The work of Egerton Ryerson furnishes an additional illustration of the truth that systems of popular education are, so to speak, the gift to the people of the Colleges and Universities. His relations to the higher education enabled him to grasp all the elements involved in the great problem he undertook to solve for Ontario, and to bring all parts of the educational system into helpful and sympathetic relations. Our Universities must always be sources of stimulus and enrichment to the schools of the Province at large, if they discharge in any original and adequate measure their functions to society.
In attributing so important a share to Egerton Ryerson in the establishment of our school system, I am not, of course, unmindful of the public men who seconded his efforts, and above all, of the teachers and inspectors by whose self-sacrificing toils educational advance was rendered possible, and has been sustained. Were he whom we honor in our midst to-day he would be the first to speak thus, and especially of his friend, Dr. Hodgins, who for so many years was his able assistant and valued confidant. This bronze memorial is well—may it long testify to the patriotic virtues of a noble man—but it is as nothing, I trust, in comparison with the living and imperishable memorials of enriched and ennobled human lives. As time witnesses the increasing development of the material and spiritual forces of the present and coming generations of our people, as our social and national institutions are more fully perfected and widely recognized, we shall have hereby and herein perennial memorials of the founder of the school system of Ontario throughout all coming time.
CHAPTER IV.
EDUCATION IN ONTARIO—PAST AND PRESENT.
An Historical Retrospect by J. George Hodgins, M.A., LL.D., Barrister-at-law, and Deputy Minister of Education for Ontario.
To-day will long be memorable in the educational history of Ontario—for to-day has been unveiled the first statue ever erected in this province to one of its own sons.
It will be still more memorable from the fact that that special subject of public interest and national concern which has been signally honoured to-day, is the pre-eminently important one of popular education. These two facts combined give to the celebration and pleasant incidents of the day a peculiar significance and a special interest.