CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Higher education was in Canada a plant of late origin, and it was for a long time a plant of slow growth. This country, with the exception of small portions of Quebec and Acadia, was not occupied by a white population until after the close of the American Revolutionary War. The conclusion in 1783 of the Treaty of Paris, by which the independence of the United States was recognized, was the signal for the exodus from that country of the United Empire Loyalists, who settled in various parts of the Dominion of Canada. Their struggle for life in what was virtually an unbroken wilderness was extremely severe and protracted. They had to hew homes out of the forest, and after they were in a position to grow produce for export there was little to be had in exchange for it, while the means of transportation was extremely defective and its cost very great. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that nothing like a system of education, higher or lower, was organized in any of the Provinces during the first half century after their colonization. The population was small; the settlements were isolated; there was no municipal machinery; and the attention of the legislatures was chiefly occupied with providing for

the administration of justice, developing means of communication between different parts of the country, and devising systems of exchange to facilitate a growing

commerce.

During all this period of strenuous effort to better their material condition, however, the colonists never lost sight of the desirability, if not necessity, of establishing universities. The United Empire Loyalists came largely from New England and New York, where the idea of higher education was quite familiar to the people. Harvard College had then been in active existence for over a hundred and fifty years, Yale College for over eighty, and Columbia College for a generation. Not a few of the immigrants were themselves men of culture, which had been acquired in some cases by actual attendance at seats of higher learning, in others at secondary schools taught by university alumni. Of the early immigrants into Canada from Great Britain some had actually received a university education, and others were in a position to appreciate the civilizing effect of academical culture on a community. It was natural that these two classes should deeply regret the want of such educational advantages as would have been afforded to their families in the countries they had left, and should earnestly strive to create similar educational opportunities in the country to which they had come.

Their efforts were probably stimulated by what had been done for the education of the French people already in the country. From an early period in the colonization of New France, the higher as well as the lower culture had been a feature in the ideal of those who promoted its

settlement, and development, and liberal endowments were granted by the French King to religious societies to enable them to perform this important work—endowments which play a prominent part at the present day in securing for Quebec efficient and well-equipped colleges and universities. There never was a time in the history of that Province when it had not creditable and valuable facilities for imparting higher education to those who desired it, and the existence of such facilities, and the use made of them, could not fail to intensify the zeal of the English speaking colonists in all the provinces and keep alive their determination to provide educational opportunities equally good for the youth of their own race and language.

Though the progress of higher education was for the first half century after the influx of the United Empire Loyalists very slow, it has during the past half century, and especially the last generation, been very rapid. The gradual expansion of settlement, the development of agriculture, the improvement of transportation facilities by the construction of canals and railways, the growing efficiency of elementary and secondary schools, and the widening of the political horizon of the people by the confederation of the Provinces in 1867, have all operated as causes to produce this effect. So have the stimulating examples set by the academical institutions of Great Britain and the United States. The liberalization of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the establishment of the University of London offered increased inducements to students from the colonies, while the valuable endowments, efficient organizations, and greater

proximity of such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton, enabled them to hold out quite as strong incentives to young Canadians to expatriate themselves. The only way to keep them at home was to provide similar facilities in Canada, To this task the authorities of Canadian universities were constrained to address themselves, and this they have done with a fair degree of success.

The enterprise in the field of higher education, which has long characterized both the French and the British people of Canada, was sure to find practical expression in the North-West Territories. In the Province of Manitoba there are three teaching colleges, all in close connection with the non-teaching Provincial University. The energy of the great religious denominations has there, as in the older provinces, been enlisted in the work, and they have never wavered in their determination or their efforts to provide facilities which will keep the youngest members of the Confederation abreast of educational progress in all other parts of Canada.

CHAPTER II.

THE UNIVERSITY OF KING'S COLLEGE.

One of the most eminent of the United Empire Loyalist immigrants into that part of Quebec which afterwards became "Upper Canada was Mr. Richard Cartwright. He was born at Albany, in New York, where his father had settled as an emigrant from England. He was educated at a school in his native city, and there he became acquainted with Latin, Greek, and other subjects usually included in a higher education. Mr. Cartwright was in training for the Christian ministry when his prcparatory work was interrupted by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, in which he took an active part on behalf of the Crown. At its conclusion he settled in Kingston, where he became prominent in mercantile pursuits, and also in the public life of the young colony. As early as 1789 he addressed a memorial to Lord Dorchester, then Governor-General, suggesting that an appropriation of public lands should be devoted to the establishment of a "decent Seminary of Education," and this with a view rather to future than to present advantage. Lord Dorchester's response was favorable, but before anything could be done the Constitutional Act* was passed by the Imperial Parliament.

*The Constitutional Act (31 Geo. III, cap 31) was passed in 1791. The King having intimated to Parliament his intention to divide the Province of Quebec into two Provinces, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, this statute created for each of them a Legislature of two chambers.