Egerton Ryerson has deserved well of his country. His best days and his best energies were given to the upbuilding of its grandest institution. Well should his country guard and cherish his memory, so that the young who are here assembled to-day may learn this lesson, that he who devotes his life for his country's good, his country will hold his memory not in fragrant only, but in perpetual remembrance.
Representative of Victoria University, Cobourg.
The Rev. N. Burwash, S.T.D., President and Chancellor of Victoria University, spoke as follows:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is particularly appropriate that on this occasion Victoria University should speak. We meet to do honor to one of the greatest of Canada's sons. Dr. Ryerson has written his name indelibly upon the pages of his country's history. He has done so not merely by superior gifts of intellect, although to few men have more noble talents been entrusted. Nor has he done so merely as the successful leader of a great party in Church or State, although he was a leader, one of the first three in one of Canada's greatest movements towards a perfect political constitution. The success of this movement, after a struggle stretching through the lifetime of a full generation, and its results of which all good men now approve, might well ennoble the name of any man. But that for which we honor Dr. Ryerson's name and memory to-day is his work as an educator; and from Victoria University he first received the call to consecrate his life to his work. He was the first President of Victoria College. He, a Canadian of the Canadians, was the first Canadian to occupy that position in our Province; and Victoria has maintained the Canadian succession unbroken from his day to the present. Victoria was the first institution in this Province in active operation as a teaching institution with University powers. And it fell to Dr. Ryerson to shape its character and curriculum, and to give it a form, many features of which it has retained to this present hour.
It was from this duty of laying the foundations of our University in this young Province that Dr. Ryerson was called to the wider field of fashioning the primary and intermediate education of the whole people.
It would be presumption on my part to attempt to speak to-day of the difficulties which beset him in his task, and of the skill and judgment with which those difficulties were met and overcome. That has already been the more appropriate duty of one who has just spoken, and who was for long years his most valued and honored associate in his life-work.
But, as a Canadian of the fourth generation, and as a Canadian school boy who has enjoyed the advantages of the great work which to-day we commit to the perpetual memory of our country, I may venture to refer to the peculiarly Canadian character of the system founded by Dr. Ryerson. The early schools of this country were very varied in their type. Prepossession and usage rule imperiously in education. Each little colony or settlement, as it was called, had its national prepossessions. Here was an attempt to reproduce a miniature English Eton or Rugby. There was a genuine Scottish parish school with its Bible and Catechism. Here was an Irish school with its predilection for difficult problems in arithmetic and algebra. There was a Yankee school with its spelling-matches and dialogues on examination day. These were the heterogeneous elements of forty-five and fifty years ago. To-day, we have everywhere the Canadian school as unique in its character as any of these, and as well-known in its results all over this continent. The skilful mind that took possession of these materials, that carefully separated the good from the bad, that patiently and wisely removed or overcame prejudices, that calmly waited till the public mind was ready for each progressive movement, and then with vigor pushed it forward to speedy completion—this was the ——le gift which Dr. Ryerson devoted to his country's service. Gathering his materials for building up a perfect educational system from all lands, and from the wisdom and experience of all ages, this great man wrought out his life-task in the face of political prejudices, of national prejudices and of sectarian prejudices. I know of no man of his day who rose more fully than did he above the narrowness of all these. From the elevation of a broad catholicity, he grasped the great outlines of a comprehensive and national system of education for the Upper Canadian people, and patiently did he work toward that as his ideal. It would be too much to say that he completed the ideal. Such is not often given to mortal man. There are problems in this work still unsolved. There is still something for us to do. But in the solution of these problems we may well thank God for the broad, strong foundations, and structures planned, and so nearly completed by this master workman.
In the inaugural address with which Dr. Ryerson opened his work in Victoria College, I find this passage "The education imparted in this college is to be British and Canadian. Youth should be educated for their country as well as for themselves." This motto, never forgotten, has given character to his great life-work, and has given us a system of public schools and intermediate schools which more enduring than any monument will perpetuate to our children for generations to come, the name of Egerton Ryerson.[9]