Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada

Any one who has carefully studied the history of the Collegiate, or University, System of Upper Canada since its commencement in 1797, must be deeply impressed with the fact, due largely to Governor Simcoe's idea of a single, or State, Church for the Provinces with a single College, or University, under its control. That idea lingered for a long time in this Province. The State Church was practically established by the Clergy Reserve Sections of the Constitutional Act of 1791, promoted, as they were, by Governor Simcoe, while he was a Member of the Imperial Parliament in that year. It ceased to exist in 1854, by the repeal of the Clergy Reserve Sections of that Act. The State Church University, (afterwards known as King's College,)-which Governor Simcoe strongly recommended to the Duke of Portland in 1796, as he was leaving Canada, was chartered by the King in 1827, and was largely popularized by an Act of the Provincial Parliament in 1837. In 1828, it was endowed, from the original Royal Grant of Lands of 1797, as urged by Bishop Strachan, with 225,944 acres of those Lands.

The granting of so large a portion of the original Royal Gift of Lands, as an endowment of a single College, while no provision was made, by way of endowment, of the Grammar Schools, as was primarily provided for in that original Royal Grant of 1797, having been objected to by the House of Assembly, in a Resolution adopted on the 21st of December, 1831, the Executive Council explained that the reason why, up to that date, the endowment of Grammar Schools had not been made, was that the inferior character of the School Lands was such that "it was not possible to realize a Fund large enough to provide for a Grammar School in any one of the Districts of the Province." The Council also stated that they had recommended that the School Lands, consisting of 240,000 acres, should be placed under the direction of the "General Board of Education for the Superintendence of Education throughout the Province." Subsequently, in 1839, an Act was passed by the Legislature on the subject, in which a grant of 250,000 acres of the Waste Lands of the Province was made to the Grammar Schools.

Although it was not a matter of practical, or Provincial, importanc at the time, yet it is surprising that the shrewd public men of those da did not note the fact that, in the Endowment of King's College in 1828 and of Upper Canada College later, as well as in the grant of 250,000 acres of land to the Grammar Schools in 1839, the whole of the Imperial Grant of 1797 was exhausted, leaving nothing of it for the Establishment in due ime of Seminaries of a larger and more comprehensive nature, (practically in the form of Colleges or Universities), as was specifically pointed out and provided for in the original Royal Grant of 1797.*

It may be noticed that each of the early Governors of Upper Canada invariably referred to the Imperial Grant of lands in 1797 as having been made for "Grammar Schools and Colleges."

It is a singular and notable fact, that, in dealing with the University Question in subsequent years, it had become practically a localized one in the public mind. I have become more and more impressed with the belief that, in the oft-times heated discussions on the subject, the original facts connected with the history of the question have been obscured, or really lost sight of. The fact was ignored that the Imperial authorities of 1797 took a wider, and more extended general, view of the future educational wants of this Young and growing Country. They did not adopt, as I have shown, the narrow and circumscribed views expressed in the Address to the King. The Reply, therefore, to that Address was not, (as is usual in such cases,) a mere echoing response. No. The larger insight into the future of the country by the Advisers of the King dictated a wiser and a more statesmanlike answer to that Address. In that reply, the principle of prospective University Expansion was emphasized by specifically providing for the establishment, in due process of time, of Seminaries, or Colleges, of a larger and more comprehensive nature than the County Grammar Schools,-a principle which in the prolonged controversy of 1846-1849, and especially in the later one of 18591863, was entirely ignored, if not, purposely lost sight of.

In consequence of this localized and purely sectional feeling in University Matters, we are apt to forget that elsewhere, and in Great Britain, especially, a demand has lately arisen for the multiplication of Universities, as great centres and sources of scientific truth and progress. This state of public opinion and feeling has had its expression in the recent expansion of the functions of the London University,-in the establishment of the unique, but comprehensive, University of Birmingham, and in the consolidation, with increased powers, of the Colleges of Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool into Victoria University.

In speaking of the New University of Birmingham, no one has sketched with so masterly a hand the object and functions of such a University, as a commercial necessity of the present day, as has Mr. Chamberlain, who has been the active promotor of that University. He regarded it as a great School of Universal Instruction, not confined to any particular branch of knowledge, but taking all knowledge as its province, and arranging regular courses of complete instruction in all the great branches of information. "If they looked to Germany, the argument for such a scheme was greatly strengthened. Education was made in Germany," he said, and it had twenty-one Universities to give effect to such a comprehensive scheme as that which he had here sketched.

It was not until the return of English scientific experts, who were sent to Germany in 1896, that the movement in England, in favour of a more diffused system of higher scientific training by means of Universities took form in that Country. The scientific experts, to whom I have referred, state in their Report, that, as far back as forty, or fifty, years ago, Germany began to prepare herself for the coming industrial struggle of to-day. But this opens up too wide a field to be discussed in this Chapter.

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