THE DAWN OF MCGILL
During the discussion in the Legislature of educational conditions in
Lower Canada which resulted in the establishment of the Royal
Institution for the Advancement of Learning under the Act of 1801, one
of the most prominent members of the Provincial Parliament was James
McGill, a merchant and fur-trader who represented the West Ward of
Montreal in the Legislative Assembly. Only meagre facts about the life
of James McGill are available and the documentary evidence bearing on
his career is scanty. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on the 6th of
October, 1744. His parents were natives of Banffshire. After an
elementary school education in his native town he entered Glasgow
University at the age of twelve, in accordance with the custom of those
days which permitted attendance at a University at a very early age. The
Matriculation Album of Glasgow University contains the following entry:
1756, Jacobus McGill, filius natu maximus Jacobi mercatoris Glasguensis.
Nine years later, his younger brother Andrew entered the University, as
indicated by the following record in the Matriculation Album:
1765, Andreas McGill, filius natu quintus Jacobi mercatoris
Glasguensis.
Like so many other adventurous Scotchmen of that period, after
completing his education James McGill determined to seek his fortune in
the new land beyond the horizon, from which wondrous stories of the
wealth and romance of the fur-trade were drifting to the old world. He
emigrated to the American Colonies, where he remained for some years,
and where he was later joined by his younger brother, Andrew. But before
the American Revolution the brothers moved to Canada and in 1775 they
were firmly and prosperously established in business in Montreal, where
the older brother became connected with the famous fur-trading
North-West Company. That he was at that time regarded as one of the
leading citizens is evident from the fact that he was selected for many
important and responsible civic duties. During the American Revolution
when Canada was invaded and General Guy Carleton withdrew all the troops
to Quebec and left Montreal to its fate, James McGill was one of those
who saw the folly and uselessness of resistance. He preferred to save
the city from unnecessary destruction and he was one of the twelve
citizens,--six French and six English,--who were selected to sign the
capitulation of the city to General Richard Montgomery on November 12th,
1775. His five associates were John Porteous, Richard Huntley, John
Blake, Edward Gray and James Finlay. On December 2nd, 1776, he married
Mrs. Marie Charlotte Guillemin, a French Roman Catholic lady, the widow
of a French Canadian gentleman, Joseph A. T. Desrivières. The ceremony
was performed by the Rev. David Charbrand Delisle, Rector of the
Protestant Parish of Montreal and Chaplain of the Garrison. The Church
record reads:--"1776, James McGill, Esq., and Mrs. Charlotte Guillemin,
widow, were married by Licence the 2nd December, 1776." Mrs. James
McGill was born in Montreal in 1747, the daughter of William Guillemin
and Claire Genevieve Foucault. She married Joseph A. T. Desrivières in
Montreal on the 19th of September, 1763, at the age of sixteen.
Soon after his arrival in Montreal James McGill acquired the Burnside
estate of forty-six acres, with the Burnside Manor, in which he resided
during the remainder of his life. He took into partnership, under the
name of "McGill and Todd," his friend, Isaac Todd, a man of keen
business ability and of civic prominence.
James McGill is described by his contemporaries as of "a frank and
social temperament," in figure "tall and commanding, handsome in youth
and becoming somewhat corpulent in his old age," and in his leisure time
"much given to reading." He was a prominent member of the Beaver Club,
the members of which were all fur-traders who had amassed considerable
wealth in their calling. A contemporary had a memory of him in jovial
mood at one of the festal meetings of this Club, "singing a voyageur's
folk-song with sonorous voice, and imitating, paddle in hand, in time
with the music, the action of the bowman of a canoe ascending a rapid."
Because of his pleasing personality, his prosperity and business
strength, and his marriage connections with another race and religion,
he was held in respect and popularity by all classes, irrespective of
nationality or creed. It was therefore but natural that he should enter
political life after the granting of the Constitutional Act by the Home
Government in 1791. He was selected, with J. B. Durocher as his
colleague, to represent the West Ward of Montreal in the first
parliament of Lower Canada which met on the 17th of December, 1792.
Later he became a member of the Legislative Council, and in 1812 he was
appointed one of the commissioners for removing from the city the old
walls which had been built in 1724. He took a prominent part in the
Militia organisation; during the war of 1812 he was honorary Colonel of
the Montreal Infantry Volunteer Regiment; later and before hostilities
ended, although he was too old for active service, he was promoted to be
Brigadier General, and he seems to have had a large part in directing
the administration of the various Militia units. After a busy, active
and strenuous life of unselfish service for his community and of devoted
efforts for the promotion of tolerance and harmony between races and
creeds as the one sure foundation for a united Canadian nationality, he
died in Montreal on December 19th, 1813, at the age of sixty-nine, and
was buried on December 21st. The official record of his death reads: "On
the nineteenth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirteen,
the Honourable James McGill, Colonel, Commandant of the Montreal
Militia, died, and was buried on the twenty-first following." The
certificate of death was signed by his partner, Isaac Todd, and by
Thomas Blackwood, a native of Lanarkshire, Scotland, who was at one time
employed in the firm of McGill and Todd, and who later formed a business
partnership with Francis Desrivières.
[Illustration: Thomas Pattendel--P. Canot Sculpsit
_Montreal as James McGill knew it_]
Mrs. James McGill survived her husband less than five years. She died in
Montreal on the 16th of April, 1818, aged seventy years and nine months,
and was buried on the 18th following. There were no children from the
marriage.
James McGill was born of Scotch Presbyterian parents and he grew up in
the church and religion of his fathers. When he settled in Montreal
there was no Church of Scotland in the city. The first Presbyterian
congregation in Montreal consisted of a small group of Scottish
settlers. It was organised without a church building in 1786 by the Rev.
John Bethune, who ministered to its members from March 12th in that year
until he moved to Upper Canada in May, 1787. But it was but a temporary
organisation and had no continuous status. From 1787 to 1790 there is no
record of the holding of a strictly Presbyterian service in the city.
The only Protestant body holding service regularly was known as "the
Protestant Congregation of Montreal," the pastor of which was the Rev.
David Charbrand Delisle, one of the three clergymen who had been
employed by the Church of England to labour among the French-Canadians.
He was Rector of the Parish of Montreal and Chaplain of the Garrison.
This congregation worshipped until 1789 in the Church of the Recollet
Fathers, which with great tolerance and courtesy was for twenty years at
their disposal; in 1789 they were given the Chapel belonging to the
Jesuits' College, then Government property; they opened it for public
worship in December under the name of Christ Church.
Like all the young Protestant Scotchmen living in Montreal at that time,
James McGill became by necessity a member of the Protestant Episcopal
Congregation. The adherents to the two Protestant creeds were tolerant
and harmonious in their relations one with the other and they were
content to worship together. In 1789 when the Bishop of Nova Scotia
visited Montreal an address was presented to him by the Church Wardens,
and by "a committee of the Protestant inhabitants of Montreal,"
irrespective of their former creed. The majority of the latter were
Scotch Presbyterians. The Bishop was met at Pointe aux Trembles by the
reception committee. One of the "Protestant inhabitants" who signed and
presented the address was James McGill. There is no doubt that the
larger number of this "committee of Protestant inhabitants," at that
time identified with the Protestant Episcopal Congregation of Montreal,
returned to the Church of their fathers as soon as a Church was built,
several of them becoming office-bearers. The precise action taken by
James McGill is uncertain. He seems to have divided his allegiance
between the two communions; while not severing his connection entirely
with the Church of England he gave his support to the establishment of a
Church of Scotland and later became identified with it. When the St.
Gabriel Street Church, the first Presbyterian Church in Montreal, was
built in 1792, he subscribed ten guineas towards the construction of the
building. He signed the call to the first pastor of the Church, the Rev.
James Somerville; he thereafter contributed three pounds a year to his
stipend and occupied pew No. 16 in the Church. His brother Andrew later
contributed five pounds towards removing the remaining debt from the
building. The Rev. Mr. Somerville, the pastor of the Church, officiated
at Andrew's funeral. There is little doubt from the records that James
McGill regarded himself as of the Church of Scotland although he was for
a time, in those days of somewhat surprising religious harmony and
tolerance, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Montreal.
One of James McGill's most intimate friends and confidants in Canada was
the Rev. John Strachan, afterwards the Right Reverend Bishop of Toronto,
who was thirty-four years his junior. He was a native of Aberdeen,
Scotland. He received his M. A. from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1797,
and then attended for some months Divinity Classes at St. Andrew's
University, near which he had a post as a Parish schoolmaster. Towards
the end of 1797, he came to Canada by invitation to organise a seminary
of learning in Upper Canada, but the plan was abandoned and he became
tutor in a private family in Kingston, Ontario. He offered himself as a
candidate for the pastorship of the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian
Church on September 21, 1802, but before his letter was received another
applicant, the Rev. James Somerville, had been accepted. Later he took
orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed to the Church at
Cornwall. He opened there a school and his fame as a teacher was soon
widespread. Among his pupils were the three sons of the Rev. John
Bethune who had established the first Presbyterian Congregation in
Montreal, one of whom afterwards became Rector of Christ Church and
acting-Principal of McGill University. In 1807, he married the widow of
James McGill's younger brother, Andrew, formerly Miss Wood of Cornwall,
and he was thus brought into closer relationship with the McGill
family. His enthusiasm for education and for its advancement in Canada
was unbounded and it is evident that he impressed his ideas as to ways
and means and methods on the mind of his wealthy merchant friend. James
McGill was a believer in the value of education; he knew what it had
done for his own home-land, and what Scotland, educationally, was doing
for the world. He determined that the torch which for him had been
lighted in Glasgow University should burn likewise for those who would
succeed him in the land of his adoption. He had indicated that
determination during the consideration of the subject in the
Legislature. But on the question of method he sought advice from his
young teacher friend, Strachan, whom he frequently visited in the
latter's home in Cornwall. During these Glengarry visits there was many
a happy and roseate night of mingled sociability and high seriousness,
after the custom of their race and time, when the two friends, the young
educationalist and the older man of wealth, with similar vision, sat
late in discussion of the Canadian educational problem and of plans for
its solution.
In a letter to the other surviving executors of James McGill's will,
written from York [Toronto] on May 31, 1820, seven years after James
McGill's death, the Rev. Dr. Strachan gave interesting information on
these discussions and their bearing on the circumstances leading up to
the practical working out of James McGill's dreams on education as
evidenced later in his will. He wrote: "It was, I believe, at Cornwall
during one of the visits which Mr. McGill made to Mrs. Strachan and me
that his final resolution respecting the erection of a College after
his name, endowing it, etc., was taken. We had been speaking of several
persons who had died in Lower Canada and had left no memorial of
themselves to benefit the country in which they had realised great
fortunes. And particularly I mentioned a University, as the English had
no Seminary where an Academical Education could be obtained. We had
repeated conversations upon the subject, and he departed determined to
do something and with some inclination to leave twenty instead of ten
thousand pounds, together with Burnside, and even to make some
preparations before his death, expressing at the same time a wish that
if he did anything I should take an active part in the proposed
College."
It was soon after the visit referred to that James McGill made his
will,--on March 8, 1811. He bequeathed to the Royal Institution for the
Advancement of Learning, in trust, the sum of £10,000 and his Burnside
Estate of forty-six acres, together with the dwelling house and other
buildings, for the erection on the estate, and the endowment, of a
University or College on the express conditions,--and these were the
only conditions imposed,--that the University be erected and established
within ten years of his death and that one of the Colleges to be
comprised in the University should be called "McGill College." If the
College was not erected in the time specified the conveyance to the
Royal Institution was to be null and void; and the estate and endowment
were to revert to his widow, and after her death to her first husband's
nephew, Francis Desrivières and to his legal heirs. He named as
executors of the will John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and
James Dunlop.
These executors were all close personal friends of the testator. The
career of John Strachan has already been outlined. Although it was not
specified in the will that he should be connected with the proposed
College, it may be assumed that because of his close friendship, his
marriage connection, and his established reputation as a brilliant and
successful educationalist with definite ideas on Canadian nationality,
James McGill desired that he should have a prominent part in the
organization of the College and that possibly he should be its first
Principal. That this desire was stated to the trustees seems certain. In
a letter written from Toronto some years after James McGill's death,
while the trustees who knew the circumstances were still living, Bishop
Strachan said:
"If it had been my desire, it was certainly in my power to have been at
the head of it [McGill College] for it so happened that I had some
difficulty in prevailing with my friend, Mr. McGill, to forbear annexing
it as a condition to his bequest that I should fill that situation;" and
he added that "a Professorship in McGill College was never desired or
thought of by me, nor could any situation in that institution have
formed an inducement to me to leave this Province to which I have been
for so many years devoted."
The three trustees associated with the Rev. Dr. Strachan as
administrators of the will were all prominent in civic and provincial
affairs. They were all Scotchmen and were connected with St. Gabriel
Street Presbyterian Church. John Richardson, partner in the mercantile
house of Forsyth, Richardson and Co., was a native of Banffshire,
Scotland. He represented the East Ward of Montreal in the first
Parliament of Lower Canada, which met in 1792, and he took his seat at
the same time as James McGill, his colleague from the West Ward. With
the latter, he was one of the commissioners appointed for the removing
of the old city walls in 1802 and it was through his influence that the
bill providing for the construction of a canal to Lachine was passed.
The firm of which he was a member contributed £20 towards the building
of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and he personally subscribed
£3 a year towards the minister's stipend; he occupied pews No. 6 and No.
47. He was one of a committee of three formed to purchase the land on
which the General Hospital now stands; he was chairman of the committee
which superintended the construction of the Hospital and was later
chosen as its first president. He died in 1831, aged seventy-six.
The Honourable James Reid, the second trustee named, was admitted to the
Bar of the Province in 1794; he was raised to the Bench as a puisne
Judge in 1807, and later in 1823 he was made Chief Justice of Montreal.
He subscribed one guinea a year to the stipend of the first pastor of
St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and occupied pew No. 14. He died
in 1848 at the age of seventy-nine. After his death, his widow erected
to the memory of her husband the southwest wing of the Montreal General
Hospital.
James Dunlop, the fourth trustee named, settled in Montreal in 1777 and
established a general store in St. Paul Street. He took an active part
in the military organisation during the War of 1812, and served as Major
under Brigadier General James McGill. He subscribed ten guineas towards
the building of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and his name
appears for ten pounds on a special subscription list for liquidating
the debt on the original building; he signed the manifesto in favour of
the first pastor of the Church, the Rev. James Somerville; he
contributed five pounds annually towards his salary and occupied pews
No. 19 and No. 99. He died in 1815 at the age of sixty.
James McGill's estate sloped from the base of Mount Royal towards the
St. Lawrence River. It consisted of forty-six acres of fertile land
extending south to what is now Dorchester Street and reaching from the
present University Street on the east to what are now McTavish and
Metcalfe Streets on the west. St. Catherine Street and Dorchester Street
were not then in existence and Sherbrooke Street was but a narrow road
running through the farm. East, west and south of the estate were open
fields and a few scattered houses, and the city proper lay a long
distance away, beside the water-front. A small stream of water passed
through the farm. It entered from the east near the present Milton
Street entrance on University Street; it then turned south and was
increased in volume by the water from a spring near the site of the
Macdonald Engineering Building. It passed on through the present tennis
courts in "the hollow" by the Physics Building, crossed Sherbrooke
Street where it was joined by another small stream from the southwest,
and then flowed close to Burnside House and on towards the city. It is
recorded that the name Burnside was given to the estate because of this
stream or "burn" as the Scotch called it. James McGill's home, Burnside
House, a large stone building, was situated on the present McGill
College Avenue, about midway between the present Sherbrooke and Burnside
Streets on the left-hand side looking south; it was demolished in 1860
to make room for the buildings now in that locality. A narrow road led
from near the front of the house to what is now St. Antoine Street. The
estate was divided into small sections which were later rented for
purposes of cultivation or pasture. It contained numerous trees and
shrubs, and was at that time regarded as one of the most valuable and
desirable parts of the district of Montreal.
In the days of James McGill, Montreal was a small town of from twelve to
fifteen thousand inhabitants, and of these the large majority were
French. Indeed, the whole province had but a scanty population.
One-third of the houses were wooden huts. The town stretched out along
the water-front in a series of narrow blocks and straggling streets. The
trade with foreign countries was exceedingly small. The entire carrying
capacity of ships annually arriving at Quebec did not exceed 12,000
tons, and only a few of these ships went on to Montreal. In 1813, the
year of James McGill's death, only nine vessels entered Montreal from
the sea, and their total capacity was but 1,589 tons. At the end of the
18th century, the exports of furs and other products from the entire
province was little more than half a million pounds sterling. Strange
and primitive customs were still in vogue in the city. The price of
bread was regulated by "His Majesty's Justices of the Peace," and bakers
were required to mark their bread with the initials of their name.
Slavery was not unknown, and a sale advertisement towards the end of the
century included in the articles to be sold "a stout, healthy negro man
about 28 years of age,--an excellent cook, and very fit for working on a
farm." A mail for England was dispatched about once a month. It went by
way of New York and took from three to four weeks to reach that city; it
was then forwarded by packet-ship to England, and usually at least four
months passed before an answer could be received. The incoming mail was
put off the New York packet at Halifax; it came overland from Halifax to
Montreal, this part of the journey alone taking nearly four weeks.
[Illustration: Photo Rice Studios
The Burnside Estate]
Such was the somewhat primitive city in which James McGill lived and
laboured and amassed his wealth. Such was the community to the service
of which he contributed unstintingly of his material substance, his
energy and his talent. Such, too, were the conditions in which this
hard-headed, practical business man dreamed a dream,--a dream of a
greater Canada with a distinctly Canadian nationality trained to solve
its own problems in its own way, and of the necessity for providing for
the youth of the great land mirrored in his mind the privileges of an
adequate education similar to that which he had enjoyed in his own
native country. For James McGill seems to have been a combination of the
practical Scottish business man and the dreaming Scottish mystic. Like
the other early Canadian pioneers of his race he was a hard-fisted man
battling by necessity in a hard-fisted new world, but he kept in that
new world the spiritual vision born of Scottish glens and mists and
hills. He worked like his ancestors for the building of churches and
schools and court houses, symbolic of religion, education and law, as
milestones of civilisation in a new land and without which no country
could make progress. He knew that without the torch of a free and
liberal education the land of promise to which he had come and from
which he had received much, could not advance to what he believed to be
its destined place of power and service in the world. And so he dreamed
of a great University which would not only be local in its usefulness,
serving a small city which his faith told him would one day grow to
giant size, but also national in its influence, and ministering to the
enlightenment of that larger Canada which his vision saw in the far and
dim distance. The making of his bequest two years before his death for
the establishment and the endowment of McGill College was the first step
towards the fulfilment of his hopes. But between the dream and its
ultimate realisation lay long and troubled years of baffling difficulty
and bitter discouragement, and at times, despair.