The present Principal, Rev. James Smyth, B.A., LL. D., of Belfast, Ireland, was appointed in 1911.
II
LAVAL UNIVERSITY
While the history of the University of McGill is largely that of a small germinal University gradually developing the potentialities of its charter, that of the University of Laval at Montreal is one of a gradual evolution from the preexisting embryonic schools of arts, philosophy, theology, law and medicine which arose in due course, as the higher education of Catholics, principally of the French Canadian population, became gradually organized. In due course all these elements, when well advanced, were absorbed into the university proper when founded in 1876. Its story, therefore, involves the description of the component parts of its constitution, and the first dates of interest connected with the foundation of the predecessors are those of the present “Montreal College.”
The “Collège de Montreal,” which would seem to be the logical continuation of the écoles de Latin in existence up to the capitulation, and had supplemented the petits écoles started early in 1657, after the arrival of the Sulpicians, was founded about 1767 in the presbytery of the Curé of Longue Pointe by M.J. Baptiste Curatteau de Blaisérie, a Sulpician priest. He had a decided taste for education and the direction of youth. To provide the beginning of a classical education for pious citizens and for the needs of the future aspirants of the clergy he had added an annex to his presbytery, and rapidly a small boarding school arose which became known as the “Petit Séminaire” or “Collège.” He was assisted in his work by two ecclesiastical students, Mm. J.B. Dumouchel and J.B. Huet d’Alude.
The success attending this venture encouraged the citizens to establish a regular college at Montreal similar to that at Quebec. Accordingly the church wardens of Notre Dame came to the assistance of M. Curatteau to place him in charge of an establishment at the Château Vaudreuil, the palace of the late governor general, then for sale, buying it, and thus, in 1773, the College of St. Raphael was installed on October 1st. The college started with about fifty-two pensionnaires and a like number of externes. The prize list of 1774, proclaimed in Latin, reveals six classes, the highest of which was called the “Schola Humanitatis.”
The memory prize of this class was awarded to Franciscus Papineau and Petrus Amabilis de Bonne de Missede, the future Judge of Common Pleas (Ex aequo), while the first prize for French into Latin fell to F. Papineau and the second to Ludovicus Bonnet. In 1789 at the term composition proclaimed in January we find the highest class named Rhetoric, the first boy called the “Imperator” being Joannes Baptista Curot. Benjamin Dys Viger comes second as “Cæsar,” and Ambrosius Sanguinet as “Consul.” In Scholâ Tertia the Imperator is Jacobus Lartigue, the future first bishop of Montreal.
M. Curatteau died in Montreal on February 11, 1790, at the age of sixty years. His will of January 29, 1774, leaves all his property to the college and should it fail, his estate should be revertible, two-thirds to the General Hospital and a third to the Hôtel Dieu. He was succeeded as principal in 1790 by M.J.B. Marchand, a priest, with seven other professors, of whom five were ecclesiastics, one a layman and the seventh a priest. M. Ignace Leclerc, the professor of the philosophy class, started his course this year. The terms about this time were for the “pensionnaires” £14-11-8, and for the externes one guinea for entrance and nothing more. The catalogue of students for 1790 reveals there were about ninety scholars, the ages varying from twenty-one, in Philosophy (although one there is twenty-nine) to eight, in the lowest class, with one of six years of age. There do not appear many English names.[3] In the last class, however, there are some beginning to enter, viz., Jean O’Sullivan (aged nine years) and Nicholas Hamilton (aged eight years). In the prize list of 1792 there is a “Patricius Smith” who receives honourable mention for arithmetic. An English class for French students was begun in 1789. This dual instruction was then apparently developed in the colony. In later years it has somewhat lapsed.
LAVAL UNIVERSITY