In 1892, when Sir William Dawson retired, he left it a university of the world, with about one thousand students and almost eighty professors and lecturers. He added the faculties of applied science, which, though instituted in 1870, was regularly organized in 1878, comparative medicine and veterinary science. As far back as 1870 he began to plan for the higher education of women, founding the Ladies’ Educational Association and the Girls’ High School. In 1883 he opened the Donalda department in the faculty of arts, which after his resignation, developed into the Royal Victoria College. During his régime the university buildings began to appear on the campus, then a bare, almost treeless, weedy, partly swampy field, bearing but small likeness to the present noble campus with its imposing piles of buildings and its fine avenue of Canadian trees.
The course in law begun in connection with the faculty of arts was made a separate faculty in 1853. The course of applied science was organized in 1856 in connection with the faculty of arts. It did not become a special faculty till 1893. In 1855 two detached stone erections, an arts building with a residence for the principal about sixty feet to the east, stood there alone. The medical building, in existence before the university was established in 1829, still stood downtown, its first location, the original home of the Montreal Medical Institute, being No. 22 St. James Street, within reasonable distance of the General Hospital on Dorchester Street, with which its staff were closely connected as its earliest physicians. Subsequently it moved to the corner of Craig Street and St. George and again to Coté Street. Shortly after 1855 the west wing of the present arts building was added by Mr. William Molson for the purposes of a library and convocation hall, and in the course of a few years both these wings (the Molson Hall on the west and the principal’s residence on the east) were joined to the center block. The west wing was used as a university museum and the east for the chemical and natural science rooms and laboratories. All four parts are now devoted to entirely different uses. The Molson Hall serves chiefly as an examination room for arts students (having long ago proved wholly inadequate for meetings of convocation), and when the Peter Redpath Library was erected in 1893 the library portion of it became available for class-rooms. Both wings, with a story added, now contain only the regular lecture rooms of the Faculty of Arts and the principal’s residence serves several purposes—for the offices of the administration, the Zoological department and the Faculty of Law.
It was not until 1872 that a medical building was provided on the University campus. This building was enlarged in 1885 and again in 1895—this time chiefly through the generosity of the late Mr. John H.R. Molson. Further enlargement was found to be necessary within two or three years afterward, and in 1895, through the bounty of Lord Strathcona, who remained during his life, the mainstay of the Medical Faculty financially, extensions and alterations were made, at a cost of at least one hundred thousand dollars. The Faculty were thus enabled to provide for the increasing demands upon them. The fire of 1907 destroyed the original building. The newer portion was, however, saved and the work of the departments of medical chemistry, physiology and histology are still being carried on therein. To complete the story of the Faculty it must be added that the fire was not after all the worst thing that could have happened, for it necessitated the erection of a new building. This has been placed at the corner of University Street and Pine Avenue (some distance north of the old site), on ground donated by Lord Strathcona, who also generously contributed over half a million dollars towards its erection and equipment. It is one of the finest and most up-to-date structures for the purpose of medical education on the continent.
In 1905 the medical faculty of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, established in 1871 by Drs. Charles Smallwood, A.D. David, Sir W.H. Hingston, E.H. Trenholme and Francis W. Trenholme, was absorbed into that of McGill.
Beyond the eminent men already mentioned McGill Medical Faculty has had associated with it as professors men of wide European reputation, honoured by other universities. Among them have been Drs. Racey, Archibald Hall, O.T. Bruneau, S.E. Sewell, MacCallum, Fraser, Sutherland, Drake A. Hall, I. Crawford, William Fraser, W.E. Scott, William Wright, Robert MacDonnell, Robert Palmer Howard, George Ross, George E. Fenwick, T.A. Starkey, Sir William Osler, W. Gardner, Sir T.G. Roddick, G.P. Girdwood, A.D. Blackader, H.A. La Fleur, H.S. Berkett, George Armstrong, F.E. Fenley, C.S. Martin, F.J. Shepherd, dean, and J.G. Adami, Strathcona professor of bacteriology, the holder of the Fothergill medal in 1914.
The third building on the campus, in what may be called the Greek style, was added in 1882—the Peter Redpath Museum. In 1889 a bequest of $57,137 by Thomas Workman enabled the Thomas Workman mechanical shops to be undertaken. In 1892 there followed the first Macdonald engineering building, with its annex, the Thomas Workman shops, the Macdonald physics building and the Peter Redpath library building for the university library which had already been organized in 1857.
The Faculty of Applied Science is perhaps the most striking example of growth in connection with the University. Organized first as a department of the Faculty of Arts in 1856, it developed rapidly, not however, “coming into its kingdom” until it was provided with a home of its own in 1893 by Sir William Macdonald, that most generous friend of scientific education in Canada. At that date there were 165 students in the Faculty, today there were 612 before the war of 1914 affected the attendance. The progress within the last few years under the able administration of Dean Adams has been especially marked, the number of students having increased since his appointment, six years ago, by 40 per cent.
As an expert in geology Dr. Frank D. Adams has an international reputation.
In 1895 Dr. William Peterson, who had recently resigned the post of principal of the University of Dundee, succeeded Sir William Dawson and has maintained the high intellectual and material ideals of his predecessor, while he has brought the university to be well esteemed among the universities of the world. The material progress of the university has continued. Six new buildings have been added to the above group, the Chemistry and Mining Building in 1898, the Conservatorium of Music in 1904, Strathcona Hall, the home of the McGill Y.M. C.A. (strictly speaking, however, not a University building) in 1905, the McGill Union in 1906, and the New Medical Building in 1911. In this list no account is taken of the imposing pile of buildings erected by Sir William Macdonald at Ste. Anne de Bellevue for the purposes of education in agriculture and domestic science and for the training of teachers. The original property there comprises 560 acres and the probable cost was two millions of dollars. Since then 228 acres were added in 1913 by the same benefactor. Nor is account taken of the addition to the campus of the Joseph property, the gift of Sir William Macdonald, at a cost of $142,500, nor of that other notable addition, forming indeed a new campus of about twenty-five acres in extent (the Molson and Law Properties), which Sir William conveyed to the University in 1911, having purchased it for this purpose for no less a sum than one million dollars. This magnificent donation insures the future of the University, providing as it does for the greatest possible expansion. It is even now being converted into a site for a gymnasium and a second campus.
To resume, in 1893 there were but five faculties; today, in reality, there are eight, a Faculty of Agriculture, a Department of Music, a Dental Department and a Graduate School having been established in the interval, whilst on the other hand, one—the Faculty of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science, established in 1889, as the result of the amalgamation of the Montreal Veterinary College, founded in 1866—has been discontinued since 1903, but it is likely to be resurrected in connection with the Faculty of Agriculture at Macdonald College within a year or two. In 1893 the different Faculties were almost separate entities, bound to the University by a slender cord, indeed. The Faculty of Medicine was almost an independent institution, so was the Faculty of Veterinary Science and to a less degree also the Faculty of Law.