The Larger McGill of Our Day
IN writing of the final epoch in McGill's first century, and the larger McGill of our day, we must of necessity be brief. We are too close to that epoch justly to judge its significance, or to give to the events and the incidents of which it is made up the fair and adequate reference which they doubtless deserve. Only the passing of the years can place them in their true perspective. Any estimate of them in our day would perhaps be proved false by time. Matthew Arnold said: “No man can trust himself to speak of his own time and his own contemporaries with the same sureness of judgment and the same proportion as of times and men gone by.” The growth and development of McGill, then, during the last quarter of a century will be here given in bare outline only. The details of that growth are vivid in the memory of living men.
In May, 1895, Dr. William Peterson, Principal of University College, Dundee, Scotland, was appointed to succeed Sir William Dawson as Principal of McGill University, and at the opening of the session in the following September he arrived in Montreal to begin his work. The new Principal was born in Edinburgh in May, 1856. He received his education at the Edinburgh High School and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated in 1875 with Honours in Classics. On his graduation he was awarded the Greek Travelling Fellowship, and after a period of study on the continent he entered Oxford University for further post-graduate courses in Classics. On leaving Oxford he was appointed Assistant to the Professor of the Humanities in Edinburgh University. Two years later, in 1882, he was appointed to the Principalship of University College, Dundee, which included among its other duties the Professorship of Classics and Ancient History. Thirteen years later he became Principal of McGill.
The twenty-four years during which Principal Peterson guided the destinies of McGill were years of steady growth and development. They were years, too, of notable and generous gifts from men of wealth and vision who believed in the value of education and of the beneficent influence of McGill in Canada and the world. Soon after Principal Peterson's appointment two projects for which his predecessor, Sir William Dawson, had planned were carried to completion. Both of these were made possible by the loyal aid of two benefactors who had already contributed greatly to the expansion of the University. William C. Macdonald had already given the Macdonald Engineering Building and the Macdonald Physics Building for the advancement of Applied Science. He now added to these the Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building with full equipment for the carrying on of courses which, we have seen, Dr. Harrington had originated years before in the cramped and poorly furnished rooms in the narrow corridor of the Arts Building. The building was opened on December 20, 1898. The Faculty of Applied Science had now passed from small beginnings and inadequate accommodation to a complete organization and a modern home. On September 4th, 1899, the Royal Victoria College for women was formally opened. It was the gift of Lord Strathcona, formerly Sir Donald Smith, who, in 1884, had made possible the establishment of the first courses for women given in McGill, and who, in 1886, had made provision for the complete four years' courses in Arts, the Donalda courses leading to the B.A. degree. The former Principal, Sir William Dawson, lived to see realised the two dreams for the fulfilment of which he had worked so arduously—the completion of the Science Buildings and the erection of a women's College as part of the University.
Dr. Charles E. Moyse
Vice-Principal of McGill University
1903-1920
Over the period that followed since the turn of the century we may pass briefly. It was a period of continued development, not always, however, without its discouragements and problems which need not be here recorded. But disappointments and obstacles were met by Dr. Peterson with courage and energy and hope. The result was progress. The Medical Faculty, which had grown beyond its quarters, needed more room if it was to keep pace with modern research and with the increased number of its students. Lord Strathcona, who had given the first Medical endowment fund in 1882, again came to the rescue, and in September, 1901, a new wing to the Medical Building was opened. In October, 1904, the Conservatorium of Music was established. Later, by the will of Sir William Macdonald, it was left an endowment fund which placed it on an independent basis and enabled it to be expanded into a Faculty of the University. In 1903 Dr. Alexander Johnson, who had been Vice-Principal for seventeen years, retired and was succeeded by Charles E. Moyse, Professor of English. In the spring of 1907 two disastrous fires occurred; in April, within eleven days of each other, the Macdonald Engineering Building and the largest part of the Medical Building were destroyed. Again the University's two great benefactors came to its assistance. Sir William Macdonald replaced the Engineering Building with a new building which was opened on April 27th, 1909, and Lord Strathcona provided for the erection of the new Medical Building, which was opened on June 5th, 1911.