“In the meantime you remain here to pursue useful work; I go to seek restored health elsewhere, and can only remember you in my prayers. Let us hope that when the winter is passed we may meet once more, and that I may be able to congratulate you on well merited success, not merely in regard to the prizes and honours which few can obtain, but in that abiding education of the mind and heart, which McGill offers to all her studious children without exception.”
On his last convocation as Principal, on April 29, 1893, he said to the graduating class: “I may say, we have full confidence that you will sustain the honour of the University, and will regard the education you have received as a sacred trust, of which you are the stewards, and which is to be used for the good of all, for the advancement of your country, and for the glory of God.”
Those who worked with him or who studied under him and who are best qualified to speak, tell that it was, after all, the noble humanity with which Dawson invested his teaching and his administration that gave greatness to his occupancy of the Principalship. It was his personality, his energy, his deep and vivid sympathy with student interests, even more than his learning and his contemporary influence in other spheres, that helped to re-create McGill. Under his spell there were many undergraduates who had thoughts and aspirations beyond the McGill of their day, thoughts of sacrifice, and of future service to the world.
In forwarding his resignation to the Governors, he wrote: “Much has been attained, but much still remains to be accomplished, especially with reference to the purely educational or academical faculty, which, in the present stage of Canadian society, demands more than any other, generous support. Means for this have hitherto been deficient, and much precious time and energy have been wasted in the inevitable struggle to maintain the ground already gained. It has been my earnest prayer that I might be permitted to carry out in the case of McGill my ideal of a complete and symmetrical university suited to this country, and particularly to the English population of this Province. It has pleased God to deny me this satisfaction; but I entertain the firm belief that good foundations have been laid, which will not be disturbed, but will be built on and carried to full completion, by the energy, care, and judgment of my immediate successors.” These hopes were destined to be fulfilled in the larger McGill of our day.
CHAPTER X
Higher Education for Women
WHEN Sir William Dawson became Principal of McGill in 1855, there was no provision in the University for the instruction of women. They were not permitted to attend the classes available to men. Indeed, women's education was then under discussion and debate in Great Britain and the United States. It had many supporters but it had also many opponents. The agitation for the higher education of women on equal terms with men, particularly in the liberal arts, went back to the days of Defoe's “Essay on Projects” in which he included a section on “an Academy for Women.” It had echoed from his time down through the eighteenth century until 1791 when Mary Wollstonecraft published her systematic treatise, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” Thereafter the original plea merely for education became but a minor part of a larger demand for the franchise and for general equality; and instead of a sober emphasis on the necessity for learning, there was a somewhat hysterical clamour that women “should be admitted side by side with men into all the offices of public life with respect both to kind and degree.” This agitation soon gathered abundant ridicule by the advocacy, led by Amelia Jenks Bloomer, of reform in women's dress, which would make it, as far as possible, the same as that of man, and would consequently be an outward and visible sign of the equality of the sexes.
