherst College, with a postgraduate year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he had taught history, had served commendably in the American army, had won election to the Arizona state legislature and to Congress, and had served in the presidential Cabinet as director of the budget, J 933~34 in the exciting beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration. He was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of numerous other prestigious boards and associations. Since 1934 he had been vice-president of the American Cyanamid Company. From Beatty's point of view there could hardly have been a more fitting candidate for the principalship of McGill University in all of North America. We can be sure that the chancellor pointed out to his fellow governors that Rockefeller trustee Douglas could be expected to prove a beneficial influence on the university's finances, and a positive influence on the university's reputation in the capitalism-socialism debate. The board readily accepted the nomination and appointed Lewis Williams Douglas principal and vice-chancellor as from I January 1938. This was the first occasion on which, in accordance with the 1935 revision of the statutes, the Senate had been invited to express an opinion on the board's choice, and support had been ready and unanimous. THE END OF DEFICITS

The new principal early fulfilled many of the expectations that had been aroused. The Great Depression was at last beginning to lift and a new mood of cautious business optimism was beginning to emerge. Douglas was too senior in matters financial for George McDonald and Owen Stredder to exclude him from financial policy decisions, as they had excluded Morgan, and by the end of the year the board decided to abolish the finance committee and to combine its functions with those of the executive committee, of which the principal was himself a member. In any case, he quickly proved to be a man after McDonald's own heart—for colleges, at least, he believed in balanced budgets. His secretary, Mrs. McMurray, recalled her experiences of working with him:

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When he found that the proposed McGill budget for the next year exceeded the expected income by $138,000 he said to me, 'Oh, this will never do, deficits are horrible things, expenditures must fit income.' By such measures as disconnecting telephones which were being paid for in empty offices all over the University during the summer months, by doing without a demonstrator here, an extra assistant there, by pruning remorselessly on even such small things as supplies and stationery, the budget was indeed brought within the income, and the Governors were duly astonished.16 POSITIVE POLICIES

But if Douglas knew how to save money, he also knew when to spend it. Proposals to close the Library School and the School for Graduate Nurses were delayed until sufficient additional funding could be secured; in the case of the latter school, the university was persuaded to go further and guarantee an annual subvention of $3,000 if the school by fees and donations could raise the rest of the funds required. The Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium, a project which the Graduates' Society had worked on for many long years with no result, was approved both as to plans and to financing, and tenders were called in May 1939, a year after Douglas had arrived. With regard to pathology, he recognized that the time had come for a reorganization which would require capital funds of the order of $90,000 and an increased annual cost of $10,000, and he recommended that the board authorize these expenditures. The most imaginative plans, however, were those for a building to house something new in the way of university equipment—a radiation laboratory equipped with a cyclotron. This would cost in the order of $100,000. The proposal had been under discussion before Douglas arrived and, at his first meeting with the board in January 1938, the executive committee had recommended its acceptance. The board decided to defer any decision, but by the end of Douglas' first year the project had been authorized as to site and structure, it being agreed that the cyclotron itself would be built with funds from the National Research Council. With additional expenditures of this kind in view, and with the 1932 decreases in academic salaries still not fully restored, in May 1939 there was renewed discussion of a public financial appeal. A committee to organize such appeals had been formed in February 1937, but the times had not then been sufficiently propitious. By way of preparation for the campaign, J.W. McConnell reported that he had succeeded in privately raising pledges of some thirty to forty thousand dollars to be contributed annually for four years. The principal drew attention to the recent action of the

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provincial legislature in granting the university $150,000 annually as a contribution to operating funds.17 The financial clouds were beginning to lighten; the new principal was giving the university confidence in the future. A W E L L - C O N S I D E R E D PROGRAM The matter of McGill's unfortunate reputation as a centre of socialist propaganda, however, still remained. In February 1939, thirteen months after his arrival on campus, Douglas wrote Beatty a letter marked Very private and confidential'. I very briefly discussed with you yesterday the results of my first opportunity to observe members of the University staff teaching and lecturing within the area covered by the Social Sciences. I regret to have to say that my observations more than completely confirm rumors that I have heard and superficial impressions that I had previously had, as to the quality and substance of the material given to the students. The evidence, as I view it, is overwhelmingly convincing that there is not a single man on the staff within the field under discussion competent to present and to support with evidence so plentifully available the alternate point of view to that of the collectivists. I do not mean to give the impression that the collectivist philosophy —if philosophy is what it is—should not be presented in a college or a university—for this point of view is part of the world in which we live and therefore one with which students should be acquainted —but I do mean to say that it is an unfortunate institution which does not make available to the students courses in which the premises of collectivism are examined, the facts on which those premises rest investigated, and the result of experimentation all over the world studied. I feel quite strongly that it would be a great mistake to take any precipitate or immediate action, but I feel, too, that given a little patience and a well-considered programme, the necessary correctives can be applied here. A part of this programme, if perhaps not all of it, I have discussed with you at various times during the course of the last eight months. I am now prepared to proceed to put it into effect, if you approve. The 'well-considered program' he proposed was threefold: first, a redefinition of tenure, whereby the junior staff were clearly seen not to possess it;

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second, promotion only for 'a list of carefully selected men in all grades entitled to promotion—promotion in salary, if not in rank, with an eye particularly, though not exclusively, to the men in the grades of Assistant Professor down'. The result to be expected was that 'we will be able to calculate on a fairly rapid turn-over of younger men, selecting here and there, as they pass through, those whom we think competent to carry on as the older men retire.' It was not spelled out, but it is obvious that 'collectivists', as Douglas termed the socialist-minded element among the McGill junior academics, were to be pressured out and replaced by less doctrinaire, 'more competent' exponents of the social sciences. Third, more senior teachers, like Scott, who by this time was an associate professor, or Carl Dawson, who was already a full professor, were to be neutralized by contrary voices: I suggest that the University, as distinct from departments or faculties, establish two visiting professorships, of terms not to exceed three years, one in Political Economy and one in History, and that the University be prepared to pay whatever may be necessary, that is, within the limits of expediency, of course, but I should say up to $10,000 a year, and to provide a sufficient sum for investigation and research work up to, let us say $3,000 a year. A man of the calibre of Lionel Robbins in Political Economy should be invited to occupy that visiting chair. The presence in the University and in the community of a man of his competence and of his ability to express his point of view, carefully documented with the wealth of evidence which he has now at his disposal, and with evidence which is available to him on this side of the water, will, I am sure, have a most beneficial effect on the members of the staff who now, without any competent resistance from any quarter, gaily and irresponsibly present to the students unrefuted, and untested, material, analyses of experience, and theoretical programmes, which, to state the case mildly, find little, if any, support in the experiments of contemporary society throughout the world, or historical evidence in the epoch preceding the nineteenth century.18 This was the plan which Douglas proposed, and which he and Beatty set out to put into operation. THE PLAN I M P L E M E N T E D

The first two parts of the plan were quickly put into effect. The revision of the statement on tenure dealt only with ranks below full professor. Those

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currently in the associate professor rank were recognized as having tenure; assistant professors over forty and having ten years' service, or being fortyfive and having five years of service, were also granted tenure. Those in lower ranks were ruled not to possess it, and tenure was itself more carefully defined than it had been previously. The stage was thus set for the quiet weeding-out of the so-called incompetent younger men. Douglas departed before the plan had time to take full effect, but the dean of arts and science was taken into his confidence and accepted his strategy. Some of the younger men soon began to get the message, since promotion and salary increases were not coming their way. The major casualties were Leonard Marsh and Eugene Forsey. One of Douglas' last actions before leaving office was to inform Marsh, by means of a letter signed by the bursar, that with the termination in 1940 of the Rockefeller grant for the Social Science Research Project, his appointment as lecturer in the Department of Economics would likewise terminate. Douglas was also responsible for the letter, which was actually signed by his successor, Cyril James, informing Forsey that his appointment would not be renewed when it terminated in 1941.19J. King Gordon had long since been eased out of his teaching post in the United Theological College. The Douglas-Beatty strategy proved remarkably enduring. The effect was that the thrust of social science research in the university was dissipated, and never again achieved the same sense of a unified purpose. Nevertheless, as we shall see, what had been accomplished by the Social Science Research Project was to have important results for Canada. The third part of the Douglas program ran into some difficulty. At the March 1939 meeting of Senate, the principal reported that he had invited a distinguished English economist as visiting professor for three years. He acknowledged that Professor Hemmeon, chairman of the Department of Economics and Political Science, had been greatly offended in that his department had not been consulted. The principal apologized for his lack of courtesy in not informing Hemmeon of his intention, but insisted that as principal he had the right, subject to the approval of the board of governors, to make such appointments. After discussion, Senate passed a motion regretting the discourtesy to the Department of Economics and Political Science, but approving the policy of visiting professorships, and recommending the proposed appointment to the board. At the next meeting of the governors, the principal's actions were approved and the invitation sustained. But then the man invited had to renege on his acceptance, and Douglas circumspectly did not try to make another three-year appointment. He had, however, already invited Sir Henry Clay, economic adviser to the Bank of England, Leo Woolman, professor of political economy at Columbia, and Robert Warren, formerly professor of philosophy at the

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2O3

American College of Constantinople, each to deliver three lectures on The State in Society'. He asked the chancellor to preside at the first lecture and he induced the governor general as Visitor to the university to preside at the last. The prestigious character of the series was thus truly emphasized, and in addition the lectures were to be published.20 Douglas' intention to counteract the radical element within the university was beginning to be realized. THE ISSUE OF FREE SPEECH Lewis Douglas was not simply a reactionary conservative. He seems genuinely to have believed that the campus should be the forum for freely expressed opinion from all sides. It seemed to him, when he arrived in 1938, that the collectivists had been going largely unchallenged and he wanted to redress the balance. He certainly was not in favour of the repression of free speech, as a number of incidents clearly indicate. It has to be remembered that in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and the aggressive propagandizing of Russian communism, the political atmosphere, even in Canada, was supercharged with ideological emotions. The ultraconservative Union Nationale regime in Quebec had enacted repressive laws against communist propaganda and had made it an offence for any person or institution to possess communist literature, even Das Kapital. In Douglas' first year, some McGill students invited the leader of the Canadian communist movement to a meeting on campus, and the Student Council was at a loss to know whether to veto the meeting or to allow it to proceed. When they appealed to the principal, he refused to make the decision for them, but promised his support whatever they decided, even if it involved imprisonment for them or for himself.21 In taking this attitude, Douglas was maintaining the same stance on this issue as had his predecessor, Principal Morgan, but he did so without hiding or forsaking his own views on the matter under discussion, as further incidents illustrate. Professor Percy Corbett of the Law Faculty argued in a speech given in January 1939 for a closer union of Canada and the United States, which he believed would remain neutral in any forthcoming European war. He advocated that Canada should remain neutral also. The editors of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph commented adversely on this speech in an editorial under the heading 'What's the Matter with Old McGill?' The editor sent a copy to Beatty, as chancellor of the university, who in his reply refused any curtailment of academic liberty, and said that Corbett's political views should be dissociated from his university appointment. Beatty, however, then wrote to Douglas:

Principal Lewis Douglas Dean Percy Corbett

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What rather disturbs me is that those who hold the opinions expressed by Professor Corbett, and as I understand is the case, Professor Scott, Mr. Forsey and other members of our staff, are accepted in the public mind as speaking for intellectual men in general— Not as a matter of university discipline at all, but as part of the general policy of maintaining the public confidence in the University, could anything be done, not to discourage Professors Corbett et al, but to persuade other officers of McGill to participate more actively than they do in the discussion of public affairs of this sort?22 It was the same plea that he had made to Morgan, but whereas Morgan had piously replied, 'I have no solution to offer for a problem which will I hope always be with us', Douglas had come up with a program. Undesirable influences were to be phased out, and new voices, expressing more acceptable views, were to be brought in. But that did not mean that in the meantime he was prepared to suffer fools gladly. In November 1939, after war had commenced, Professor Adair of the History Department argued publicly that Britain should never have given a pledge to Poland, and was therefore responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. He was violently attacked in the Montreal press for expressing such 'stupid' views, but some student voices on campus were raised in his defence, saying that the issue was one of the freedom of speech. Douglas disagreed, saying that for him it was the issue of responsibility in wartime.23 It was a difficult period, and as an American citizen Douglas was in a particularly difficult position. Nevertheless he maintained a liberal stance without forgoing his own opinions; he also sought to influence events so that his own views would prevail. It was all in accordance with the 'wellconsidered program'. A NEW A P P O I N T M E N T IN COMMERCE One way in which Douglas sought to build for the future was to initiate a new appointment in the School of Commerce. As a businessman, he had a particular interest in the success of the commerce course, and it was obvious that it had hitherto not performed very creditably. The two-year program was for a diploma rather than a degree; the lecturers were mostly supplied by the Department of Economics and Political Science, which regarded the school as of secondary importance. The one so-called full-time appointment was that of the director, R.M. Sugars, an accountant who had left England to practise his profession in Spain, where he had learned to appreciate the Spanish language and literature. After coming to McGill, he had begun lecturing in Spanish, and for many years he had done double

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duty as director of the School of Commerce and as a professor of Spanish. There were those who said that the teaching of Spanish had long become his major interest and concern. In 1939 he was due to retire, and Douglas, with his many contacts in the world of American finance, looked for someone who would give the school the academic overhaul it badly needed. But he also wanted someone who would eminently qualify as a teacher in the social sciences, and would disseminate the kind of influence that Douglas thought desirable. His choice lighted on Professor James of the Wharton School of Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, and he proposed that he be invited to Montreal to reorganize the McGill commerce operation. Frank Cyril James was a young Englishman who had won a travelling scholarship from the London School of Economics to the University of Pennsylvania. Having gained his Ph.D. there, he had risen steadily through the academic ranks until, at thirty-two, he reached the level of full professor of finance and economic history. By 1938 he had already an enviable publication record, and he then produced two volumes of a major work, The Growth of the Chicago Banks. In the United States he had made his mark as a member of the Advisory Committee on Research for the Association of Reserve City Bankers, and also as a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and indeed he had acted as liaison man between these two distinguished groups. He was also a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His experience at the Wharton School of Commerce in Pennsylvania, his professional standing as an economist, and his involvement with the banking industry in the United States qualified him as an ideal choice not only to reorganize the McGill School of Commerce, but also to support that alternative to the collectivist interpretation of society which Douglas and Beatty believed to be greatly needed. But the war clouds in Europe were growing ever more threatening. As we have seen, some few members of staff and the student body were expressing the view that Canada should stay neutral in the approaching conflict, whereas the great majority believed that Canada and particularly McGill should respond with unquestioning patriotism to the call of King and Commonwealth. As an American citizen, Douglas felt his position keenly and decided that despite his recent arrival he ought to resign. At the same May 1939 meeting at which he proposed the James appointment, he informed the board of governors of his intention, and the date of 31 December was reluctantly agreed for the resignation to take effect. But events moved more swiftly than expected. Germany invaded Poland and a state of war was declared by Great Britain on 3 September, the day that James arrived in Montreal. Canada's own declaration followed seven days later.

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20y

The search for a new principal, like so much else, was thrown into great confusion. At the end of October Beatty and Douglas called the newly appointed director of the School of Commerce into the principal's office. James has placed on record the words that the chancellor used on this occasion: 'You already know that Lewis Douglas wants to go back to Washington. In normal circumstances McGill would search for a really distinguished successor in Canada and in the United Kingdom, but at the present time all such people are being absorbed into the war effort The Board of Governors would therefore like you to take on the job.'24 In this blunt, uncomplimentary manner the invitation was given which determined the university's future for nearly a quarter of a century. A C O N T I N U I N G POLICY

Douglas departed for Washington and became first director of the War Shipping Administration and later the United States ambassador to Britain.25 Although he had been at McGill so briefly, he had influenced its future development profoundly. A last instance of that influence remains to be noticed. At the end of the Currie period, it had been recognized that the university statutes were in need of revision. The task was given to Wilfrid Bovey, Currie's long-time assistant, and he took the opportunity to introduce a number of quite radical changes. As regards the board of governors only one amendment was introduced: the requirement that members should be 'Laymen of some Protestant denomination' was excised, though, as we shall see, the tradition prevailed for another generation. The old body Corporation was renamed Senate and given considerable new powers, while those of the principal were curtailed. His prerogative of nominating all candidates for academic appointment was modified in that selection boards (of which the principal would be a member) would nominate full professors, and deans of faculty would nominate junior appointments through the principal. Further, the principal could suspend any member of the teaching staff", but must then report his action to Senate, which would make its own report to the board of governors, as it saw fit. The Senate would also be consulted by the board as to the choice of the person to be appointed as principal. The new version of the statutes came into effect in 1935, when there was no principal in office. Most of these reforms were to be made effective in the 19606 either by amendment of the statutes or by the modification of customary practices, but in the 1930$ they were too liberal for Douglas, who initiated a further revision of the statutes in 1939, which gave back to the principal the prerogatives he had lost. The principal again had the power to make nomina-

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tions for all academic appointments; he remained chairman of Senate, but he himself reported directly to the board. When Ernest Brown, the dean of engineering, demurred at this turning back of the democratic clock, Douglas replied: 'You are, I think, overlooking the fact that practically all presidents and principals of universities on this continent possess even greater authority than is proposed under the impending statutes.'26 The new version of the statutes was enacted 28 November 1939, too late to be of any significance for Douglas, but just in time for James to inherit the restored prerogatives. It was the Douglas concept of principalship which made the James style of administration possible. By the time James came into office on I January 1940, the problem of collectivist philosophies had taken on wholly new proportions, and the rules for its resolution had completely changed. The two major protagonists on the side of tradition were removed from the scene: Douglas had been asked to continue as a member of the board of governors, but he did so only formally for two years, and then his duties in the United States led him to resign; Beatty succumbed in December 1939 to a severe illness which prevented him from taking part in the further direction of the university. But the two kingmakers had chosen their man well, and in Cyril James the university received a leader who continued very much, if not along lines they had charted, at least in ways of which they would not have disapproved.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

D.H. Miller-Barstow, Beatty of the C.P.R. (Toronto, 1951), p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., pp. 151-52. MUA 641/276, file 'Student Activities; Alarm Clock Magazine, Morals', 1933. 5. MUA 641/275, file 'Student Activities; Black Sheep Magazine, Morals and Discipline', 1932-33. This paragraph has been taken substantially from Eleni Bakopanos, 'Arthur Eustace Morgan: The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time?' McGilliana, no. 9, March-September 1980.

6. Canadian Unionist, February 1936. 7. Beatty to Morgan, 28 December 1936, MUA 641/279, file 'Chancellor Sir E. Beatty-Morgan'. 8. Ibid., 30 December 1936. 9. See Miller-Barstow, p. 153. The speech was reported in the Montreal Star, j October 1935. 10. Morgan wrote a memorandum of this conversation and McDonald agreed that it reported his remarks correctly. MUA 641/279, file 'Chancellor Sir E. Beatty-Morgan'. 11. Morgan to Beatty, 10 April 1937, MUA 641/282, file 'A.E. Morgan's Quarrel with G.C. McDonald'. 12. Beatty to Morgan, 22 April 1937, MUA 641/279.

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13. Dorothy McMurray, Four Principals of McGill (Montreal, 1974), p. 36. See also Eugene Forsey, 'A Genius for Making Himself Disliked', in The McGill You Knew, ed. Edgar Andrew Collard (Don Mills, Ontario, 1975), PP226-37. 14. Morgan returned to England and became warden of Toynbee Hall, a university welfare settlement in London's East End. He never re-entered academic life. He died in 1972. 15. The Verdun Protestant Hospital for the Insane was renamed the Douglas Hospital in 1965 to honour the Quebec physician. See C.H. Cahn, Hdpital Douglas: 100 ans d'histoire et deprogres/Douglas Hospital: too Tears of History and Progress, printed privately for the hospital (1981). 16. McMurray, Four Principals, pp. 41-42. 17. The University de Montreal had asked in 1935 for a large subvention—$3 or $4 million in capital funds and a yearly grant of $600,000. McGill as a private university could not expect the same kind of support, but was able to demonstrate need, and in 1939 was promised $1.5 million over ten years. 18. Douglas to Beatty, 3 February 1939, MUA 641/279. The literary style of Douglas' correspondence leaves much to be desired. 19. James referred to decisions taken in May 1939, before he became principal; Forsey denied knowledge of them. He departed for Harvard with a Guggenheim Fellowship. McGill gave him an honorary degree in 1966. See correspondence Bn. 20. The war seems to have prevented the publication in book form, but the series was fully reported in the McGill Daily, 23 January through 15 February 1939. 21. Douglas' own account of this incident is to be found in The McGill You Knew, ed. Collard, p. 251. 22. Beatty to Douglas, 20 October 1939, MUA 641/267, file 'Freedom of SpeechRadicalism'. 23. Michael Perceval-Maxwell, 'The History of History at McGill', a paper presented to the James McGill Society, 2 April 1981, 82.6.2.12. 24. Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew, p. 251. 25. On leaving McGill, Douglas first became president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. He served as U.S. ambassador to Britain 1947-50, and then resumed a distinguished career in business. He died 7 March 1974. 26. The Brown-Douglas exchange of letters is to be found in MUA 641/284,

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CHAPTER

V I II

THE YEARS OF WORLD WAR II

W

hen Cyril James took office as principal on the first day of January 1940, he was thirty-six years of age. He had had no major administrative experience, and both the university and the country of Canada were new to him. He had everything to learn, but would have little time in which to do it; the chancellor, who would have been his mentor, had been removed by illness, and the university and the country were facing the demands of a newly declared war. But the McGill community was quickly to discover that they had acquired a fast learner, a man of immense capabilities and a personality worthy to rank with any of his predecessors. For the next twenty years James was to prove the driving force in the university's development, at a time of great growth and wide-ranging expansion. THE ELEVENTH PRINCIPAL

Frank Cyril James was born in London, England, on 8 October 1903. His father was a minor official with the Metropolitan Water Board, and the family lived in Stoke Newington in humble circumstances. Cyril, the eldest of three boys, had no hope of schooling beyond the elementary level unless he was fortunate in the eleven-plus examinations to win a place in a secondary or grammar school. This he failed to do, but succeeded two years

Principal F. Cyril James

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later at the intermediate scholarship level and so entered Hackney Downs School. Three years later he stumbled at the next step also, the London University matriculation examination, success in which would have qualified him to enter the university-stream sixth form. But a dedicated schoolmaster encouraged James and a few other boys in the same situation to attempt matriculation again, with a view to constituting a new venture, a commercial sixth form. This time James was successful and he remained at school to take the first part of the London Bachelor of Commerce degree. His performance in that examination gained him a free place with a modest stipend for a year at the London School of Economics. Among his teachers were William Beveridge, Clement Attlee, Hugh Dalton, and R.H. Tawney. But the stipend terminated at the end of the first year, and the family circumstances were such that he had to seek employment. He found it in a bank, as a very junior clerk. He could, however, continue to use his tuition scholarship in the school's evening division, and this he did to such good effect that he won one of the very few Sir Edward Cassells Travelling Scholarships. Since the school's regulations permitted him to spend his third year at another institution, he decided, on the strength of the Cassells scholarship, to enrol in an American university. Sent by the bank on messenger duties to Sir Henry Thornton, then chairman of the Great Eastern Railway, James became acquainted with him, and was thus influenced to choose the University of Pennsylvania, of which Thornton was an alumnus. Thornton later became president of the Canadian National Railways, and James was able to renew this acquaintance in Canada. While the scholarship gave the young student travelling and subsistence funds, it made no provision for American-style tuition fees, and these appear to have hit him as a very unpleasant surprise. There was no alternative but to find employment, and again he turned to banking, as well as to other more traditional ways of working one's way through college. Somewhat surprisingly he was allowed to register in graduate school and by June 1924 he had completed all the requirements for the M.A. degree, including a thesis on the economics of international shipping. However, the degree could not be awarded until he had returned to London in June 1925 to write the final examinations for the B.Com. This he did, and received his bachelor's degree that year and his master's degree a year later. Returning to Pennsylvania, James registered for the Ph.D. degree and worked his way through graduate school with the aid of a student instructorship. The title of his thesis was The Economics of Money, Credit and Banking'. The degree was awarded in 1926, and with his appointment as assistant professor a year later his future career was determined.l James was promoted associate professor in 1933 and full professor only two years later.

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For a boy who had enjoyed no family advantages, and who was evidently something of a slow starter, it was a remarkable achievement. In the process, he had learned some useful lessons which stayed with him all his life: that he possessed a superior intelligence, but that it was of no great advantage to him without a good deal of hard work; that the important thing was to be better prepared than anyone else around him; and that life was a competitive struggle. He had also learned that knowing the right people was more than half the battle. Those lessons were never forgotten, and throughout his career James displayed a very quick mind, an immense capacity for hard work, a constant need to prove himself a little better than his associates, and a marked respect for those who sat in the seats of power. Coming into a situation where the chancellor was, if absent, still dominant, and the board of governors was tightly composed of successful business executives, James slipped easily into the role which Beatty and Douglas had designed for him. By the time Beatty was finally removed from the scene in 1941 by a stroke, James had already quietly gathered the reins into his own hands.2 He never acted in such a way as to challenge the authority of the board, but little by little he represented that authority as being expressed through his own office. 'The Board, though legally the repository of authority, exercised that authority through Principal F. Cyril James who, as one professor recalls, "paid selective attention to advice". Given the extreme situation [of the 1940s], the retrospective opinion is that this kind of administration may have been the only way to cope with that particular era the job of running the university during and after the war probably required a Cyril James.'3 For the next twenty years James ran a very efficient, tightly geared, almost one-man operation. In some parts of the university, particularly in the areas of his own professional expertise, he was never able to overcome resentments that he had been promoted over his colleagues' heads; but his outstanding intellectual capacities, his practice of always ensuring that he knew more about a situation than any other participant, and his care to retain the full confidence of the board made his position unassailable. The fact that the Province of Quebec was at this time still dominated culturally by the Roman Catholic Church, and politically by the conservatism of Premier Duplessis, greatly assisted him. The social and political climate of Quebec was one in which James' personal style of university administration could be pursued virtually without challenge. It was only when Duplessis had gone, and when the Quiet Revolution was beginning to permeate Quebec society, that academic dissatisfaction with his dominance began to surface. At the personal level, James had much to commend him. Tall, goodlooking, with a clear, resonant voice and a gift of restrained eloquence, he

Arthur Lismer's cartoon of the principal's redoubtable secretary, Dorothy McMurray

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was at his best in public and on formal occasions. In private life he was less sure of himself; he found it difficult to be at ease, and though he had a host of acquaintances, he made few friends. With individuals he could be very thoughtful and would perform much-appreciated acts of kindness for members of the staff or for graduates, especially if they were ill or bereaved, and he won the warm loyalty of those who served him personally. He remained true to the Christian and moral ideals of his youth, and if he enjoyed the exercise of power, he used it benevolently and was seldom, if ever, guilty of injustice. He consistently put the good of the university before all else. Unlike William Peterson, whom he resembled in many ways, Cyril James conceived a deep and lasting love for his adopted country, and he became as truly Canadian as any immigrant can; but, like his predecessor, he had a wife who did not share his vocation. Mrs. James was in her own right a charming and talented woman (she won a scholarship to Trinity College of Music), who married her girlhood sweetheart only to find him rise to a public position she did not want to share. They had no family, and she often stayed in England through the long winter months. In her husband's last years at McGill she often did not return even for the summer. When he retired and she could have him to herself in England, she was very happy; when he died of a heart attack in his seventy-second year, she also passed away within a few days. But through the years of his retirement his love for Canada remained strong, and it was McGill that received his books and his personal treasures, together with a very handsome part of the modest fortune he had built up. Characteristically, he asked that his ashes be returned to the university, and they repose in the University Chapel. Constitutionally, James held back developments which, had they come sooner, might have made the years of his successor rather easier. The changes demanded by the times need not have been so abrupt. But had he attempted to introduce reforms, it is doubtful whether the board of governors would have retained him as long as it did. If he delayed developments in university governance, in every other way he greatly encouraged the growth and expansion of the university in years of immense difficulty. The war years obviously constitute a period all their own, and it was the problems of war and its aftermath that James had to deal with first A U N I V E R S I T Y GEARING FOR WAR The declaration of the Canadian government that a state of war existed with the German Reich was issued on 10 September 1939, one full week after the British declaration. There had never been any doubt as to Canada's decision, but the delay was highly symbolic. It registered for all the

THE Y E A R S OF W O R L D WAR II

2IJ

world that Canada had come of age, and was acting independently of Britain or of any other Commonwealth partner. At McGill the majority commitment to support the action of the government was in 1939 no less prompt or sincere than in 1914, but this time the voices of dissent were not wholly lacking. As we have seen, Professor Adair and Dean Corbett had publicly argued that the war was not Canada's concern. F.R. Scott's views were at first not unlike those of Corbett in some respects. In a paper read to the Ontario Educational Association in April 1939 he urged neutrality for Canada in any coming European war, and argued for the independence of the Canadian nation from colonial ties with Britain. As part of a regional system of security, he was prepared, like Corbett, to envisage a military alliance with the United States. But by the time war was declared, Scott had come to see Canada's participation as unavoidable, and he gave it his support; it was necessary, he said, to defeat fascism militarily, in order to have the opportunity to defeat capitalism politically.4 But the fact that Scott, Corbett, Adair, and others were not fervent Commonwealth supporters was well known on campus, and though their numbers were small, their visibility was enough to ensure a more sober mood of participation than the uninhibited enthusiasm of I9I45 But if Beatty felt that on this issue, as on others, it was the dissentient minority which secured the headlines and detracted from McGill's reputation, there was no doubt about the wholeheartedness of the majority response once war had been declared. The Canadian Officers' Training Corps was quickly expanded from an enrolment of 125 to more than 1400 cadets, with fifty instructors. The need for an armoury and drill-hall spurred on the construction of the long-delayed Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium. The foundation had been dug in the spring and work had continued through the summer. The cornerstone was laid 4 November, and the opening ceremonies included a review of the COTC contingent by General A.G.L. McNaughton in the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium. The names of Arthur Currie and Percival Molson were themselves evocative. McNaughton was the McGill graduate who had risen to command the Canadian Corps Heavy Artillery under Currie in World War I, and then had pursued a career of scientific research which had taken him in 1935 to the presidency of the National Research Council. Recalled in 1939 for war duty, he had been placed in command of the First Canadian Overseas Division. On the reviewing stand were other World War I personalities such as H.S. Birkett, former dean of medicine and former commanding officer of the No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill), and Mr. Justice George Barclay, who had commanded the No. I University Company reinforcing the 'Princess Pats'. Other notable veter-

Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium

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ans included Wilfrid Bovey, George C. McDonald, and Percy Nobbs, all wearing their military decorations. Their presence gave the ceremony the character of one at which the torch of duty was being solemnly handed on from one generation to the other, from the veterans of 1914-18 to the new young heroes of 1939. By the early months of 1940, some 800 members of the COTC were training in the Currie Gymnasium three times weekly. An early decision by Senate was that all male students 'of British nationality' (which at that time included all Canadians) who were physically fit were to take part each week in military training. A problem arose when 'a score of students' expressed conscientious objections to military training. The concerns of the majority were met in various ways, and only two remained adamant. After much discussion in Senate, they were suspended from the university. When the Department of National War Services later amended its regulations to provide alternative, non-combatant service for conscientious objectors, the university provided non-combatant training and the two students were allowed to return. Military training (or, when permitted, non-combatant training) was made one of the conditions of the federal government's service-deferment category for those registered in university courses, but McGill had anticipated these decisions, and had already enacted its own requirements. THE UNIVERSITY AND NATIONAL POLICIES

While the combatants, scientists, and civil volunteers were making their contributions, the university was also finding itself more and more involved in the national struggle. One question which required an early answer related to the attitude the federal government would adopt concerning recruitment for the armed forces from university campuses. There was widespread recognition that the mistakes of 1914 should not be repeated; intelligent young men and women should not be encouraged to enlist until they had completed their professional qualifications, and academic staff should not be immoderately depleted in response to calls from the armed services, however urgent these might appear. J.S. Thomson, at that time president of the University of Saskatchewan and an influential member of the National Conference of Canadian Universities (NCCU), paid tribute in his memoirs to the 'very enlightened view' taken by the federal government: There was no disposition to urge any major diversion from our accustomed ways, or to call for enlistment in the armed forces. On the contrary, it was fully accepted that the best contribution by students was to continue their courses to completion. The universities were

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recognized as fully concerned about the national emergency, and they could be trusted to act with complete responsibility concerning their distinctive role. Moreover, they themselves were the competent judges of what this implied. Thus, from the very beginning of their growing involvement with national policies, a mutual respect was established between the universities and the government. The prevailing spirit was one of co-operation and, to promote liaison, the Conference of Universities now acquired a new significance and importance as providing a medium of discussion and communication with governmental authorities. Hitherto, the Conference had been what the tide suggested: a series of annual meetings to discuss topics of common interest in higher education; now, it became the recognized means for agreement on accepted policies.6 The National Conference of Canadian Universities had been instituted, largely through the efforts of William Peterson, in 1917, though there had been consultations among the universities since a first historic gathering on the McGill campus in June 1911. The NCCU had established between the wars a number of standing committees, notably one on graduate education in agriculture, and another, born of World War I, on military studies, but, as Thomson said, it was not a significant body until these new developments took place in the early months of World War II. The Department of National Defence, the Department of Munitions and Supply, and the Department of Labour began to use the NCCU with increasing frequency as the means of liaison with the universities scattered across the country. An order-in-council established the Wartime Bureau of Technical Personnel, with truly dictatorial powers; the bureau was given complete authority over the disposition of all scientific and technical workers in the country. No member of staff or student under the control of this body could leave the university, and no professional scientist or technician could accept any appointment or change his employment without the bureau's permission. At the June 1942 conference, the assistant director of the National Selective Service reported a severe shortage of engineers and scientists in the armed forces, and asked the universities to do all they could to enrol more students in these programs. The government, he said, was going to offer scholarships to promising high-school students to enable them to meet the costs of university education in the crucial disciplines. These measures greatly increased enrolment in engineering and the sciences. The universities were even tempted to do more than the government asked, and characteristically McGill was involved. In January 1943 at a special meeting of the NCCU, Principals James of McGill and Wallace of Queen's proposed that, following the lead of the United Kingdom and the

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United States, registration in arts, education, and commerce courses should not be grounds for deferment of enlistment under the National Selective Service Act7 Such a regulation would have effectively closed the academic departments concerned. Fortunately, wiser counsel prevailed: The government was not disposed to regard all other kinds of education [than work of a scientific, medical, and technical nature] as unnecessary and, consequently, attendance at all the regular courses of study was accepted as essential national service. The universities... undertook that only fully qualified students should be admitted, and that they should be allowed to continue only so long as they made satisfactory progress in their studies.8 At McGill these national agreements were, of course, fully respected, and in addition Senate decided that all women students should participate in a special program of training organized by the Canadian Red Cross to prepare women for national wartime service. The program included physical training, courses for the St. John's Ambulance Association's First Aid Certificate, and programs in nutrition, housing, and air-raid precautions. These government regulations and provisions were to have important consequences for the development of Canadian universities. To enable students to enrol in college courses, and for the universities to provide the accelerated programs in medicine, engineering, and the sciences, the federal government proposed to set aside funds to provide both bursaries and institutional support in those provinces which opted to join the program. Quebec and six other provinces agreed to enter the program on the basis of equal cost sharing by the federal and provincial governments. This arrangement created a precedent. It was the beginning of federal support for higher education, a matter which, as we shall see, was to be of the greatest importance for university development over the next thirty years. However, there was also another side to the coin. The decision to maintain the university's program in all its departments as fully as possible, and to accelerate courses wherever that might be possible, meant that those professors and lecturers who stayed at their posts during the war years carried a very heavy burden of teaching, particularly if they were also associated, as many were, with important research programs. There were few, if any, replacements for those who had departed for other duties, and in lecture rooms and laboratories equipment and supplies were hard to come by. But it became a matter of departmental pride to 'keep the courses going', and it was that kind of stubbornness which enabled the university to survive the difficulties and emerge, after five years, ready for new adventures once the war was won.

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C O N T R I B U T I O N S TO A R M E D S E R V I C E S

By 1939 the number of McGill graduates had increased considerably beyond the number extant in 1914, and therefore the number of those who served in the armed forces in World War II was correspondingly greater. It has been estimated that over 5,500 graduates, men and women, registered in one or other of the services of the Allies, in a wide range of organizations. Over 700 were enrolled in naval forces, over 1,200 in flying services, over 2,600 in land forces, and the remainder in auxiliary organizations. They took part in convoy duties in all the seven seas, the Batde of Britain, bombing raids over enemy territory, the disaster of Hong Kong, the great struggles in Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Holland, the final thrust into Germany, and the many battles of the Pacific. As in all wars, some individual experiences stand out by reason of their unusual character, but they are in fact representative rather than unique. For example, Lt Roger Kee Cheng, B.Eng., 1938, a Canadian-born Chinese, was dropped by air into the mountains of Borneo as a member of a Commonwealth group organizing tribesmen in guerilla attacks on the Japanese. Margaret Elspeth Russell flew planes from British factories to RAF aerodromes, and Sgt. Dorothy May Boyce, B.Sc., 1940, was attached to the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and found the work so much to her liking that on her return to McGill she became one of the first women to register in the Faculty of Engineering.9 Such men and women are the observable few— the others equally knew the monotony of long hours of boredom, punctuated by short bursts of excitement, as they flew planes, served on ships, manoeuvred tanks, drove ambulances, trucks, and staff cars across Canada or far overseas. At the end of the conflict, some 300 names had to be inscribed on the university's memorial to those who had lost their lives in the great struggle. The medical contribution was well worthy of the World War I tradition. The Faculty of Medicine was largely responsible for the organization of two Canadian General Hospitals, Nos. I and 14, but ministerial policy precluded their using the McGill designation. These hospitals operated in Britain during the bombing raids on the civilian population in the large cities, and then followed the Canadian armies to Sicily and Italy, where both served with great distinction. The No. I Canadian Neurological Hospital was conceived by Colin Russel of the Montreal Neurological Institute, and, with William Cone as chief neurosurgeon and a staff largely drawn from the McGill hospitals, it not only performed excellently, but also demonstrated the immense value of that kind of specialized facility. In this respect, its work has been described of historic significance. Other members of the Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, nurses from the Montreal Gen-

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era! and the Royal Victoria hospitals, and members of the Canadian Red Cross were making an immense contribution by doing the thing they knew best in situations often very unglamorous and sometimes highly dangerous, as the call of duty might require. C O N T R I B U T I O N S ON CAMPUS

Meanwhile, those who remained on campus were equally contributing their expertise in a variety of ways.10 Students in the Faculty of Engineering were required to seek employment during the summer months, and so aided the war effort while gaining invaluable experience in practical situations. In the Faculties of Arts and Science, Medicine, and Dentistry, modifications of curricula and the provision of summer courses encouraged earlier graduation, and these changes made great demands on the attenuated staffs available. A very notable success was achieved when McGill was asked to accommodate over 500 trainees, ranging in age from eighteen to fifty. These men were housed in the Royal Victoria College, and after thirteen weeks of very intensive training under a staff headed by Dr. David Keys of the Physics Department all but thirty-five qualified as radio technicians. The British Air Ministry had asked that their training be made a matter of the highest priority, and the efficiency of the program and the excellent qualifications of those who completed it won deservedly high commendations. A similar but longer lasting contribution to military training programs resulted from the designation of Macdonald College as the eastern training centre for the Canadian Women's Army Corps. Thirteen hundred staff and trainees were provided with accommodation; to make room for them, the Homemakers' Course was suspended and the School for Teachers, much reduced in numbers because of wartime conditions, was transferred to Strathcona Hall on Sherbrooke Street. So that Dean Brittain could continue to administer the total Ste. Anne de Bellevue estate, he was gazetted lieutenant colonel and superintendent of the training establishment. With the dean in uniform, cooperation with personnel of the army corps worked smoothly, and the contribution made by the college to the operations of the Canadian army was of major significance. Meanwhile teaching and research in the Faculty of Agriculture and in the School of Household Science continued unimpeded and with quickened intensity. McGill campus also provided a home for another important operation, but this was an international body rather than a Canadian one. The International Labour Organization was an agency of the League of Nations, headquartered in Geneva. It conducted research into legislation affecting conditions of work and into the role in modern society of labour unions in

McGill students join the harvest train, 1942

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countries and political systems around the world. In wartime, and with the practical demise of the League of Nations, the office could not continue in Switzerland or indeed with its usual level of activity. But it was important that the senior staff be retained and the organization kept in being. By finding accommodation, first in the Presbyterian College and later in a house on University Street, McGill made possible the survival of the ILO through the war years, and a plaque on the wall of Dawson Hall testifies to the gratitude felt towards the university by this important international agency. A contribution of a different kind was made in October 1942, when the minister of labour announced a shortage of labour on the prairies to secure the wheat harvest. Five hundred students, mostly from the Faculty of Arts and Science, joined a special 'harvest train' and were transported to points west of Winnipeg to work in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Some McGill men found work on farms even further west, in Alberta and British Columbia. Not all the volunteers found farming to their liking, and it is said that some of their employers regarded their efforts with less than enthusiasm, but the total achievement was considerable and the harvest was secured. The McGill News commented: 'After three weeks in Saskatchewan, the students came home with little money, but much experience, and the pleasant sense of having helped in a vital war need.'n CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH The impact of war upon the life of the university was nowhere more evident than in its program of research. Scientists in every discipline reviewed their fields of expertise to see where they might make a contribution to the national war effort. In this they were ably supported by their students, and particularly their graduate students. General McNaughton had himself set the policy, saying in effect: 'In the waging of the war, the scientific contribution of the universities of Canada will be of more vital import to the fighting forces than it is easy at present to imagine. Do not, therefore, at any cost, allow your best graduate students to join the Forces until they bring with them the scientific knowledge that will vastly increase the value of their contribution.'12 This recommendation, one might almost say command, was faithfully observed, despite some criticism from the uninformed, and consequently an immensely valuable amount of research could be undertaken in almost every department, even while the teaching program continued in full force. War engages the total effort of a nation, and practically every activity becomes a war activity, and almost all research, war research. At Macdonald College, patient experimentation over three decades in horticulture,

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agronomy, animal science, and other disciplines now acquired an added significance, as better methods of food production and storage became matters of vital importance. New work undertaken included the investigation by F.O. Morrison and M.D. Proverb of the toxicity of the newly synthesized DDT and related organic materials, the investigation by E.W. Crampton of the nutritional value of rations for troops operating in arctic conditions, and the establishment of a biological procedure for the assay of the Vitamin C content of foods. The wide variety of problems presenting themselves is well illustrated from the programs undertaken by the Pulp and Paper Research Institute. They included the production of tougher paper for the insoles of children's shoes, required because wartime footware was being produced with poorer quality outersoles, chewable paper for documents which might need to be destroyed in a hurry, impervious paper for the prevention of secret writing by prisoners of war in family letters, wet-strength paper for sandbags, and papers possessing, contrary to their normal character, a fair degree of electrical conductivity. The list of different papers required in wartime appeared to be endless. As might be expected, the Chemistry Department played an extremely important role. Amidst a great variety of activities, some instances are particularly noteworthy. The first was a program relating to chemical warfare, smoke, and other airborne particles. The leading spirit was Otto Maass, Macdonald Professor of Chemistry and chairman of the department. Maass was appointed special assistant to Dr. CJ. Mackenzie, the acting director of the National Research Council, and was given responsibility for this important program, which was part of the activities of the council's subcommittee on chemical warfare defensive research. A highly secret unit had been established at Grosse He in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and here defensive measures against all forms of chemical and biological warfare were investigated as a joint enterprise with British and American units. After the war, senior military authorities testified that the defensive and counter-offensive measures developed by the operation constituted 'an effective threat which the enemy dared not risk to invoke. In this achievement, the name of Dr. Maass ranks second to none amongst the Allied scientists whose joint efforts rendered impotent a weapon which otherwise the enemy might well have used decisively.'13 A second area was not defensive but decidedly offensive. The British had developed what was perhaps the ultimate in the way of chemical explosives, a substance known as RDX, standing for Research Department Explosive. The existing method of manufacture was very wasteful and the compound was difficult to produce. James Ross, a lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at McGill, undertook the investigation of alternative methods. With the help of Robert Schiessler, a graduate student, he was

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remarkably successful. But in order to compare the Canadian with the British product, a sample had to be flown across the Atlantic. It was decided that Ross and [H.S.] Sutherland [of Shawinigan Chemicals Ltd.] would travel from Dorval to Prestwick in one of the bombers being 'ferried' to Britain and deliver personally a 20-lb sample of RDX to Woolwich Arsenal for testing— About the middle of August [1941] the 20 pounds of RDX, subdivided into smaller lots, placed in glass jars under water, and packed in sawdust, was brought from Shawinigan Falls to Montreal by automobile. It was placed on the roof of the Biology Building at McGill, pending the departure of the bomber, which was in fact delayed two or three days. The fuselage of the plane was unheated. It flew at low altitude to Gander,'Newfoundland, where it stopped to refuel. On learning from the pilot that he intended to fly at high altitude over the Atiantic, Ross and Sutherland asked his permission to bring the containers into the passenger compartment where they could be warmed by body heat. They were fearful that the water would freeze, the jars would break, and the high explosive be spilled. All went well— The Canadian RDX met the British specifications.14 Large-scale manufacture of RDX began in Canada on 19 July 1942; by the end of the war, production had reached 350,000 pounds per month, and McGill chemists had made a major contribution to the Allied cause. J.R. Donald, director general of the Canadian government's Explosives and Chemical Production Branch, made the comment that 'RDX has been the novel and important explosive development of World War II, overshadowed only by the atomic bomb.'15 McGill played a part in that greater enterprise also. The development of the atomic bomb was an undertaking so vast that the Canadian contribution was necessarily small in comparison with the input from the British and American sources, but in that it greatly facilitated the cooperation of the two larger powers, it was of historic significance. In addition, Canada supplied vital raw materials and conducted the heavy water research, while the United States concentrated on the development of the energy pile. The Canadian work was carried forward in the Montreal Laboratory, situated in the as yet unoccupied buildings of the newly located Universite de Montreal. The McGill involvement, because of its previous interest in the subject, and the proximity of the laboratory to the campus, was considerable; of the seventy or so scientists who worked in the Montreal Laboratory under Sir John Cockcroft of Britain, approximately one-third, including Deputy Director E.W.R. Steacie, were either McGill staff or graduates. An

Otto Maass

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important result from Canada's participation in the great effort was that in the postwar world, Canada possessed not only a technology of immense significance, but in the newly established Chalk River plant a nuclearenergy facility which permitted this nation to keep pace with developments world-wide. At the Diamond Jubilee Meeting of the Engineering Institute of Canada held in 1947, Dr. Mackenzie said: 'Although we never worked on the bomb itself, we are the only country outside the United States that has successfully constructed an atomic-energy pile.'16 It is not possible to detail further the great volume of wartime research conducted by McGill on and off the campus. One indicator of its quality and achievement is to be found in the fact that of the nine Canadian scientists who received the Medal of Freedom from the United States government, four were members of the McGill staff: J.B. Collip, the pioneer of endocrinology; Otto Maass, the director of the Chemical Warfare Unit; J.S. Foster, for work on radar carried out in the United States; and J.H. Ross, for his work in explosives. The most important result was the great encouragement given to scientific research in the postwar years. From this time on, no one could doubt its importance or that it was essential to the kind of university McGill aspired to be. When the war was over and staff and students began to return to the campus, the board of governors set aside a fund of $5,000 to assist individual professors to resume their research activities. The university had wholeheartedly adopted the definition of a professor as a teacher who engages in the research whereby his discipline is advanced. P R E P A R A T I O N S FOR PEACE

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the intense years of World War II was that concurrently with total commitment to the ongoing struggle, careful consideration was being given from a very early date to the problems of peacetime reconstruction. With clear memories of the mistakes made at the close of World War I, when matriculation standards were too leniently relaxed and many universities accepted more students than they were equipped to serve, those who were in positions of authority were determined, if it were at all possible, to avoid repeating them. McGill was closely involved in this planning at many levels. The federal government had already established the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and under its auspices the General Advisory Committee on Demobilization and Re-establishment was set up as early as August 1940. It quickly became apparent that the problems of returning veterans could be adequately discussed only in the larger context of social planning for postwar Canada as a whole. This led to the establishment of another advisory body,

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the Committee on Reconstruction. This committee was required by its terms of reference to report to the Cabinet, so that it had the potential for considerable influence. It was indicative of Cyril James' swift rise to leadership that he was appointed the committee's chairman. Recognizing that the former director of the McGill Social Science Research Project, Leonard Marsh, was well suited to be the committee's research director, James appointed him to that position. James threw himself into this work with characteristic zeal: The James Committee moved rapidly on several fronts. Its efforts were unified by a comprehensive memorandum on basic policy, drafted by James and revised as probabilities changed. Essentially, reconstruction policy should be planned to avoid a postwar depression that would create widespread misery and nourish radicalism more surely than after World War One. This could be circumvented only by a new international economic structure coupled with active government intervention in the domestic economy to maintain consumer spending power and ensure full employment. A passage from the third version of the basic memorandum well illustrates the direct and forceful style... 'Even though, as individuals, we may regret the passing of the older order of free trade, competition and capitalism, the available evidence concerning the impact of industrialism on a democratic-capitalistic order of society suggests that the attainment of reasonable economic security for the average individual will demand a large measure of co-ordination and economic control.'17 James toured the western provinces, encouraging them to establish similar committees, which could work cooperatively with his own. He also made contact with similar planning committees in Britain and the United States. But his very energy was his undoing. The federal bureaucracy took alarm, fearing that the James Committee would take everything under its direction, and the civil service 'mandarins' decided to hobble it while there was still time. Cabinet was persuaded to rule that the Committee on Reconstruction should first report to the interdepartmental Economic Advisory Council. As James observed in his journal, the order-in-council as drafted 'was completely unsatisfactory, because the wording made the Committee on Reconstruction look like a fifth wheel'.18 Despite James' protests the committee was not only made to look superfluous, but it was rendered superfluous; its work petered out and it was dissolved at the end of 1943. However, while it was active the committee had produced a number of studies, some of which were influential long after the demise of the committee itself.19 In particular, Leonard Marsh prepared the Report on Social

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Security for Canada, which was published by the King's Printer in March 1943. It evoked a great deal of comment at the time, both favourable and unfavourable, but it proved over the years to be one of the determinative influences in the formation of Canada's social planning.20 The author specifically commented in a second edition that ten years of social studies on the McGill campus came in this way to fruition, and made a national impact21 It was probably due to the stimulus provided by this activity in the area of social welfare that McGill looked to its provisions for its own staff. In 1930 the university had entered into a group contract with the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada to provide contributory pensions on a voluntary basis to academics who had a salary of at least $1,200 a year. This plan was revised in 1942 to be compulsory for all full-time employees, academic and non-academic, whose remuneration was over $900 a year. Thus secretaries, librarians, and other employees were included in the pension plan for the first time, although in their case only after having served the university for three years. The additional cost to the university was considerable and it was a sign of society's increasing awareness of social responsibilities that even in wartime, and amidst many other financial concerns, Cyril James could persuade the board that these new provisions were necessary. Other matters under consideration also had serious financial implications. As plans for the postwar period began to take shape, a great deal of discussion was necessary among the universities themselves and with the federal government. The main points agreed among the universities were that all qualified veterans who applied for admission should be accepted, and 'reasonably uniform' standards of matriculation and of 'mature matriculation' should be adopted. These agreements were worked out without too much difficulty, but then there followed the knotty problem of their financial implications. The matter was complicated by the fact that the federal government had passed an order-in-council in October 1941, providing a number of postwar benefits for discharged members of the forces. The planning behind this order-in-council had been largely the work of a small group from NCCU, among whom President Cody of Toronto and Principals Wallace of Queen's and James of McGill were singled out by the government announcement as having made particularly valuable contributions. As far as the universities were concerned, the important provision was that grants were to be available to veterans to pay university fees and to provide them with subsistence bursaries. This aid was highly satisfactory from the individual's point of view, but it created immense problems for the institutions. There had always been a wide margin between the fees paid by students and the cost of the educa-

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tion given to them. In most provinces, this difference was made good by provincial grants given directly to the institutions, but the large numbers anticipated in the returning veterans' program rendered the traditional measures of support wholly inadequate. In McGill's case, since the university did not receive that kind of general support, the problem was magnified many times. The number of university and college students in Canada before the war, including those in the francophone colleges classiques, had been approximately 35,000; the universities were startled to learn that in 1945 they could expect at least an equal number of veterans, so that their student registration figures would double in a single year; the following year the number of veterans in university courses was expected to reach nearly 40,000. The need would be for additional classrooms, laboratories, and equipment, for additional teaching staff and demonstrators, for additional student services, especially in the way of tutoring and academic counselling, and all this apart from the provision of health, housing, and recreational facilities. Moreover, if by some miracle the physical and staffing requirements could be achieved, considerable additional funds would be required to operate these facilities. It was obvious that the usual sources of income could not be expected to cope with demands of these dimensions. The NCCU Post-War Planning Committee, with Norman McKenzie of the University of New Brunswick in the chair, and with representatives from universities in all the provinces, including James from McGill, was set up in June 1942. It presented an excellent report in 1944, which included a main recommendation that funds be sought from both provincial and federal governments 'so that universities may be able to give our returned men and women the full benefits intended by the generous policies of the Dominion Government'. The difficulties involved in this proposal were twofold: first, a constitutional roadblock had to be surmounted, and, second, the actual financing had to be secured. The terms of Confederation in 1867 had reserved all educational responsibilities to the jurisdiction of the provinces; for the federal government to move into this area would be to risk a challenge that it was acting ultra vires. An argument was produced that the Vocational Training Coordination Act of 1942 gave the federal government sufficient authority to do what was needed. It was ingenuously hoped that by using the word 'training' rather than 'education' the constitutional problem could be bypassed—a vain hope, as later events were to prove. The second step was to procure the actual money. A delegation led by J.S. Thomson, the president of the University of Saskatchewan and also of NCCU, secured an interview with Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the minister for veterans' affairs. Thomson went into the inter-

James Sutherland Thomson

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view hoping for a grant to the universities of $150 for each veteran registered; the traditional canny Scot, he asked for $200 and when Mackenzie King offered $100, Thomson, with a show of reluctance, suggested a compromise of $150. With this genteel session of bargaining in high places, the immense step was taken which was to revolutionize university financing in Canada.22 For McGill it was a step even more momentous than for any other institution; it put the university on the same footing as other institutions in respect of government funding, and began the process which twenty years later would effect the university's transformation from a private to a quasi-public institution. For the present, however, it meant that James, his board of governors, and his academic colleagues could plan for the onslaught of the returning veterans with considerably more confidence. Even so, the financial problems facing the university were immense. The long depression of the 19308 and the necessary suspension of developments in the war years had left academic buildings and equipment in urgent need of rehabilitation, even to provide for the normal number of students. The staff, both academic and non-academic, had been sadly depleted and overworked, and as a result of wartime inflation were now seriously underpaid. The board of governors established a needs committee in 1943. After careful consultation with the various faculties and schools and auxiliary operating departments, it reported that the aggregate cost of all desirable reparation was in the neighbourhood of $40 million. Clearly, the raising of sums of this magnitude was not possible, but that ever-resourceful member of the board of governors, J.W. McConnell, undertook in September of that year to head up a financial exploration committee, to raise whatever funds might become available. Largely through his personal effort, his committee was able to report early in 1944 that in the intervening months a sum had been raised, quietly and without any public campaign, amounting to more than $7 million. ^ While this fell far short of the dream figure of $40 million, it met the most immediate needs and represented a remarkable wartime achievement. If we allow for the effects of inflation, the funds raised at that time compare very favourably with anything the university achieved either before or after that date. It then had to be decided how the money should be assigned. Capital funds were established, the income from which would be used to raise academic and non-academic salaries—in the amount of $2.5 million for the first item and $1.5 million for the second. Another million dollars was set aside for the construction of a physical sciences centre, linking the Macdonald Engineering and Chemistry buildings, a structure later to be named the Frank Dawson Adams Building. In particular it provided muchneeded space for the Department of Geological Sciences. The expansion of the Redpath Library was becoming urgent and $200,000 was set aside as a

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commencement fund for what would obviously have to be a long-term project, and another $100,000 was devoted to re-equipping the university's science departments with modern apparatus. A further $200,000 was devoted to the establishment of a Department of Health and Social Medicine, and $150,000 was assigned for reconstruction and re-equipment on the Macdonald campus. In this way, some of the depredations of the economic depression of the 19305 and of wartime were made good and the university was put in better shape to continue its normal activities in the postwar years. But how to prepare for the hosts of returning veterans was another matter. A VERY SPECIAL CONVOCATION

Before we consider that important subject, there is a more colourful, perhaps one might even say in retrospect a more lighthearted, event which needs to be recorded. In 1942, when the contribution of the United States to the Allied war effort was beginning to produce immense benefits, and to promise even more, Cyril James proposed that McGill should offer President Franklin Delano Roosevelt an honorary degree. Senate gladly concurred, but Roosevelt while expressing appreciation replied that he could not make the journey to Montreal to receive the award. Two years later it was learned early in September that Canada was to provide in Quebec City, for the second time, a meeting place for Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. James immediately proposed to the governor general, the Earl of Athlone (who was ex officio the university's Visitor), that both Roosevelt and Churchill should travel to McGill at the end of the conference to be honoured by the university. But an additional journey to Montreal could not be included in the conference planning. James then telephoned the governor general's aide and suggested that if the mountains could not come to the prophets, then the prophets would be prepared to come to the mountains. McGill would hold a special convocation in Quebec City. This was, as James remarked in his journal, 'an idea so contrary to precedent that it shocked Mrs. McMurray', his secretary and the longtime guardian of university propriety. By Friday, 15 September, no further response had come from the governor general's office, and the idea seemed to have died. By chance James visited J.W. McConnell in his office that morning to discuss other matters and noticed a photograph of Churchill on McConnell's desk. He expressed 'almost absentmindedly' his wish that Churchill could have been able to accept the degree. McConnell became interested and telephoned Mackenzie King. Surprisingly by four o'clock James was informed that a convocation had been arranged at the Citadel for three o'clock the next day.24

Convocation at Quebec City

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That James' bold proposal had been accepted on such short notice threw the university offices into a sudden storm of activity. A new page of the register of honorary degrees had to be prepared, diplomas must be engrossed, academic dress for all participants chosen and packed. Above all, speeches had to be written. The Earl of Athlone, as governor general of Canada and Visitor to the university, was t reside and must be provided with an appropriate address. More dauntingly, the principal 'had also to prepare introductions for two of the most important men alive, and these introductions are not simple things to write'.25 James thoroughly agreed with this comment; he confided to his diary: 'I was appalled at the thought of speaking before the two most famous orators in the world—and perturbed by the task of delicately balancing the things I said about each.'26 The occasion certainly called for a nice sense of judgement. The presentation speeches were still being revised during the journey to Quebec, and the final draft of the Churchill one was finished only as the train pulled into the station. But all went well. Roosevelt was described as 'long a friend of Canada' and one who 'has attained imperishable stature throughout the length and breadth of this North American Continent'. Churchill was presented as 'one who needs no words of mine to attest to his greatness', and as 'of the company of the immortals who have rallied England in the great climacterics of her history'. In his reply on behalf of Roosevelt and himself, Churchill declared: 'We are living in a great age, of which it will always be said that this present generation, in Britain and the United States... have cleared the way for the broad advance of mankind, to levels they have never yet attained, and to securities of which they will never be deprived.'27 It may be that in this unusual convocation there were forces at work, not visible on the surface. Mackenzie King recorded in his diary that he received McConnell's call, and continued: I did not hold out much hope but promised to do my best; as soon as the President and Churchill had finished their lunch, I went to them and told them of the message I had received, of Morris Wilson being Chancellor, and of their having only a word to say in acknowledgment of a degree. Churchill seemed to favour the idea and the President said he had no clothes. I told him I would have gowns and hoods brought along, I also mentioned that the Governor General was the official visitor of the University. Something was said of the possibility of his being here. Finally, I got their consent and later 'phoned McConnell. As the prime minister's diary reveals, King was in considerable difficulty in that while the conference was being held in Canada, his two powerful allies

Cyril James greets returning veterans, January 1945

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tended, as at the first Quebec Conference, to overlook his own presence and to ignore the separate identity of the country he represented.28 Even Churchill referred to 'this generation in Britain and the United States' without including any reference to the people of Canada or indeed any other part of the Commonwealth. It was in that regard unfortunate that Mackenzie King himself could not have been included among the degree recipients, but he had already received the university's recognition fifteen years earlier. Even so, it may be that the proposal of something so distinctly Canadian as the conferring of a McGill degree on the wartime leaders was welcomed by the prime minister as a way of putting a visibly Canadian stamp on the public part of the conference. The degree-granting ritual, with its procession of red and white gowns and black caps, constituted a colourful ceremony to which the news media of the free world, and their cameras, were given full access. At the press conference which followed the ceremony, the university officials continued to wear their robes, so that the McGill colours were made familiar to the world. This historic event not only illustrated the driving initiative of Cyril James, and the remarkable extent of McConnell's influence, but for many people on campus and far beyond it also symbolized McGill's wholehearted support for the country's participation in the Allied cause and the university's contribution, past and present, to the growing nation of Canada. P R O V I D I N G FOR THE V E T E R A N S

After the pageantry of Quebec City, the university prepared itself for the flood of returning veterans. First there were some academic measures to be taken. In order to meet the needs of men and women demobilized at different times during the year, entry possibilities in January and May were added to the usual September registration. The first class of veterans, many of them still in uniform, was welcomed by Principal James and Dean Cyrus Macmillan on a snowy day in January 1945. The new students speedily dispelled many of the myths that were current regarding the difficulties that would confront them. They did not suffer from problems of psychological maladjustment, about which the civilian population had been dramatically warned. Those of us who had the privilege of teaching the veterans soon realized that they were among the best students we have ever known, and by the end of the session the examination results offered definitive proof of that opinion.29 But their numbers soon became overwhelming. In the spring of 1939 the total student registration figure had been 3,275. By spring 1945 this figure

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had risen modestly to 3,905, but in the fall the number of registrations rose to 6,370. For the 1946-47 session it rose further to 8,237, an increase over prewar registration of 150 per cent. This proved to be the high point, but registration remained close to that figure for another three years, and began to decline only as the veterans passed through the graduation lists in the early fifties. Even so, the student body total was never again to fall below 6,500, and the character of the university was decisively and permanently changed.30 This dramatic increase in student numbers called for equally dramatic solutions. An intensive search was undertaken to find a building or buildings into which the university might expand its operations more or less overnight. Surprisingly one was indeed found, but no nearer than at St. Johns, Quebec, twenty miles from the Montreal campus. It was the former No. 9 Air Observer Training School. An appeal was made to McGill graduate Douglas Abbott, at that time minister of national defence, and surplus materials from the army, including such things as furniture, bedding, kitchen and dining-hall equipment, and other domestic necessities were quickly made available. The station was handed over to the university on Wednesday, 26 September 1945; on Friday the first registrants arrived, and on the following Monday classes for 700 students began at 9 A.M. It was a classic case of instant education. The new institution was named Sir William Dawson College. It is not to be confused with the later College d'enseignement general et professionnel, also named for the great nineteenth-century educator. Dawson College at St Johns was taught very largely by McGill professors, who commuted between Montreal and St. Johns, and who repeated for the benefit of the veterans the lectures they had already given in Montreal. Professor A.H.S. Gillson was appointed vice-principal of the college and he and his assistant, Professor Carleton Craig, were together responsible for a remarkable feat of administrative improvisation. Gillson was appointed dean of arts and science in 1947, and Craig then succeeded him as vice-principal. A library was established, largely by borrowing from the University Library, and laboratories and engineering drafting rooms were hastily constructed and equipped. Army huts were converted into dormitories for single men or into one- and two-room apartments for married men. As the numbers swelled, still more space was required. The Repairs Depot of the RCAF, also at St. Johns, was taken into the college, while the RCAF Manning Depot at Lachine became the Peterson Residence of McGill University—a name rather more dignified than the makeshift if very welcome quarters seemed to deserve. A quarter of a million dollars provided further residences for married students at Macdonald College. By the spring of 1947 McGill was providing living accommodation in Montreal, Lachine, Ste.

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Anne de Bellevue, and St. Johns for 3,215 persons, including 233 married students with their wives and children, while a Lodgings Bureau in Montreal, run by volunteers drawn in large measure from faculty wives, was also in full operation on a year-round basis. The return of the veterans meant a great deal of additional work for many people, but it was undertaken cheerfully and wholeheartedly, and was the means whereby McGill coped with the tide of men and women returning from the forces. Dawson College continued in operation at St. Johns until 1950, when the declining numbers of veterans permitted the transfer of the college's functions to the Montreal campus.31 The Lachine operation was also terminated about that time, but the 'temporary' married quarters at Macdonald College, colloquially known as Diaper Dell, were to remain in occupation for more than a quarter of a century. AN U N W E L C O M E A F T E R M A T H McGill's involvement in wartime activities had one unpleasant consequence which the university would gladly have not experienced. Even during the war relations between Russia and her English-speaking allies were never wholly comfortable, and the free flow of information between the co-belligerents was never authorized, particularly on the atom bomb and the RDX projects. Nevertheless, Canadian authorities, like their counterparts in Britain and the United States, had reason to suspect that some scientists and civil servants were divulging to the Russians information on these projects in contravention of the secrecy oaths they had taken. In September 1945 suspicions were confirmed when Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, defected with copious evidence relating to his country's North American information-gathering activities. Among the Canadians implicated by the Gouzenko revelations were a number of McGill graduates. The prominent name was that of Raymond Boyer. He was national chairman of the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, and the cosecretary of the British-Canadian-American joint RDX Committee. He was therefore in a particularly knowledgeable position. He was arrested in February 1946 on a charge of having passed classified information to Russian agents. The university's reaction was to suspend him from all teaching and other duties until his case had been heard and a judicial decision rendered. Another of the scientists implicated by the Gouzenko revelations was Philip Durnford Smith, a McGill graduate who had completed his bachelor's degree in 1934 and his master's in 1936 in the Physics Department. After 1940, however, his connection with the university was simply that of a non-resident candidate for the Ph.D. He was said to be ready to submit his

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thesis for the degree at the time of his arrest; Senate suspended his status as a student, thus making him ineligible to submit his thesis until the charges against him had been settled. The other McGill graduates involved were working for various government agencies and the university had no direct responsibility for them. A newspaper report that the employment of two other members of the Physics Department had been terminated under similar espionage charges was promptly denied by Norman Shaw, the departmental chairman. These measures, however, were not sufficient to silence widespread criticism of the university. On 18 March, a newspaper, the Quebec ChronicleTelegraph (the same journal, it will be recalled, which had commented adversely on Professor Corbett's prewar activities) wrote in an editorial: 'It is a matter of common knowledge that for years since [our universities] have been hotbeds of radicalism and centres not of pure learning but of ideological indoctrination. You send your boy to McGill a Canadian democrat and he graduates as an international communist The fruits of that hell-brew we are at present reaping.' The following day Solon Low, the leader of the Social Credit party in the House of Commons, pointed out that many of those implicated in the espionage activities were McGill graduates, and repeated the charge that the university was a 'hot-bed of Communism'. In rebuttal, James issued a press release, pointing out that the men under suspicion were working for the National Research Council and other government agencies; the only one also employed by McGill, Raymond Boyer, had been recommended for his university appointment by the council, and most of the time his salary had been paid by a grant from the council. If Mr. Low had evidence to support his charges, the university would be glad to investigate. Brooke Claxton, the minister of national health and welfare, himself a McGill graduate, issued a statement denying that the university had ever been a strong centre of left-wing political indoctrination. 'McGill's great record of service in war and peace is the complete answer to Mr. Low.'32 The official inquiry moved into the law courts, and McGill's name dropped out of the headlines. Boyer was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and forfeited his university position. Durnford Smith was also convicted and never submitted his thesis, though James pointed out to David Thomson, the dean of graduate studies, that after serving his sentence Smith should be in the same position as before he was charged.33 With regard to Boyer, informed opinion seems to have coalesced around the view that as a scientist he made an individual political judgement for which he had to take equally individual responsibility: He felt very strongly about Russian participation in the war, the great losses that Russia was suffering, and felt that we ought to be

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giving freely of our scientific information to Russia. He was not convinced that this was being done even though, as events turned out, the information which he eventually gave to the Russians had actually been given them officially by the Canadian government. He did, however, commit a breach of the Official Secrets Act, giving details of RDX manufacture to Canadian Communists for transmission to Russia.34 Within the university, these incidents raised again a question which had been vigorously debated in the early days of the war, in both the Graduate Faculty and Senate: the propriety of McGill professors engaging in secret research, whether on behalf of the National Research Council or any other agency, government or commercial.35 The thrust of university research, it was agreed, was the discovery and the dissemination of new knowledge; research findings which could not be published were inimical to the idea of the university. Moreover, if the professors' projects were of a confidential nature, graduate student involvement could create disturbing possibilities. In the Department of Physics, where things might have gone seriously wrong, the graduate student connection had been minimal; in the Department of Chemistry, as in the instance of Schiessler working with Ross, student involvement had been close and very productive, and no harm had resulted. There were those who thought that no students should be involved in secret research. The counter-arguments were that all the resources of the university must be made available to the government in times of national emergency, and that some risks were unavoidable. The working answers reached were that in any circumstances academic credit could be given only for research findings available for judgement by the university's duly appointed examiners; that publication had to be contemplated, though a delay in publishing was permissible in particular circumstances; that a professor using university facilities and fulfilling academic duties on campus could only engage in secret research with the knowledge and express permission of the chairman of his department and the dean of Graduate Faculty; and that what a professor did off campus and in his own time was a matter that he himself must decide responsibly. These were not wholly satisfactory answers, but they reflected a consensus of opinion which became faculty policy, and stood the university in good stead when the question of secret research became once again a matter of much discussion in the disturbed years of the 1960s.36

NOTES I. In his curriculum vitae James listed his degrees by the years he reckoned he earned them: B.Com. 1923, M.A. 1924. But the official date for the B.Com. was 1925 and for the M.A. 1926, the same year he received the Ph.D. In 1960

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when he was made a Fellow of the London School of Economics he believed he was the only recipient of the B.Com., 'that rather despised degree' (it had since been discontinued), to be so honoured, and took particular pleasure in the election. 2. Beatty was in hospital until March 1940 and convalescent in Atlantic City until June. He resumed work until his stroke in March 1941. Thereafter James was one of the few visitors Beatty permitted until his death in 1943. 3. 'The Early Years of M.A.U.T.', McGill Association of University Teachers Newsletter 7, no. 5 (June 1981): 2. 4. See Marlene Gay Shore, '"Overtures of an Era Being Born"; F.R. Scott: Ideas of Cultural Nationalism and Social Protest, 1920—1939' (M.A. thesis, UBC, 1977), pp. 78ff. Shore cites Scott's poem 'Lest We Forget': The British troops at the Dardanelles Were blown to bits by British shells Sold to the Turks by Vickers And many a brave Canadian youth Will shed his blood on foreign shores, And die for Democracy, Freedom, Truth With his blood full of Canadian ores, Canadian nickel, lead and scrap Sold to the German, sold to the Jap With Capital watching the tickers.

5.

6. 7.

8.

This poem was published in Overture (Toronto, 1945), but was written in the early 19306. It is quoted here with the author's kind permission. The British Empire Association passed a resolution 6 April 1939 condemning Corbett's views and urged that McGill terminate his appointment. The University of Toronto was having to cope with even greater problems: on 13 April 1939 Premier Hepburn and Opposition Leader Drew concurred in the Ontario legislature on the need to discipline Professors F.H. Underbill and G.M.A. Grube for expressing similar views. MUA 641/267, file 'Freedom of Speech and Radicalism'. See also Montreal Gazette, 14 April 1939. James Sutherland Thomson, Yesteryears at the University of Saskatchewan: 1937-1949 (Saskatoon, 1969), p. 37. The James-Wallace proposal had the support of an editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail, 24 December 1942. It would have provoked a head-on confrontation with the classical colleges of Quebec, seeing that it would have practically closed them. Gwendoline Pilkington has drawn attention to the closed-door manner in which the proposal was made and debated, and to the fact that this secrecy was carried over into the record of the meeting in the minutes of the NCCU. She also draws attention to Watson Kirkconnell's account of how strong reaction to the James-Wallace proposal by humanities professors led in late 1943 to the creation of the Humanities Research Council. See Gwendoline Pilkington, 'A History of the National Conference of Canadian Universities' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1974), pp. 322-37, and Watson Kirkconnell, A Slice of Canada: Memoirs (Toronto, 1967), p. 235. Thomson, Yesteryears, p. 47.

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9. Boyce was registered in electrical engineering 1945-48, but did not graduate. The first woman B.Eng. was Mary Jackson, 1946. See Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, pp. 322ff. 10. See the report 'The Contribution of McGill University to the War Effort: A Reply to the Questionnaire of the Dominion Statistician', October 1941, MUA 1853/4. 11. McGill News 24, no. 2 (Winter 1942): 59. See also letter from the secretary, Harvest Labour Committee, Regina, describing the McGill effort 'an unqualified success'. 'Harvest Train', Bio. 12. This paraphrase of McNaughton's directive is given by R.C. Fetherstonhaugh, McGill University at War (Montreal, 1947), p. 331. 13. Ibid., pp. 332-3314. R.V.V. Nicholls, 'Canada's Contribution to R.D.X.: Super Explosive of World War II', a paper delivered at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, Halifax, June 1981. 15. Cited in ibid. 16. The Engineering Journal 30, no. 13 (1947): 581. 17. Robert A. Young, 'Reining in James: The Limits of the Task Force', Canadian Public Administration 24, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 589-99. 18. Journal, 7 January 1943, MUA 1853. James maintained both an 'official' journal and a private diary. 19. Young, 'Reining in James', p. 599, commented that James' basic memorandum prepared for the committee generated, in time, a climate favourable to the 1945 White Paper on Employment and Incomes and that other studies commissioned by the committee 'stimulate[d] thought within a limited audience, and several later proved useful'. 20. The Report on Social Security for Canada was republished in 1975 in the Social History of Canada series. In the preface to this edition Michael Bliss wrote: 'The most important single document in the history of the Welfare State in Canada is Leonard Marsh's Report on Social Security—The Marsh Report was a pivotal document in the development of war and postwar social security programs, the equivalent of the Beveridge Report in Great Britain.' 21. Ibid., 1975 ecU introduction, p. xx. 22. Thomson, Yesteryears, pp. 75-78. 23. McConnell himself contributed $250,000; report of the Financial Needs Committee, MUA 15/9/2/1. 24. These details were recorded by James in his private diary; MUA (restricted access). 25. The registrar, T.H. Matthews, wrote an account of the hectic preparations which is included in James' journal; a shortened version is in Fetherstonhaugh, McGill at War, pp. 224ff. 26. Cyril James, private diary. 27. Fetherstonhaugh, McGill at War, pp. 224-26. 28. J.W. Pickersgill and D.R. Forster, The Mackenzie King Record, vol. 2 (Toronto, 1968), p. 85; see also p. 87: 'I am determined not to allow the position of Prime Minister of Canada to be blotted out in my own country.' For King's concern on this point with regard to the first Quebec Conference, August 1943, see vol. I, pp. 527—28.

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29. Cyril James, epilogue, in Fetherstonhaugh, McGill at War, p. 345. 30. S.B. Frost and Sheila Rosenberg, The McGill Student Body', McGill Journal of Education 15, no. I (Winter 1980): 35-53. See also the graph Student Enrolment. 31. See V.M. Jolivet and D.H. Kennedy, 'Dawson College, 1945-1950', Bio; also, 'Nihi bastorum carborundum', McGill Reporter 13, no. II (19 November 1980). 32. Montreal Gazette, 20, 21 March 1946. See also the editorial, The Mind of Mr. Low', Montreal Star, 20 March 1946. 33. F.C.James to D.L. Thomson, 2 January 1946; MUA 16/917. 34. Leo Yaffe, 'History of the Department of Chemistry', a paper given to the James McGill Society, 13 April 1978, 82.6.12.3. 35. Paul Dufour, 'Eggheads and Espionage: The Gouzenko Affair in Canada', Journal of Canadian Studies 16, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1981): 188-98, discusses in detail the course of the Gouzenko affair and comments perceptively on its effect upon McGill. He was misled by an unsigned note from Mrs. McMurray, the principal's secretary, into thinking that 'within McGill there was strong resentment towards the N.R.C.'s imperialistic attitude during the war when, for all practical purposes, Canadian universities became federal government research arms.' The resentment was felt much more strongly by Mrs. McMurray in the principal's office than by scientists in the departments. 36. It was not only the physical sciences in wartime which raised the question of secret research; the social sciences argued that in some circumstances the publication of the results of sociological inquiries would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy, or might prevent further inquiries being undertaken. The consensus was that such circumstances would be extremely rare and should be decided ad hoc. For wartime discussion, see Senate, Minutes, par. 146, 23 May 1941, also par. 142, 21 April 1943, MUA 2752/1; Graduate Faculty Minutes, 28 September 1944, MUA 56/36/1/1/8; AR 1943-44, pp. 23-24.

CHAPTER YEARS OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENT: 1945-1960

W

hile the incoming flood of veterans preoccupied the attention of the university in the immediate postwar period, other developments commencing at that time were to prove of even greater significance. The first was a revolution in university financing; the second, a world-wide expansion of human understanding, without parallel in the history of man. In the somewhat frustrating way in which the sublime is often enmeshed with the mundane, the two were by no means unconnected: the rich harvest of the mind could not have been gathered without a major increase in resources. The third was the beginning of a further immense and permanent enlargement of the student body, a phenomenon which was to give rise to serious repercussions in the 19605.

private and gobvenmental aidffdf

McGill is unique in that it was a public institution forced to become a private one. It had not chosen private status, and had never been averse to receiving government grants, and had indeed assiduously sought them. Because, particularly in the fifties, the matter was to become a question of survival, it is necessary to review it in some detail, even at the cost of repetition.

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McGill believed with good reason that it had been promised initial government support which it had never received.1 The college received a royal charter but not a royal endowment. Further it had not been given the provincial support which it had been assured would be forthcoming: the petition of 1865 indignantly pointed out that 'all the moneys received by [the college] from public sources (of which the first was in 1854) do not amount to one-fourth of the annual revenues of the University of Toronto.'2 For the next century that situation was not to change very greatly. The Faculty of Medicine had been given a grant of $2,000 annually for some years prior to 1847, but when a second school was established in that year the same amount was divided between them, and McGill received only $1,000.3 The amount increased very slowly and never became more than a token payment; in 1873 Protestant higher education profited by the allocation of the Marriage Licence Fund, but even this had to be shared with Bishop's University, and was never a significant or dependable amount. In 1890 the total income for the year from government sources was $4,250, hardly the salary of one professor. The matter was further complicated by the involvement of the university in teacher training. In the days of the old McGill Normal School, operating expenses were covered by a government grant; in the time of the Macdonald School for Teachers, operating expenses were supposed to be covered by Sir William's endowment, but costs quickly rose beyond means.4 The university contended that the provincial government should give it grants to cover rising costs and expanded services, as it had done for the francophone normal schools. The government was very slow to respond, and until 1939 the university was still arguing forcefully that, far from receiving government funding, it was paying out of its own resources costs which the government should have met5 By 1939 the annual education grant had climbed to $15,000, and there were one or two other small subsidies, such as those to agriculture. In that year the first major change occurred: Premier Duplessis introduced a bill into the Quebec legislature proposing statutory aid for the universities Laval, Montreal, Bishop's, and McGill, the last-named to receive $150,000 annually for ten years. In the event, McGill received no more than $50,000 in 1939 and the same amount in 1940, but in 1941 special wartime federal grants to universities, as described previously, took the place of the Duplessis statute and the university received $I20,000.6 Although this still left the teacher-training dispute unresolved, these sums were additional to the previous grants, and so constituted a clear and very welcome addition to the university's resources. Then followed the imaginative postwar scheme for assistance to the veterans and to the institutions which had received them, and this strengthened the finances suffi-

John Wilson McConnell

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ciently for the university to meet the greatly increased operating costs of the years following 1945. Cyril James had continued during the war years the conservative tradition of Lewis Douglas that budgets should be balanced. In the unusual circumstances of the immediate postwar years, deficit spending was unavoidable, but an early effort was made to return to fiscal integrity. Governmental resources had been supplemented in 1944, it will be remembered, by the magnificent $7 million raised by J.W. McConnell. But even of that total $1 million had come from the provincial government, so that here again the university had received substantial amounts of public money. In 1948 the university launched yet another campaign, and this time raised $8 million.7 Of that amount, $2.75 million came from municipal and provincial grants. However, it was obvious that with the passing of the veterans, and with them the federal per capita grants, Canadian universities in general and McGill in particular would be left with ever-increasing problems. No amount of private fund-raising could cope with the steadily increasing costs. FEDERAL G O V E R N M E N T TO THE RESCUE

In 1949 Cyril James, as chairman of the finance committee of the National Conference of Canadian Universities, secured an interview with the prime minister, Louis St. Laurent, and urged federal aid for all of Canada's universities. He received a sympathetic hearing, and was informed of the government's intention to establish a royal commission on the development of arts, letters, and sciences, a body which came to be known as the Massey Commission. The commission published its report in June 1951. It found that 'universities have become essential institutions of higher education, of general culture, of specialized and professional training, and of advanced scientific research.' But it also found that 'our universities are facing a financial crisis so grave as to threaten their future usefulness... the universities face the twin spectres of falling revenue and rising costs.' It reported that 'although the Federal Government accepts the principle that scholarships should be offered for the encouragement of post-graduate studies, in no field are these scholarships on a lavish scale; and certain important areas, especially in the creative arts, the humanities and the social sciences, are left almost entirely to the efforts of voluntary societies.' The commission recommended that 'in addition to the help already given for research and other purposes, the Federal Government make annual contributions to support the work of the universities... that these contributions be sufficient to ensure that the work of the universities of Canada may be carried on in accordance with the needs of the nation.' It also recommended that the present support of

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25!

postgraduate studies and research in the natural sciences should be continued and increased and that appropriate funds be made available to establish postgraduate bursaries and scholarships in the humanities, the social sciences, and law. Further the report urged that 'a system of fellowships to be known as the Canada Fellowships be established for the encouragement of mature and advanced work' in the same range of disciplines. To administer the funding for these latter awards, the commission recommended the creation of a 'Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, Letters, Humanities and Social Sciences'.8 The recommendations for the scholarship plan, and for the establishment of the council, later called the Canada Council, were not implemented until 1956, but the proposal to pay direct grants to universities was accepted and enacted with commendable speed. The subvention was fixed at the rate of fifty cents per head of provincial population. From this source McGill's share in 1952 was $615,270, and with this grant a new era began. It was not the largest amount the university had received from public funds, but it was different in kind: McGill had been placed by the federal government on the same footing as other universities, and for the first time received money on an annual basis, not according to legislative whim but to known norms, generally applied. It was to be many years before the provincial government also treated McGill as a university comme les duties, but the federal grant of 1952 pointed the way. It was the portent of a new and very different future. PROVINCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

It soon appeared, however, that the new resources, which James had done so much to win for the universities of Canada, were going to benefit all except those of his own province: Laval, Montreal, Bishop's, and McGill were not to be allowed to receive federal moneys. In August 1951 Marcel Faribault, secretary-general of the Universite de Montreal, wrote to the secretary of NCCU, denying that the conference had the right to negotiate with the federal government on behalf of all universities, and further contending that the federal government had no authority to contribute to university budgets, since education was exclusively a matter of provincial jurisdiction. It seems that he wrote on his own responsibility, for the following month the rectors of Laval, Montreal, and Ottawa universities met and decided that they were willing to receive the grants 'provided that the provincial government had no objection to the aid in question'.9 The Universite d'Ottawa was fortunate; the Ontario government had no such objection, but in Quebec the damage had been done. Premier Duplessis could not allow his nationalism to appear to be in doubt He made it very clear to

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the universities of Quebec that any institution accepting the grants would feel the weight of his displeasure. Since a threat coming from Duplessis was never an idle one, McGill reluctantly decided to decline the federal support for general operating funds. In 1953, therefore, no government funds reached McGill, but in the following year Premier Duplessis introduced legislation to provide provincial aid in the place of the income of which the university had been deprived. From 1954 through 1957 McGill received $750,000 a year, so that the lost ground was quickly recovered. In 1957 the federal government tried again; it passed the necessary funding to NCCU for distribution to the universities and, with the higher per capita allotment then in force, McGill's share would have been $1,184,693. The university was deeply divided as to whether it should defy Duplessis and accept the grant, or should express its unanimity with the three other universities in the province and return the cheque to the NCCU. In Senate the debate ended in a tie vote, with the principal as chairman voting in favour of a joint conference of Senate and the board. McConnell agreed to seek an interview with Duplessis, as a result of which he advised against acceptance. It had been made clear that (if Quebec lived up both to its promises and to its threats) the university would lose rather than gain financially by keeping the federal grant. Again, therefore, with great reluctance the board of governors decided to return the cheque, asking the NCCU to hold these funds in trust until such time as Quebec universities might be free to accept them. It was certainly true that provincial grants were steadily rising, for in 1960 the grant from Quebec amounted to $1,832,900. The death of Duplessis in 1959 and the willingness of subsequent premiers to work out a solution to the constitutional difficulty brought a resolution of the problem in the early 19605. The federal government would make a fiscal transfer to the provincial government, which would then use the funds to support, in accordance with its own norms, the universities for which it was responsible. As a result, McGill though still primarily a private institution began to receive major public funding for the first time in the century and a half since the establishment of the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in 1801. The injection of the these new, large amounts of money into university financing by the federal and the provincial governments was neither fortuitous nor exceptional. The grants were an expression of a conviction which was world wide. At a Medical Faculty banquet in Redpath Hall in 1963, Cyril James remarked on this phenomenon: 'In every country of the world today, men believe that higher education has a significant influence on the rate of economic development. This belief underlies the worldwide demand for the expansion of university institutions—in number and size—and it also justifies the steadily-growing demands on the public purse to finance this development.'10

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It was a conviction which would transform the nature of higher education in Canada. For McGill University it was the beginning of a revolution in the character and style of the university, whereby it would no longer be meaningful to describe it as a private institution. It also made possible the timely arrival of resources without which the university could not have coped with the intellectual explosion of the postwar decades. AN E N L A R G E M E N T OF THE M I N D It is a fact, in some ways regrettable, in some ways compensatory, that great wars stimulate technologies to swift advances. It was particularly true of World War II, but in this case the technologies made possible, or acted as catalysts for, new dimensions of comprehension. The twenty-five years following the end of the conflict were characterized by a pushing back of horizons and a major enlargement of human understanding. The most noticeable of these advances began with wartime rocketry, developed by German engineers for the V2 weapon. After the war both the Soviet Union and the United States exploited German techniques to develop their own machines capable of escaping for the first time the imprisonment of earth's gravity. The ascent of the first sputnik, the supernavigation of the globe by Gagarin, the landing on the moon by Armstrong and Aldrin, the sojourns in the space laboratories, the satellite probes of neighbouring planets, all pushed back the effective boundaries of space, and gave man an infinitely larger lebensraum. For the first time, he could look back on a distant earth and see it for the lonely spaceship it truly is. The photographs taken were shared with all the billions upon earth, and all mankind could see themselves as travellers together on the 'over-crowded ark', journeying through limitless space.11 At the same time, the development of the radiotelescope gave astronomers another tool, far more powerful than any they had previously possessed. It probed the far reaches of the galaxies, and confirmed that ours is a receding environment. The realization came home as never before that man lives on a shrinking planet in an expanding universe. All human endeavour and intellectual achievement, all politics, philosophy, religion, and art, had to be viewed in an entirely different perspective. It was not only space that expanded. Universal time had to be calculated in billions of years and even terrestrial time acquired a new significance. The continuing work of the Leakeys and their colleagues gave a vaster time frame for the history of Homo sapiens. Carbon 14 and other dating technologies gave man a tool for interpreting archaeological data, and for gaining additional insights into previously gathered material. Dramatic finds such as those in the Dead Sea desert, at Mohenjo-Daro in India, at Ebla in Syria, made archaeology an exciting science again; painstaking

John Stuart Foster and the McGill cyclotron

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work in China, Mexico, and South America cast further light on the beginnings of civilization in one continent after another. The horizon of the past was pushed back, and again the consequence was that man entered upon a new understanding of himself. The recent technologies were also effective in the never-ending studies of the nature of life and the nature of matter. The development of the electron microscope created a window through which to look into the world of the infinitely small, and to study the hidden secrets of the life phenomenon; the application of physical and chemical theory to biological processes made the cell the most interesting of all living organisms, and for a while at least relegated taxonomy to a secondary interest; molecular biology and genetic theory, the discovery of DNA and the three-dimensional interpretation of its structure by Watson and Crick and their fellow workers, together with the accelerated study of the steric chemistry of proteins, brought new insights into the nature of life. At the same time, the cyclotron and the accelerator opened up possibilities for particle and high-energy physics, and man's understanding of the nature of matter and its relation to energy was greatly enlarged. Yet the mystery of being, so far from being solved, deepened with each penetration. Commenting on developments in science in these postwar decades, Professor F.C. Macintosh, the longtime chairman of the Physiology Department, distinguished between two aspects, each valuable in itself and obviously interacting, but by no means identical: the public perception of scientific advances in general and the actual breakthroughs in the pure sciences. With reference to the latter, he wrote: In pure science, as I read the story, the post-war period was especially characterized by a rather new general strategy, namely the invasion of the terrae incognitae between the classical, scientific disciplines. The boundary between physics and chemistry became one of convenience only; the earth sciences and the life sciences became, much more than before, extensions of physics and chemistry; experimental psychology became a branch of biology. The scientists who exploited this strategy set up new societies and new journals devoted to the new areas of research, and thus generated new disciplines that acquired a limited degree of independence. One of the most important of these has been materials science, with inputs from solid-state physics, crystallography and physical chemistry: it has profoundly affected many branches of science through its input on instrumentation and computer technology. Computer science, basically a branch of mathematics, was nourished by computer technology; and advances in instrumentation allowed molecular biology, immunology

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and geophysics to attain their fall growth rates as pure sciences Nuclear physics gave rise to high-energy physics (particle physics) and thus helped to widen our intellectual horizons.12 Universities were profoundly influenced by both these aspects of scientific development. It became socially acceptable to devote large sums to scientific teaching and research, so that individual scientists continued to find universities exciting places in which to explore their disciplines. A little leaven introduced into the dough permeates until all is leavened. The excitement engendered by a major breakthrough in one discipline spills over into contiguous areas. The ferment in astronomy and space science, in biology and chemistry and physics, in archaeology and anthropology, spilled over into psychology and the social sciences and on into the humanities. Again, traditional boundaries became blurred. Languages and literature gained a new significance as the object of studies closely related to cultural patterns. Man, it was recognized, had to be viewed in all his relationships, in a total culture or 'horizon', rather than in any one art; in the same way that biology, coincident with its interest in the micro-unit, the cell, moved towards the concept of the macro-unit, the ecosystem, so, too, in the social sciences and humanities, man and his culture, and the ecological system in which that culture is one element, constituted a single new totality of interest. To express this outburst of intellectual activity a phrase was borrowed from demography. That study had already coined the term 'population explosion' to designate the huge increase during these years of earth's human population; now man, it was said, was caught up in a 'knowledge explosion'. As we have indicated, it was not only a new accumulation of facts, but also their interpretation and synthesis into new wholes. Facts indeed there were, in their thousands, and millions, growing each day in volume exponentially, far beyond the power of any one mind to store and order and utilize. With the problem, however, came the technology: the new kind of calculating machine to which Macintosh referred in his summation. Restricted in scope and huge in size, the computer had at first major limitations, but elaboration and miniaturization developed its capacities with almost frightening speed. There were those who feared that the computer might prove the destroyer of man rather than his saviour, but it is evident that without the service of this, possibly the most remarkable of all his inventions, man could not have coped with the knowledge explosion of the fifties and sixties, a phenomenon which since that time has shown no sign of diminishing, now or in the foreseeable future. Many scholars recognized the computer as a tool of the intellect, increasing man's mental capacity as truly as a tool of the hand increases his physical capacity.

The crowded halls of learning, 1956

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THE E N L A R G E M E N T OF MCGILL

In 1950 the human family numbered 2.5 billion, but by 1970 the figure had risen to 3.6 billion, an increase of 30 per cent. This expansion in numbers coincided with the dissolution of European colonial empires, and the emergence of newly independent nations, eager to prosper economically and culturally. Their heady aspirations eagerly embraced the belief that education was the golden key to that prosperity. Young people, and their parents, all over the world, were convinced of the value of higher education to the extent that a much higher proportion of the college-age population sought to gain entry to universities. Governments, persuaded by the same belief, actively encouraged their efforts. Canada was no exception. The college-age population in Canada increased from 860,000 in 1950 to over I million in 1960 and 1.5 million in 1970. Even more significantly, the percentage of that population attending higher education institutions increased from 7 per cent in 1950 to 20 per cent in 1970, or from approximately 60,000 to over 300,000. To accommodate these numbers new universities were founded and existing universities were greatly enlarged. The Toronto federation, for example, increased from a full-time student registration of 11,482 in 1950 to 26,568 in 1970. The Universite de Montreal showed a similar increase from 6,673 to 13,132. In the Province of Quebec, the government opened two new francophone universities and gave support to many other collegia! institutions. The increased numbers required increased funds: Quebec government support of higher education was approximately $16 million in 1950 and $249 million in 1970.13 In 1955, when these developments were still in their early stages, Edward Sheffield produced a paper at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Canadian Universities in which he forecast university enrolments for the next decade, and thereby alerted all Canadian institutions to the prospects of growth of an order which could not but change fundamentally their character and style.14 The reaction at McGill was at first somewhat negative. There was some talk of the university's attempting to limit its enrolments, and of refusing to grow, in order to ensure that its character might remain unchanged. McGill, it was said, might play the role of 'the Princeton of the north'. But, as James pointed out, this would be to forgo provincial government support for those institutions prepared to cooperate with the government's attempts to meet the new demands of the people of Quebec. Further, without that support, he said, McGill did not have access to a sufficiently large economic base from which to meet the swiftly rising costs of operation. McGill had either to accept a policy of expansion or to resign itself to becoming a liberal arts college—not a Princeton, but

Student Enrolment

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another not-so-elite Bishop's. The university was in this way led by him, not so much by formal decision either in Senate or in the board of governors, but by a quiet influencing of opinion, to venture on the road of growth and to accept the challenge of the new situation. The results were as decisive in their character as both sides in the discussion had foreseen. From a total student registration of 7,352 in 1950, the figures rose to an immense 16,818 in 1970, an increase of 128 per cent. In the same period, the university's operating budget increased from $854,011 to $15,228,858, an increase of 1,783 per cent.15 Even if we allow for the modest rate of inflation then prevailing, the available funds increased much faster than the number of students, and this permitted an improvement in the quality of the education. At the same time a major program of physical rebuilding was undertaken, at a capital funds cost of $150 million.16 This growth in size and this experience of relative affluence inevitably meant that the fifties and sixties saw McGill change profoundly in its structure, its mores, its intellectual interests, and its community relationships. It became in fact a whole new university. The various departments of the university were of course affected very differently. The chapters which follow try first to give some account of the intellectual and disciplinary developments in the faculties and departments, and the final two chapters seek to record the changes in the university as a whole. It will not be possible to take notice of all developments in all disciplines, but only those which contribute to the synoptic overview. Many points must be made which will be patently obvious to those within a particular discipline, but which will assist the generality of readers from other areas to gain an appreciation of that discipline's experience in the context of the larger developments. Another point needing to be made is that non-events are not news but they are history. In telling the story of the different disciplines, it is the advances that are noteworthy. The textbooks that were not changed, the courses that stayed unaltered, the professors who were not stimulated, these remained part of McGill's life just as they have been part of the life of every university since the Renaissance. But while a fact and a solid part of the history, they are not the significant part. In the chapters that follow, they will perforce receive little mention, but it is well to remember that they were only too often a part of the university experience of many students. We should also remind ourselves that not all technological advance is pure gain for mankind; that all too often new technologies breed new problems of pollution, job displacement, and social dislocation. But even in these situations the university often finds compensations: the problems call for new studies in pollution control or social planning or yet another technology, and so prove grist to some other part of the academic mill. One of the more

YEARS OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENT

26l

significant advances at McGill, for example, may well have been the establishment of the Institute of Occupational Health and Safety in 1974 Chairman Mao was a poet as well as politician, and he coined for China at a particular moment in its economic revolution the image of 'the great leap forward'. Looking at the transformation of his country in the decades following 1950, in the perspective of 5,000 years of Chinese cultural history, many observers have recognized that it was an appropriate and imaginative metaphor. Yet China's transformation was only one rather tardy instance of a global phenomenon. The chapters in part 2 of this volume relate some of McGilTs experiences in 'the greatest leap forward' in the history of mankind. THE C O N T I N U I T Y OF S T U D E N T LIFE The most important element in a river is the water, but it is the most difficult to grasp; students are the sine qua non of the university, yet from the professor's point of view, and even more from the historian's, they come and are gone with all the impermanence of a Heraclitean stream. Nevertheless, the unbroken flow of generations provides the identity of the student body, constantly changing as individuals but as a community remaining undeniably a dominant element in the university. Wars, disturbing demographic variations, social revolutions—the students experienced them all, and as individuals were deeply, sometimes traumatically, influenced, but as a body they continued from year to year, reassuringly permanent. Whatever else changed in the university, it remained true that each year a new generation of students streamed through the Roddick Gates, asking to be taught. The students are undoubtedly the most difficult element in the university to chronicle. They played games, they ran races, they held debates; they organized societies, clubs, fraternities, and sororities; they staged plays and produced operettas, revues, and concerts; they studied hard and gained degrees, diplomas, and awards; but one year's accomplishments were hurried from attention by the achievements of their successors. Occasionally, however, a football team, a hockey triumph, a stage production, was so outstanding as to become the high point by which the efforts of succeeding years were judged. The golden decade of college football in Canada was that of the 19508. Those were the days when men and women students and a goodly number of graduates and Montreal football fans flocked up University Street to the Molson Stadium for the McGill Redmen games. Crowds of 15,000 and more were the norm, and in 1950 a record attendance of 23,000 was established. Unfortunately, that was the game in which the Redmen were over-

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run by the Western Mustangs by a score of 24 to 2, and 'the fans who came to cheer them on to victory sat on their hands in shocked silence.' But victories were plentiful in other seasons, especially in the years at the other end of the decade. Many graduates still recall the great games of 1960 and 1962, when Tom Skypeck was the McGill quarterback. The 1960 season began uncertainly, but the McGill Redmen were able by strenuous effort in the latter half of the season to struggle into the final against Alberta, the champions of the western intercollegiate league. 'The national playoff game was staged in Molson Stadium and the Redmen crushed the University of Alberta Golden Bears by a score of 47 to 6.' Having lost the championship to Queen's the next year, Skypeck led his men to victory a second time in 1962, appropriately enough over those same Queen's Golden Gaels: 'If the return home from Kingston the previous year was like the retreat from Moscow, this time it was like an Armistice Day celebration.'17 But the football field was not the only scene of McGill triumph in the decade of the fifties. Another was that well-trodden, much-abused stage in Moyse Hall. It was here that the footlights first went up on My Fur Lady}* It was one in the long series of student productions of varying qualities, known as Red and White Revues. This particular effort was the child, incongruously enough, of a group of law students, mostly of the class of 1957; Jim Domville, Tim Porteous, Don MacSween, and Erik Wang. They brought back Brian Macdonald, an arts graduate of 1954 who had left the university for the professional stage, to choreograph their production; they roped in Jim Hugessen, also of law, and Ann Golden of music to play the main roles, and Gait MacDermot to help Domville write the music. As the opening night drew nearer, the show demanded more and more effort until at last fully sixty students were involved in production and at least another sixty were handling management, publicity, and sales. Opening night was on 7 February 1957 and the next day the newspaper critics were loud in their praise. My Fur Lady is a genuine Canadian satire, conceived with wit and staged with imagination. In the hands of seasoned professionals it would stand comparison with many a more lavishly expensive company, but even as it is now, being staged in the raw, as it were, by student amateurs, it is a rattling good evening's entertainment, filled with topical and political jokes that seldom miss their mark— With a little editing and judicious trimming and a little more polishing, it could easily tour Canada coast to coast and leave a trail of appreciative audiences.19 That was exactly what the show did the following summer, with particularly successful experiences at the Stratford Festival, the Royal Alexandra

My Fur Lady, 1957

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Theatre in Toronto, and even in Ottawa where the governor general reversed the most famous of all royal lines and confessed himself amused. But 'Fur Ladies' are few and far between, and the postwar period is not remarkable for the number of students who have left records of their experiences at McGill. Edgar Andrew Collard, the historian par excellence of Montreal, invited graduates' reminiscences for the forty-year span 1920-60, and published a volume, The McGill You Knew, but it is noticeable that the postwar contributions largely concern Cyril James and his personal style of principalship.20 What students thought of other professors, or more importantly of each other, provides little or no material, and this is in marked contrast with earlier periods, as by our citations we have from time to time demonstrated. There is a probable reason. All parts of the university were greatly affected by the sudden growth of the university in the postwar years, but no element on campus was so immediately influenced as the students themselves. As classes became larger, professors became more inaccessible, the Union more crowded, the class-year loyalties less meaningful. The smaller professional faculties, such as medicine and law, experienced less dislocation because for them enrolments were limited, but arts and science and to some extent engineering were particularly under stress. Macdonald College, where a considerable proportion of the students lived in residences, was affected to a lesser degree, though the Institute of Education experienced some of the overcrowding. Ironically, the students at Dawson College were perhaps those who suffered least in this regard. Classes at Dawson were fairly small, most students lived in the former service accommodations, and a strong esprit de college developed. Within a year twenty-one intramural and eighteen intercollegiate sports had been organized. The football team won its first game after only four days of practice. Not one of the players had seen a football for five years, yet the team won every game that initial season. In five years Dawson recorded a 93% participation rate in intramural and intercollegiate sports. The campus was often compared to a small mining town, where everyone worked for the company, where all members shared in the life of the community and consciously or unconsciously helped to shape it. Of the students themselves, Professor Cecil Solin, who taught at Dawson in those years, said in his reminiscences: 'By and large, they worked hard when they worked, and played hard when they played. Without reservation, they were the best students I have had as a group in my thirty-five years at McGill.'21 That is consistent with what James had said of the

Dawson College, St. Johns, Quebec

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veteran students in general, as quoted earlier, but in the later years of Dawson College not all its students were veterans; former servicemen or not, they all seem to have been caught up into its communal life. On the main campus the increased numbers seriously aggravated the shortage of student housing. It was the women who suffered most, despite the expansion of the Royal Victoria College to accommodate a total of 400 residents. Shortly after the war, the college reasserted the rule that women students must live at home or in college; living in lodgings was not permitted and it was not yet proper for a young woman to live in an apartment alone or with a friend. As a result, many eligible women students were denied access to the university. Men had more latitude. They had Douglas Hall as the official university residence and, for the favoured few, some of the fraternities provided boarding facilities. For the others, the Diocesan and United Theological Colleges acted as unofficial residences, and for another rather larger group the 'student ghetto', the area between University Street and Park Avenue, provided a varied range of accommodations in rooming-houses and apartments. But the lack of sufficient residence accommodation helped to loosen the bonds of student cohesion and more of those coming into the university, both men and women, found it a 'nine-to-five' experience only. It was not until the end of the James era that the administration gave any priority to building further student residences. In 1961 Gardner, McConnell, and Molson Halls were built as men's residences, and Bishop Mountain Hall was erected to serve as their refectory. The Roscoe Tower was added to the Royal Victoria College in 1964; the residence rule had been rescinded the previous year. But these ameliorative moves were too late to prevent serious disturbances within the main student body of McGill in later years. There was, however, running strongly through the decade of the fifties one tradition which can perhaps claim to represent the continuity of student life more clearly than any other—the tradition of the student newspaper. The McGill Daily commenced publication in 1911 and claims to be the oldest student daily in the British Commonwealth. It had an honourable ancestry: the first student publication began in 1873 and was known during its seventeen years variously as The Gazette, The University Gazette, and The McGill Gazette. It lapsed in 1890, probably because its literary and moralistic character was becoming more difficult to sustain. Its successor described the Gazette's purpose as 'to mirror the intellectual and literary progress of the University, and also to act as a chronicle of College items and class reports', which does sound rather high-minded. But this successor, The McGill Fortnightly, was hardly any more frivolous: its own intention was 'to keep the literary standard and tone of the paper as high as

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possible', while also giving news of societies, faculty items, class reports, and college news in general.22 It ran from 1892 through 1898 and included the same kind of literary essay that the Gazette had provided, as well as rather more numerous items of current interest. The next student paper, The McGill Outlook, 1899-1907, was definitely intended to be of a lighter style. The literary essays were fewer and the news-reporting sought to cover a wider scene, giving more space to societies, including the Graduates' Society, and giving more prominence to sporting activities. After a year's lapse, student publication began afresh in 1908 with the McGill Martlet. This magazine was published weekly and the reporting of campus activities was beginning to predominate. Sports and athletics received considerable coverage. Much space as well was given to reports of societies and of Theatre Night and to bulletins from the various classes. The third issue of the first volume had the inevitable article by Stephen Leacock (this one was on college journalism) and another number had one by Ethel Hurlbatt on the controversial subject of women's suffrage. For Quebec, she was still thirty years before her time. The McGill Martlet also devoted some space to humour and retailed a number of jokes, thereby showing that however hard it is to maintain literary standards, to maintain standards of humour is even more demanding. The Martlet was published for three years. This brings us to the founding in 1911 of the true college newspaper, the McGill Daily. But before we comment on the long and notable history of that publication, we should take notice of its older and equally remarkable colleague (competitor it is not), the Old McGill series of annuals. Begun in 1897, and designed, published, and financed entirely by students, the yearbooks vary in physical format, style, and content quite considerably, and are therefore difficult to characterize. Their major purpose is to record the memorable events of the session and to perpetuate in photographs the student's memories of his or her year. The class and group photographs are therefore a constant element, and they do indeed identify and substantiate the individuals, giving a sort of immortality, as it were, to each member of each class. But the annuals may also offer valedictory messages from university dignitaries or verses from student poets, and the later numbers include some striking student photography, particularly of campus scenes, or views of Montreal or the Quebec countryside—the kind of visual memory a young graduate might wish to recall of his or her experience at McGill. The McGill Daily is something else. At various times faculties and departments have started magazines and journals to reflect their interests, or a particular religious group or a political party has put out a publication, but these items inevitably proved ephemeral: they had their day and ceased to be.23 But the Daily went on each year from strength to strength.

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Building on the lessons learned by its predecessors, the McGill Daily succeeded in making student journalism a meaningful and (as far as one can ever see into the future) a permanent feature of campus life. Leacock's article on college journalism, which appeared in the Martlet, was unintentionally prophetic. He noticed and deplored the change that was developing, even in 1908, away from the literary magazine style, 'a literary product, a repository of thought, a vehicle of ideas, an influence', to a new style of production 'which attempts to be a newspaper, relating occurrences, real things that have happened'. The newer journalism, he said, is 'up to date, businesslike, plausible and utterly valueless; imitating with spurious activity the rush of the news-net of the Metropolitan daily; telling the news of the campus to people who saw it happen'. But Leacock was fighting a losing battle. The McGill Daily set out to be just what Leacock feared: a true newspaper. The first number declared: 'We intend to keep every McGill man, old and young [sic— the women evidently did not count], well-informed on news of his university.' The paper was going to battle for all schemes of university improvement, such as a new gymnasium, much-needed residences, a closed ice-rink, and a new arts building. The journal also intended to keep McGill in touch 'with the great university world of Canada, the British Isles and the United States'. For the next twenty years the Daily developed only slowly: reports on the visit of the chancellor, sports, societies and clubs, the election of student officers, the annual convocation for the award of degrees—these were the staples of the newspaper's content. But in the 19308 a change was becoming discernible. Sports, although still prominent, no longer dominated every issue. Articles on serious events from the world beyond the campus—the economic depression, the disarmament talks between Europe's warring nations—began to find a modest place in the Daily columns, though surprisingly little reference was made to the Spanish Civil War. Working on the Daily became one of the truly educational experiences the university had to offer. An editorial printed in October 1931 said: 'What the Daily has to offer is best answered by those who have succumbed to its lure in the past, those who have gone on to graduation with a host of Daily friends, with the fruits of Daily experience stored away in their memories... they have seen the result of their work in concrete form in print and have received the finest possible training in writing—the opportunity to write.'24 McGill has never had a school of journalism, and another editorial that same month explained why this should be so: 'It has often been said by those in a position of authority that three years' work as a reporter on the Daily is equivalent to any course in journalism in a recognized university.'25 By the time we reach the decade of the fifties, the Daily has come of age and has found its metier, as it were. There was still plenty of news of

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sports and of social functions but increasing attention was paid to such matters as the McCarthy communist witch-hunts. Students were urged to ease McGill out of its 'academic isolation', and to have more contacts with its sister university on the other side of the mountain, the Universite de Montreal. In 1953 the Daily won the Bracken Trophy for the best editorials in Canadian university journalism, and registered in third place for general excellence among college newspapers. The McGill Daily boast that participation in its production was an excellent preparation for a journalistic career was made good by the large number of McGill graduates who went on to distinguished careers with the Montreal newspapers, particularly the Star and the Gazette, and with other newspapers in Ottawa and Toronto, and then, as radio and television developed, in those media also. It is also true that just as the Daily began to foreshadow in the later fifties many of the developments that were to dominate the campus in the sixties, so too the group of young men and women who gave their time to the production of the student newspaper in those years were to prove the forerunners of a new breed of students, less ready to accept the status quo, more ready to question the society for which their university education was supposed to be preparing them. As the university grew in size, so it became less easy to characterize the typical McGill student; but by studying the columns of the Daily and by gazing on the photographs in the Old McGill annuals, one can at least gather an impression of the great variety of personal styles which the campus increasingly exhibited. More and more, the campus was becoming a microcosm of the pluralistic society into which Canada was developing in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Advancement i: 209-21. Ibid., p. 219. Ibid., pp. I4lff.; see also p. 148, n.iy. For details of the contract entered into in 1907, see chapter 3. As late as 1949, this matter had still not been satisfactorily settled. Mrs. McMurray, the principal's secretary, produced at that time a long memorandum in which she reviewed the financial history of the School for Teachers, and showed that by 1938 the annual loss had become of the order of $38,000. Ten years later, despite an increase in the grant to $35,000, she calculated that the university's deficit on the operation of the Macdonald School for Teachers was still some $20,000 annually. The accumulated deficit had grown to nearly $1.25 million. See MUA 16/188. 6. See chapter 8. 7. This was described as the first public subscription campaign in the university's history. A professional fund-raising company was employed and $8,016,405 was the final figure reported. Gifts from individuals amounted to

2yO

8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

CHAPTER N I N E

approximately $1,040,000 and from corporations $4,226,000; Montreal contributed $1,250,000 (to be paid over twenty years) and the Province of Quebec, $1,500,000. Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (Ottawa, 1951), chaps. 12, 21. Gwendoline Evans Pilkington, Speaking With One Voice: Universities in Dialogue with Government (Montreal, 1983), p. 67. In Cite Libre (February 1957), Pierre Elliott Trudeau supported the Duplessis stance but not 'the purely negative and narrowly partisan aspect of this policy'. See his Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto, 1968), pp. 79-102. The Conscience of Universities and Their Goals', an address by F. Cyril James, Principal Emeritus, at the professorial dinner of the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University, 18 December 1963, MUA 1853/2438. James was at that time president of the International Association of Universities. The phrase, harking back to the Genesis story, was coined by Gerald Durrell, as the title of one of his books. Private communication, 22 September 1981, 82.6.9.10. The figures for the universities were taken from the (then) Dominion Bureau of Statistics reports, but the basis of the numerations (e.g., what kinds of students were included) are not given, and the numbers are of illustrative value only. McGill figures were taken from the university's Annual Reports. World population figures were taken from the United Nations' Demographic Yearbooks. Quebec financial figures were obtained from Statistics Canada, 68-207. E.F. Sheffield, 'Canadian University and College Enrolment Projected to 1965', Proceedings oftheNCCU (1955). Registration reached 20,989 in 1976. Since that date, there has been a modest decline, but the old comfortable days of the 'small' university are never likely to return. The budget figures are taken from the university's Annual Reports. For this rebuilding program, see chapter 14. The quotations are from a forthcoming history of sport at McGill, written by Dink Carroll and edited by Tom Thompson, and scheduled to be published in 1984. Edgar Andrew Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew: An Anthology of Memories, 1920-1960 (Don Mills, Ontario, 1975). See especially The Triumph of My Fur Lady', pp. I23ff. Montreal Star, 8 February 1957. Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew, pp. 252-62. 'Nihi bastorum carborundum', McGill Reporter 13, no. II (19 November 1980). Also V.M. Jolivet and D.H. Kennedy, 'Dawson College, 1945-1950', Bio. McGill Fortnightly, 22 October 1892, p. I. See also Advancement i: 287. Faith Wallis, 'Student Newspapers in the McGill University Archives', MUA Occasional Papers. Also a listing, 'Student Publications in the Rare Book Room', 82.13.5. McGill Daily, I October 1931. The investigation of student publications was undertaken by Research Assistant Cecilia Danysk. McGill Daily, 24 October 1931.

PART TWO

FACULTIES AND DEPARTMENTS IN THE POSTWAR YEARS

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CHAPTER THE HUMANITIES

T

he Faculty of Arts received its new title, the Faculty of Arts and Science, in 1931. The change of name, and the appointment of a dean of arts and a dean of science, reflected the fact that two kinds of departments were somewhat incongruously grouped in one organization. In 1939 a further subdivision was felt to be desirable and four groups were established: Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Biological Sciences. Each group had its own chairman under one dean of arts and science, the separate deanships having been discontinued. This arrangement had to cope with the difficulty that some departments had affinities with two groups rather than one; the Department of History, for example, which could have been regarded as a humanity elected to go with the social sciences, whereas the Department of Psychology chose to belong both to the social sciences and to the biological sciences. But on the whole the scheme worked fairly well and with some modifications lasted until 1971, when the final step was taken and the science departments became a separate faculty.1 During those thirty-two years, 1939-71, the group arrangement gave the humanities a self-awareness which perhaps had previously been lacking, and it certainly provided occasions for self-examination. A committee to consider 'the present state and future prospects of the humanities' was established in 1947 and reappointed in 1948; in 1949 an interim report

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emerged and in June 1950 a full twenty-six-page final report was presented to the principal for his consideration.2 Attached were additional comments by H.N. Fieldhouse, Kingsford Professor of History, and J.S. Thomson, dean of the Faculty of Divinity, each dealing with the teaching of his own subject. A T I M E OF S E L F - S E A R C H I N G The 1950 Humanities Report is a somewhat curious document. The text is full of statements which are unexceptionable, but also unimpressive. Occasionally it strikes a memorable phrase, but as regards curriculum reform it proposes disappointingly little. The major recommendation was that if either Latin or Greek had been taken at matriculation level, then no further classical language should be required for the humanities B.A.; the same attitude was taken towards mathematics. Of course, any particular discipline could stipulate these subjects as prerequisites for later studies. Studies in fine arts and music should require an academic knowledge of the subject, but creative activity in these areas should be optional, for artistic appreciation does not depend upon the acquisition of particular skills. Religion could similarly be studied objectively, without personal commitment, and courses in religion should be among the options available. Apart from these rather mild proposals, the writers of the report spent their ti on statements of general principle: 'the broad aims of the humanities re, among other things, 'to develop as comprehensive an understanding as possible of human nature', and again, 'to develop an intelligent sensitiveness to spiritual values', and 'while insisting on intellectual discipline, to encourage an imaginative response to life and art'. These statements, general as they are, testify to the humanist's recognition that his essential task is to encourage in individual minds an appreciation of aesthetic, cultural, and moral values, wherever they may be found. The report was less effective in suggesting how the factual elements of language, history, theatre, musicology, or whatever, which have to be taught in the different pursuits as the necessary foundation before the appreciation can be aroused, could be more effectively handled. A more practical approach to the problems inherent in the teaching of the humanities was reflected in some paragraphs contributed by Professor A.S. Noad of the English Department, referring to an experimental course entitled 'The Great Writings of Europe'. Such a course is always open to charges of superficiality and depends very much on the enthusiasm of the participating professors; after a year or two this venture was discontinued, a sign that it had foiled to gain general approbation. In 1960 Fieldhouse, by that time dean of arts and science, introduced a series of lectures known as

English lecture, Moyse Hall, c. 1955

T

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the faculty coursew ,wgcughc wasobligatory for all third- and fourth-year which was

General B.A. students. The lectures were given by members of various departments, each surveying his own specialty; the approach was both chronological and topical, covering a wide range of subjects from the Homeric Age to existentialism, and dealing along the way with such diverse topics as Islamic civilization, humanism, William Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, Karl Marx, and atomic structure. The reading list was commensurately formidable. The Faculty Course came to an end, partly because of the organizational difficulties, but mostly because all but a few exceptional students found the requirements in terms of reading and intellectual comprehension too demanding. Both series can be viewed as attempts by the humanities to rediscover some 'core curriculum' which could take the place of the abandoned classical curriculum, as the generally accepted summation of 'what an educated person ought to know.'3 They may also be viewed as indicative of a further fact. From the time of the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century, the professor who was learned in the culture of classical civilization had been aware of his social role as the guardian and purveyor of that heritage. His twentieth-century successor, who had acquiesced perforce in the abandonment of that culture, was obliged to seek its replacement, since only by this means could he find his own place in the new order of things. The decade of the fifties, which saw scientists of every kind growing more confident of their disciplines and more assured of their role in society, left many humanists searching for a New Learning, which in the twentieth century could reconstitute their raison d' etre. By the end of the following decade, however, in ways most of them had not foreseen, their self-questionings were being answered. Obviously many individuals and even some departments continued teaching very much in the way to which they were accustomed. The Department of Fine Arts, for example, changed its name at the end of our period to the Department of Art History to express more clearly its perceptions of its task, but otherwise did not greatly change its ways. Other departments were enabled by particular circumstances to exchange old patterns for new, comparatively painlessly. The Department of Classics experienced in the later sixties an encouraging renewal of interest in its discipline. When the classical qualification was wholly abandoned in 1967, the department was liberated from the incubus of teaching elementary Latin to large classes of resentful students, and the professors were able to give more time to graduate students and to their own research interests. Departmental members began to pay a renewed attention to classical archaeology, organizing visits to sites in Italy and Greece. A coincident circumstance was that the McCord Museum unearthed a forgotten collection of valuable

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coins, which stimulated considerable interest in classical numismatics and resulted in the publication of a scholarly two-volume catalogue.4 In this way the department, although necessarily shrinking in size, was able to improve considerably the quality of its activities. The Department of Philosophy had natural affinities with the Department of Classics, from which it had indeed derived its origin. The history of the ideas which had sheltered under the umbrella-term 'philosophy' continued to be taught vigorously in the fifties and sixties. However, the dominant interest of the discipline had traditionally gone beyond a history of ideas to the provision of a contemporary synthesis of all human understanding in one comprehensive system. From Plato to A.N. Whitehead, Homo intelligent had sought through philosophy to come to terms with all reality, but this high endeavour had been undermined in the middle years of the twentieth century by the combined forces of existentialism and logical positivism. Typically, Ludwig Wittgenstein 'regarded philosophy as a clarification of thought through a "critique of language", not as a theory about the foundations of knowledge, or the nature of reality'.5 It appeared that all philosophical problems were in fact problems of language; metaphysics dissolved into linguistic analysis. As philosophers questioned in this way the content and the validity of their own discipline, they appeared to fellow academics as having to satisfy themselves as to their cultural relevance before they could again contribute positively to the general debate. The middle decades of the century may have been a time for philosophy when much had to be destroyed in order that in later years more valid structures could be raised, but neither on the McGill campus nor elsewhere in academia were the 19508 and 19608 a comfortable period for the professional philosopher. The honesty and vigour with which individual members of the department sought to cope with their profound intellectual crisis won the admiration of many observers. In particular, by his erudition and his sensitivity to modern currents of thought, Raymond Klibansky gained an international reputation, and he was appointed editor of the prestigious series Philosophy in the Mid-Century.6 Alastair McKinnon was similarly recognized as an authority on Sbren Kierkegaard. He devised a computerized concordance to Kierkegaard's writings in the original and in translation, and later acquired for the university a specialized collection of works relevant to the study of this seminal philosopher.7 The Department of English was another which had its problems in these years. Just as in the wider concerns of the western world the abandonment of a classical culture had left scholars searching for a replacement, so within the closer horizons of English literature a classical norm had been found unsatisfying and was being deserted without any consensus as to what should take its place. The tradition of English letters from Chaucer to Eliot

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was no longer acceptable as the major content of an honours course for Canadian students, nor was it sufficient for individual teachers to offer a few electives dealing with some Canadian or American writers; the poets and dramatists of the past were being abandoned in favour of contemporary authors, whom time had not yet authenticated either as to the importance of their thought or the quality of their style. Poetry had forsaken its old forms and was experimenting with new. New genres had arisen, such as science fiction and fantasy fiction, which appeared to some professors worthy of scholarly evaluation. The question was being asked in the department, What ought a well-read English honours student to know? The prevailing uncertainty resulted in a proliferation of courses, each reflecting the individual interests of the lecturer and attended by his own coterie of students, but not representative of or contributing to any overall plan.8 At the same time, there was a recognition that prose, poetry, and drama were not the only forms of literature in the twentieth century. Radio, film, and television were new media of expression that employed the English language as a means of communicating artistic values, and in that sense they were literature and should be studied as such. It was a period of much trial and error, and doubtless some success, but time would be required to winnow the permanently worthy from the merely meretricious. If this disciplinary turmoil had been taking place in a time of social stability, it would have been difficult to cope with, but it occurred during (and in part derived from) a period of profound social disturbance.9 It was a time of considerable questioning and self-analysis, not conducive to that poetry which Wordsworth had defined as 'emotion recollected in tranquillity', but abundantly productive of its own poetry, drama, and films. The department was by no means without its outstanding personalities. Harold Files was Greenshields Professor of English from 1940 to 1964. He had been teaching in the department since 1923 and during those forty years he established himself in the minds of many, students and colleagues alike, as the very exemplar of the humanist professor. Rich in erudition, gifted in communication, generous of himself equally to large classes as to individuals and small groups, Files truly enjoyed the heritage into which he had entered, and he loved to share it with others. For many who knew the McGill Department of English in the 1950s, Files epitomized the tradition of English letters. Louis Dudek, born in Montreal and a McGill graduate, joined the department in 1951 at the invitation of Files, whose student he had been. Over the next three decades he gained great distinction as a poet, an editor of poetry collections, and a contributor to journals and anthologies. Hugh MacLennan, a graduate in classics of Dalhousie, Oxford, and Princeton, taught for ten years at Lower Canada College before joining the English Department in the same year as Dudek. He

Harold Files' retirement: Vice-Principal Noel Fieldhouse and Dean H.D. Woods congratulate Professor Files, in the company of Professor Ralph Walker (left to right)

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published Barometer Rising in 1941 and established himself as Canada's foremost novelist with Two Solitudes in 1949, a reputation which successive novels and perceptive articles on Canadian themes were to sustain well into the 19806. In addition to individual achievements such as these, scholars in the department conceived and carried forward to successive conclusions, the Burney Papers Project, a team research program destined to be sustained over several decades, producing a stream of highly reputable publications and maintaining throughout the most meticulous standards of scholarship. Few if any parallels can be found in the history of Canadian literary scholarship.10 THE FRENCH MILIEU

During these years, as we shall have reason to take note at length later, French Canada achieved a new self-confidence and succeeded in making apparent to the rest of Canada and to responsive minds in the United States and in the francophone nations the indigenous culture of Quebec. McGill responded not unreadily to the new emphasis. It had some precedents to follow. From at least the time of Principal Meredith in the 18408, the French language had been given a special place in the arts curriculum, and in the early 19005 scholars and authors from France had been invited by the university to give public lectures in Montreal on the culture of their country.11 The McGill French Summer School was begun, as noted earlier, in 1904, and theses on aspects of French-Canadian culture were being written in the growing graduate program in the years between the wars.12 But in the late 19505 and early 19605, in accord with the spirit of the Quiet Revolution, the Quebec language and culture began to receive renewed attention. In 1963 the French Canada Studies Program was established to promote a better anglophone understanding of French-Canadian history and culture. The centre coordinated its own courses with other undergraduate offerings to constitute a program leading to a major for students wanting to concentrate on the literature, history, and culture of Quebec. It also provided seminars and research opportunities for graduate students and staff drawn from many departments. In the same year courses for academic and non-academic members of the university's staff were established to increase their language skills.13 The French Language Centre was instituted in 1970 to meet another increasingly important need: the provision of language instruction for students and members of professions wishing to practise in Quebec. The Centre for Continuing Education had from its beginnings in the 19205 offered French courses at all levels to graduates and other adults through its evening classes, and in the 19605 the

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centre increased the range and versatility of its offerings. In particular, a certificate and a diploma for proficiency in translation skills in Canada's two official languages were established to recognize the attainment of very high standards in that difficult art. However, these centres and programs were auxiliary to the main concern of the university, which continued to be the study and exposition of French literature and culture as a world-wide phenomenon. The justification for the auxiliary programs was that they set the Department of French Language and Literature free to concentrate on its undergraduate courses, its honours programs, and its rapidly increasing range of graduate offerings. A measure of the department's growth is to be seen in the number of theses presented for graduate degrees, and in the lengthening list of publications proceeding from the department, many of them gaining international recognition.14 These substantial and sustained efforts in the area of French language in no way compromised the university's perception of itself as an English-language institution, nor was it thought that the results would do much to lessen the antagonism of the Quebec nationalist minority, whose animosity derived directly from the university's anglophone character. The increased provision for the study and employment of the French language was the university's response to the changed conditions prevailing in the Province of Quebec. The French fact had become a reality, and McGill was adapting to it: political considerations were matters that would have to be decided elsewhere. A THIRD INHERITANCE Other disciplines among the humanities which expanded vigorously were those concerned with cultures other than those of the traditional British and French founding peoples. There were many reasons for this development The increase of ethnic complexity in the population of Montreal brought to the university considerable numbers of students who were motivated to study in depth the language and the culture of their parents and grandparents. At the same time, ethnic communities, growing in size and economic wealth, sought to have their cultural heritage represented in the university's curriculum. In many cases, the government of the community's homeland actively encouraged the establishment of language and cultural programs. German, for example, had played a subsidiary role in the combined Department of French and German since the mid-nineteenth century; it became a separate department, somewhat ironically, only on the eve of World War II, but it was in the postwar years that, with considerable encouragement from the West German government's Goethe

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House program, the department grew steadily in the number of student registrations and in the number of full-time academic staff. Similarly, a course in Italian was established in 1949 with the strong support of the Italian government, and programs in modern Greek were made available from 1968 as a direct result of the concern of the local Greek community. Where community interest or government support was not strong, development tended to be slower, as was the case with Spanish, despite the importance of the language on the world scene. There was no large Spanish-speaking community in Montreal to encourage further developments, and it was not until 1958 that the government of Spain began to offer scholarship opportunities in that country.1S Still other language and cultural developments were the results of political developments on the world scene. The emergence of the USSR as a world power and a leading contributor to world science encouraged the addition in 1957 of that language to the offerings of the Department of German, but the program speedily grew into a separate Department of Russian and Slavic Studies with close ties to the History Department's East European Program. Interest in the language and culture of China, on the other hand, was impeded rather than assisted by the postwar political situation. The isolation of China from the western world discouraged the exploration of its culture, but McGill derived considerable advantage from the university's connection with Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor whose activities on behalf of the communist armies had won him an enduring place in the esteem of the Chinese people.16 The Norman Bethune Exchange Professorship was instituted in 1964 and was at that time almost the only link the People's Republic of China had with the medical sciences of the western world. The Department of East Asian Languages and Literature and the Centre for East Asian Studies were established in 1968, and benefited considerably from the interest of the growing Chinese community in Montreal. The university had for many years received students from the Chinese dispersion, notably from Hong Kong and Singapore, but in those years the cultural relationship had operated in one direction only; from 1968 the wealth of history and culture which China had to offer began to flow reciprocally from east to west17 When Wilfred Smith founded the Institute of Islamic Studies in 1951, there was said to be in all of Montreal one settled Muslim family, as distinct from transient merchants and students. This may have been an exaggeration, but until that time Arab immigration to Canada had been limited; most of the newcomers were Syrians, of whom 90 per cent or more were Maronite Christians.18 By 1970 the Muslim community was numbered in the thousands rather than the hundreds, a fact reflective not only of the dispersion of cultures world-wide, but also of the growing importance of

Islamic Institute seminar, c. 1962

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the Islamic nations on the world scene. McGilTs institute anticipated these developments by many years, and quickly gained recognition in the Islamic lands because of the authority of its scholarship, and the breadth of its concern with all things Muslim. The study of Islamic history, law, and religion quickly required skills in Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, and other eastern languages, which now appeared in the McGill Calendar. The Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute was established in 1968 to coordinate Canadian studies in the cultures of the subcontinent and to facilitate visits of Canadian scholars to India. Although not strictly a McGill enterprise, its location on the university's campus gave strong support to programs in comparative religion, linguistics, anthropology, and history, to name but a few of the disciplines involved. These two institutes placed their emphasis on research and operated almost exclusively at the graduate level. The Jewish Studies Program, on the other hand, began in 1968 with an undergraduate activity. In view of the importance and the resources of the Jewish community in Montreal, and the strong contribution made by Jewish staff and students to the university in every faculty, it was appropriate that a program to provide opportunities for learning and research in the rich inheritance of the Hebrew tradition should have found its place in the McGill curriculum. Once again, its commencement was the result of community initiatives, and one wonders why this very natural development was so long in coming. Studies in the culture of African nations, which were in general without a strong representation in Montreal and lacked effective governments to promote their interests, developed more slowly, and the African Studies Program, when it was initiated in 1969, resulted from a confluence of academic interests from anthropology, history, political science, and other social science disciplines. It is somewhat ironic that a similar Canadian Studies Program was not established until 1972, but the answer may lie with those who contended that such a program was superfluous because the relevant departments were already fulfilling the function without the need for further academic bureaucracy. One last development should be noted. This great growth in the number of languages studied naturally increased interest in the phenomena of language as such. Lectures in linguistics had been given a place in the curriculum since the late 1940s, but in 1966 a separate department was established. This discipline set out not only to explore some of the fundamental questions encountered in explaining and describing language, such as those relating to sound, syntax, semantics, and language change, but also to discuss the role of language in relation to culture and social behaviour. The department early developed many affinities with both anthropology and psychology.

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In summary, then, we observe that the humanities took part very actively in that extraordinary outburst of intellectual activity which was called the knowledge explosion. One measurement of that growth is that from 1950 to 1970, the number of staff members in humanities departments increased fourfold, from 44 to 180; the number of theses approved for graduate degrees in these departments rose from an average of twenty a year to more than seventy. It was indeed a time when some of the older disciplines ha to meet and surmount serious challenges, but it was also a time when new studies were undertaken, when old horizons were transcended, and when that study which had always laid a large claim upon man's attention, namely the understanding of himself, made vigorous forward strides. There was also an unexpected bonus. In the renewed importance accorded to the fact of being human, many humanities professors found a restatement of their own cultural role—not as the expositors of a classical inheritance from the past, but as the investigators of a subject limitless in extent and forever relevant. They had rediscovered that 'the proper study of mankind is man.' A UNIVERSITY PRESS One consequence of the quickened activity in the humanities was a growing conviction that the university should not only produce the records of research, but also play a larger role in publishing those records. McGill should establish its own university press. Cyril James appointed a committee to consider the matter in 1959, and in July 1960 Robin Farr, an experienced member of an established Canadian publishing firm, came to McGill as the first director of the McGill University Press. The new enterprise began literally from nothing other than an office location, but it quickly engendered considerable enthusiasm, and its early years were characterized by an extraordinary commitment of all members of its staff to the success of its operations. Within a short period, the envisaged production level of some twenty titles a year was reached and some notable volumes bore the McGill imprint. In 1968 the second director, Robin Strachan, was successful in negotiations with Queen's University, and the venture became the McGill-Queen's University Press. The absence of a sufficient capital base prevented any major expansion during the 19605 and 19705, but a steady level of production at the rate of twenty-two to twenty-eight volumes a year was maintained. The quality of the manuscripts selected for publication, and the high level of publishing standards achieved, secured for McGillQueen's University Press a commendable reputation in academic circles and in the professional publishing milieu; the two universities had the satisfaction of knowing that they were making their contribution in an

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increasingly difficult but nevertheless very important area of academic activity.19 DIVINITY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES The story of the Faculty of Divinity epitomizes the fortunes of religion in North American society, and so has a larger significance than the relatively small numbers involved would suggest. In the postwar years, the quickened interest in studies of man's many and diverse cultures drew considerable attention to the religious aspects of those cultures, notably in the Institute of Islamic Studies, the Shastri Institute, and the arts courses in comparative religion. The theological colleges, however, were in a different position. Their task was not merely to study but also to practise and to affirm. Engaged in training the clergy of their various denominations, they were committed to the Christian religion. To understand the postwar situation we have to return to the years between the wars. During that period the Joint Board of the Theological Colleges Associated with McGill University had made considerable progress.20 In 1918 and for some thirty years thereafter, the board had organized at Macdonald College the Clergy Summer School for Rural Improvement, thus reinforcing that college's work in rural societies. In 1919 the Joint Board had agreed to assume responsibility for theological courses in the Khaki University established in England for Canadian soldiers awaiting demobilization. Throughout the 19208 the board had supplied, as we have seen, half the cost of the university's involvement in social work education. These and similar activities had inevitably raised the question whether a closer and more organic relationship of the colleges to the university should be the next step. Principal Currie was sympathetic but recognized serious problems. He did not see how a faculty of theology could be operated under the joint control of Senate and of the denominational colleges. In 1923 he wrote to W.M. Birks, the foremost proponent of the idea: 'If we establish a Faculty, I think it should be wide open in every sense of the term. That is, it should be a place where men would study Theology just as they study Biology.'21 That viewpoint was a long way from being acceptable to the Protestant denominations in the early 19205, and the idea was temporarily laid aside. Two events took place, however, which renewed the discussion. In 1925, following long years of negotiations, the denominations represented by three of the colleges, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian, transcended their differences and formed the United Church of Canada. Their three colleges similarly came together and constituted one Montreal United Theological College. While the first two denominations joined

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wholeheartedly in the union, a proportion of the Presbyterian community, generally estimated at one-third of the total membership, elected to stand aloof from the union and to continue as the Presbyterian Church of Canada. This body asked for a judicial division of the assets of the former Presbyterian denomination and among other things was awarded the Presbyterian College in Montreal. The new trustees of the college decided not to continue with the Joint Board, with the result that the board was thereafter supported only by those interests which most strongly favoured church and university cooperation. The second event was the erection in 1931 of an impressive new building to house the work of the Joint Board more adequately. The site was again on University Street, not on campus, but contiguous to the university grounds, next to the Methodist College (later Wilson Hall) north of the Milton Gate. The new building was a handsome stone edifice, richly academic in tone, with an impressive entrance hall, broad staircases leading to a well-equipped library, and a beautifully appointed chapel. Furthermore, Divinity Hall, as it was named, was handsomely endowed with funds to support a well-balanced academic staff. More and more the Joint Board of the Theological Colleges was looking and behaving as if it were a faculty of the university, and thus increasing the likelihood that one day it might be. By 1940 circumstances had further changed in that the university now had a principal who was strongly in favour of the idea. As a young man James had taken an active part in church life, and had at one time served as a lay preacher; he was familiar with the faculties of divinity in British universities and in such prestigious American universities as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. He was also aware of the keen interest of W.M. Birks, J.W. McConnell, and other influential members of the university's governing board that McGill should conform to this pattern. As early as 1940, Birks proposed in Senate, where he sat as a governor's representative, that a committee should consider the matter. In 1943 it issued a statement, 'The Place of Theology in University Studies'; the document urged that theology could make specific contributions in such fields as sociology, philosophy, history, and ethics, and further that theology could recover the rank of a major discipline only by being brought within the world of higher education. However, a minority report was appended by C.S. LeMesurier of law and D.L. Thomson of biochemistry which argued that the proposed faculty could not be anything but sectarian in character and that it 'would be viewed unfavourably by many of our English Catholic, French-Canadian and Jewish students' and recommended that the committee be dissolved.22 Faced with opinions so strongly opposed, Senate resolved that the proposal should be laid aside. This then was the situation at the end of World War II. In 1947 James encouraged the Council of the Faculty of

University chapel, William and Henry Birks Hall

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Arts and Science to give the matter fresh consideration, and in January 1948 the executive committee of the board of governors received from the council a unanimous recommendation that a faculty of divinity should be created.23 In the ensuing Senate debate the adverse views of Deans LeMesurier and Thomson were supported by Professors F.R. Scott of law and E.G.D. Murray of medicine. The former arguments on both sides were repeated, but at the end of the day the proposal passed with a majority of nineteen votes to five. Under the arrangements agreed upon, the Joint Board would convey Divinity Hall to the university, with its contents and endowments, which by that time exceeded $i million, and in return the university would establish a faculty of divinity with six professorial chairs, four of which were to be occupied by nominees of the churches and two by nominees of the university; but, in all cases, the university was to have the final word of appointment. Principal James then effected one of his masterstrokes; he persuaded J.S. Thomson, president of the University of Saskatchewan, to accept appointment as dean of the new faculty. Thomson, as we have seen, had been prominent in the leadership of the National Conference of Canadian Universities and had achieved national status as chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the war years. He was later to become moderator of the United Church of Canada. His leadership of the new faculty gave it from the beginning a standing in the university's affairs out of proportion to the relatively small numbers involved. In the first years of operation there were nineteen students in the undergraduate courses; ten years later there were only forty-nine, but significantly there were also twenty-one graduate students. For the first two decades of the faculty's existence this was to be the pattern: a small undergraduate enrolment, reflecting the diminishing strength of the Protestant churches in the Montreal area, and a disproportionately large number of graduate students. The high qualifications of its academic staff combined with the rigour of McGill's graduate standards quickly gave the Faculty of Divinity an estimable reputation in theological circles of the United States and Canada; the dean who succeeded Thomson, S.B. Frost, was elected president of the prestigious American Association of Theological Schools for the years 1962-64. However, social forces were already at work challenging the place of religion in North American society. In the period of turbulence which characterized the middle and late sixties, the general acceptance of Christian beliefs and ideals which had characterized the preceding years was swept away with remarkable suddenness. As a result, the role of a Protestant faculty of divinity came under fresh scrutiny. By 1970 the curriculum had been recast to provide for a B.A. major and honours in religion for

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students wanting to study the subject in general, while a B.Th. program was retained for intending ordinands and others wanting to concentrate on studies in Christianity. Graduate studies were to receive even greater emphasis than before, but the Bachelor of Divinity and the Sanctae Theologiae Magister degrees were phased out to be replaced by M.A. and Ph.D. programs in religious studies.24 At the same time, a change of name was made from Faculty of Divinity to Faculty of Religious Studies. As Dean George Johnston wrote at that time: 'While this relationship [with the affiliated colleges] remains important, our new definition requires a greater emphasis on the study of all the major faiths of mankind and a turning quite deliberately into the mainstream of university affairs.'25 By the appointment of its first Jewish and Catholic members of staff, and then of adherents of other religions, the faculty was recognizing the reality of the times: the plurality of faiths in the 'global village' and indeed in Montreal and on campus. Members of staff and students alike were free to adhere to their loyalties; the faculty continued to provide the academic courses required by the theological colleges for their ordinands; the four reserved chairs remained in the nomination of the Joint Board; but the metamorphosis of the Faculty of Divinity into a Faculty of Religious Studies was a significant step. Students would henceforth study theology just as they would biology, as Arthur Currie had predicted. The faculty in its comparatively brief life span had exemplified the immense changes taking place in Canadian and western societies. THE FACULTY OF MUSIC The Faculty of Music, as we have noted, was established in 1920 and music became an option in the B.A. curriculum two years later. At that point development was arrested, and while individuals achieved some notable personal successes, the discipline as a whole lapsed into a holding pattern. There was barely enough money to keep the Conservatorium and the faculty alive, and both operations suffered from a lack of appropriate premises and a dearth of adequate equipment. The McGill administration could not see music as anything other than a peripheral operation, well down the list of academic priorities. The remarkable fact is that those who served St. Cecilia did so with loyalty and zeal. Clara Lichtenstein persevered until she retired in 1928; H.C. Perrin, director of the Conservatorium and the first dean of the faculty, matched her devotion until his own retirement a year later. He was succeeded by Douglas Clarke, who was once described as 'gruff, utterly honest, British to the core, an enemy of phonies, trigger-tempered, glowing with professional anger, liberal libations, and human warmth, an unfor-

McGill String Quartet, 1939

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gettable personality'. He struggled with his responsibilities through the economic depression of the 19305 with dogged persistence. As the use of musicians at the cinema was progressively reduced by the introduction of sound films, he organized his unemployed colleagues into the Montreal Orchestra, of which it was said that its pedigree should be described as 'by Douglas Clarke out of Depression'.26 From that organization grew the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which became in later years one of the leading orchestras of North America. Another remarkable achievement in those difficult years was that of Alexander and Lotte Brott, who founded the McGill String Quartet in 1939, nurtured it into the McGill Chamber Society, and finally into the internationally famous McGill Chamber Orchestra, which was still vigorously operative forty years after its beginning. When Clarke retired in 1955, an apparently brilliant appointment of yet another Englishman proved unpopular, and he had literally to be paid not to come to McGill. After considerable confusion, Marvin Duchow, a Montrealer and a graduate of the faculty, was appointed dean in 1957, but it was widely understood that he would be the last person to hold that office and that the venture would be allowed to run down and quietly expire. Even in 1957, however, parts of the operation showed remarkable pertinacity, and indeed vigorous health. One activity which continued steadily, without great publicity or much attention from the university, was the Conservatorium and its attendant system of examinations, still conducted widely in Quebec and occasionally, as in former years, in locations far away. The original conviction that a faculty of music needed a supply of musically prepared matriculants sustained these operations through many crises, and it says much for the loyalty of the teachers and the administrative staff that, though often threatened, the Conservatorium survived and functioned more than adequately. In any one year, some 600 young musicians were in training in its programs, and approximately 1,000 presented themselves for its various levels of examination. The unique combination of preparatory instruction, local examinations, and university-level teaching continued to contribute to the raising of musical standards in the province and beyond its borders. Another lively activity in these years was the McGill Opera Workshop, conceived, contrived, and conducted by Luciano and Edith della Pergola. The workshop operated from 1956 through the next quarter of a century with considerable success, proving itself as a learning experience, and gathering a modest but very loyal body of supporters. On becoming dean, Marvin Duchow was faced with an extremely difficult situation as regards the faculty's housing. The old Conservatorium on the corner of University and Sherbrooke Streets had been condemned as unsafe, and demolished in the late 19405. Since that time the faculty had

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been without a permanent home and its activities were at one time conducted in seven buildings. As for the library, a great deal of musical material had been amassed, but it had never been organized or sorted, or even properly shelved. Duchow made a beginning on this last problem. He was an excellent musicologist and he took on the immense task of converting a disorganized mass of material into a respectable music library. It was fitting that, in happier times, the faculty's collection of books, scores, sheet music, manuscripts, records, and tapes, which by 1970 had become a nationally significant resource, should be named for him—the Marvin Duchow Music Library. The critical turning point in the faculty's history was reached in 1963. Three factors combined to effect the transformation. The first was a surge of interest in music in all its forms among the Canadian peoples, and indeed within the population of all the affluent 'western' nations, a term which in this context has to embrace Japan. New high fidelity technologies in recordings, stereophonic radio and television programs, stimulated music listening and music making, and created a new respect for musical education and musical careers. Parents and students no longer viewed a music degree as an uneconomic proposition. The second factor was again the provision of provincial funding for the university. For the first time, McGill could begin to provide more adequately for the discipline, especially in the matter of more full-time appointments. In Duchow's days, apart from himself, there had been only one full-time and two part-time academic members of staff; the rest of the instruction had been given by part-time staff, paid according to hourly assignments. By 1970 the number of substantially full-time staff had risen to more than forty; the number of students registered in degree programs had risen to 240, with another 7 in graduate studies. In 1957 there had been 32 students in degree programs; in thirteen years student registrations had increased eightfold. The third factor was undoubtedly the personality of Duchow's successor as dean. Helmut Blume was a concert pianist of considerable merit, who had greatly distinguished himself as a teacher. But his greatest asset was his unbounded confidence in his discipline. Blume believed so strongly in his understanding of music that he compelled everyone else to take his discipline as seriously as he did himself. The result was a larger allotment of resources and renewal of equipment on a scale more adequate to the faculty's needs. There followed a vast increase in activities, whereby music became one of the high-profile operations on campus. Evening concerts by members of the academic staff, presentations of visiting artists, student concerts during the lunch hour, impromptu sessions on summer afternoons on the library terrace, a weekly series of concerts known as Faculty Fridays, presentations by the McGill Opera Workshop—a constant stream of activi-

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ties ensured that no one at McGill, or indeed in Montreal, could be unaware that the university was in the happy throes of a musical renascence. The growing strength of the faculty emphasized even more strongly its need for adequate housing. In 1970 the Royal Victoria College, where McGill music had been born, found itself with unused capacity, leaving space sufficient for a unified and worthy location for the many activities of the Music Faculty.27 After much discussion, the central and eastern portions of the college were assigned for the faculty's use. Lord Strathcona, the great-grandson of the founder, himself deeply interested in musical education, opened the remodelled premises in 1971. In 1975 the old college assembly hall was rebuilt to provide the Pollack Concert Hall. For the first time, the faculty possessed a home worthy of its abilities. But it was not only in equipment and facilities that changes occurred. The content of music had developed also. Contemporary musicians were beginning to experiment with new sounds, electronically produced, and with new musical structures, obeying patterns constructed by computers. On the other hand, older styles like those of jazz and the eastern traditions were being taken into the repertoire alongside the traditional heritage. The first concert of electronic music in Canada was presented at McGill in 1959, and jazz performance and composition were given a place in the curriculum ten years later. Non-western traditions of music began to be studied and the new subdiscipline of comparative musicology was born. An important consequence of this revitalization of music at McGill was that the initiative taken by Charles Harriss seventy years earlier with regard to preparatory musical education was fully maintained in the Conservatorium, both as regards instruction and as regards examination. Another equally welcome consequence was that a growing number of welltrained musicians graduated from the university to take their place in positions of musical responsibility, in the orchestras and teaching institutions of North America and on the concert platforms of the world. Music at McGill had finally won its way to full maturity. THE D E P A R T M E N T OF EXTENSION

From at least the early days of William Dawson the teaching function of the university was not confined to its regular curricula, and the practice of offering lectures to the citizens of Montreal and the Province of Quebec had a long history before its spectacular growth in the postwar years.28 In the course of time the offerings became so many and varied, and the students so numerous, that the curricular activities took on the nature of a mirror image of the university, generating its own complex history, which can only be given cursory treatment in a history of the university proper. As many of these activities began in the Faculty of Arts, and since they

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were greatly increased, as much as any other activities of the university, by the knowledge explosion of the postwar era, there is justification for including that overview in this chapter. In 1922, to take up the story at one of its major turning points, there was already sufficient activity for Corporation to establish a committee to investigate the whole subject of 'extension' activities, the term being one imported from England, where it denoted the extramural teaching activities of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The committee was authorized the following year to organize, normally at evening hours, series of lectures on subjects which might be useful to Montreal citizens. By 1926 enrolment in these classes had risen to approximately 600, which was approaching 25 per cent of the current regular enrolment. Courses were also offered in places as far away as Grandmere, Ottawa, and Quebec City. In 1927 Wilfrid Bovey was appointed to direct a program of Extramural Relations, and in 1934 some of the courses, those provided for schoolteachers, were approved for credit towards the first two years of the B.A. degree. That particular development did not last very long and was not repeated. However, the non-credit courses multiplied, with various departments and faculties organizing their own classes, to such an extent that in 1935, to ensure some rationalization, Senate passed a resolution according 'the Extension Committee jurisdiction over all the organized educational activities of the University other than those of the regular curricula of the faculties and schools'. Bovey as vice-chairman of the committee, of which the principal was chairman, was de facto the first director of the Department of University Extension. It had responsibility for the extension lectures of departments in the Faculty of Arts, the classes organized in cooperation with the Workers' Educational Association, relationships with the Women's Institutes organized from Macdonald College, the classes organized in cooperation with the various accountants' associations, as well as the lectures announced from time to time by the university itself. In 1938 a grant from the Carnegie Corporation provided for the establishment of the McGill University Rural Adult Education Service. This development greatly encouraged extension activities at Macdonald College. Its activities were aimed at the English-speaking communities in the Eastern Townships, and featured programs on public affairs, farm forums on agricultural matters, training programs for community leadership, and documentary films on rural and cultural subjects. The success of these programs generated their considerable expansion, so that the relationship of Macdonald College with the farming community of Quebec, both anglophone and francophone, became particularly close. When Bovey retired in 1948, a Senate committee recognized that the postwar growth of extension activities called for considerable reorganization. Four types of activities were to be encouraged: coordinated programs

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of courses leading to professional qualifications, such as the university's postgraduate diploma in electrical engineering, or the diploma of the Institute of Chartered Accountants; coordinated programs of courses in academic subjects, such as philosophy or psychology; individual courses on cultural subjects given by a single lecturer; and courses on cultural subjects to which a number of lecturers would contribute according to their particular expertise. The last three series were not to carry academic credit; they would be taken, mostly by graduates, for their cultural values. Sir George Williams University was by this time offering the anglophone community evening degree programs, and the University de Montreal was offering them extensively to the francophone population, but the Faculty of Arts remained unpersuaded that McGill should follow suit. The fear expressed was that academic standards would suffer; probably, a strong motivation was a fear that enrolment in day courses would suffer. But nation-wide interest in part-time education was high; in Canada in 1955 there were 10,791 part-time university students; by 1961 this figure had tripled. This situation was reflected at McGill: in 1949 there were 3,000 such students, in 1957 there were 7,300, and in 1960 there were 8,556—some 500 more than were registered in regular degree courses. Although the Extension Department figures did not keep pace with the spectacular increase in full-time registration during the sixties, they continued to grow and by 1973 had passed the 10,000 mark. In 1949 H.R.C. Avison, well experienced in adult education organizations, was appointed to direct the work at Macdonald College, and F.S. Howes, professor of electrical engineering, in Montreal.29 The steady growth of the extension activities during the decade of the fifties owes much to the dedication of these two men. In 1969 Senate recognized the need for a further reorganization. The department became the Centre for Continuing Education, and its activities were grouped into six divisions: Accountancy, Business Management, Education (that is, Pedagogy), Engineering, Language, and a miscellany of General Courses. The centre offered programs leading to various certificates and diplomas of professional efficiency in all areas except the last. The level of instruction rose steadily; in 1973 the evening programs organized with the cooperation of the Faculty of Management were extended to include credit courses both for the B.Com. and for the M.B.A. degrees. The importance of the involvement of the Management Faculty in the continuing education operation was recognized that same year by the appointment of Professor Alistair Duff of that faculty as director of the centre. The Extension Department of Macdonald College continued to be directed separately from the college; it operated in three main areas: community programs, extension courses, and information services. It published

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the Macdonald Journal and, in conjunction with farming associations and units of the Quebec Department of Agriculture, four newsletters, Agricultural Newsletter, Producteur de lait Qutbe'cois, Quebec Farmers Association Newsletter, and Quebec Young Farmers' News Spreader. The extension service also contributed regularly to radio programs, continued its association with the Women's Institutes, organized farm forums, workshops, and field days. More than forty continuing education courses were given each year on the Macdonald campus, and the practical two-year diploma course in agriculture continued to attract many young registrants from farming families. When the community-oriented activities of the Faculty of Agriculture were also taken into account, including such major projects as the Dairy Herd Analysis Service, the Soil Testing Service, and the annual Macdonald 'Royal' agricultural show, it was apparent that the college extension activities in no way suffered by comparison with those of the Montreal campus. It should also be remembered that many other faculties, especially the professional ones, had their own out-reach program. The Medical Faculty had its conferences and seminars for physicians in general practice, the Law Faculty scheduled lectures and discussions on amendments to the Civil Code and other legislative developments; the School of Social Work, the School for Graduate Nurses, and many other units, all kept in touch with their alumni and alumnae and offered them opportunities to renew and improve their professional expertise. McGill was never isolated from its milieu: through all these manifold activities, the university was responding to the multifarious life of the thriving metropolis and province in which it was located. AN INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM

An indication of the university's growth in the postwar years was readily discernible in the campus libraries. Despite the depression and the years of war the holdings in the central library, the Redpath, continued to expand. A total inventory of 152,000 items in 1920 had more than doubled by 1947 to 360,000. Since the Redpath building, despite various modifications over the years, could not possibly provide for this kind of expansion, a major extension of the premises became imperative. The result was in 1953 a new Redpath Library, south of the old one, doubling the stack area and offering greatly enlarged reference, circulation, and reading-room facilities. The old reading room, with its hammer-beam roof and its stained glass windows, became the university's ceremonial hall. In the later 19503, with the greatly increased student enrolment, the expanded curricular offerings, the birth of new departments, and the introduction of new teaching methods, the call for library services increased

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dramatically. The growing emphasis on research at every level, down to and including first-year undergraduate courses, multiplied enormously the number of would-be library users. Yet by 1960 the holdings in the Redpath had grown to only 400,000 items, and the major satellite operations, such as the Medical Library, the Law Library, and the Baillie Chemistry Library, were also showing signs of inadequate support. Reading rooms in all these locations were overcrowded, and books required for undergraduate courses were particularly difficult to obtain. As a result, a tendency developed to create small departmental collections, hidden away in offices and seminar rooms, accessible only to a favoured few. By the early 19605 it was becoming evident that the McGill libraries were in danger of breaking up into a collection of disparate units, lacking any central direction. Moreover, there was no rationale of support. A strong dean or departmental chairman could get more generous treatment in the annual budgets for his library than was available to a less aggressive head. It was symptomatic of the general malaise that the University Library Committee had not met for a considerable period. Library renewal began in the Council of the Faculty of Arts and Science in March 1962, when several junior members of faculty drew vigorous attention to the deterioration of services. In response, the faculty set up a library committee of its own to monitor the situation, and appointed new faculty representatives to the University Library Committee. Coincidentally, that committee received a new chairman, and launched upon a survey of the whole library situation at McGill. The result was a report to Senate, dated 9 April 1962, which was to be the basis for all future library development. The main proposal was for all the faculty and departmental collections to be integrated into one campus-wide system, administered by the university librarian with the oversight of the Library Committee, which would report regularly to Senate. The report also tentatively advanced the idea that the central University Library should be divided into an undergraduate collection and a research collection. This report was carefully reviewed, and in its main features endorsed, by a new body which was to prove of growing importance in university affairs, the McGill University Library Staff Association (MULSA). The report was also considered by external consultants brought in by the Library Committee and they too gave it general approval. With subsequent modifications and amplifications, particularly on the technical side, recommended by the consultants, and on library organization, recommended by MULSA, the proposals of the committee were accepted by Senate and became the basis for a progressive series of library improvements, which continued into the 1970s.30

The McLennan Humanities and Social Sciences and Redpath Undergraduate libraries

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The initial step was the institution of an integrated library system administered by a director of university libraries, assisted by colleagues and staff committees exercising delegated responsibilities and reporting to Senate through the University Library Committee. The interests of faculties and departments would be safeguarded by the participation of their representatives in the work of that committee. Another major decision was to implement the proposal to divide the central library into an undergraduate collection, designed to meet the teaching needs of the academic departments, and a research collection, designed primarily for the use of graduate students, visiting scholars, and academic staff. Plans were drawn for the reconstruction of the existing buildings to make provision for the Redpath Undergraduate Library. This area offered seating for 1,500 library users and contained initially a basic collection of some 100,000 volumes, calculated to satisfy 80 per cent of the average undergraduate's needs for courses in the humanities and social sciences. In addition, plans were drawn for the McLennan Research Library, to be located south of the original buildings and to be connected with them, and offering seating for another 1,500 library users, including individual carrels for visiting scholars and allocated desks for graduate students.31 Stack space in the two libraries provided for some I1A million volumes. This Redpath-McLennan complex, when it was opened in 1969, also contained such specialized collections as the BlackerWood and the university's exceedingly valuable rare book collection, together with reference collections, periodical rooms, and a comprehensive library of government documents. In addition both the Medical and the Law libraries were rehoused in new buildings, giving them the reading room and stack space they required; other libraries were given extended space in their present locations. To provide for the maintenance of these libraries, a single global budget was established, which supported not only the Redpath and McLennan libraries, but also the Medical, Law, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and other specialized libraries in as equitable a manner as could be devised. No less important were the steps taken to bring some degree of order and equity into the ranks of those working in the libraries. Their conditions of service and their remuneration had differed even more widely than had the book budgets of the various operations. Grades and salaries were established according to qualifications and length of service, both for professional librarians and for library assistants, in such a way as to provide for career mobility and as far as possible for equity with regard to remuneration. In 1971 these processes of rationalization underwent further development as a result of the work of a commission headed by Vice-Principal Robert Shaw. The University Library system was divided into five areas: the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Life Sciences, the Physical Sci-

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ences, the Law Library, and the Undergraduate Library.32 In 1973 professional librarians acquired the status of a unique non-teaching group within the academic staff, with separate representation on Senate. By 1975 the number of items in the various collections exceeded 3 million, the number of persons employed in the library system was over 400, and the annual global budget had risen to some $4 million.33 The growing self-awareness of French Canada in the 19605 and 19708, and the immense implications of this movement for the educational system of the province, and particularly for the training of schoolteachers within the university system, must be reserved for a chapter of its own.34 But the corollary that Quebec began to recognize a responsibility for public libraries had a consequence which should be mentioned here. The McLennan Travelling Libraries service had continued its activities with great acceptance through the war years, finding less need to serve other provinces in the postwar era but meeting a growing demand in the Province of Quebec. The bookmobile service in particular made heavy demands on a devoted group of women, led indefatigably by Miss Kay Clynes; in 1975-76 the total circulation was over 101,000 volumes, of which 75 per cent was achieved through the rounds of the bookmobiles. It was with great sadness, mingled with pride and thankfulness for an onerous duty loyally fulfilled for more than seventy-five years, that Miss Clynes and her colleagues handed their store of books and their responsibilities for a host of readers to the province's own library service in 1978. ^ But the postwar decades also recorded many gains for the McGill library holdings, particularly in specialized collections donated by generous benefactors. In 1945 a collection of first editions of the works of Rudyard Kipling, and some of his papers and other materials, were given by Mr. Norman Friedman. The following year he donated a similar collection of first editions, manuscripts, and papers relating to Stephen Leacock; enlarged by contributions from some of Leacock's former students and many admirers, the collection has grown steadily. A further Friedman collection is on Baden-Powell and the origins of the Boy Scout movement. Dinah Lauterman was a Montrealer who having gained a reputation in music abandoned that art to devote herself to sculpting. After many years of training, she produced works of considerable force and distinction, but her early death cut short a very promising career. Her sister Annie established in 1946 the Dinah Lauterman Library with an endowment to procure books and other materials devoted to the fine arts. The collection was administered with the architecture collection and the two together formed the Blackader-Lauterman Library. Lawrence Lande, McGill graduate, notary, and bibliophile, was another outstanding library benefactor in these decades. He began in 1953 what

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was to prove a long series of donations by presenting some 250 items on William Blake; frequently enlarged both by Lande and by the Rare Books Department, the Blake collection grew to some 1,300 items and constitutes a major resource for studies of the English poet and artist. Twenty-six years later Lande gave a collection of nearly 400 volumes on English literature of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, together with two subcollections, one on the Book of Job and the other on the notorious forgeries of J.T. Wise. Between 1953 and 1979 the Lande donations were mainly in the area of the history and culture of Canada. The first Lande Canadiana collection, given in 1965, is on the discovery of eastern Canada and its political and cultural development up to Confederation. The following year Lande shared equally with the university in the purchase of the natural foil to his own collections, the Nathan Arkin collection of western Canadiana. In 1972 a bequest by a Montreal jeweller, Jean Michel, enabled the university to purchase at a cost much below market value a further Lande Canadiana collection. Three years later there followed the donation of some 1,000 items on the Moravian missions to the Eskimo of Labrador and on the exploration of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Lande published two bibliographies of his Canadiana collections, thus making them of even greater usefulness to scholars. Together with the university's own rich holdings in its libraries, archives, and museums, the Lande collections have endowed McGill with the finest Canadiana resources outside the National Library and Archives in Ottawa. THE G R A D U A T E SCHOOL OF L I B R A R Y S C I E N C E

As the expansion of the libraries continued, the calls upon the services they provided grew in number and complexity. Concurrently, the art of librarianship became more elaborate and a new expertise began to develop, which became known as library science. Library science is basically an instance of information storage and retrieval, which in the present generation has obvious affinities with computers and their operation, but it also goes considerably beyond those functions in that it embraces library administration, personnel management, collection building, rare book conservation, cataloguing, and many other specializations. At McGill the first steps in the development of professional training for librarians began, as we have noted, with the summer school initiatives of C.H. Gould soon after the turn of the century. Aided by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, these summer schools evolved in 1927 into the McGill Library School, offering a one-year course for a diploma in librarianship. The entrance standard for the school was the university's senior matriculation examination. In 1930 this requirement was raised to a B.A. or

Richard Pennington, University Librarian, 1948-64 Vernon Ross, Library School Director, 1949—66

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B.Sc. degree, and the school awarded its graduates a second bachelor's degree, that of Bachelor of Library Science (B.L.S.). By so doing, the school became eligible the following year for accreditation by the American Library Association, a development of immense importance for its graduates' professional standing and their opportunities for employment in North America generally. It also encouraged the steady improvement of the school's academic curriculum. McGill's Library School was the first in Canada to gain this accreditation. Until 1949 the university librarian, first Gould and then his successor Gerhard Lomer, also acted as director of the Library School, but in 1949 Miss Vernon Ross became the first independent and full-time director. For some years there was considerable confusion in the library degree nomenclature, since the McGill B.L.S. was in many ways equivalent to the American M.L.S. After some experimentation with an M.L.S. degree, which was intended to indicate a research qualification and for which the B.L.S. served as the prerequisite, it was decided in 1964 to institute a twoyear professional master's degree. That program would incorporate courses of the old B.L.S. program, but would also introduce students to the new dimensions of their profession, including computerized information storage and retrieval. With the expansion of knowledge, the expertise to utilize that knowledge demanded an increasing degree of sophistication in those entrusted with its conservation and retrieval. The maturation of the program was recognized in 1965 by the bestowal of a new name, the McGill University Graduate School of Library Science. It was the culmination of many years of endeavour by Vernon Ross and her colleagues, especially Virginia Murray, Violet Coughlin, and Effie Astbury. They succeeded in bringing the university (in the face, it must be said, of considerable conservative reluctance) to acknowledge that as libraries had grown significantly in academic importance, so too the role and professional standing of librarians had also evolved and that therefore their education and training had also progressed very considerably over the years. The degree of Master of Library Science marked the emergence of a new style of academic professional, and it was this which was recognized when Senate accorded academic status to professional librarians in 1973For even in the world of the university, where so much is very special and can justifiably regard itself as unique, even there libraries possess a distinction all their own, and some of this rubs off on those who serve in them. The distinctive quality is best expressed, perhaps, by the reflection that the university's twenty-two major libraries and the twenty or re smaller collections are the only enduring part of the university; ideas and concepts change overnight, student generations pass through with aston-

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ishing rapidity, courses become outdated, equipment obsolete, professors become emeriti, and new buildings quickly grow old and need replacement, but collections of books remain. They are never discarded, but are constantly enriched as the years pass and constitute the one abiding physical reality of what we term 'McGilT. Libraries conserve the knowledge and wisdom of mankind, and their price is beyond rubies.

NOTES 1. The modifications included a rearrangement in 1965 into five divisions, each with a vice-dean. Even after the Faculty of Arts and Science became separate units, the two continued to publish a joint announcement in the University Calendar and shared administrative officers to coordinate their undergraduate programs. 2. MUA 690/26. The self-awareness of the humanities had been greatly increased by the founding of the Humanities Research Council of Canada in 1943. See chapter 8, note 7. 3. 'The Faculty Course... will run through the two senior years and, very briefly, it will deal with the successive conceptions of the nature of man and of the world in which he lives; with the relation between these conceptions and actual institutions, economic, political and religious; with theories of freedom and authority and their social and political implications; with the chief intellectual and imaginative works of man and with the changes in his standards in these matters; with traditional ideas of knowledge and the effects on them of the empirical findings of modern science.' AR 1959-60, p. 36. The Faculty Course was first proposed in 1959, instituted in 1962 as a compulsory course in the third and fourth years of the General B.A., reduced as a compulsory course to a one-year program in 1967, suspended for two years in 1968, and was never reintroduced. 4. The McGill University Collection of Greek and Roman Coins, ed. Michael Woloch, vol. I by D.H.E. Whitehead, vol. 2 by Franziska E. Shlosser (Amsterdam, I975)5. G.H. von Wright, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1967, s.v. 'Wittgenstein'. 6. Philosophy in the Mid-Century: A Survey, The International Institute of Philosophy (Florence, 1958), vols. 1-4. 7. Alastair T. McKinnon, The Kierkegaard Indices (Leiden, 1970—75). See also 'McGill Acquires Major Kierkegaard Library Collection', McGill Reporter 12, no. 31 (30 May 1980). 8. Noel Fieldhouse, speaking of the faculty at large, was moved to deplore the 'curricular anarchy' of the times. AR 1959-60, p. 34. 9. For an account of these disturbances, see chapter 14. 10. The Burney Project began in the 19405 as the private enthusiasm of Joyce Hemlow, a lecturer in the Department of English; her History of Fanny Burney (Oxford, 1958) received the Governor General's Award for academic non-fiction. In 1971 Dr. Hemlow, with Jeanne M. Burgess and Althea Douglas, published A Catalogue of the Burney Family Correspondence (New York and Montreal). Volumes I and 2 of The Journal and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d'Arblay), 1791-1840 (Oxford), ed. Joyce Hemlow, C.D.

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

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CHAPTER TEN Cecil, and A. Douglas, appeared in 1972; vols. 3 and 4 in 1973; vols. 5 and 6 in 1975; vol. 7 in 1978; vol. 8 in 1980; vols. 9 and 10 in 1981, and vols. II and 12 were in that year waiting for publishing subsidies. It is an astonishing record. Dr. Hemlow not only maintained over five decades her enthusiasm and her impeccable standards of scholarships, but raised new generations of colleagues and disciples to share in the task. See Advancement i: 116. In 1899, for example, Edouard Rod gave a lecture entitled 'Les Caracteres du roman francais'; in 1901 Gaston Deschamps, literary critic for Le Temps, presented 'La Presse francaise, au dix-neuvieme siecle', and in 1902 M.H. LeRoux presented 'Le roman contemporain, est-il une peinture exacte de la societe francaise?' Often the mayor of Montreal was invited to preside and the lectures were always well attended. Most theses presented in the Department of French before 1961 dealt with European French writers and subjects, but in the late 19206 a few studies dealing with French as a North American phenomenon began to appear. After 1961 they became more numerous. See Theses I and 2. Wilfrid Bovey drew attention to the French-Canadian way of life in two volumes, Canadien: A Study of the French Canadians (Toronto, 1938) and The French Canadians Today: A People on the March (Toronto, 1938). Although not intended as scholarly studies like Everett and Helen Hughes' French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943), they showed an interest in FrenchCanadian culture long before such attitudes became fashionable in anglophone Canada. In its first fifteen years, the French Staff Course program directed by Professor Pascal-Smith recorded over 2,500 registrations from the academic, professional, and non-academic staff, and greatly helped the university to adjust to the new patterns of public life. In 1950 five theses were accepted from the Department of French; in 1970, twenty-five. In 1950 the staff numbered eight and in 1970 forty, apart from the staff in the auxiliary enterprises. In 1970 members of the department registered in the university's annual record of research some thirty-nine published items. See the graph Montreal Population by Ethnic Origin. There had been earlier attempts to teach Spanish and Italian, but they were dependent on the availability of interested staff*. For the Bethune family, see Advancement i: 98. Norman Bethune, a Toronto medical graduate, held a research fellowship in the Royal Victoria Hospital and served as a clinical assistant in surgery. He also participated in the teaching program of the Faculty of Medicine. He arrived in Montreal in 1928 and departed for Spain at the end of 1936. He was often absent from the city, but it was in those years that he learned his operating skills and made his name as a thoracic surgeon, before setting off to assist the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. The Department of East Asian Languages and Literature introduced the study of both Chinese and Japanese; the Centre for East Asian Studies coordinated major and honours programs, as well as graduate studies, drawn from many disciplines and relating to any aspect of the larger East Asian area. Baha Abu-Laban, An Olive Branch on the Family Tree: The Arabs in Canada (Toronto, 1980), p. 72.

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19. See 'McGill's Publishing Ann', McGill News 42, no. I (1960), and 'New Direction for MUF, McGill News 48, no. I (1967). 20. For the earlier history of the Joint Board of the Theological Colleges, see chapter 3. Also, H. Keith Markell, The Faculty of Religious Studies, 1948-1978 (Montreal, 1979). 21. 3 July 1923; Theological Colleges Scrapbook, W. M. Birks Papers, MUA II3/2. 22. MUA 812/4. 23. 'Principal James now placed the whole matter in the hands of Dean Gillson and his Arts and Science Council. Gillson was a new Dean, and the Council was composed of Chairmen and all heads of departments under him. Some of these were churchmen; some were not, but under Gillson's ability and extraordinary charm, they brought in a unanimous recommendation for a Divinity Faculty.' 'Reminiscences: McGill's New Faculty of Divinity', W.M. Birks Papers, MUA 1866. In actual fact, only A.H.S. Gillson, the four group chairmen, and Professor R.D. MacLennan, chairman of philosophy and himself a clergyman, were present as voting members. Principals W.A. Ferguson of the Anglican College and G.G.D. Kilpatrick of the United College were also present as consultants. An earlier petition had indicated strong support within the faculty at large, but it was probably not unanimous. See 'Report and Recommendations of the Council of the Faculty of Arts and Science on the Establishment of a Faculty of Divinity at McGill University', MUA 812/1/4. 24. The S.T.M. was later (1973) restored as a postgraduate program for ordinands possessing the B.Th. degree. 25. Cited in Markell, Religious Studies, p. 54. 26. Cited in McGill Music Month (McGill Publications Service, May 1975), p. 14; a booklet produced to mark the opening of the Pollack Concert Hall. 27. In response to growing needs, the university had greatly expanded the capacity of Royal Victoria College to house something over 500 students. In the late sixties demand for places in residence fell off rapidly, to the point where RVC was being used to only half-capacity and was incurring large deficits in its operations. 28. For reference to early interest in extension activities, see Advancement i: 168-69, 188, 196, 256. 29. Professor Harry Avison, B.A., M.A., and three years of theology at McGill, had a distinguished career in the Student Christian Movement and in community work before returning to Macdonald College in 1940 as associate professor of English and director of extension. He further served in the latter capacity on the Montreal campus 1959-66. Professor Fred Howes not only played a significant role in electrical engineering, but also took a prominent part in founding the McGill Association of University Teachers and the national organization, the Canadian Association of University Teachers. 30. Stephen McCarthy (Cornell) and Richard Logsdon (Columbia), 'Survey of the McGill University Libraries' (1963), MUA 1538/7. The April 1962 University Library Committee Report is included, with the MULSA comments, among the appendices. The Undergraduate Library had had a long and somewhat chequered history: see Wesley Cross, 'Meeting the Need: The History of McGill's Undergraduate Library', August 1980, 82.10.2.

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31. The McLennan Library was named for the McLennan family, who had consistently been generous benefactors of the University Libraries, and specifically for Miss Isabella McLennan, who was a friend of libraries all her days and who in 1960 bequeathed McGill over $i million for library purposes. The architect for the Redpath Library reconstruction and the design of the McLennan Library was R. David Bourke, who subsequently entered the university's service and was appointed secretary-general in 1982. 32. See 'The Report of the McGill University Libraries Commission', McGill University Library, 1971. 33. Peter F. McNally, 'McGill University Libraries', Encyclopedia of Library and Information Service, vol. 17 (New York, 1976), pp. 311-20. 34. See chapter 14. 35. S.B. Frost, 'McLennan Travelling Libraries Celebrates 75th Birthday', McGill Reporter, 6 October 1976.

CHAPTER

XI THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

he premise that man is one natural phenomenon among many underlay another approach to man's understanding of himself. Rather than the subjective approach of the humanities, it adopted an objective methodology, more akin to that employed in the observation of other natural phenomena. The disciplines involved reached a sufficient coherence and self-awareness to permit them in 1939 to constitute one of the four groups of the Faculty of Arts and Science.

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D I F F E R E N T I A T E D DISCIPLINES

A conventional distribution of these studies into different disciplines had come to be generally accepted in the western world, and these divisions were consequendy adopted at McGill. Economics was interested in man's creation of wealth and the organization of its distribution; political science studied the emergence of organizational power in human societies and the development of theories relating to its deployment Sociology was concerned with man's behaviour in groups and in larger units of society; anthropology centred on man as a biological phenomenon and his evolution physically, ethnologically, and culturally, particularly in the early or primitive stages of those developments. The study of law was traditionally conducted in a separate faculty, but it was increasingly seen, particularly as

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it broadened its academic interests, to have close affinities with the social science grouping on campus. Because history developed a new attitude towards its materials and began to employ new technologies in the study of its data, it also came to regard itself as more of a social science than a humanities discipline. Psychology, which developed first within the Department of Philosophy, could also have been included in this group, but when the discipline emerged as a separate department, the McGill psychologists preferred, as we shall see, to be grouped with the biological sciences. As one might expect, these studies tended constantly to flow into one another, and their distinction one from the other was a matter of convenience rather than of logic. As new areas of study emerged, their initial development nearly always took place in an existing department, which, if the study grew in importance, later became a joint department, and then, generally towards the end of our period, divided into separate structures. Thus political economy early became the Department of Economics and Political Science and continued so for half a century before political science became a separate department Sociology became the Department of Sociology and Anthropology before dividing into two distinct departments. But the differentiation was in organization rather than in clear-cut disciplinary distinctions. The period between the wars, as we have already observed, had been one of major importance for the social sciences, particularly because of the stimulation provided by the McGill Social Science Research Project. When that program terminated in 1940, and all energies were redirected into the national war effort, social science developments within the university slowed considerably; it was not until the late 19406 that the pace began to quicken again. The following two decades were to see an immense growth in the scope and influence of social studies throughout the western world, and because the structures and goals of society were everywhere in question, their study in universities was perceived to be of immediate and practical relevance. McGilTs social science departments shared fully in these developments and the numbers of students and of academic staff grew very rapidly.1 The course of events which ensued at McGill as a result of this societal criticism was so determinative of the university's future that the story must be given detailed attention later.2 Here we notice that a theoretical dilemma present in the social sciences from the beginning became of increasing significance in the postwar years. The dilemma stemmed from the fact that the methods for these studies were to be objective and descriptive, as in any science. But as their studies progressed, social scientists found it more and more difficult to observe and to describe, without going on to prescribe. They found themselves tending to offer, and indeed under pressure to

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offer, solutions for man's social problems and to define goals for his social and individual betterment. The purists continued to assert that the social scientist must remain the detached observer; the activists, on the other hand, argued that those best informed on these matters (in which role not surprisingly they cast themselves and their colleagues) should take the lead in guiding mankind into more rational and more just forms of society. This debate, we may recall, had already taken place in the 1920$ in the field of social organization and had resulted in an academic department of sociology and a professional school of social work; in economics it had given rise as early as 1906 to a separate program of commercial studies. In political science the same tensions resulted, not in new structures, but in considerable debate, both within the department and on the campus at large, as to whether teachers should openly advocate one or other political program in their lecture rooms. It was a time of great disciplinary ferment, and perhaps understandably of considerable confusion, and of very serious self-questioning; some of the questions, as we shall see, received practical answers as the 19605 drew to a close, but others remained very patently unanswered and proved to be matters of continuing concern in the years that followed. ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE Nowhere was the ferment more lively than in economics and political science. The continuing prominence of the USSR in world politics and the emergence of newly independent nations having to decide their own structures and goals ensured a continuing interest in Marxist interpretations of history and science; the nascent recognition in the West that in China a revolution, akin to but markedly different from the Russian, was taking place on a scale that dwarfed all other human social reconstructions reinforced the study and criticism of both socialist and capitalist societies. In western societies forces were at work elaborating the concept of the social welfare state, and this also provided the social scientists with immense subjects for research. In Canada the majority of the population had come to accept the idea of the welfare state as a form of capitalist democracy, organized much along the lines first adumbrated by the League for Social Reconstruction and the Marsh Report, into which, it will be recalled, the McGill input had been considerable. A small but vocal minority, however, advocated a more Marxist form of society, whether of the Russian or Chinese variety, and did so rather more vigorously than Canadian opinion as a whole was prepared to tolerate, so that at times the resulting tensions made themselves felt strongly both outside and inside the university. This aspect of the story of the department influenced the history of the university at large so strongly, that it became very much part of the events which are

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described in detail in chapters 14 and 15. Comment on those matters must therefore be reserved until those chapters are reached. But many other things also occurred in this vigorous department. An outstanding feature of the postwar period, and a strong testimony to the ferment of ideas at work in the area, was to be seen in the cluster of activities which grew up around the central economics-political science matrix. A major instance concerned the training of students for the business professions. The School of Commerce, which had long been the poor relation of the Department of Economics, suffered another setback in 1940 when Cyril James, who had been brought to McGill to rehabilitate it, became principal. The school received considerable reinforcements, however, when in 1941 Professor Earl Beach and in 1954 Professor Eric Kierans were successively given the task of improving the program for the B.Com. degree. Standards for entry were progressively raised and a greater measure of professionalism was introduced. But the enterprise continued to suffer from its junior status vis-a-vis the Department of Economics and Political Science until Professor Donald Armstrong succeeded in convincing all concerned that a new start was needed at an entirely different level. The Graduate School of Business, instituted in 1963, was designed to teach managerial skills to men and women already possessing relevant undergraduate degrees in arts, engineering, or commerce. To give the new school freedom to establish its own goals and methodology it was located in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research and the degree it offered was the Master of Business Administration. The success of the school in the application of business theory and skills to the tasks of management in industry and commerce soon resulted in increasing numbers of students opting for this kind of education, either at the undergraduate level in the School of Commerce or at the graduate level in the School of Business. Five years later the two operations were put together to form a new faculty, the Faculty of Management. Howard Ross, a McGill graduate who had distinguished himself in the accounting profession and who was an acknowledged leader of the Montreal business community, was at this time the chancellor of the university. His interest in the new faculty was so great that he resigned as chancellor and accepted appointment as the first dean. From the beginning the venture was remarkably successful and speedily became one of the fastest growing areas of the university. A very different range of interests was that exhibited by Harry Douglas Woods. His concern in industry and commerce was in the relations between the employer and the employed. As early as 1947 Woods conceived the Industrial Relations Centre, designed to study the relevant problems in the light of current theories and models, and especially to bring together representatives of management and employee unions to discuss

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their common interests, not in an atmosphere of adversary negotiations, but in that of constructive concern for the commerce and industries in which both have so large a stake. The cooperation of government at the federal and the provincial level was a marked feature of the institute's conferences from its earliest days. Its continuance through thirty and more years of research and teaching demonstrated its worth, and after Woods retired from its direction to serve as dean of arts and science, the centre continued to flourish, first directed by an industrial sociologist, William Westley, and from 1970 by an industrial relations specialist, Frances Bairstow. A related interest gave rise to the organization of the Canadian Labour College, jointly sponsored by McGill and the University de Montreal. Trade unionists were introduced to economic theory, to the nature and impact of labour legislation, and to many other matters of social theory and practice, in order that they might perform more adequately on behalf of their own membership, for the good of the economy, and so for the welfare of the community in general. James Mallory, the most enduring and highly respected of the department's political scientists, has commented that members of that division felt themselves challenged in the postwar years by the vigour of their economist colleagues. Mallory himself joined the department as a young assistant professor in 1946. As part of the postwar departmental reconstruction a senior appointment was made that same year in the person of Frederick Watson, who was particularly interested in the central fields of the discipline, political theory and comparative politics. His book, The Political Tradition of the West, published two years after his arrival on campus, quickly became a classic in its field. He stayed only five years in the department before returning to Yale, but he made an enduring contribution to the development of the political science discipline at McGill. He was followed in 1948 by Keith Callard, whose major interest had been in the debates of the Indian Constituent Assembly, and the quality of his Pakistan: A Political Study emphasized the tragedy of his early death in Ghana, while on sabbatic leave in 1960. Michael Brecher, who joined the department in 1952, was another specialist in the affairs of the subcontinent, and his biography of Nehru, published in 1959, won international acclaim. He later transferred his interest to the developing nation of Israel. Michael Oliver was a member of the department from 1951 to 1972 and encouraged in the early 1960$ the growing understanding of McGilTs French-Canadian milieu. He initiated, as we have previously noted, the French Canada Studies Program, but in 1967 he was largely lost to the department by his appointment as vice-principal (academic). Mallory himself, in addition to contributing strongly to the teaching program of the department, and to the

Arts Faculty Enrolment

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conduct of university affairs for more than thirty years, achieved a national reputation in the area of Canadian constitutional studies, particularly with The Structure of Canadian Government, published in 1970. While members of the teaching staff were in this way registering outstanding individual achievements, the main work of the department continued with a steady growth in numbers and in academic appointments. At the end of our period, economics and political science was one of the strongest departments in the Faculty of Arts and Science; it divided in 1970 into economics as one department and political science as another. The division was obviously the result, not of weakness, but of major growth and development.3 SOCIOLOGY A N D A N T H R O P O L O G Y

The other major discipline in the social sciences was that of Carl Dawson's department, sociology. He retired in 1951, and with his departure the pioneer days of sociology were over. The period that followed was one of great individualism, both among the professors, as to what they taught and what they researched, and among the students, as to what courses were to be included in their degree program. One of the professors from that period, David Solomon, has recalled his experiences: The significant aspect of freedom, to which I want to draw attention, is the freedom of each member to choose teaching and research areas. Apart from a few courses which must be taught and which someone must Volunteer' to teach if there is a vacancy, members of the Department have had almost complete freedom to choose their own courses. Even when we have appointed people on the understanding that they would teach certain courses, usually within a year or two, those who wished have opted out of anything in which they decided they really were not interested. He went on to distinguish a number of groups in the department, but said that the word 'group' could be used only loosely: the political sociologists were committed to survey research and other quantitative approaches, and were interested in voting behaviour and other aspects of the political system; another group were more politically minded in the common meaning of the term. They believed that the analysing and understanding function of sociology ought to be directed towards developing in students a critical attitude to existing social systems, and towards encouraging them to contribute in an active way to social change. He also detected some manifestation of what he called 'the old Chicago tradition':

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Some identify themselves with symbolic interactionism, deviance, and grounded theory. Others are involved primarily with the sociology of work, which includes industrial sociology, the sociology of medicine and other professional types of occupations, and in applied sociology in these particular areas. There are others who are committed to social psychology with a quasi-experimental approach, to urban studies, communication, sociology of knowledge, and more besides. Solomon's own comment was, 'The individualistic tradition lets each person claim to be a specialist in his own area, so that there are almost as many specialities as there are people in the Department.'4 Some observers saw in this extreme form of individualism the department's great virtue; others regarded it as a dissipation of effort in research and as an incoherence of curriculum in teaching. However, the outstanding worth of many of the individual teaching and research contributions was never in question. Aileen Ross published a series of significant articles on the structures of philanthropy, and went on to studies of social processes in India, including one book on the Hindu family and another on student unrest in the subcontinent. Fred Elkin published one of the first analyses of French-English conflict in Quebec professions; he chose to study the clash of attitudes among advertising personnel. William Westley's Violence and the Police examined the problem of police discipline and became a standard work. His studies of the dynamics of crowds, and of the family background of emotionally healthy students, also attracted considerable and favourable attention. Maurice Pinard, Richard Hamilton, and Immamiel Wallerstein were among the major scholars who joined the department in the 19608 and greatly strengthened its reputation.5 In 1948 the first anthropologist formally so designated was appointed to the department and a year or two later its tide was changed to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.6 In the new area, a markedly different approach was employed; it was early decided to concentrate on areas of strength, and the phenomenon of social development was chosen as central to the department's interests. This subject was to be studied in the areas in which members of the department already had expertise, such as northern Canada, the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia; further staff appointments were made with those areas in mind. Another early policy decision was to seek alliances with other university departments which had similar interests in the geographic areas named, and fruitful relationships were quickly established with, for example, the Arctic Institute of North America, at that time located on the McGill campus, the McGill Committee on Northern Research, the Department of Geography, the Bellairs Research Institute, the Shastri Institute, and the Institute of

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Islamic Studies. Some of the most profitable instances of cooperation were, of course, with those sociologists whose concerns were particularly close to those of the anthropologists. In order to coordinate the training of graduate students in the applied aspects of anthropology the program named Anthropology of Development was instituted in 1964 This program sent its students into the field, and particularly into northern Quebec. In 1971, when the James Bay project for hydroelectric development was announced, the McGill team was the only group already working on the topic of social development in that area. It provided basic information on the many social problems which the project raised and suggested solutions both to the indigenous inhabitants and to the Quebec government. Its work 'essentially formed the basis of James Bay land claims in Quebec'.7 The McGill concern in these decades with the development of newly independent or disadvantaged countries, the nations of the so-called Third World, led Professor Irving Brecher in 1964 to conceive the idea of a Centre for Developing Area Studies. The term 'development' was fast taking on a technical connotation, and he secured the cooperation of a considerable number of colleagues in the social sciences to promote an integrated program of teaching and research in all aspects of 'development'; that is, the economic, political, educational, and cultural aspects of social change in underdeveloped countries. Emphasis was placed upon research into the impact of planning upon such things as agricultural development and commercial and industrial growth. The consequences and achievements of foreign-aid programs were also the subject of close study. The centre admirably fulfilled its primary purpose of bringing together those who approached common problems from very different points of view, and who by coming together were able to share knowledge and pool resources for more adequate results. The centre assisted the work of the African Studies Committee of the Faculty of Arts, the Caribbean SmallScale Agriculture Project of the Department of Geography, the Centre for East Asian Studies, and the Inter-University Consortium for Research and Training in the Caribbean. It was also responsible for a particularly active program in publishing books, monographs, and a very valuable reprint series. THE FACULTY OF LAW As elsewhere in the university, the Faculty of Law registered considerably increased numbers of students immediately after World War II. Even after the veteran wave had passed through, the number of applications remained very high. The faculty's increasing importance was recognized by the provision, for the first time in its near century of existence, of a home of its

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own; J.W. McConnell presented the Ross family residence on Peel Street to the university, and in 1950 the faculty moved from the upper floors of Dawson Hall into its new premises, which were appropriately renamed Chancellor Day Hall. In other areas of the university, this growth in enrolment would have resulted more or less automatically in an increase in the number of full-time academic appointments, but the Faculty of Law still suffered from the old problem that academic salaries compared poorly with incomes obtainable from legal practice.8 In 1950 there were five full-time members of the academic staff and by 1962 this number had risen only to eight. There were in addition some fifteen part-time lecturers. It was not until after 1963, when public funds began to flow towards the university, that steps could be taken to improve the situation, so that by 1970 there were twenty-five full-time members and thirty-five part-time. In that same period the student body increased from 180 to 275, so that there was a considerable improvement in the ratio of full-time staff to students, and again of full-time to part-time staff. Across Canada, following the lead of the better schools in the United States, there had been a determined effort to increase the number of full-time academic appointments in law, with a view to an improvement in the quality of teaching. It was essential that McGill should keep pace with the progress being made elsewhere, and the new funds made this possible.9 Even more encouraging was the intellectual burgeoning of the faculty. During the 1950s, the conservatism of the Duplessis regime was strongly apparent in legal matters, particularly since, next to language, the Civil Code was French Canada's most cherished possession. Louis Baudouin was widely respected as an authoritative exponent of the code, but there was little in the social climate of the day to encourage innovation in either teaching or research. In 1951 the faculty took responsibility for the fourth or practical year of legal education, and instituted a program whereby the students spent their mornings in law offices and their afternoons with practice-oriented lectures. This development secured more uniformity and direction for the professional year. It was at first in legal areas beyond the concerns of the Civil Code that the faculty began to register a number of notable achievements. Frank Scott had already gained a reputation in constitutional law and enhanced it greatly when he took the Roncarelli case against Duplessis and the further case against the notorious Quebec Padlock Law to the Supreme Court of Canada and won both suits handsomely.10 Maxwell Cohen, who joined the faculty in 1946, quickly achieved prominence as an authority on international law, and he served on a number of United Nations and Canada-United States joint commissions. The faculty was beginning to find opportunities in legal concerns which transcended provincial boundaries. The outstanding instance of these broadening interests has to do with faraway places in a quite literal sense. The location in Montreal of the

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headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization and of the International Air Transport Association brought to this city John Cobb Cooper, an exponent of legal studies on mankind's latest mode of transport In 1951 he encouraged McGill to establish in the Faculty of Law the world's first Institute of International Air Law. In 1958, immediately after man had begun to place satellites in orbit, the institute added the word 'space' to its title, and the work of the Institute of Air and Space Law, in both air travel and the wider realms of post-sputnik explorations, more than fulfilled the early expectations. By 1971 over 130 graduate degrees had been awarded, and students coming to Montreal from all over the world engaged in the seminars and research studies. Another indication of the increasing vitality of the faculty was the decision in 1966 to create a second institute. Since Montreal was uniquely situated as the meeting place of the Quebec Civil Code, rooted in French and Roman law, and the Canadian common law code, derived from English case-law, McGill was recognized by the Ford Foundation as an appropriate location for the comparative study of legal systems, and was given a grant of $400,000 to promote the Institute of Comparative Law over the next five years. H.R. Hahlo, formerly dean of law at Witwatersrand University, South Africa, brought a new viewpoint to these studies and was himself an early director of the enterprise. Most of the graduate students registered in these two institutes came from outside Canada; by 1971 they were numbering each year about fifty, and making a considerable contribution to the university's research program and to its international reputation. A corollary of the work of the Institute of Comparative Law was a decision in 1966 to revive the idea of a national program in legal studies.n The core of the proposal, which was strongly promoted by Cohen after he became dean of the faculty in 1964, was not only to offer the LL.B. degree in common law as well as the B.C.L. in the Civil Code, but to offer a four-year joint course whereby both qualifications could be gained at once. The joint program was designed for those planning to serve in government, where an understanding of both systems would be invaluable, and also as a basis for graduate studies. An important aspect of the program was the decision to offer appropriate courses in French, since this was the major language of the Quebec courts and since an increasing number of students registered French as their maternal language.12 These activities stimulated a renewed interest in the code, especially as the centenary of the codification of Quebec's legal system was to be celebrated in 1967. As if in recollection of the major role played by McGill Chancellor Charles Dewey Day in the 1867 codification, McGill's Wainwright Professor of Law, PaulAndre Crepeau, was named president of the Office de revision du Code civil, while J.W. Durnford and J.E.C. Brierley, successive deans of the faculty, served with other colleagues on the various committees charged

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with this thorough refurbishing of Quebec's legal system.13 Yves Caron made an especially valuable contribution. The part played by McGill in the revision was thus significant, and the faculty could by no means be accused of having become so internationally and spatially minded as to have overlooked its primary responsibility. On the contrary, in these decades the faculty gave new dimensions to the study of law, while at the same time striking its roots deeper into its native soil. The tall annex which rose beside Chancellor Day Hall in 1968 was both the outcome and the symbol of the faculty's increased stature on campus and in the wider world beyond. THE D E P A R T M E N T OF HISTORY

This discipline, it will be recalled, was first introduced into the curriculum as an offshoot of language studies, so that history began very definitely as a humanity.14 This was in accord with the long tradition, personified in Clio and stretching from Xenophon to Macaulay, that the historian was by instinct an artist, working with the raw material of historical fact as another artist might work with colour and canvas or a block of marble.15 Carl Berger has pointed to Donald Creighton as the last notable Canadian historian writing in that tradition.16 But from the late nineteenth century onward, under the influence of the ideas of von Ranke and Lord Acton, the historian came more and more to think of himself as a social scientist, dedicated to objectivity and the writing of history wie es eigentlich war. In postwar years the Great Man motif gave way to the computer-compiled data sheet, and the history of heroes became the study of populations. The historiographer became a social scientist, alongside the economist and the sociologist, and shared with them the privileges and the responsibilities of a truly professional status. Significant changes took place not only in methods of study, but also in content. As we have seen, what breathed new life into the humanities was the postwar 'discovery' of the other races of the world, and this theme is further illustrated by the development within the History Department. In 1950 the McGill department boasted six professors, nicely balanced as two full professors, two associate and two assistant professors. They taught some seventeen courses, of which seven were 'British imperial' and seven were 'European', concerned mostly with Europe west and south of a line from Germany to Italy. Of these courses, three had reference to Canada, and one additional course was devoted wholly to Canadian history. Similarly three courses had reference to the United States, but none was wholly devoted to that subject. Single courses on Latin America and ancient history, the history of classical Greece and Rome, were given by other depart-

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ments. In 1954-55 the courses were divided simply into two categories: history of the English-speaking world, eight courses, and European history, eleven courses. In 1970, however, the fifty-one offerings included six courses on Canada, of which two were devoted wholly to French Canada; Britain and Europe between them were still responsible for nineteen courses, or rather more than one-third of the department's total program, but the remaining half of the program was varied. It included studies in the history of Russia, China, Japan, the Islamic countries, the African countries, Latin America, and Spain. By 1970, also, the department listed twenty-four academic staff members, of whom eleven were assistant professors, that is, scholars at the early stages of their careers—a fairly safe indication of a growing and vigorous department. Particular mention should be made of Milos Mladenovic, who came to this country in 1950 as a refugee, originally from Yugoslavia, and who almost singlehandedly introduced the serious study of Russian and East European history, not only to McGill but also, through his former students, to many other Canadian universities.17 THE UNIVERSITY'SMUSEUMS

'The social sciences, which deal with the study of man both past and present, require an understanding of man's changing environment, and this in turn requires a knowledge of the earth and all that lives and grows upon it. To present a coherent story of the interrelationships of all these factors is the ultimate aim of the McGill University Museums.'18 So runs an introduction to the McGill museums written in 1959. The history of the various collections was even at that time a long and complex story, but what was clear then, and has become even more clear in the intervening years, is that the fortunes of museums, more than that of most institutions, rise and fall as individuals arrive on the scene bringing personal enthusiasms for particular interests, and then pass away, only to be replaced, if at all, quite fortuitously. McGill's parent museum is the Redpath. Erected in 1882, it housed a collection of botanical, palaeontological, geological, and zoological specimens which William Dawson had gathered for teaching purposes. He had begun the collections even before he arrived in Montreal in 1855, and by 1882 they had outgrown their earlier modest quarters. Hence the provision of the Redpath. It was not intended as a public amenity; that role was fulfilled by the splendid museum of the Montreal Natural History Society in its building on the corner of University and Cathcart Streets.19 However, students on production of identity cards and visitors on payment of a small fee were permitted at certain hours to view the university's collection.

Redpath Museum

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Even before the Redpath was built, major acquisitions had begun to supplement Dawson's material. Andrew Fernando Holmes' collection of mineral specimens was acquired for $600 as early as 1858, and the large and valuable shell collection of Philip Carpenter in I862.20 In 1880 the Geological Survey moved from Montreal to Ottawa, and naturally took its extensive geological collection with it, but Sir William Logan, the first director of the survey and a good friend of McGill, arranged that his estate should as far as possible duplicate in the Redpath Museum the wide range of specimens the survey had removed Another valuable collection was acquired in 1914, when Sir William Macdonald presented the museum with the Ferrier collection of mineralogical specimens. Walter Ferrier, a highly reputed mineralogist, was the grandson of James Ferrier, McGill's former chancellor, and was himself a graduate of the university.21 A further enrichment of McGill's museum holdings in 1914 resulted from tragedy. The Empress of Ireland sank off Father Point in the St. Lawrence River, and Henry Lyman was among those who lost their lives. An amateur entomologist, he had willed to the university his collection of lepidoptera, together with a small entomological library and $40,000 for the collection's upkeep. The Lyman Entomological Museum was housed in the Redpath and became one of its major scientific resources.22 The period after World War I recorded other benefactions. In 1919 David Ross McCord bequeathed his Canadiana collections to the university and these were so extensive as to require their own building. The McCord Museum was housed in the former Joseph mansion which stood on the corner of Sherbrooke and McTavish Streets. McCord was an insatiable collector all his life, beginning long before others saw the need to preserve Canada's pioneering past, and there are few collections which illustrate more splendidly the social history of native peoples and immigrants alike.23 His ethnological materials were greatly enriched in 1925, when the Montreal Natural History Society dissolved and its extensive collections, which were begun in 1827, also came into the keeping of the university. All the areas of museum interest—zoological, ornithological, botanical, geological, palaeontological, ethnological—all benefited from this major acquisition. In the 19305 Casey Wood was not only enriching his ornithological library with invaluable publications, but he was also constantly adding specimens of birds to the display in the Redpath Museum.24 In the later thirties and during the war years, the university's museums inevitably suffered from neglect. The attention of the individuals who had sustained them with their enthusiasm was diverted elsewhere, and funds to maintain and conserve the collections were hard to come by. Moreover, a change had developed with regard to the museum's purpose. Since the Geological Survey had long since taken its display cases to Ottawa, and the

The Joseph house, Sherbrooke Street, the original home of the McCord Museum

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Montreal Natural History Society's museum had disappeared, the McGill museums were more and more expected to take their place as a public amenity.25 A visit to the Redpath in particular became a regular part of many school schedules and these were encouraged in the fifties and sixties when volunteer guides were trained to provide escorted tours. As the public usage increased, so the scientific effectiveness of the Redpath declined; yet the university had no source of funding, federal or provincial, to support the considerable costs of running a natural history museum for the benefit of the public. More problems arose in 1936. The university was forced to save money wherever possible, and it closed the McCord Museum. The collections were left in storage, and for eighteen years, as the Joseph house fell further into decay, there was considerable danger that many of the more sensitive objects would suffer irreparable damage. Finally in 1954 the structure was condemned and had to be torn down. Its contents were moved to somewhat better quarters in the Hodgson house, another mansion which McGill had inherited in the north-west campus area. Even in the new location an attenuated reference service was all that could be maintained, and for those who had the museum's interests at heart the postwar years continued to be a time of much anxiety. However, in 1956 McGill received a notable addition to its historical resources. Maclean's magazine, Empire Universal Films, and the Maxwell Cummings Foundation concerted their efforts to present the Notman Photographic Archives, a priceless collection of some 400,000 photographs and negative plates, illustrating people and places, mainly in Montreal but also much further afield, from 1856 to 1936. Here then was another heritage which needed housing and careful conservation.26 It was not until the early sixties that answers began to emerge. The Department of Entomology in the Faculty of Agriculture had been established as early as 1921 and it was obviously the part of the university with the greatest interest in the Lyman collections. The original bequest with its emphasis on lepidoptera had been greatly expanded by the long-time honorary curator George Moore, whose main interest was in hc-miptera. By 1961 the accommodation provided in the Redpath was sarily inadequate. Keith McEwen Kevan as chairman of entomology 'lind of the Lyman bequest committee was able in that year to overcome legal and other obstacles and have the collection removed to Macdonald College, where in two successive locations the research activities of the museum were greatly increased. This was recognized in 1972 when the university accorded the collections a new name, the Lyman Entomological Museum and Research Laboratory. Its holdings at that time were surpassed in numbers only by the National Insect Collection in Ottawa, a collection which the Lyman

Cyril James with Redpath's 'Old George', and at the Redpath Italian Exhibition, 1952; museums link man with his past and his culture

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sought to complement rather than to duplicate.27 The departure of the entomological museum to Ste. Anne de Bellevue released much-needed space in the Redpath for its own growing departments. The next development came in 1965, when a new student centre, the University Centre, was opened on McTavish Street, and the old Student Union on Sherbrooke was left vacant Isabel Dobell, the McCord curator, was able to persuade the university and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Stewart, the generous Macdonald heirs, to rehabilitate the old Union to serve as a new home for the McCord Museum and the Notman Archives. The plan was carried into effect with great sensitivity, and after financial support had been secured from both federal and provincial sources, the museum opened in 1967 and quickly became known as one of Montreal's finest research and public interest museums, specializing in Canadian ethnology and social history.28 The removal of the entomological collection to Macdonald College in 1961 pointed the way for a similar removal of the University Herbarium from the Redpath to the Ste. Anne de Bellevue campus in 1972. The nucleus of the university's 'library of plants', gathered mostly in 1820-25, was again the work of Andrew Fernando Holmes. Over the years there had been notable accessions, including one from the Reverend Robert Campbell, the indefatigable Montreal local historian and naturalist in the middle nineteenth century. His collection was one which came by way of the Natural History Society's contribution to the university's holdings. The middle decades of this century saw much neglect of these materials until the late 19508 when Professor Paul Maycock, a plant ecologist, devoted considerable time and attention to the restoration of the herbarium. Similarly the collection at Macdonald College had been neglected until Dr. Dorothy Swales took it into her care in the late 19505. Her additions from her many trips to the Canadian sub-Arctic greatly increased the scientific value of the Macdonald materials, so that when in August 1972 the two collections were combined at Ste. Anne de Bellevue as the McGill University Herbarium, they constituted eastern Canada's strongest resource in this increasingly important aspect of ecological studies.29 The history of science became a subject of increasing importance in the 19608, but McGill even in the 19808 lacked a good general scientific historical collection. There were, however, two most honourable exceptions. The Medical Faculty had a number of valuable disciplinary collections and treasured the memory of Maude Abbott, who in the 19205 and 19308 made her curatorship of the Medical Museum the basis of a great teaching career and of an international reputation in the pathology of congenital heart defects.30 Secondly, Ferdinand Richard Terroux, who was a graduate student in Rutherford's laboratory at Cambridge and who joined the Physics

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Department on his return to McGill in 1931, was concerned to seek out and preserve some of the equipment Rutherford had constructed and used in his epoch-making experiments at McGill. A bequest by another professor who had known Rutherford well, Norman Shaw, enabled Terroux to create in 1967 the Rutherford Museum, which he then used as the object lesson of an introduction to atomic physics for generations of students, and for the edification of more general visitors.31 Museums take many forms, but the finest of all is surely the conservation of a natural habitat. This opportunity came to McGill in 1958 when Brigadier-General Andrew Hamilton Gault bequeathed his 'most treasured possession', the Mont St. Hilaire estate, to the university with the hope that 'its beauties and amenities may be preserved for all time to come'.32 It was decided to divide this property into two sections, one to be used for public recreation and especially for a program of nature study and conservation for schools; the other was to be left as the last stand of virgin Canadian wilderness within easy reach of Montreal for scientific study and observation. Alice Johannsen on becoming director of the Gault Estate in 1970 established the Mont St. Hilaire Nature Conservation Centre and organized a program of conducted nature study tours, which met with a very appreciative response from educationists and the general public alike. In 1970 the university was experiencing one of its recurrent financial crises, and a particular difficulty arose with regard to the university's museums. The provincial government declined to recognize that the university had any obligation to serve the public in the provision of a natural history museum and would allocate no funds to keep the Redpath open to the public and particularly to classes of schoolchildren. The university was also under pressure from the scientific staff of the museum to permit the Redpath to revert to its primary function as a teaching resource and research centre. It was decided therefore to terminate visits by the public, except in special circumstances. This caused considerable resentment among some Montreal schoolteachers and parents, but university classes could once again be scheduled in the museum, and its holdings resumed their role as a major teaching facility. Under the direction of Professor John Lewis, the program of scientific research in all the museum's departments went forward with renewed productivity. Museums are costly institutions, both to establish and to operate, and government funding for such ventures tends to be meagre and fitful. Museums are not productive of immediate or obvious results. Even more fundamental than adequate funding is the presence on the museum scene of enthusiasts for the interests served by the collection. Every McGill historical resource owes its existence to a relatively few individuals who gave of their personal time and concerns, and often of their personal fortunes, for

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the assembling and conservation of a particular series of materials. We have mentioned only a few names, and many more could have been added, but it is to such men and women as these that McGill owes not a little of its hold upon the past, and therefore of its vision for the future.

NOTES 1. Course registrations in the Department of Economics and Political Science, of Sociology and Anthropology, and of History rose from 8,736 in 1961 to 19,185 in 1970-71. Some students would be taking one course, and others as many as five, so it is not possible to translate course registrations into student numbers, but a 1: 2.2 ratio of increased course registrations compares with a i: 1.7 increase in student registrations university-wide. This indicates that of the great student increase in the 19605 a considerable proportion registered in the social sciences. Academic staff in these departments increased over the same period from 42 to 99; graduate students, from 143 to 268. For many years, in the middle and late sixties, economics and political science supplied the largest number of students from one department in Graduate Faculty registrations. 2. See chapter 14. 3. See Earl F. Beach, 'The McGill School of Commerce', McGill News 22, no. 3 (March 1941): 17-19, and Donald Armstrong, 'Draft Notes for a History of Management Education at McGill', 82.6.8. Also, J.R. Mallory, 'Notes on the Development of Political Science at McGill', 62.6.2.17. 4. The quotations are from 'My Life as a Student and Teacher at McGill, 1935-1974', a paper presented by David Solomon to the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, August 1974, pp. 15, 17 (unpublished manuscript, quoted with permission). 5. Aileen Ross, The Hindu Family in Its Urban Setting (Toronto, 1961); Student Unrest in India: A Comparative Approach (Montreal, 1969). Frederick Elkin, Rebels and Colleagues: Advertising and Social Change in French Canada (Montreal, 1973). William Westley, Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom and Morality (Toronto, 1970); The Formation, Nature and Control of Crowds (Montreal, 1956); The Silent Majority: Families of Emotionally Healthy College Students (San Francisco, 1969). Pinard joined the department in 1963, Hamilton in 1970, and Wallerstein in 1971. 6. The early appointees in anthropology did not stay long, but the advent of Richard Salisbury (1962), Peter Gutkind (1963), and Bruce Trigger (1964) gave the department the stability it needed. These three were teaching and conducting research in the department into the 19805. 7. R.F. Salisbury, F.G. Filion, F. Rawji, and D. Stewart, Development and James Bay: Socio-Economic Impact of the Hydro-Electric Proposals (Montreal, 1972). 8. For the earlier history of this problem, see Advancement i: 278-81. 9. The improvement in ratios of full-time staff to students in 1950—70 was from i: 22.5 to i: II. The 19703 saw a further considerable growth in the student body which was stabilized in mid-decade at 525 registrations, but this caused a reversal in the staff-student ratio trend, which declined to i: 17. However, the full-time to part-time teacher ratio improved from i: 2 to i: 1.4 in 1970. This figure further improved by 1975 to i: I, excluding seven

330

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

CHAPTER ELEVEN teaching fellows. Thus the solid gains in the quality of teaching made in the sixties were maintained in the seventies despite the increased student numbers. The value of having a certain proportion of legal instruction given by contemporary practitioners has never been questioned. McGill owes these men (and now women) an immense debt. Roncarelli was a restaurateur who provided bail for members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect, which Duplessis had decreed illegal. Roncarelli was not a Witness himself, and so could not be charged, but in retaliation Duplessis deprived him of his liquor licence, and thus forced the closure of his restaurant. Roncarelli was awarded $40,000 damages against Duplessis personally. The Padlock Law, giving the police the power to close any premises used by communists, was declared by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional and disallowed. For the earlier attempt, see chapter 6. Dean Cohen expounded the rationale of the national program in detail in the faculty's report to the principal in 1967; see AR 1966-67, pp. 56-65. See 'Law Lectures in French', memorandum prepared by Faith Wallis, MUA, 62.6.7. The work of revision continued through the seventies and was completed in 1978. For Charles Dewey Day, see Advancement i: 155, and J.E.C. Brierley, 'Quebec's Civil Law Codification Viewed and Reviewed', McGill Law Journal 14, no. 4 (1968): 522-89. Advancement i: 266; and chapter 2. 'History is to be classed among the Humanities... because its purpose is self-knowledge: to show men what it is to be men, by showing them what men have done.' H. Noel Fieldhouse, chairman of the History Department, report of the dean of arts and science, 1948, MUA I6/2J/3/9. Fieldhouse also acknowledged that history was related to the social sciences 'because of the subject matter' and to the natural sciences 'because of its method'. Carl Berger, 'Donald Creighton and the Artistry of History', in The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing, 1900-1970 (Toronto, 1976), pp. 208-37. Mladenovic is credited with the direction of eleven Ph.D. and twenty-four master's theses between 1955 and 1973—roughly one in three of all Ph.D.'s and one in six of all M.A.'s directed by the History Department during the period. And history was by no means an unproductive department. See Theses I and 2. Alice Johannsen Turnham, 'McGill University Museums' (Montreal, 1959), 62.14.4. See Advancement i: 268-69. Also, S.B. Frost, 'Science Education in the Nineteenth Century: The Natural History Society of Montreal, 1827-1925', McGill Journal of Education, 17, no. I (Winter 1982): pp. 318". Also, Susan Sheets-Pyenson, '"Stone, Bones and Skeletons": The Origins and Development of the Peter Redpath Museum, 1882-1912', ibid., pp. 498". Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, p. 187. Edgar Andrew Collard, Oldest McGill (Toronto, 1946), p. 83. Louise S. Stevenson, *Walter F. Ferrier and the Ferrier Mineral Collections', Mineralogical Record 3, no. 5 (1972): 232. V.R. Vickery and G.A. Moore, 'The Lyman Entomological Museum, 1914-1964', Canadian Entomologist 96, no. 12 (1964): 1489-94; also, V.R.

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23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

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Vickery, 'George Allan Moore, 1878-1966', Entomology Newsletter 44, no. 6 (1966): 2-3. Evelyn Levine, 'A McCord Chronicle', McGill News 53, no. 4 (September 1972): 16-18. See chapter 6, 'The University's Libraries'. 'The absence of an adequate public museum service in the City of Montreal places on McGill University... the duty of doing its utmost to provide such a service.' Cyril Fox, A Survey of McGill University Museums (Montreal, 1932), p. 25. C.E.W. Graham and S.G. Triggs, 'Guide to the Microfilmed Indexes and Picture-books of the Notman Photographic Archives', MUA 1824. D.K. McE. Kevan, 'The Lyman Entomological Museum and Research Laboratory: A History to 1978' (Macdonald Campus, 1978), pp. 1-35, 82.144. McCord Museum, an introductory pamphlet (McCord Museum, n.d.). Dennis W. Woodland, 'The McGill University Herbarium', McGill News 55, no. 2 (June 1974): 7-9, 20. See chapter 6, 'Women in Medicine', and note 47. F.R. Terroux, 'A Memorial to Rutherford', McGill News 48, no. 6 (November 1967): 19-20. McGill University, Mont St. Hilaire, The Gault Donation: Report of the Chairman', 31 March 1959, 82.18. The quotations are from Hamilton Gault's will. See also 'Brig. Gault's Bequest: Mont St. Hilaire', McGill News 40, no. 2 (Spring 1959): 12, and Paul F. Maycock, 'Mont St. Hilaire: A Naturalist's Paradise', McGill News 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1959): 15-17.

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CHAPTER

I II

THE PHYSICAL AND APPLIED SCIENCES

or the areas in which McGill had traditionally shown strength, the physical and applied sciences, the postwar decades were crowded with incident and made notable by many outstanding personalities. In any attempt to record them the selection of examples must be a personal one and, because of the varied nature of the materials available, somewhat fortuitous. In some departments the knowledge of the past slipped away in the excitement of the present almost unnoticed; in others the story of developments and of the men and women who made them possible were preserved with considerable care.

F

OLD WORLDS BECOME NEW

The technologies developed in wartime stimulated new activities in established disciplines, so that familiar subjects were newly explored. In at least one instance, that of geography, a somewhat lowly branch of learning, little regarded at the university level, became an exciting new science, resulting in new departments in major institutions.1 At McGill, although there had been some work in the prewar years at the teacher-training level at Macdonald College, geography was not recognized as a separate discipline on the Montreal campus until the closing years of World War II.2 As a synthetic science, the subject had close

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relationships with geology, meteorology, zoology, botany, anthropology, sociology, and economics, to name but a few. Some argued that these sciences should be left to care for their own concerns and that the proposed department would only duplicate their efforts. The argument that it was the synthesis of these interests in a new department which was needed prevailed largely because of the personal interest of Principal Cyril James. In 1944 the first geographer was appointed on the Montreal campus. George Kimble, a young Englishman who had served as a climatologist with the Royal Navy during the war, himself illustrated some of the contradictions inherent in the discipline. In his inaugural lecture he accepted the designation of his new department by the Faculty of Arts and Science as a social science, yet he made his first three appointments in the areas of physical geography. He acknowledged the fear of the older departments that geography would encroach upon their preserves and promised to abstain—but also announced his intention of 'reviving' meteorology at McGill, even though a strong program in that science had been maintained in engineering and in physics since the days of Charles Smallwood and the old McGill Observatory.3 Once established, the new department nurtured the earlier link with the Institute of Education, as the School for Teachers had become, by encouraging the teaching of geography in high schools, and this became a characteristic activity. Only as the schools made geography an attractive option in the tenth and eleventh grades could there be a stream of matriculants ready to consider the discipline at the university level. Consequently, the department assisted high-school teachers through successive summer schools at Stanstead, Quebec, and through local area seminars offered in conjunction with the Institute of Education.4 This activity was supported by a wellplanned series of undergraduate courses, including a strong honours program. At the graduate level the department benefited from the postwar revival of interest in the Canadian North. The department established its first field station at Knob Lake on the initiative of another climatologist, Kenneth Hare, who had studied the climatological and biogeographical conditions in the northern Quebec-Labrador area. In 1954 the Iron Ore Company of Canada was ready to mine the massive ore deposits discovered in that region in the late 19205 by James Gill of the McGill Department of Geological Sciences. A railway was to be constructed into this previously inaccessible country and Hare recognized the value of a research station permanently located in the mining area. A major Defence Research Board grant was secured and, with Norman Drummond as the first director, the station began a twenty-four-hour meteorological observation program. It also became the base for a whole series of sub-Arctic and Arctic experi-

The McGill-Jacobsen Axel Heiberg Expedition, 1959-62

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mental programs. Expeditions to Axel Heiberg and other far-northern locations stimulated further interest in such subjects as glaciology, geomorphology, and Arctic ecology, all of which had close links with work being undertaken in other departments. Instead of the rivalry which was feared when the department was founded, cooperative efforts brought the scientists working in contiguous areas into highly productive relationships. This situation was particularly favoured by the presence on campus of the Canadian headquarters and library of the Arctic Institute of North America. McGill scientists interested in the North made valuable contributions of leadership and expertise to the institute, and in return they derived great benefits from the university's association with the joint Canada-United States organization.5 By way of contrast, another strong program in the department concerned itself with the humid tropics. It was greatly assisted by the happy acquisition of a research station in the island of Barbados. How that came about was, to say the least, fortuitous. In 1951 Vincent Massey, chairman of the Royal Commission on the Arts and Sciences in Canada, received a letter from a person living in Barbados, offering to donate his property to a Canadian university. The letter was poorly written on very cheap paper, and Massey was inclined not to treat it very seriously. Cyril James later recalled that 'although Vincent Massey was at that time the Chancellor of the University of Toronto, he turned the letter over to me, with a semihumorous remark that this kind of thing was likely to be of more interest to McGill than to Toronto.'6 The writer of the letter proved to be Commander Carlyon Wilfroy Bellairs, R.N., whose eyesight had been failing for some time and who wrote only with the greatest difficulty. This explained the nature of the communication. The property in question was a valuable stretch of shoreline, protected by a fine coral reef. James suggested a marine biology research station, a proposal later broadened to include climatological, geomorphological, sociological, and other tropical interests. The Bellairs Research Institute was established in 1954 and the Department of Geography began at once to take full advantage of its facilities. Climatology and geomorphology were among the early programs, and geographers participated in the island's irrigation and land reclamation activities. The humid tropics program was also engaged, in Cooperation with other McGill departments, in ecological and other programs in the Rupununi district of Guyana. The founding of the Geography Department, and its speedy growth from a single academic appointment in 1945 to a complement in 1971 of twenty-one, illustrated with considerable vigour the widening of McGill horizons during the decades of the fifties and sixties.7 Through its Department of Geography, the university was, in fact, given a new view of an old world.

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But it was not only the age-old land that had become new; the sea also became as never before part of man's habitat. For millennia he had sailed upon its surface and had peered into its shallows; only with the perfection of the aqualung and the bathysphere could he begin to invade the unknown world of its depths. The expansion of man's submarine knowledge is an outstanding instance of the knowledge explosion in the third quarter of the twentieth century and resulted at McGill in another synthetic science to meet the new challenge. The university's contribution to oceanic studies began with 'the admirable Pierre Fortin', who graduated M.D. in 1845 ano' spent sixteen summers studying the fish and fauna of the Gulf of St. Lawrence while serving as a coast guard and a consular officer of the Canadian government.8 Throughout the nineteenth century McGill professors contributed papers on marine sciences to the journal of the Montreal Natural History Society and marine specimens to the society's museum.9 In the twentieth century a long series of contributions to the work of the Atlantic Biological Station at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and the Arctic Biological Station at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, came from many parts of the university, including the Institute of Parasitology, the Faculty of Agriculture, the Departments of Zoology, Botany, and Physiology. The need to coordinate this work, and to provide a focus for all marine sciences, led in 1963 to the organization by Maxwell Dunbar of the Marine Sciences Centre. The main locations of research were the waters of the Canadian North, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Caribbean Sea, The acquisition of the Bellairs Research Institute and the fact that the first director, John Lewis (1954-70), was himself a marine biologist made the last-named area particularly significant. The major interest of the centre included physical and geological oceanography, biological oceanography, marine geochemistry, marine microbiology, and (a sign of the times) marine pollution. There was hardly a terrestrial discipline which did not generate its marine counterpart and open up whole new areas for exploration.10 OLD SCIENCESREINVIGORATED

The old main-line departments of physical science, physics and chemistry, had entered into their own new worlds almost a half-century earlier, following the work of Rutherford and Soddy, but in the fifties and sixties they were busier than ever, exploring uncharted domains and making further exciting new discoveries. In the Department of Physics a main locus of this activity was the Foster Radiation Laboratory.11 We have already commented on the prewar gestation of this project It was formally opened in 1946, but the first theses and publications resulting from work with the cyclotron did not appear until 1951. They dealt with results obtained with

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the proton beam. During the early 19508 the commonest kind of research was the examination of radioactivities produced in samples of various elements bombarded by high-energy protons. For the next three decades the radioactivities credited to the Foster Radiation Laboratory represented a considerable percentage of the many man-made radioactivities being recorded around the world. However, the kind of survey with which the laboratory began became increasingly the domain of nuclear chemists, and in the late fifties the McGill physicists transferred their interest to the detailed mechanics of the reactions in which atomic nuclei participate. When Robert Bell became director in 1960, the laboratory was expanded and a change of emphasis introduced. R.D. Barton obtained his first delayed-proton events in the winter of 1962-63, and his success led to an extensive and rapid exploration of this field, with Bell's encouragement, by other members of the laboratory. The proton beam was extracted from the machine and relocated in a new external beam hall to enable research on nuclear reactions to be carried forward in a more direct way. Another important experiment in these years was the measurement of the efficiency of bremsstrahlung production in proton-proton collisions, a fundamental physical observation but a very difficult one to achieve. Subsequently a high-energy physics group was established, and it later became an independent unit, working not only at McGill but with even more powerful equipment in the United States. The McGill cyclotron was further adapted in the 19708 to accelerate particles other than protons. Putting so much money and committing so much of the department's energy into this facility was a gamble in the 19408, which continued to pay handsome dividends into the 19805. The work with the cyclotron was by no means the only research endeavour going forward in the Physics Department. G.A. Woonton was the first director of the Eaton Electronics Research Laboratory, founded in 1950. In his early years at McGill, Woonton worked principally in microwave optics, where he achieved a fine balance between experimental ability and theoretical understanding. Later he undertook the study of solids by microwave spectroscopy; experimental equipment and techniques developed in the laboratory enabled detailed spectroscopic measurements to be made, leading to a fuller understanding of magnetic insulating systems, including masers and atomic clocks. In the early years of Woonton's association with the laboratory, McGill was drawn into Canada's attempts to establish a warning system against bomber attack from the north. The USSR acquired the nuclear bomb in 1949, and at that time the delivery system was still the manned bomber. After consultation with the National Research Council and the predecessor

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of the Defence Research Board, it was decided to try to develop a system on one of four models. Two of these were assigned to McGill, and the one finally adopted was developed by Dr. J. Rennie Whitehead, who had come to the laboratory in 1951 from the United Kingdom, and Ross Warren, a graduate student in the department. The system was almost exactly that of the simplest Doppler radar. The idea was to erect a chain of unmanned radio transmitters and receivers along the fifty-fifth parallel, arranged to detect the Doppler beats of any approaching aircraft. Communication links would carry the alarm to manned stations located about every tenth installation. Most of the equipment was modified standard communications gear, supplied and maintained by the RCA company, who had collaborated closely with Whitehead and Warren. Power was provided by diesel generators at each station, and maintenance was by helicopter from the manned locations. The operators became very expert at interpreting the Doppler signals that came in, and tests proved that even a flock of five or more migrating Canada geese could be identified. The effect was that of a semi-automatic intruder fence, and its informal name was the McGill Fence, though officially it was termed the Mid-Canada Line. The system operated routinely until 1965, when the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles led to the installation of the Distant Early Warning radars, though many radar people still thought the McGill Fence was more trustworthy than the DEW-line for detecting intruder aircraft.12 In the area of physics undergraduate teaching, major changes began to take place in the early sixties. Challenged as they were by huge increases in the number of first- and second-year students, members of the department responded with determined efforts to improve the quality of their instruction. From 1962 onward much advantage was being taken of the new techniques of television and video-taping. In the later sixties the content of the courses was changed. The introductory and continuation courses were abandoned, and more demanding courses were substituted; these were major and honours programs, which required a prescribed concentration in the discipline.13 In addition students were provided with academic counselling in the Departments of Physics and Meteorology. The value of this service was soon recognized by other departments, which made similar provisions for their students, until these ad hoc arrangements were replaced by a faculty system of academic advisers in March 1970.u Physics had naturally close relationships with many of the departments in the Faculty of Engineering, and for many years this had been recognized by a five-year program in engineering physics, which included most of the final year of the honours physics program. As engineering developed its own graduate and research programs, and as the faculty's relationship

The early days of televised teaching; the lecturer is R.E. Bell Radar Weather Observatory, Ste. Anne de Bellevue

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with the Corporation of Professional Engineers became more precise, the rationale for the engineering physics program weakened and the course was discontinued in 1965. A program in meteorology had been administered successively within the Faculty of Engineering, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Physics. Although it included a modest teaching program, its strength was in research. During the war J. Stewart Marshall had directed the Canadian army's Stormy Weather Project, a study of the structure and movement of storms, and he brought the project with him when he joined the Physics Department in 1945. Marshall experimented with the use of radar for this study and a specialty developed, very largely as the result of his pioneering efforts. About the same time Kenneth Hare established the Arctic Meteorology group in the Geography Department, and the two programs interacted productively during the decade of the fifties. 'The physics of clouds and precipitation processes is classical physics. Sometimes one is astonished that the problems in this area were not solved generations ago since the basic physical concepts have long been known. The bottleneck was our inability to locate and observe precisely the important processes in the atmosphere.'15 Once again it was a question of breaking through a frontier. From the beginning of time man's knowledge of the atmosphere had been limited to the narrow band enveloping the earth to a distance of a relatively few thousand feet. After World War II, aircraft, radar, sondes, and satellites opened the upper atmosphere to research as never before. The Stormy Weather Project was itself a direct outcome of this breakthrough, and it was followed in 1956 by a similar, long-term research program, the Alberta Hail Project.16 With opportunities such as these, meteorology became a renewed science. It also became in 1960 a new department, detaching itself from physics, but maintaining very close disciplinary and personal relationships. In 1968 the department realized a long-cherished ambition when it opened the Radar Weather Observatory at Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Perched on top of its eighty-six-foot tower, the radar equipment displayed the three-dimensional structure of rain and storms passing through its air-space with a sensitivity to precipitation as slight as 0.5 millimetres per hour within a radius of loo miles. Needless to say, the daily weather observations begun on the McGill campus by Charles Smallwood in 1863 continued without interruption. One aspect of the Department of Physics which was both a harking back to the days when physics was natural philosophy, and a recognition that cosmology and ontology had become as much if not more the domain of physicists as of philosophers, was the relationship which physics established with the Department of Philosophy through a new specialty, the philosophy of science. Mario Augusto Bunge was appointed in 1966 to

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work at the difficult interface of philosophy and physics, and was very active in teaching and research in the 19606 and 19706, his published work receiving the accolade of translation into many languages.17 Yet another department with which physics had close relationships was mathematics, and here again it is a story of an intellectual renascence in the postwar period. Until 1945 mathematics was almost wholly a service department. The seven faculty members taught twelve courses in the Faculty of Arts and Science, three courses to engineering students, and an additional course or two to commerce students. A small graduate program was shared with the Physics Department; most of the students in the program were headed for further graduate work in physics. With the advent of the veterans after the war, the situation tended to worsen rather than improve. The calls for a greatly increased number of sections in the service courses were met by the engagement of a large number of lecturers, who taught for twelve or fifteen hours a week. Though often described as graduate students, they had little leisure or encouragement to maintain studies of their own. Apart from Toronto, which had nurtured a program in pure mathematics for some years, other Canadian universities were in much the same situation. The two men credited with effecting a radical change in this dismal picture were A.H.S. Gillson and Edward Rosenthall. As chairman of the department, Gillson initiated in 1945 a small program under the name Applied Mathematics. It will be recalled that the Department of Physics had emphasized experimental physics and had tended to neglect theoretical physics and it was this lack which Gillson was making good. In 1962 it was agreed that the program had proved itself to the point where it should be recognized as theoretical physics and as belonging to the Department of Physics. The transfer was duly effected. Gillson had not been idle in other areas; in 1948 he recommended for appointment to a professorship of mathematics Hans Zassenhaus, who had an outstanding reputation as a pure mathematician. Zassenhaus soon began to attract a number of good graduate students into his program. A few years earlier, two members of the department, W.L.G. Williams and Gordon Pall, had founded the Canadian Mathematical Congress, and this body took the lead in persuading the National Research Council to make funds available for the support of pure mathematics. Some of the McGill students gained NRC awards, which made them less dependent on teaching appointments and more free to concentrate on their own studies. Zassenhaus departed for Notre Dame University in 1958, but the graduate program he had built up was continued by younger colleagues. In 1963, as public funds came to the university and a larger budget became available, the newly appointed chairman, Rosenthall, concentrated on building a balanced and well-qualified academic team, which could not

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only fulfil the increasingly heavy demands made upon it in its service capacity, but could also sustain a vigorous graduate program. As we have seen, all the sciences went forward on a broad front in these years, and mathematics, teaching the language of science, responded to the challenge laid upon it A senior statistician was appointed in 1960, and a senior analyst the following year. Analysis and algebra became particularly strong elements in the department's program in the late 19605 and the early 1970s, and there was also a lively interest in statistics and in applied mathematics. The advent of the computer, and the development of the School of Computer Science, so far from diminishing the role of mathematics on the campus created a greater need for mathematical perception and expertise.18 The Department of Chemistry came into the 19508 with a reputation and a strength unrivalled in Canada, but also with the recognition that much refurbishing would be required.19 Otto Maass, together with Harold Hibbert and Stafford Whitby, had done great things for McGill between the wars in building up its graduate school of chemistry and during the war he had done even greater things for Canada. Inevitably during his absence and that of several of his colleagues, the department had been stressed to the limit After the war Maass began to rebuild, and before he retired in 1955 he made some promising appointments. Stanley Mason came to the department as a research associate in physical chemistry at the Pulp and Paper Research Institute. Throughout a long career he was to win international recognition, particularly in the field of microrheology, in which he founded a new specialty, microhaematology. In organic chemistry the pace was set by Alfred Taurins. He came to McGill from Latvia in 1948 as a Lady Davis Fellow;20 after a summer's leave in Ottawa in the early fifties, he returned with the conviction that nuclear magnetic resonance was an extremely powerful tool for the study of organic chemistry and persuaded the department to move in that direction, with very satisfying results. At the same time some older interests were renewed. The appointment of Leo Yaffe in 1952 was the first since that of Soddy in the area of radiochemistry; it was to become in the 19605 a strong specialty of the department.21 The close relationship between the department and the Pulp and Paper Research Institute had been continued productively since 1943 by Clifford Purves as professor of industrial and cellulose chemistry. Carl Winkler also continued to prove an immense asset to the department He taught physical chemistry with outstanding merit from the wartime days until his retirement in 1978, and he also found time to serve as chairman of the department from 1955 to 1961 and as vice-principal (development) of the university from 1966 to 1969. In his later years he saw the need for specialized research and teaching in the fast-expanding field of polymers. There had been in the department a long-standing tradition of research

Graduate student Adir Jacob in Carl Winkler's laboratory

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and teaching on macromolecules. In the 19206 Whitby had pioneered research on synthetic rubber and Hibbert on lignin. In the 19305 R.V.V. Nicholls introduced the teaching of courses on polymers into the undergraduate program and he and Winkler were deeply involved, with their graduate students, in research on polymers during World War II. These and other lines of endeavour reached their culmination in 1965 when Winkler secured contributions from industry for the establishment of a polymer laboratory, a development which further strengthened the department. All these initiatives called for a major renewal of equipment and for a new building to house the constantly growing number of students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors. A plan of development, adopted by the department in 1965, was laid before Principal Robertson, who recognized its importance and secured the support of the board of governors. Consequently the years 1965—70 saw the department newly housed in the Otto Maass Chemistry Building, as well as a substantial re-equipment of both teaching and research facilities and a healthy expansion of academic appointments.22 By 1972 the department had graduated its Sooth Ph.D. Among them had been E.W.R. Steacie, Ph.D. 1926, and W.G. Schneider, Ph.D. 1961, both of whom were to serve as presidents of the National Research Council.23 The immense expansion of human knowledge in this period is given further illustration in geology. The historian of the Geological Survey of Canada wrote: The two decades since 1950 have probably been the most productive in the Survey's history— Great scientific and technological advances in geology and the other physical sciences provided the means for mastering many previously insoluble problems— The rise of such new sub-sciences as geophysics, geochemistry, tectonics and metallogenics, made new techniques and approaches available New tools contributed to the more accurate understanding of the geology of Canada, and a host of advances in scientific concepts ensued.24 Given its involvement with the survey and its close relationship with the mining industry, the McGill Department of Geological Sciences was inevitably much stimulated by these developments. This was clearly evidenced in areas where the collaboration had been of long standing, as for example in mineral exploration. Geochemical prospecting techniques were pioneered in Canada by Professor J.E. Riddell, who introduced them into Quebec mining practice. The airborne magnetometer was another prospecting tool being introduced at this time; it was derived from instruments

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originally designed to detect submerged submarines from an aircraft. Obviously a new kind of prospector was needed, one who could use these and other new techniques in an integrated approach to geological exploration. In response, the department created an M.Sc. (Applied) program which trained students both in traditional prospecting practices and in the new technologies. The course attracted students from across Canada and from other countries. Programs were also developed in crystallography, radiometric age-dating, and engineering geology. The outstanding personalities in the Department of Geological Sciences in the postwar decades were undoubtedly J.E. Gill and T.H. Clark. Both served immensely long terms. Gill was a McGill graduate io mining engineering of the class of 1921, joined the staff in 1929, and completed forty years of teaching in the department. Throughout his career he maintained an active consulting practice in mining geology, which served as the basis of his research. He participated in the discovery and development of numerous mineral resources, including the central Quebec-Labrador iron ore deposits and the north-western Quebec gold fields. Gill was also associated with the discovery of vitally needed chromite deposits during World War II. He was interested in structural geology, and he formulated the concept of the 'structural province', which he used to define the fundamental subdivisions of the Canadian Shield. T.H. Clark, a Harvard graduate, joined the department in 1924 He began a major program of field mapping in the Eastern Townships for the Geological Survey in 1928 and published a classic paper, 'The Structure and Stratigraphy of Southern Quebec' in 1934. Four years later he began mapping the St. Lawrence lowlands and over the next thirty years, either alone or with colleagues and graduate students, Clark covered some 90 per cent of the area. He became professor emeritus in 1963, so that he too served in the department for almost forty years, but he continued working in retirement and his last map and the accompanying report appeared in 1977. Since the St Lawrence lowlands represent the most fertile and inhabitable section of the Province of Quebec, a thorough knowledge of the geology of the area is essential for their environmental management. This is what Clark's work supplied, with precision and in great detail, and it constituted a major contribution to the well-being of the university's home province. Both Gill and Clark excelled as teachers, and together they set a stamp upon the department which gave it stability and high academic standards.25 THE FACULTY OF E N G I N E E R I N G The close identification of an academic department with a particular industry generally means that the fortunes of the industry tend to be reflected in

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the well-being or impoverishment of the department. This is true not merely with regard to the economic fortunes of an industry, but also to its social status. But even though in the fifties and sixties Canadian mining was enjoying relative prosperity, and the Department of Geological Sciences was successful with its mineral exploration programs, the number of candidates for the extractive aspects of the industry declined, presumably because mining is a dirty industry, often conducted in distant locations. By the mid-sixties the Department of Mining Engineering at McGill had almost closed for lack of students. The sister department at the University of Toronto did close down. A conference held in 1964 at Melbourne, Australia, and attended by university representatives from seven countries, recognized that the shortage of mining engineering candidates was a worldwide phenomenon. To encourage enrolment in the postgraduate mining programs at McGill, the university and the industry combined to redesign the courses and provide that each of the two senior years would include summer employment at a mining location. Substantial scholarships were provided by the industry, and Frank White was brought in from Australia to head the revitalized department26 At the Mont St Hilaire estate White established a model mine and ventilation research laboratories. His untimely death in 1971 checked these developments but did not terminate them. Industry attention was directed in subsequent years to the undergraduate program as well as to the graduate, and when the mining program was amalgamated with that of the Department of Metallurgy in 1973, both were strengthened and continued strongly in the new decade. The researchers at the Mont St. Hilaire laboratories broadened their interests from mining ventilation in particular to occupational health hazards in general. In 1974 the unit became the Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, in which the Department of Mining and Metallurgy continued to take a close interest The fortunes of these departments set the pattern for the Faculty of Engineering in general. In the postwar period the number of registrations rose sharply from approximately 500 in 1944 to more than three times that figure in 1946, and then declined slowly as the veterans graduated until 1954, when it began to rise again. In 1957 a high-level mark of 1,823 was reached; in that year, one in four of all undergraduates at McGill was registered in engineering. Obviously the profession had attained both a social status and a level of income such as to make it a popular option. But then its attractions began to fade, and although the university enrolment as a whole, and particularly that of the Faculty of Arts and Science, was mounting steadily, that of engineering actually declined. In 1970 registrations did not exceed 1,500, and approximately only one in ten of the university's undergraduates enrolled in engineering.

Mechanical engineering class, c. 1960

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The reason for these varying fortunes of the Engineering Faculty must be sought in the history of the profession rather than within the university, for the same phenomena were observable at North American universities generally. McGill, as we have seen, took steps to correct the situation in the sensitive area of mining engineering, and elsewhere appointments were made which gave strong leadership both to the faculty and to the departments. Donald Mordell, who had joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1947, became chairman in 1954 and dean of the faculty in 1957. Beginning with his own department, he was able, partly through fortunate circumstances but also by reason of his own enthusiasm and energy, to encourage a new mood of optimism in the faculty as a whole. He was fortunate in that J.G. Notman and J.R. McLagen, graduates of the Mechanical Engineering Department and governors of the university, had seen the need to establish a fund to re-equip the department with the machinery and instruments required in its fast-developing field. MordelTs own research in the Gas Dynamics Laboratory from 1948 to 1958 encouraged other colleagues to establish further programs, and his participation with Gerald Bull in the High Altitude Research Project gave a considerable stimulus to graduate studies in several departments.27 A further stimulation came in 1959 with the establishment of the Canadair Chair of Aerodynamics. In the Department of Electrical Engineering the division of activities into power and communication categories, which went back at least to 1927, still continued. G.L. d'Ombrain became chairman in 1958 and inherited, especially in the power laboratories, some venerable equipment which had been acquired as war surplus. On the communication side, the equipment was not as old, but the expertise in the field had progressed considerably faster. D'Ombrain succeeded in raising funds outside the university for a substantial re-equipment program. The number of academic staff in the department rose from eight in 1958 to eighteen when he succeeded Mordell as dean in 1968. One of d'Ombrain's major interests was the automatic control of machines and systems, and the closely related and fast-moving field of computer development. The increasing complexity of the equipment, and the degree of sophistication required of those who used it, made this an exciting and challenging field; d'Ombrain cooperated in the early sixties with Peter Sandiford, an engineer in the Graduate School of Business, to lead the university into the age of computers. This association resulted in 1971 in a school to teach the new discipline of computer science.28 Within the Electrical Engineering Department itself, the communication science aspect developed so strongly that by 1965 the power courses had all but disappeared from the honours program—an optional one-term lecture course in electro-mechanical energy conservation was all that remained.

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The same kind of swiftly changing developments were discernible in the Department of Civil Engineering. In 1962 the hydraulics laboratory was rebuilt and two years later a high-speed water tunnel was added; in 1963 a structural models laboratory and a municipal laboratory were installed; and in 1964 dynamics, concrete research, photogrammetry, and air-photo interpretation laboratories were all established. At the same time testing machines and strength of materials equipment were substantially renewed. The Department of Chemical Engineering was another of the postwar developments, but its antecedents reach much further back. Courses described as practical chemistry, industrial chemistry, and chemical analysis went back to the days of G.P. Girdwood and N.N. Evans. But as the chemical processes used in industry became more numerous and complex, calling for a particular expertise in this area, a need was perceived for a professional curriculum bringing the relevant courses together into a balanced program. The first curricula organized and named Chemical Engineering were instituted in the early years of the century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Michigan. McGill followed these leads in the years after World War I, and relevant courses were organized within the Department of Chemistry, particularly with the encouragement of Harold Hibbert, the professor of industrial and cellulose chemistry. In 1930 one of his students, J.B. Phillips, who had just completed his Ph.D., was offered an appointment in chemical engineering at McGill, on the understanding that he would first spend a year at MIT to prepare himself to teach this subject The authorities at MIT cooperated generously and Phillips not only undertook research in that institution, but he also attended undergraduate and graduate courses in the chemical engineering program. He stayed on to attend a summer school on the organization and the teaching of the new specialty. Returning to McGill in 1931, Phillips was appointed lecturer in chemical engineering and developed a considerable program in the Department of Chemistry both at the undergraduate and at the graduate levels. In 1946 the demand for a professional program had developed in Canada to the point where a separate department of chemical engineering was established within the Faculty of Engineering. Phillips became the chairman, as indeed was appropriate, for the introduction and encouragement of the program had been very largely due to his personal efforts. In 1947 Phillips was joined in the department by another chemistry graduate, W.H. Gauvin, with the rank of associate professor. Gauvin gave particular leadership by developing a graduate studies program, and his initiative was maintained and supplemented by W.J.M. Douglas when he was appointed in 1958. When Phillips retired in 1964, after more than thirty years of greatly appreciated teaching and administration, Gerald Ratcliff

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was brought in from Cambridge, England, to be the new chairman and to give the department the invigoration of new ideas. Ratcliff instituted a considerable reconstruction of both the undergraduate and the graduate programs. The greater opportunities thus given to the department, the immense increase in the use of chemical processes in industries in Canada, and the growing interest of students in the career opportunities in this area contributed greatly to the strengthening of the chemical engineering programs in the latter half of the 19606. By the end of the decade, the departmental staff had grown to approximately fifteen, the undergraduate enrolment to some seventy students, and the graduate student registrations to about fifteen. What had begun as a comparatively minor interest within the Department of Chemistry had developed into a strong and very lively independent discipline. All this increased activity in the Faculty of Engineering necessitated more space, and one of the earliest achievements of the university's postwar development program was the opening in 1959 of a new engineering building named for its donor, J.W. McConnell. It was closely connected to the Macdonald and Workman buildings and doubled the area available to the faculty. The new space provided the facilities required for the graduate programs, which became in the 19606 an increasingly important element in the faculty's operation. Nevertheless, considerable thought was also given to the revision of teaching in the undergraduate programs. A comment in the 1969 McGill Engineering Handbook was applicable to all the departments: 'Engineering educators everywhere were faced with the necessity of coping with this continual expansion and change of relevant technology... we have long given up the attempt to teach a man all he should know, rather we try to produce individuals with great potential.' The faculty sought to take advantage of the situation, rather than to be overwhelmed by it29 THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE In 1939 the School of Architecture had been in operation forty-three years, but the venture had not proved very successful. The first director, Stewart Henbest Capper, was a scholar of great charm, a linguist, musician, and Egyptologist, who laid the foundations of an excellent architectural library, but who did little to build a professional school. Percy Nobbs who followed Capper in 1903 was a superb draughtsman, an architect who often executed the work of craftsmen he could not find for his buildings. We have noted from time to time that he designed many of the most pleasing additions to the McGill campus. After ten years he resigned the directorship of

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the school, but remained on a part-time basis in the department with his successor, Ramsay Traquair. Like Capper and Nobbs, Traquair had received his training in Edinburgh. He was an archaeologist and historian of architecture, and a brilliant lecturer, but again not the man to build up the fortunes of the school as a professional training institution. By 1939 the number of students had fallen to twenty-eight in five years of classes. The retirement of Traquair in 1939 and the impending retirement of Nobbs in 1940 suggested to Principal Douglas that the venture might be terminated, but the acting director Philip J. Turner called on fellow architects in Montreal to support him in ensuring its survival. Like the schools of Social Work and Nursing, Architecture was saved at the critical moment of its history by the support of alumni and concerned members of its profession. Fortunately, the new principal in 1940, Cyril James, foresaw that in a period of postwar reconstruction, architects would be in demand. In 1941 he appointed John Bland as director, a post in which he was to remain for the next thirty-one years. The great growth of the school during the fifties and sixties was almost entirely due to its director. Previous to his appointment, students in architecture were admitted after junior matriculation, whereas prospective engineers had to complete a one-year 'pre-engineering' course in the Faculty of Arts and Science. Bland raised the entrance requirement for architecture to the same level, and placed his students in their junior years in appropriate engineering classes. These steps improved the quality of students entering the school, and removed the sense of academic inferiority under which they had long laboured. As their numbers grew, specialized 'sections' within the engineering courses catered to the particular needs of architectural students, but they were still taught by engineering professors, and this remained one of the strengths of the program. Its quality is indicated by the fact that in 1950 the program graduated Arthur Erickson, best known for his imaginative Simon Fraser University, and eleven years later Moshe Safdie, the creator of Expo 6y's Habitat, probably the outstanding architects of their generation. Bland was able in the 19508 to make some notable appointments, including the artist Arthur Lismer and a young, creative, near-genius named Gordon Webber. By the mid-sixties a sufficient number of full-time, highly qualified staff had been appointed to ensure a well-balanced and reputable program. The curriculum became sumciendy diversified to appeal to others than intending architects, the student body grew to some 150 students in a four-year program, and admission became selective. Municipal government, interior design, and town planning began to appear among the career choices, and in response the first degree was redesigned as the B.Sc.(Architecture), a non-professional degree obtainable after three years

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of study. The B.Arch., the qualification for architectural practice, required a further year of study. To provide still further for the interests of architects in the new materials, technologies, and concepts becoming available, graduate programs in architectural design and housing were instituted, leading to the Master of Architecture degree. A complementary program in urban planning became so multidisciplinary that it developed into a separate unit, the School of Urban Planning, and was located in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. By 1972 the sickly operation of 1941 had become a healthy and highly respected professional institution, well deserving the commitment of the more than twenty colleagues whom John Bland had drawn into its academic strength. There are few, if any, parallels in McGill history for his thirty-one years as director of a major academic unit. But he was also active in the exercise of his profession, both on campus and elsewhere. His attractive designs for the law annex in 1966 and for the Pollack Concert Hall in 1975 are further instances of a long and unique contribution to the academic and cultural life of the university.30 THE FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE There are cogent arguments against considering the Faculty of Agriculture in conjunction with applied sciences, since a great deal of its activity is of the purest science and its closest academic affinities are with the biological sciences. But to include it in the latter grouping does not take account of such interests as agricultural engineering or agricultural economics, and ignores its considerable involvement with practical farming. It is better to regard the faculty as a complex of interests, which is mostly but not exclusively concerned with biological sciences, and which finds its raison d'dtre in agriculture and its related industries. During the decades of the fifties and sixties these relationships, while undoubtedly the faculty's main source of strength, were nevertheless not without their drawbacks. It might be thought that no industry could be more sure of its place in modern society than the one concerned with the production and delivery of food to the hungry populations of our overcrowded planet, but during the fifties and sixties world-wide problems of agricultural surpluses and their distribution created considerable uncertainty for the North American farming industry. In Quebec this general lack of confidence was aggravated by governmental inertia in the fifties, and then by far-reaching political and social changes in the sixties. The future of anglophone farming communities, in particular, did not appear promising, and even though the training of farmers was no longer the faculty's primary task, the uncertainties affected the number of students entering agriculture to the extent that registration did not keep pace with

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the general growth of the university. It even declined in actual numbers as the decade of the sixties ended and the seventies began.31 These problems generated outside the university were made more difficult by problems arising within its own structure. In the 19505 the Faculty of Agriculture was sharing the Macdonald campus with the School of Household Science and the Institute of Education. Considerable tensions within Macdonald College arose, however, because the institute grew out of proportion to the other two partners.32 When in 1970 the institute (which had in the meantime become a faculty in its own right) moved to the Montreal campus, for reasons discussed later, the Faculty of Agriculture and the School of Household Science were left in sole possession of the Macdonald College campus. But this new arrangement created further problems for the university. The expense of operating Macdonald College, with its residences, dining halls, and sports facilities, for the approximately 500 undergraduates then registering in agriculture and household science was disproportionately large, and could not be justified at a time when, because of recurring annual deficits, every effort had to be made to decrease expenditures. The administration proposed that the academic activities of the Faculty of Agriculture should also be brought to Montreal and that only the practical and research activities should remain at Ste. Anne de Bellevue. This policy was strongly resisted by members of the Faculty of Agriculture with a whole battery of arguments in which logical reasoning and nostalgic emotion were equally mixed. Agriculture undoubtedly could have thrived on the downtown campus, as it does at other universities, and could have benefited immensely from proximity to the other biological sciences; it was also true that other disciplines had research facilities considerably less easy of access than those at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, and made good use of them. But the close link of the college with the Quebec farming community would have suffered badly at a time when all such community relationships in Quebec were extremely important to the university, and the proposal to abandon the Macdonald College concept was made even by its strongest advocates only faute de mieux. Happily something better did present itself, in the form of another tenant for the space education had vacated, one which would be able to undertake a full share of the administrative overhead costs of the Macdonald campus operation. This tenant was John Abbott College. Named for the McGill dean of law who became prime minister of Canada, the college was set up under the CEGEP system, which will be discussed later.33 Its role in education and its prospective clientele were by no means far removed from Sir William Macdonald's original purpose, and it would supply the Faculty of Agriculture in particular and the university in gen-

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era! with well-trained matriculants, already familiar with the McGill connection. Since John Abbott College would require the greater part of the original buildings, it was agreed that new buildings for the faculty should be erected and that those parts of the former buildings to be retained by agriculture should be rehabilitated and enlarged.34 In 1979 the faculty formally opened the new suite of premises: the Macdonald-Stewart Building, housing the faculty's administration, the School of Food Science, and several academic departments and research laboratories; the Raymond Building, containing academic departments, lecture rooms, and the undergraduate laboratories; the Barton Building, accommodating the campus library and additional lecture rooms.35 The operation of the farm to the north and east of the old college complex continued without interruption. Most faculty members found themselves more conveniently located in the new premises than they had been in the original buildings of 1907. These events have required few sentences for their narration, but for those who lived through them, they entailed long years of uncertainty and stress. Even though that period engendered an esprit de corps of quite remarkable intensity, and was scientifically extremely productive, few would have ventured to predict in the late 19605 that the institutional problems would find solutions providing so large a measure of satisfaction. It is fair to say that no professional achievement of the faculty has ever outrivalled its success in nurturing the phoenix of hope upon the Macdonald campus in the troubled years 1965-75. If the exterior problems of the faculty did not find equally happy solutions, they did experience ameliorations. The civil government's success in surmounting the October crisis of 1970, which will be discussed later; the fact that the provincial government began to take a renewed interest in agriculture, and to stimulate it with stronger incentives; and the fact that rural English-speaking communities were finding it possible to adjust to the new order without too many pains; all contributed to a renewal of confidence in the minds of prospective anglophone students, and registration began its rise once more.36 At the same time, for a complex of social, political, and economic reasons, the number of francophones registering also rose markedly, so that towards the end of the 19708 the Faculty of Agriculture was clearly once again a viable and healthy operation, which could look forward to the future with considerable confidence. A particularly helpful factor was a reform of teaching programs initiated by George Dion, dean of the faculty and vice-principal of the college from 1955 to 1971. The former system of 'options', somewhat unevenly administered by the departments, was replaced by one in which departments were grouped into divisions, which established the required elements in a degree program while permitting maximum choice in the other courses needed to

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complete the program as a whole. Further, Dion anticipated the introduction of the CEGEP system by planning the agricultural degree as requiring five years after high school rather than the normal four. The transition later to the provincial scheme of two years of college followed by three years of university was greatly facilitated and few further adjustments required to be made. Over the years the faculty has comprised a number of departments which have changed their names, or coalesced, or divided, in the manner of all living things; as their programs changed, so their structures developed, or divided, or became obsolete in the light of later advances. A core of continuing interests can be identified: first, the basic sciences: agricultural chemistry with physics, and microbiology; second, the four major aspects of agriculture: animal science, plant science, entomology, and renewable resources (soils, water, forestry, and wildlife); and third, the auxiliary functions. Because the agriculturalist was often a practical man, there was a need for the Department of Agricultural Engineering; because he was sometimes an industrialist, there was the School of Food Science; and because he was almost always in some respects a businessman, there was the Department of Agricultural Economics. There were also two major activities of consultation and reference: the University Herbarium and the Lyman Entomological Museum, both of which offered information and identification services.37 None of these units could have operated without the support of the Macdonald Library, which remained a major unit within the University Library system. In the years after World War II, research at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, as on the Montreal campus, broadened its horizons, revised its concepts, and entered upon wholly new activities. Most of the work undertaken was of that essential nature which provides the small pieces of the jigsaw puzzle from which larger pictures can, little by little, be constructed. The value of such research can be judged only by those working in the same areas, and it is therefore significant that in the 19505 and 19605 the reputation of the faculty continued to grow in the esteem of those best qualified to judge, the peer-committees of the National Research Council and the agricultural agencies at the provincial and federal levels. Consequently, the research grant income attracted by faculty members remained at high levels and indeed increased very healthily.38 In the Department of Animal Science, for example, experiments were conducted with embryo transplants; fertilized ova of prize stock were transferred to foster mothers of nondescript parentage, so that herd improvements could be achieved in much shorter periods. In 1966, with the advent of the computer, the Dairy Herd Analysis Service was instituted on the initiative of J.E. Moxley; ten years later some 200,000 cows in Quebec and

Experiments in foster mothering, begun in the late 1960$, permit Macdonald Princess Oleander III multiple offspring, July 1980

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a further 18,000 in the Atlantic provinces were registered in this recording and advisory program, the largest in Canada. Since cows in the program produced an average of 3,000 pounds more milk per annum than those not on test, the benefit to participating producers was around $90 million each year. Genetic research and milk quality studies were part of the program, and this work was implemented by milk studies of such unlikely species as the polar bear, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, and the Arctic wolf. The findings led to studies of Inuit women, which identified elements of radioactive fall-out in their milk, at levels considerably higher than those in the milk-banks of Montreal. R.H. Common's painstaking work on the domestic fowl, begun in the 19505 and continued into the 19705, contributed greatly to avian genetics, and incidentally to the techniques of raising an increasingly important contribution to the world's food supply. The research conducted by H.R. Klinck resulted in the development of four improved oat cultivars and three barley cultivars, of which Laurent oats and Laurier barley in particular gained wide acceptance in Quebec and elsewhere. In 1963 the many and productive years of research by W.A. DeLong, 'in effect a one-man Soil Science Department', were recognized by the creation of a department with that responsibility; there followed the institution of a regular soil analysis and advisory service, whereby many ill-informed practices of field fertilization could become precise and directed. The interests of nature conservation, forestry, and the better utilization of the farm woodlot were promoted by the administration of the Morgan Arboretum, which adjoined the college farm.39 'The record of research', comments a report written in 1970, 'reveals a sustained interest in the technical problems of agriculture and the industries based on agriculture.'40 In view of the immense contribution to science and industry by members of the faculty, only a small part of which has gained mention, this was a modest understatement of a very notable endeavour. THE SCHOOL OF FOOD SCIENCE During these years the School of Household Science underwent similarly interesting developments. Since 1918 the school had awarded the Bachelor of Household Science, but the increasing academic content of the program prompted in 1944 a change of name to Bachelor of Science (Home Economics). The hospital internship programs in dietetics, offered since 1919 in conjunction with the university's teaching hospitals, were a little more correctly described by the new designation, though they had long since had little to do with household management or home economics. In the 19505 and 19605 they grew in popularity and continued to attract students from

Food science laboratory c. 1965

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across North America. As technologies, and consequently patterns of home life, continued to develop, a change of name was proposed in 1967 for the school itself. The School of Household Science became the School of Food Science, and the degree, the B.Sc.(F.Sc). At the same time the programs offered were reorganized into a number of majors or concentrations in food and consumer sciences and nutrition. The majors programs continued to equip prospective schoolteachers and dieticians for their specialties, but they also provided for a wider range of employment opportunities in industry and in research. In these developments, the school appeared to be moving far from William Macdonald's original aim of preparing young women to make good wives for farmers, but it was, in fact, under the leadership of Helen Neilson, director of the school from 1949 to 1975, responding constructively to the evolution of its constituency. However, Macdonald's original concerns were not wholly overlooked or set aside. In addition to its academic courses and scientific research, Macdonald College continued to serve rural communities by means of its Extension Department, of which we have taken notice previously.41 Surveying its many programs and activities as a whole, we can say that in the postwar decades, Macdonald College exemplified the ideal epitomized in its heraldic device, 'Mastery for Service', and provided the university with yet one more interface of close and constructive relation with the world beyond its boundaries.

NOTES 1. 'By 1950, geography was accepted as a standard part of the college curriculum in most of the enlightened schools in [the United States].' Encyclopedia Americana, 1958 ed., s.v. 'Geography'. 2. Miss D J. Seiveright was on staff at Macdonald College from 1930, and in the early forties she collaborated with Professor Trevor Lloyd in publishing a number of textbooks which were very well received. Lloyd, a teacher of high-school geography in Winnipeg in 1931, joined the McGill department from Dartmouth College in 1959. He retired from McGill as emeritus professor in 1977, only to become director of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies. He relinquished this position in the summer of 1980, after having made a unique contribution to geography in Canada and North America for nearly fifty years. 3. J. Brian Bird, 'Geography at McGill University: An Essay on Its Historical Development', a paper presented to the James McGill Society, 62.6.124. 4. The Stanstead Geography Summer School operated at more than one level, and included, for example, graduate seminars on Arctic studies which attracted participants from across North America. 5. The Canadian headquarters of AINA stayed at McGill from 1948 until 1975, when it moved to Calgary. Preceding the move, McGill set up its own Centre for Northern Studies and Research, which carried on without interruption the work previously done cooperatively with AINA. In 1975 the

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6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

36!

centre published the Bibliography of McGill Publications of the North, and a supplement in 1977; the two listings include over 1,500 items from some 390 authors. From 1967 to 1975 McGill-Queen's University Press published for AINA the Arctic Bibliography. Cyril James to D.G. Murray, 21 June 1971, MUA 1866/89. There were also two honorary lecturers, P.D. Baird, director of the Gault Estate, and George Jacobsen, a Montreal engineer who specialized in farnorthern construction. In 1959 Jacobsen helped to finance the McGillJacobsen Axel Heiberg expedition to 'establish late Quaternary events in Canada's High Arctic'. From 1962 the expedition concentrated on glaciological studies. Others who contributed strongly to the department in its formative years were Theodore Hills, a 'human geographer' who took responsibility for the humid tropics program, and Brian Bird, a physical geographer who conducted geomorphological studies in Africa, in the Arctic, and for ten years in Barbados. Pierre Fortin's story is told in Kenneth Johnstone, The Aquatic Explorers: A History of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada (Toronto, 1977). See also Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. II, s.v. 'Fortin, Pierre'. For the Montreal Natural History Society, see Advancement i: 268-69, and S.B. Frost, 'Science Education in the I9th Century: The Natural History Society of Montreal, 1827-1925', McGill Journal of Education 17, no. I (Winter 1982): 31-42. See 'Oceanography at McGill University: A History', a paper read by Maxwell Dunbar to the James McGill Society, 6 December 1979, 82.6.12.6. The second director of the Bellairs Research Institute was another marine biologist, Finn Sander, 1970—82. The Foster Radiation Laboratory was so named in 1964, after its founder. The information in the paragraphs on its work was supplied by Robert Edward Bell, who succeeded Foster as director in 1960. See 'The Foster Radiation Laboratory in the 19505 and 19605', 62.6.12.9. Bell became successively dean of graduate studies and principal of McGill (1970-79). For his work in nuclear physics, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, in 1965. See 'Three Echoes of Radar', a paper read by R.E. Bell to the James McGill Society, 26 April 1983, 82.6.12.9. See J.S. Marshall's report covering the years 1962-64 in 'CCTV's Increasing Role at McGill University', Broadcasting and Communications (MarchApril 1967): 14-15, 27-28. Also W.M. Martin, The Department of Physics: 1950-1970', 82.6.12.1. The course changes were in part made possible by the introduction of the Colleges d'enseignement g^ne'ral et professionnel (CEGEP), which relieved the university of teaching at the 'collegia!' or pre-university level, roughly equivalent to the former first year. For the CEGEP system, see chapter 14. The prime instigator was J. Stewart Marshall, who held a joint appointment in physics and meteorology; hence, the experiment went forward in these two departments. Svenn Orvig, 'Interface with the Community: A Century of Meteorology at McGill', a paper read to the James McGill Society, 2 February 1978, 82.6.12.8. See also 'A Festschrift for Stewart Marshall', Atmosphere-Ocean 20, no. I (March 1982).

362

CHAPTER TWELVE

16. The Alberta Hail Project was instituted as an attempt to unravel the basic physics of hail formation, a matter of particular concern for Alberta agriculture. The project was supported by the provincial and federal governments, and continued until the early seventies when the provincial government assumed sole responsibility, directing its activities more specifically in the direction of weather modification. 17. For example, Mario Bunge, 'Philosophy & Physics', in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. R. Klibansky (Florence, 1968), pp. 167-99, an 450 International Air Transport Association, 319 International Association of Universities, 412 International Civil Aviation Organization, 319 International Labour Organization, 156, 223 Investigative Medicine, Department of, 385-86 Iowa State College, 71 Irwin, Lilian Doris, 176 Islamic Studies, Institute of, 282, 286, 316-17 Italy, land and language, 28, 222, 282, 444 Jackson, Mary, 245119 Jacobsen, George, 36in7 James Bay, 317 James, Frank Cyril (principal): born London, England, in 1903, 211; B.Com., London School of Economics, 213, 24301; University of Pennsylvania, 206; career in U.S., 206, 213; director, McGill School of Commerce, 206; appointed principal, McGill University (1939), 207, 211-16, 44onio; member, Quebec Education Council (1940-62), 412; chairman, Postwar Reconstruction Committee, 230; active in securing federal grants for universities, 231-34, 250-52; chairman, executive committee, ACU, 412; president, IAU (1960-65), 412, 44onil; vice-president, Quebec Commission on Economic Planning (1960-62), 412; relations with governors, 214, 412; with chancellors, 412-17; style of administration, 214, 413; personal character, 214, 287; resigned in 1962, 417; analysis of student unrest in 1967, 462-64; died in England (1973), 44onn Japan, language and history, 444 Jasper, Herbert, 381 Jazz, 294 Jewish community, 128, 284, 456

Jewish General Hospital, 379, 397n2 Jewish students, 128, I37ni9, 287 Jewish Studies Program, 284 Johannsen, Alice, 328, 33oni8 John Abbott College, 354, 363034 John Fraser Laboratory, 389 Johns Hopkins University, 80 Johnson, F.M.G., 104, 181 Johnston, David Lloyd (principal), 184028 Johnston, Enid, 389 Johnston, Florence, 58n3O, 169, 184043 Johnston, George, 290 Johnstone, Rose, 390 Jolivet, V.M., 246n3i, 27on3i Jones, Geoffrey Melvill, 385 Joseph house (Dilcoosha), 98, 323, 325 Juniper, Annie B., 71 Kalz, Gertrude, 390 Kellogg, Chester, 147 Kellogg Foundation, 393 Kelsey, Frances O., 397n8 Kendall, Alan, 389 Kennedy, D.H., 246n3l, 27on3l Kennedy, Leo, 130 Kerrigan, Claire, 456 Kevan, D. Keith McEwen, 325, 3311127 Keys, David, 178, 223 Khaki University, 92n3l, 106, 286 Kiang Kang-Lu, 143 Kierans, Eric, 312, 440112 Kilpatrick, George G.D., 307023 Kimble, George, 334 King, Dorothy, 151 King, Louis V., 104, 180 King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 232, 235-39 Kingdon, G. Samuel, 363034 Kingsbury, Donald, 47107 King's College, N.S., 74 Kingsford Chair of History, 14, 30, 146 Kingston, Ontario, 146, 189 Kirkconnell, Watson, 244n7 Kirkpatrick, Robert, 35 Klein, A.M., 130 Klibansky, Raymond, 277 Klinck, Harold R., 358 Klinck, Leonard S., 71 Krnjevic, Kresimir, 384, 390, 4con4i

INDEX

Labour College, Canadian, 313 Labrador, 334, 346 Lady Davis Fellows, 362020 Lafleur, Eugene, 43, 89 Laird, Sinclair, 69, 158, 407 Lakeshore General Hospital, 39702 Lambek, Joachim, 362020 Lambert, Wallace, 398012 Lampert, Herbert, 399022 Lande, Lawrence, 301-2 Langstaff, Annie Macdonald, 157 Lantos, Robert, 47109 Laporte, Pierre, 404 Latham, Allan, 130 Latin, 27, 181, 274, 276 Lauterman, Dinah, 301 Laval £ Montreal, University 45, 443 Laval University, Quebec City, 86, 248, 251, 425, 429 Laviolette, Forrest, 150 Law, Faculty of, 4, 29, 41-43, 119, 152, 153-58, 193, 317-20, 329119, 33onnio, n, 12; Civil Code, Quebec, 43, 155, 297, 318, 319, 33oni3; constitutional law, 131, 156, 181, 315, 318; common law, 155, 319; national program, 319; air and space law, 319; comparative law, 319 Leacock, Stephen Butler, 28, 58041, 89, 96-98, 129, 267, 268, 301, 407 League for Social Reconstruction, 192, 3ii League of Nations, 223-25 Leahy, W. Gordon, 169 Leblond, Charles Philippe, 383, 400041 Lee, Robert Warden, 155 Lehmann, Heinz, 379 LeMesurier, C.S., 287, 289 Levesque, Rene1, 447 Levin, M., 93048 Levine, Evelyn, 33in23 Levy, Mortimer, 385 Lewis, D. Sclater, l84n39 Lewis, Jefferson, 1841144, 399027 Lewis, John, 328 Libraries, University, 14, 30, 122, 150, 234, 240, 297-302; Baillie Chemistry, 298; Blackader-Lauterman, 143, 301; Blacker-Wood, 142; Education, 411;

483

Engineering, Applied Sciences, 39, 300; Gest Chinese, 143; Law, 41, 298; Macdonald, 356; McLennan Research (Humanities and Social Sciences), 300, 432; McLennan Travelling, 73, 164, 301; Medical, 142, 18208, 420; Music, 293; Osier, 142, 18208, 420; Physical Sciences, 300; Redpath Undergraduate, 300 Library Committee, University, 73, 298, 300 Library Science, Graduate School of, 31, 199, 302-4 Lichtenstein, Clara, 10, 33, 290 Ling, Daniel, 390 Linguistics, 284 Lismer, Arthur, 352 Lloyd, Trevor, 36002 Lochhead, William, 71 Locke, George H., 63-64, 68 Lods, Emile A., 162 Logan, Elizabeth, 393 Logan, Harry T., 9211036, 41, 43 Logan, Sir William, 323 Lomer, Gerhard, 304 London, England, city and University, 61, 83, 86, 113, 143, H7, 152, 156, 169, 211 London School of Economics, 152, 213, 24401 Long, C.N.H., 166 Low, Solon, 242 Lowenstein, Louis, 390 Lyman Duff Medical Sciences Building, 433 Lyman Entomological Museum, 323, 325, 327, 356 Lyman, Henry, 323 Maass, Otto, 180, 226, 229, 343 McBain, Georgina, 47 MacBride, Ernest William, 34 McBride, Sir Richard, 77 McColl, Allan, 419 McConnell Engineering Building, 93058, 35*> 423, 433 McConnell Hall, 266, 423, 441022 McConnell, John Wilson, 86, 93054, 192, 199, 234, 235-39, 245023, 266, 287, 318, 351, 364n39, 422-24

484

INDEX

McCord, David Ross, 323 McCord Museum, 21, 323, 325, 327 McCrae, John, loi McCutcheon, James, 396 MacDermot, Gait, 262 MacDermot, H.E., 581135, mn2o, 1841138, 4001138 McDonald, Alison, 390 Macdonald, Brian, 262 Macdonald buildings: Chemistry and Mining, 13, 35, 104; Engineering, 3, 4, 20, 39; fire (1907), 82-83; Physics, 3, 37>40 Macdonald College: founded to benefit English-speaking rural communities, 62-66; integrated with McGill, 64; located in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, 66; opened 1907 to accommodate the School for Teachers, 66-69; estate enlarged (1945), 9ini8, 423; extension activities, 164, 296—97; campus shared with John Abbott College, 354; new buildings provided, 355. See also Agriculture, Faculty of; Household Science, School of; Education, McGill McDonald (Macdonald) family (Anna nee Brecken, Augustine, Donald, Helen, John), 16, 18, 26ni8. See also Macdonald, William Christopher McDonald, George C., 190, 196, 198, 219 Macdonald High School, 66, 69 Macdonald Institute, Guelph, 60 McDonald, John Corbett, 390 Macdonald Journal, 297 Macdonald Park, 15, 83, 123 Macdonald, Ronald St. John, 57024, 137021 Macdonald 'Royal' agricultural show, 297 Macdonald School for Teachers. See Education, McGill Macdonald, Sir William Christopher: born P.E.I, in 1831, 15; moved to Montreal before 1854, 16; major benefactions to science, 3, 35, 83; founded Macdonald College, 62-66; benefactions to other areas, 14, 18, 19, 41, 76, I53> 323» elected chancellor, 18; antireligious attitudes, 16, 89; personality, 15-19, 71-72 McDougall, Colin M., 413

McEachran, Duncan, 44 McGarry, Eleanor, 388 McGill activities: Athletics Committee, 21, 426-27; Labour Club, 192; Provisional Battalion, 98-99; Red and White Revue, 262, 422; Redmen football team, 261-62, 426; Skyclub, 458; Students' Society (Council), 23, 24, 129, 203, 446, 449 McGill Association of University Teachers, 24403,3071129,415,417,455,467,4721124 McGill campus, 3, 20, 89, 98, 135, 432-35, 468 McGill Chamber Orchestra, 292 McGill, James, 35, 64, 95, 123, 133 McGill-Montreal Children's Hospital Learning Centre, 372, 441021 McGill—Montreal General Hospital Research Institute, 383 McGill Observatory, 334 McGill Physical Society, 37 McGill publications: The Alarm Clock, 192; The Black Sheep, 13604, 192-93; Daily, 130, 192, 209n2o, 266-69, 444-46, 449-53, 464, 47in5; Fortnightly, 266; Fortnightly Review, 130, 193; Martlet, 267; McGill University Magazine, 51-55, 96; News, 103, 133, 235, 3775 Old McGill, 19, 37, 267, 423, 464-65; Outlook, 267; The Plumber's Pot, 58037; Reporter, 447; Student Handbook, 444, 446; University Gazette, 19, 266; University Magazine, 96, 98 McGill University Library Staff Association, 298, 300 McGill University Non-Academic Staff Association, 437 McGill University offices and services: Bookstore, 439; Buildings and Grounds, 438, 441025, 458; Centre for Teaching and Learning, 339, 450; Computing Services, Management Systems, 438; Industrial Research Office, 436; Information, 437, 441025; Instructional Communications Centre, -437, 450; Personnel, 437, 441025; Physical Planning, 438; Printing Service, 437; Publications Service, 437; Research for Planning and Development, 438, 441025; Research Grants Office, 436

INDEX McGill (McGill-Queen's) University Press, 285 MacGowan, Alexander H.B., 74 McGrath, Earl, 430 McGregor, Maurice, 375, 388 Macintosh, F.C., 255, 385, 39704,40onn35, 36,39 Mclntyre, Duncan, 433 Mclntyre Medical Sciences Building, I82n8, 433 Mackay, F.H., 171 Mackay, Ira A., 137014, 156 McKenna, R.D., 389 Mackenzie, Chalmers Jack, 226, 229 McKenzie, J.M., 388 McKenzie, Norman, 232 McKenzie, R. Tait, 21, 108, 124 McKinnon, Alastair T., 277 McKinnon, Ian, I37ni5 Macklem, Peter, 388, 400041 McLagen, J.R., 349 MacLean, Lloyd Douglas, 389 Maclean's magazine, 325 McLennan family: Hugh, 73; Isabella, 308031 MacLennan, Hugh, 278, 468 McLennan Library. See Libraries MacLennan, Roderick D., 307023 MacLeod, Annie Louise, 82 Macleod, J.J.R., 171 MacLeod, Robert B., 369 Macmillan, Cyrus, 26017, 144, 239 McMillan, Gardner C., 390 McMurray, Dorothy, 90014, 91023, 138025, 197, 198, 235, 246035, 269, 413 McNally, Peter, 53, 308033 McNaughton, Andrew G.L., 217, 225 McNaughton, Francis, 399024 Macnaughton, John, 54 Macphail, Sir Andrew, 30, 5604, 96, 98, 119, 129, 136, 13607, 138025 MacSween, Donald, 262 Magnuson, Roger, 9003 Mallory, James R., 313, 315, 32903 Malmo, R.B., 379, 399022 Management, Faculty of, 296, 312, 370, 422, 438, 460 Manchester University, England, 28, 29, 89, 146 Mao Zedong, 261, 444

485

Marine sciences, 337 Markell, H. Keith, 93056, 307020 Marriage Licence Fund, 248 Marsh, Leonard, 152, 195, 202, 230 Marsh Report, 230-31, 245020, 311 Marshall, J. Stewart, 341, 3610013, 14 Martin, Charles Ferdinand, 151, 169, 170, 173, 189 Martin, William M., 361013 Marx, Karl, 148, 195, 276 Marxism, 311, 458, 463 Mason, Edward Holton, 166 Mason, Stanley G., 141, 343 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 198, 350 Massey Commission, 250-51, 336 Massey, Vincent, 336, 464 Master's degrees, 80, 145, 149, 151, 177, 178, 180, 181, 304, 393, 394, 396 Mathematics, 144, 181, 255, 342 Matheson, H.W., 104 Matthews, Thomas H., 245025, 413 Maxwell Cummings Foundation, 325 Maxwell, Michael. See Perceval-Maxwell, Michael Maycock, Paul F., 327, 331032 Meakins-Christie Laboratories for Respiratory Research, 388 Meakins, Jonathan, 166, 386, 388 Medical Library, 142, 18208, 420 Medical Research Council, 376 Medicine: Department of, 165, 385-89; Department of Experimental, 385, 386, 400040; Departmeot of Investigative, 385, 386. See also University clinics Medicine, Faculty of: Strathcona benefactions, II; Macdonald legacy, 19; absorbed Bishop's faculty, 44, 142; independent financing, 49; full union with university, 49; influence in British Columbia, 77; building programs, fire, 82; Strathcona building, 83, I2O, 142; equipped military hospital in 1914, 99; services in World War I, loi; Rockefeller endowment, 108,120; reorganization after World War I, 165-69; research in interwar years, 166, 169-73; services in World War II, 222; postwar medical education, 373-75;

486

INDEX

postwar research, 375-92; Mclntyre Medical Sciences Building, iSanS, 433; Lyman Duff Medical Sciences Building, 433 Melville, Kenneth, 390 Melzack, Ronald, 398012 Memorial College, Newfoundland, 161 Mental Hygiene Institute of Montreal, 398019 Meredith, Sir Vincent, 166, 167 Metabolism and Toxicology, Department of, 387 Metallurgy. See Engineering, Faculty of Meteorology, 334, 341 Methodist Church of Canada, 75, 76, 115 Methodist College, Montreal, 87, 286, 287 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 166 Michel, Jean, 302 Milhau, Marie-Louise, 30 Milic-Emili, Joseph, 385, 388, 400041 Militia, Canadian, 99, 116 Miller-Barstow, D.H., 2o8nni, 2, 3, 9 Mills, Charles Henry, 34 Mills, Edward Sadler, 387 Milner, Brenda, 370, 381 Milner, Peter, 370 Mladenovic, Milos, 321, 3308117 Molson Hall (original), 4, 30, 39, 122 Molson Hall (student residence), 266, 441022 Molson, John Henry Robinson, 5, n, 15 Molson medical building, n Molson Memorial Stadium, Percival, 15, 103, 122, 129, 217, 261 Molson, Percival, 101, 217 Monk, Elizabeth, 157-58 Mons, Belgium, 135 Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, 21 Montreal, Bank of, 5, 413 Montreal, city, 61, 72, 86, 87, 107, 135,

171, 195 Montreal Council 149, 150 Montreal Council Montreal General Montreal General Institute, 387

of Social Agencies, of Women, 176 Hospital. See Hospitals Hospital Research

Montreal Star, 18, 57019, 110014, 193, 20809, 246032, 269, 270019, 39809, 423, 47in3 Montreal, University de, 209, 248, 251, 258, 269, 296, 313, 425, 429 Mont St. Hilaire, 328, 347 Moore, George A., 325, 330022 Mordell, Donald, 349 Morgan Arboretum, 91018, 358, 423 Morgan, Arthur Eustace (principal), 192-97, 205 Morin, Joseph Luther, 30 Morrin College, 92030, 198 Morrison, P.O., 226 Morton, Desmond, 13605 Morton, N.W., 148, 153 Mount Allison University, N.B., 74 Mouvement pour 1'integration scolaire, 458 Mowry, D. Prescott, 396 Moxley, J.E., 356 Moyse, Charles Ebenezer, 51, 89, 96, 98, 122

Moyse Hall, 122-23, 262 Munroe, David, 405, 407-9, 411 Murphy, Beverly, 400041 Murray, E.G.D., 289 Murray, John Clark, 14 Murray, Margaret (Mrs. John Clark), 20 Murray, Virginia, 304 Museums, 321-29; Lyman Entomological, 323, 325, 327, 356; McCord, 21, 3233 325, 327; Medical, 327; Mont St. Hilaire Nature Conservation Centre, 328; Redpath, 4, 321, 323, 325, 327, 328, 426, 432; Rutherford, 328 Music: Department of, and Faculty of, 18, 31, 274, 290-94; Conservatorium, 33, 290-92; examinations, 33, 74, 292 My Fur Lady, 262 Nanaimo, B.C., 73 National Conference of Canadian Universities. See Universities National program in law, 319 National Research Council, 162, 177, 180, 18101, 199, 226, 242-43, 246035, 338, 342, 356 National Selective Service Act, 128, 219, 22O-2I

INDEX Natural History Society, Montreal, 321, 323, 324, 327, 330019 Neilson, Helen R., 360 Neurological Hospital, No. I Canadian, 222

Neurology and neurosurgery, 170-71. See also Hospitals Newfoundland, 51, 73, 911129 Nicholls, Robert Van Vliet, 57nio, noni5, 180, 185051, 245ni4, 345 Nicholson, John A., 56, 118 Nickerson, Mark, 390 Noad, Algy S., 274 Nobbs, Percy Erskine, 20, 140, 142, 219, 351 Normal School of Domestic Science and Art, 60, 64, 71 Norris, John, 92042 North America, 80, 130, 148, 162, 170, 353, 373, 444, 445, 453, 459 Northern research, 316, 334, 336, 337, 3601114, 5, 36107 Notman, J.G., 349 Notman Photographic Archives, 325, 327 Notre Dame University, 342 Nova Scotia, 157, 161 Nursing profession, 101, 173-76, 222-23, 393 Nursing, School of (Graduate Nurses, School for), 174-76, 190, 199, 297, 392-93 Oakeley, Hilda, 10, 29, 53 O'Brien, John, Il8 Obstetrics, 49, 165, 389 Occupational Health and Safety, Institute of, 261, 347 Oertel, Horst, 169-70 Old McGill annuals, 19, 37, 267, 423, 464-65 Olds, James, 370 Oliver, Michael, 313, 419, 426, 464 Ontario, 64, 73, 86, 423, 427 Ontario Agricultural College, 60, 7! Opera Workshop, McGill, 292 Ophthalmology, 142 Ormstown, 66, 408 Ornithology, 142 Orvig, Svenn, 36ini5 Osier, Sir William, 142, 165, 169, 366

487

Ottawa, 71, 146 Otto Maass Chemistry Building, 345, 432 Owens, R.B., 104 Oxford, city and University, 4, 10, 29, 37, 142, 155, 156, 158, 165, 458 Padlock Law, 318, 33onio Pall, Gordon, 342 Parasitology, Institute of, 162, 364037 Parent Commission, 405-7, 409 Paris, city and University of, 113, 156, 427 Parkin, George, 96, Uon6 Parti Quebecois, 439 Pascal-Smith, Gabrielle, 3o6ni3 Pathological Institute, 122, 165, 433 Pathology, 85, 120, 165, 169-70, 199, 433 Pearson, Lester, 424 Pediatrics, 49 Pedley, Frank, 166 Penfield Pavilion, Neurological Institute, 433 Penfield, Wilder Graves, 170-71, 379-83, 433 Penhallow, David, 34 Pennsylvania, University of, 206, 213 • Pensions, staff, 125, 137015, 231 Perceval-Maxwell, Michael, 1830014, 15, 209023 Percival, Eleanor Susan, 176 Percival, Walter P., 159 Perrin, Harry Crane, 34, 89, 290 Peterson Hall, 433 Peterson, Sir William (principal): born Edinburgh in 1856, educated Edinburgh, Gottingen, Oxford, 4; principal of Dundee College, 5; appointed principal of McGill, 5; secured RVC trust for McGill, 8, 25010; proposed first student society, 21—24; promoted student self-government, 23-24; proposed academic board, 55; secured Macdonald College for McGill, 63; encouraged McGill College, B.C., 74-79; served Carnegie Foundation (1905-18), 107; visited McGill units in France, 108; suffered stroke in 1919, died in England in 1921, 109 Pharmacology, 120 Phillips, J.B., 181, 350

488

INDEX

Philosophy, 28, 29, 147, 149, 152, 277, 341 Philp, Bessie M., 71 Physical and Occupational Therapy, School of, 393-96 Physical Education, School of. See Education, McGill Physical Sciences Centre (F.D. Adams Building), 234 Physical Society, McGill, 37-38 Physics, 104, I2O, 145, 178, 242, 243, 255, 327-28, 337> 342 Physiology, 120, 165, 255, 366, 384-85 Pilkington, Gwendoline, 244*17, 270019, 424, 44oni5 Pinard, Maurice, 316, 329^ Pitcher, Frank H., 35, 57ni2 Plant pathology, 161 Police, Royal Canadian Mounted (RCMP), 192, 458 Political science. See Economics and political science Pollack (Maurice Pollack) Concert Hall,

294, 353, 433 Porteous, Tim, 262 Port Hope Guide, 131, I36n2 Portner, Christopher, 456 Poser, Ernest, 370 Powell, Raymond Edwin, 413, 415, 417, 420 Presbyterian College, Montreal, 87, 225, 286, 287, 432 Press, McGill (McGill-Queen's) University, 285 Prince Edward Island, 15, 73, 161 Prince of Wales College, P.E.I., 161 Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, 99, 217 Princeton University, 18, 144, 258, 287 Principal, powers of, 202, 207-8, 419, 439 Professorial ranks, 125, 201—2 Protestant, 125, 127-28, 207, 453, 456; school system, 60-62; Committee of Education, Provincial, 60-61, 64, 68, 159; McGill not sectarian, 74, 85, 127; Teachers, Provincial Association of, 159. See also Theological colleges Proverb, M.D., 226 Provisional Battalion, McGill, 98-99 Psychiatry, 120, 177, 377~79, 390 Psychology, 28, I47~48, 152, 177, 255, 273, 369-72

Public health, 152 Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada, 108, 141, 226, 343 Purves, Clifford B., 141, 343 Purvis Hall, 423 Pyenson, Lewis, 185^0 Quastel, J.H., 383 Quebec City, 16, 61, 86, 146 Quebec Commission on Economic Planning and Development, 412 Quebec government: withdrew from education, 60; agreement re School for Teachers, 68, 160, 248; legislation re McGill College, B.C., 76; grants to polytechnic schools, 86; grant to 1920 campaign, 120; annual grants to universities, 200, 248; dispute with federal government, 252; increased aid to universities, 258, 405, 424-25, 429, 44on2; continuing debate, 447; modus vivendi established, 426, 429 Quebec, Province of, 73, 82, 157, 158, 214, 280, 301, 319, 334, 345-46, 403-7, 459 Queen Elizabeth Hospital, 389, 397n2 Queen Mary Veterans' Hospital, 379 Queen's Quarterly, 53, 1381125 Queen's University, Kingston, 40, 69,

129, 189, 262, 285 Quiet Revolution, 214, 280-81, 403-7, 459-60 Rabinovitch, Sam, 372 Rabinowitch, Israel M., 387 Rabkin, Y.M., 363^9 Radar Weather Observatory, 341 Radcliffe College, 157 Radiation Laboratory, Foster, 337-38 Radioactivity, 37, 180, 337 Radio communication, 223, 349 Railway Engineering, Department of, 40-41, 54 Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library, 301-2 Raymond, L.C., 162 RDX (Research Department Explosive), 226-27, 241 Reconstruction, Committee on Postwar, 229-31

INDEX Red Cross, Canadian, 91028, 103, 173, 221

Redpath family: Grace (Mrs. Peter), 30; Peter, 7 Redpath Hall, 252, 297, 468 Redpath Library. See Libraries, University Redpath Museum, 4, 321, 323, 325, 327, 328, 426, 432 Reed, Roger, 390 Reed, Sheldon, 367 Reford, Robert, 85, 87 Reid, Helen Y., 149, 173 Reid, Hugh S., 104 Reidy, Mary, 393 Religious Studies, Faculty of (Divinity), 274, 286-90, 407 Research: World War I, 103; interwar years, 139-81 passim; World War II, 225-29; governors' contribution to, 229; secret research, 243, 246036, 449. See also names of individual faculties and departments Research Grants Office, 436 Residences: Brittain, Macdonald College, 66, 69; Douglas, 124, 197, 266, 441022; Gardner, 266, 441022; Laird, Macdonald College, 66, 69; McConnell, 266, 423, 441022; Molson, 266, 441022; Peterson Residence, Lachine, 240; RVC, see Royal Victoria College Rexford, Elson I., 106 Reynolds, Helen, 137014, 452 Reynolds, L.G., 153 Ribbeck, Otto, 14 Riddell, J.E., 345 Riley, Douglas, 26025 Ritchie, Grace, 57n28, 176 Robb, J. Preston, 184044 Robertson, Harold Rocke (principal): boro in British Columbia in 1912, educated in Ontario and Switzerland, 419; McGill B.Sc. (1932), M.D., C.M. (1936), 419; surgeon-in-chief, Montreal General Hospital, and professor of surgery, 389, 419; appointed principal in 1962, 419; reformed university administration, 419, 435~39> 454-56; charged Daily with obscene libel, 452; recommended dismissal of lecturer, 460;

489

reconstituted McGill libraries, 298-301; oversight of major rebuilding program, 431-32; resigned in 1970, 465 Robertson, James Wilson, 59-60, 64, 71-72, 90028, 106, 162 Robertson, Lemuel, 75 Robins, Sampson Paul, 64, 66, 68, 91021 Robioson, Alexander, 76 Robson, J.G., 390 Rockefeller Foundation, 108, 120, 151-53, 165-66, 171, 198, 202, 381 Roddick Gates, 123, 261, 432, 458 Roddick, Sir Thomas, 50-51 Rogers, Mervyn A., 58031, 184042, 400046 Roland, Charles G., 57010 Roncarelli, Frank, 318, 330010 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 235-39 Roscoe, Muriel V., 25011, 413, 415 Roscoe Tower, RVC, 433 Rose, Bram, 387, 388 Rosenberg, Sheila E., 246030, 471011 Rosenthall, Edward, 342 Ross, Aileen, 316, 32905 Ross family (Ross, J.K.L.), 318 Ross, Herbert, 106 Ross, Howard Irwin, 312, 420, 422, 430, 455 Ross, James H., 226, 229 Ross, John, 87, 89, 120, 420, 422, 423 Ross, Philip Dansken, 138024 Ross, Veroon, 304 Rountree, G.M., 153 Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, 68, 76, 85, 107, 252, 467 Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in British Columbia, 77 Royal Victoria College: founded in 1899, 8-10, 25nio; residence for women, 10, 21, 83, 146, 223, 3071127, 415; west wing erected in 1930, 124; east wing in 1949, 266; home of Faculty of Music in 1971, 294 Royal Victoria Hospital. See Hospitals Rubenstein, David, 388 Rupununi, Guyana, 336 Russel, Colin, 171, 222 Russell, Margaret Elspeth, 222 Russiao and Slavic Studies, Department of, 282

490

INDEX

Rutherford, Ernest, 37-39, 54, 89, 327, 328 Rutherford Physics Building, 433 Ruttan, Robert Fulford, 35, 89, 145, 176 Ryerson, Egerton, 66 Ryerson Institute of Technology, 393 Safdie, Moshe, 352 Saffran, Murray, 379, 399n22 Saint Andrews University, Scotland, 5, 69 Ste. Anne de Bellevue, 63, 66, 164, 327, 354, 423 Ste. Marie, Quebec, 162 Ste. Rosalie, Quebec, 162 Saint Johns, Quebec, 240-41 Saint Joseph's Teachers' College, 44on5 St. Laurent, Louis, 250, 424 St. Lawrence School of Medicine, 44 Saint-Pierre, Henri Ce"saire, 157 Salaries, teachers', 62, 158 Salaries, university: academic, 41, 85, 125, 189, 234, 248, 318, 413; nonacademic, 31, 125, 189, 234, 429 Salisbury, Richard, 329nn6, 7 Sander, Finn, 36inio Sandiford, Peter, 349 Sandwell, B.K., nonli Sankey, Charles A., mn2i, i82nn2, 4 Saskatchewan, 74, 156, 225, 232 Schally, Andrew, 3991122 Schiessler, Robert, 226 Schiff, H.I., 362n2i Schneider, William G., 345 School Service Bureau, 147 Schwartz, Lew, 130 Science, Faculty of, 273, 365-66, 370, 435 Scientific Information, Institute for, 390 Scotland, 4-5, 53, 72 Scott, Frank R., 130, 157, 193, 195, 201, 205, 217, 244114, 289, 318, 423, 444, 470 Scott, Walter, 54 Scriver, Charles, 367 Scriver, Jessie Boyd, 58032, 176, l85n48 Second World War. See War Seed Growers' Association, Canadian, 9001, 164 Sehon, Alec, 387, 388, 397ni Seiveright, D.J., 36on2 Sekelj, Paul, 384

Semitic studies, 181 Senate, university: Corporation (1854), 2I J 55> 64; academic board (1896), 55; revised regulations for M.A., M.Sc., in 1899, 80; agreed to McGill, B.C., proposal in 1905, 75; established Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in 1922, 177; given new powers, new name, Senate, in 1935, 207; consulted on Principal Douglas' appointment in I 938, 198; debated Duplessis embargo in 1957; 252; adopted disciplinary procedures in 1965, 450; Joint Committee with governors in 1966, 455; new composition with student members in 1968, 455 Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, 284, 286, 316 Shaw, Flora Madeline, 174 Shaw, Norman, 178, 242, 328 Shaw, Robert Fletcher, 420, 458, 468 Shawinigan, Quebec, 227 Shea, William R., 57nn Sheets-Pyenson, Susan, 33oni9 Sheffield, Edward Fletcher, 258, 415 Sherbrooke Street, 8, 13, 16, 20, 122, 133, 460 Shore, Marlene Gay, 24404 Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, 397112 Silverman, Baruch, 398019 Simon Fraser University, 352, 472019 Sir George Williams University, 296, 454, 458 Skelton-Passmore, Elizabeth, 399022 Skiagraph, 35 Skoryna, Stanley, 389 Skypeck, Tom, 262 Smallwood, Charles, 334, 341 Smith, A.J.M., 130, 193 Smith, Donald A. See Strathcona, Lord Smith, H.A., 156 Smith, Peter L, 92036 Smith, Philip Durnford, 241 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 282 Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 133 Snell, John Ferguson, 26ni9, 68, 9002, 910022, 28 Social Agencies, Montreal Council of, 149, 150

INDEX Socialism, 130, 192-96, 311 Social Science Research Project, 151-53, 195, 310 Social Service, Department of, 69, 108, 148-49, 173, 1831120, 286 Social Work, School of, 108, 149-51, 1831120, 190, 297, 311 Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, 362n2o Sociology, 149, 150, 152, 309, 310, 315-16, 329ni, 370, 449, 458 Soddy, Frederick, 37-39 Soil science, 358 Soil Testing Service, 164, 297 Solin, Cecil, 264 Solomon, David, 315, 316, 32904 Solomon, Samuel, 388-89 Sorbonne University, 427 Sourkes, Theodore L., 379, 390, 39701, 3991122 Space exploration, 253, 319, 385 Spanish, 28, 205, 282; Civil War, 203, 268 Sports, 21, 101, 261-62, 267, 464 Staff: academic, 4, 221, 231, 240-41, 32901, 412, 426, 458; non-academic, 231, 437, 453, 456, 458 Stansfield, Alfred, 105 Stanstead College, 74 Stanstead Summer School, 334 Starr, Paul, 47in8 Statutes, university: revised in 1931, 145; revised in 1935, 163, 174, 198, 207; revised in 1939, 207-8; revised in 1968, 455-56 Steacie, E.W.R., 180-81, 227, 345 Stephen, George, 8 Stevenson, Lloyd G., 376, 440012 Stevenson, Louise S., 330021, 362025 Stewart, David, 18, 19 Stewart, David Macdonald, 364035 Stewart, Walter Moncrief, 19, 327, 433 Stoneycroft Farm, 91018, 423 Stormy Weather Project, 341 Strachan, Robin, 285 Strathcona Hall, 20, 93055, 223 Strathcona, Lord (Donald A. Smith): financed Donalda program, 8; appointed chancellor, 8; founded RVH with George Stephen in 1893, 8;

491

founded RVC in 1899, 8-1 o; supported YMCA, 20; benefactions to medicine, n, 50; benefactions to music, 31-32; chair of zoology, 34 Strathcona Medical Building (1911), 83, 120, 142 Strathcona Music Building, 294, 433 Stredder, F. Owen, 190, 196, 198 Struthers, R.R., 398013 Student enrolment, 4, II, 89, 120, 128, 155, 169, 231, 239, 258, 260, 264, 293, 347, 353-55, 4", 435, 449; graphs, 259, 3H Student fees, 128-29, 189, 447 Students, 19-24, 99, 125-28, 129-31, 192-93, 258-60, 261-69, 443-64; academic counselling, 339; American, 128; arts, 128; dentistry, 169; divinity, 89; education, 63, 66, 69, 158, 160; engineering, 89; ethnic composition, 125-28, 281-84, 404-5; extension, 295; graduate, 82, 177-81, 436; household science, 161, 163; law, 41, 43, 155, 157; at Macdonald College, 89; medical, 373-75; veteran, 107, 155, 231, 239-41 Students' Council, 23, 24, 129, 203, 446, 449 Students for a Democratic University,

449, 459 Student songbook, 95 Student Union, 21, 129, 327, 446 Student unrest, 405, 443-64 Sugars, Robert M., 5602, 205-6 Sun Life Assurance Company, 125,137015 Surgery, 165, 167, 389, 419; experimental, 389 Sutherland, H.S., 227 Sutherland, William, 44 Swales, Dorothy, 327 Swann, Nancy, 143 Tait, William D., 28, 147, 148, 369 Tank Battalion, Universities, 99 Taurins, Alfred, 343 Taylor, Alfred Ernest, 29 Taylor, Andrew, 13 Taylor, Graeme, 130 Teaching and Learning, University Centre for, 450

492

INDEX

Tenure, academic, 2OI-2 Terroux, Ferdinand Richard, 327-28, 33insI Terroux, Kathleen, 384 Theatre Night, 19, 23, 129, 267 Theological colleges, 7, 74, 87; Joint Board of, 89, 106, 148, 286-89; students, 21, 25n8, 289 Thomas-Edding, Dorothy, 4001145 Thomas, Harry E., 398ni4 Thompson, Grattan D., 58035 Thomson, David Landsborough, 242, 287, 289, 392 Thomson, James Sutherland, 219,232-34, 289 Thorp, Harry Webster, 388 Thurlbeck, William, 390 Times, The, London, 109 Toronto, University of, 18, 25n8, 37, 40, 76, 86, 108, 129, 146, 147, 171, 176, 177, 188, 197, 24405, 248, 258, 336, 342, 347, 412, 427, 443 Tory, Henry Marshall, 75—79, 92n3l, 106-7, J6i Traquair, Ramsay, 352 Trenn, Thaddeus J., 57013 Trigger, Bruce, 32906 Triggs, Stanley G., 331026 Trott, Harold William, 93055 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 27009 Tuois, Barbara Logan, 185046, 400043 Turbide, Nadia, 5609 Turner, Philip J., 352 Tyndale, Orville, 412 Underbill, Frank H., 24405 Unemployment, 152-53, 195 Union generate des e'tudiants du Quebec, 459 Union Nationale, 203 United Church of Canada, 286, 289 United States of America, 53—55, 63, 80, 109, 111017, 129, 151, 162, 177, 203, 2I7> 235-39, 376, 444~47> 452 United Theological College: Ceylon, 87; Montreal, 195, 266, 286 Universities: American, 60, 80, 177, 181, 412, 445; British, 86, 412; Canadian (including Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the

National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges), 7, 107, 177, 220-21, 231, 250-53, 258, 289, 412,

415, 424, 430, 454; German, 80, 164; International Association of, 412; Quebec, 252, 427. See also individual names Universities Company, Canadian, 99, 103, 217 Universities Tank Battalion, 99 University Centre (student), 327, 439 University Centre for Teaching and Learning, 450 University Chapel, 216, 287 University clinics: Montreal General Hospital, 387; Royal Victoria Hospital, 165-67, 170, 386, 387; Surgical, 389 University Herbarium, 327, 356 Urban Planning, School of, 353 Urdu, 178, 284 Urquhart, Hugh M., 136001, 3, 9, 138023 Usher, Robert, 390 Vancouver College, 74-79 Vancouver General Hospital, 419 Vancouver Province, 92037

Vao Horne, Sir William, 56, 63, 188 Vas, Magda, 390 Vas, Stephen, 390 Vatican Council, Second, 403 Vaughan, Susan (ne'e Cameron), 10, 30 Vaughan, Walter, 55-56, 109 Venning, Eleanor, 166, 386 Veterans, 107, 155, 231, 239-41 Veterinary science, 44, 45 Vice-principals, 439 Vickery, V.R., 330022 Victoria College, 74-79, 92026 Victoria, Queen, 10 Victoria University, Ontario, 76 Viet Nam War, 445-46, 462 Vineberg, Arthur, 389 Vocational Training Coordination Act, 232 Vogel, Robert, 4721123 Wagg, Susan E., 137010 Walker, James Wallace, 35 Wallace, Robert Charles, 220, 231

INDEX Wallerstein, Immanuel, 316, 329115, 471118 Wallis, Faith, 270023, 3301112 Walter, Hermann, 31 Walton, Frederick Parker, 43, 89, 155 Wang, Erik, 262 War: Boer, 25nio; First World, 7, 40, 95-107, 217; Second World, 79, 206, 211, 216, 253; Spanish Civil, 203, 268; Viet Nam, 445-46, 462 Ward, Vance, 166 Warren, F.G. Ross, 339 Warren, Robert, 202-3 Wartime Bureau of Technical Personnel, 220

Washington, D.C., 109, 207 Watson, Frederick, 313 Watson, James, 255, 39704 Watson, W.H., 180 Waugh, William Templeton, 146-47 Webber, Gordon, 352 Webster, Donald, 389 Webster, Edward C., 398ni2 Wechsler, Harold, 137019 Wedd, Rachel, 2502 Weir, Robert Stanley, 443 Wellcome Trust, 389 Werner, S.W., 105 Westley, William, 313, 316, 32905 Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, 206 Whitby, George S., 180, 343> 345 White, Frank, 347 Whitehead, J. Rennie, 339 Wilkinson, Ralph, 389 William and Henry Birks Building. See Divinity Hall Williams, Basil, 146, 147 Williams, E.R., 105

493

Williams, W.L.G., 342 Wilson Hall, 393 Wilson, Mark, 47105 Wilson, Morris, 237, 412 Winkler, Carl, 343, 345, 419-20, 441020 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 277 Witwatersrand, University of, 319 Woloch, Michael, 30504 Women's Institute, 73, 164, 295 Wood, Casey Albert, 142, 323 Wood Library of Ornithology. See Libraries Woodland, Dennis W., 331029 Woods, Harry Douglas, 312, 313, 440012 Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, 34 Wool Growers' Association, Canadian Cooperative, 73, 164 Woonton, G.A., 338 Workers' Educational Association, 295 Workman Engineering Building, 4, 39 Yaffe, Leo, 185049, 246034, 343, 3620021, 23 Yale University, 18, 139, 151, 169, 287, 313 Young, E. Gordon, 184045 Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), 20, 86, 87, 105 Young, Robert A., 245017 Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), 20 Yukon, 73 Zaborski, Bogdan, 362020 Zaslow, Morris, 362024 Zassenhaus, Hans, 342 Zoology, 34, 120, 145