THIS VOLUME is deliberately limited in its scope. We have not attempted to write a formal history of University College. Such an undertaking would have called for a bolder search into the past, at least as far back as 1827 when Bishop Strachan obtained the charter of King’s College; for a detailed analysis of the intellectual climate of the 40’s and 50’s when the University College idea was taking shape; and, above all, for a far more comprehensive survey of the various aspects of the College life. Fortunately, a good deal of the work has been done.The University of...

THE HISTORY of University College is so interwoven with that of the University of Toronto that it is difficult to separate them. At times they are inseparable. But, although University College and the University of Toronto have today a common governing body (so far as finances and appointments are concerned), University College is a separate entity, with a life and history of its own—a history not without its dramatic features. Unfortunately, when, at the request of the Board of Governors of the University, I wrote myHistory of the University of Torontoover twenty-five years ago, I did not...

THE CENTENARY of University College is not precisely that of the building which houses it. In 1853 the College was sheltered in former King’s College on the site of the Ontario Parliament Buildings; and it was not until 1856 that the present structure was begun, to be completed three years later. After the humiliation of the previous six years during which it had been housed in a variety of makeshifts, the College moved into adequate quarters for the first and last time in a century. In an effort to spend a handsome endowment before the church colleges could make good...

THERE IS no influence more potent in determining the character of a university than the quality and ideals of the men who were responsible for its establishment If a university today is still a kind of glorified high school the cause can probably be found in its early history and in the qualifications of its first professors. The close association of Toronto in its beginnings with British universities from which it derived not only the ideal of a university, but a succession of brilliant scholars to illustrate this ideal is a fact of primary importance in the history of our...

AS ANOTHER CHRONICLER takes up the subject of the Staff after Federation, he may be permitted to state the conditions of his task and the method by which he will proceed.

In this period, 1890 to the present, the range of the College’s teaching has been reduced to six subjects in the Humanities: Classics (including Greek and Roman history), Semitics, English, French, German, and Ethics; and all other subjects have been relegated to the University. In these six disciplines alone, then, we must seek our notable figures. Two problems immediately appear. What shall be our criteria of selection? And, since...

IN A LETTER that he wrote to the student editors of a University of Toronto journal commending their critical attitude towards staff and curriculum, Stephen Leacock observed that “I am even inclined, as a professor, to harbour a little bit of academic discontent of my own.” He went on to argue, in a cheerfully iconoclastic vein, “that our colleges would be greatly brightened if there were no students; if the professor could saunter undisturbed among the elm trees in friendly colloquy, lecturing—for they know no other form of conversation—to one another; if the library and the campus could...

SOMEWHAT MORE than half a century ago I was an undergraduate student at University. The curious part of it is that owing to certain conditions which existed in the 1890’s but have since largely disappeared, I did not then know that I was at the College. Or to put it a little more accurately, I was dimly aware that I was a member /of University College, but intensely aware that I was a member of the University of Toronto, and a member studying in the Faculty of Arts. After I left the University I spent nearly forty years in other...

IT IS perhaps just that the reader, who has been informed by Dr. Bissell that “the University College student has never been accused . . . of inarticulateness,” should be given an example of undergraduate articulation. I have been asked to provide a representation and appreciation of the world of the U.C. student, emphasizing its distinctive characteristics. However, I am loath to speak for the undergraduate body; having cultivated an atypical outlook for some years, I must therefore disclaim any right to the pronoun “we,” and write only of the impressions received in my first three years at the College....

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE is the embodiment of an idea. It is a community of teachers and students dedicated to ideals of higher learning. As we celebrate its one hundredth birthday, it would seem fitting to ask whether it has kept faith with its founders, whether its aspirations are still the same, even if its achievements may sometimes have fallen short. If the examined life is the only life worth living, a little self-examination is surely a seemly anniversary exercise for a community.

Though University College is now officially a centenarian, in fact it is as old as the University, sharing with...