Women’s successful struggle for admission to University College in 1884 took place at a time when the question of whether or not women should obtain a higher education was being widely and heatedly debated. The debate was not taking place in isolation in Ontario, but was being conducted in most of the urban centres of Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. The subject was, of course, emotionally charged, and discussion tended to focus less on educational questions than on more general issues relating to ‘woman’s nature.’ Women, some authorities claimed, were not constituted to handle the rigours of the...

By the middle of the nineteenth century, increasing financial priority was being given by the provincial government to institutions of higher learning which did not have a religious affiliation – in particular, University College at the University of Toronto. Colleges with some religious affiliation, such as Victoria, which had been established by the Methodists, suffered from this change and many resented it.

Because of increasing financial hardship and a shift in population from eastern to western Ontario, Victoria chose to federate with the University of Toronto in 1889 when the Federation Act was put into effect. It became the first...

The system of medical education in Ontario before 1887 – the time of the University of Toronto Federation Act – was extremely complex. The Act made possible the creation of a Faculty of Medicine at the University, absorbing faculty and students from the Toronto School of Medicine. (The Trinity Medical School was later absorbed by the Faculty of Medicine when Trinity federated with the University of Toronto.)

When Emily Howard Stowe requested permission to attend lectures at the Toronto School of Medicine more than a decade earlier, her request was flatly denied. She was the first to challenge the all-male...

Though enrolment statistics for women at the University of Toronto increased steadily after the turn of the century, there remained a lurking suspicion about the female presence on campus. By 1905,152 women were registered at University College and items inThe Varsityof the day indicate that men were becoming annoyed by what they felt was increased competition for facilities on campus. A series of poems addressed to the ‘Chitty-chatty Co-ed’ appeared inThe Varsity, no doubt contributing to a growing rift between the men and women on campus. One reads:

Lovely Venus came to college

Made a buff at...

Women who attended universities in the early part of this century were very exceptional people, particularly those who were entering fields which had been male domains of long standing. It is not surprising, therefore, that a considerable number of the first women students ranked high in their classes and received many of the University’s awards. And once the ph.d. programme was instituted in certain departments in the late nineteenth century, women again responded to the challenge and began working toward this degree. In 1903 Clara Cynthia Benson in Physical Chemistry and Emma Sophia Baker in Philosophy were the first women...

As early as 1916, women were talking of the need for a comprehensive building on the campus for women’s athletic as well as cultural and social activities. Even earlier than this, in 1911, when discussion had begun regarding the construction of the building which was to become Hart House, a motion was passed that a petition be sent to each college reading: ‘We, the undersigned, do hereby petition for a gymnasium in the Massey Memorial Hall [Hart House] for the use of women students at the University of Toronto.’ This effort had, however, little effect.

The eleventh day of November...