The staff of the university in 1829 was: Divinity, Rev. J.G. Mountain, D.D. (Cambridge), principal; moral philosophy and learned languages, Rev. J.L. Mills, D.D. (Oxford); history and civil law, Rev. J. Strachan, D.D. (Aberdeen); mathematics and natural philosophy, Rev. J. Wilson, A.N. (Oxford). The staff of the Montreal Medical Institution, now become the Medical Faculty, in 1829 was: Lecturers, A.F. Holmes, M.D.; W. Caldwell, M.D.; J. Stephenson, M.D.; and W. Robertson, M.D.
After 1829 McGill College, rich in a charter, but poor in students and educational facilities, struggled on, unsupported by government amidst political rancour, financial embarrassment, and internal administrative difficulties, and almost extinct as a body with university pretensions with the exception of its medical and its art faculty, the latter being erected as such in 1843 under the Rev. Dr. John Bethune, so long Rector of Montreal, then acting as principal, till a number of citizens came to its support.
Doctor Bethune’s dual position of principal and Rector of Montreal was not a happy one, especially in 1845, when he was in front of a movement to affix to the University a distinctly Anglican denominational stamp. The appointment of the principal was consequently disallowed upon the advice of Mr. Gladstone. An extract from his letter to Earl Cathcart is of interest and shows how desperate were its straits to merit such a complicated utterance:
“Into the various and somewhat complicated charges which have been brought against Doctor Bethune, in his capacity as principal of the College, I do not find it necessary to enter; nor do I wish to state at the present moment any decided opinion as to the extent to which the present condition of the Institution is, owing to the character and position of its principal. My decisions are founded upon reasons which are not open to dispute: the first, the weight of the Bishop’s authority together with your own, independently of any reference to that of the Board of Visitors, which may be considered to be to some extent, at this moment in dispute; next, the fact that Doctor Bethune did not himself receive an university education, which I must hold to be, unless under circumstances of the rarest occurrence, an indispensable requisite of such a position as he occupies. To these I am disposed to add, although I express the opinion without having had the advantage of learning what may be the view of the Lord Bishop in this particular, that I cannot think it expedient that the offices of principal and professor of divinity in McGill College should be combined with that of Rector of Montreal. This circumstance is not much adverted to in the papers before me; but I am strongly impressed that the incongruity of this junction of important collegiate appointments with a no less important pastoral charge in the same person; either the former or the latter of which, especially considering the large population of the town of Montreal, I must, as at present advised, hold to be enough to occupy his individual attention.”
In 1851 its total income was only £540 per annum and even with the small staff employed, the expenditure was £742, consequently a large debt accumulated. A committee of Montreal merchants arose and relieved the stringency, an example which has never failed to be followed with like success in succeeding crises of its growth.
McGILL UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS
Clockwise from left: Engineering Building, Medical Building, Art Building, Mining and Chemistry Building
In 1852 an amended and favourable charter was secured. Its new era of progress was assured in 1855 by the advent of Dr. William Dawson as the new principal, invited by the Hon. John Day, the president of the board of governors, and backed up by the personal solicitation of Sir Edward Head, the governor-general. He was a young man, having been born at Pictou, Nova Scotia, on October 13, 1820. His studies were commenced at Pictou College and continued at the University of Edinburgh. In 1850 he was appointed superintendent of education for Nova Scotia and became soon distinguished as a geologist and educationalist. On his appointment to McGill he found the little, feeble, struggling college with about eighty students, with two faculties, those of arts and medicine, and the nucleus of a faculty of law begun in 1853. The School of Medicine of this period sent out, however, such men as Duncan McCallum, George E. Fenwick, Robert Palmer Howard, William Wright, Sir James Grant, Robert Clark, and Sir William Hingston of a later period.
Dr. Dawson has described his first impressions, which were anything but agreeable, in the following words: “Materially, the University was represented by two blocks of unfinished and partly ruined buildings, standing amid a wilderness of excavators and masons’ rubbish; overgrown with weeds and bushes. The grounds were unfenced, and pastured at will by herds of cattle, which, not only cropped the grass, but browsed in the shrubs, leaving unhurt only one great elm, which still stands as the founder’s tree, and a few old oak and butternut trees, most of which have had to give place to our new buildings. The only access from the town was by a circuitous and ungraded car track, almost impassable at night. The buildings had been abandoned by the new board, and the classes of the Faculty of Arts were held in the upper story of a brick building in the town, the lowest part of which was occupied by the High School. I had been promised a residence, and this I found was to be a portion of one of the detached buildings aforesaid, the present eastern wing. It had been imperfectly furnished, was destitute of nearly every requisite of civilized life, and in front of it was a bank of rubbish and loose stone with a swamp below, while the interior was in an indescribable state of dust and disrepair. Still, the governors had done the best they could in the circumstances.”