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University of Toronto Is IOJ years Old

By W I N N I F R E D E . BARLOW, Beta Tan

IT WAS in 1827 that George I V granted the charter which resulted in
the establishment of the institution of learning now known as the
University of Toronto. The idea of founding this University, how-
ever, was even then not new. As early as 1760, just after the capture
of Quebec by Wolfe, an Oxford poetaster, in a lament on the death of
George I I embodied in blank verse his prophetic vision of a university
on the shores of Lake Ontario;

The time may come when Peace,
Diffusing wide her blessings, on thy shores,'
Romantic Erie, or Ontario's meads,
Where nature revels most, may build a Fane
To Science sacred

Naturally, nothing was done until after Ontario's meads acquired a
population. The first considerable settlements in which is now the
province of Ontario took place at the close of the American Revolution,
when between five and ten thousand United Empire Loyalists were placed
on the land along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, about the
Bay of Quinte, and near Niagara and Detroit. These Loyalists early
felt the need of educational institutions, and in the petitions which they
presented to the government, praying for assistance, are to be found, as
early as 1789, requests for the establishment of schools and colleges.

Colonel John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of the
province of Upper Canada (the U.E.L. colonies west of Montreal) even
before leaving England to assume the government of Upper Canada, had
conceived the idea of founding a university in the province. He was
of the opinion that a university would "have great influence in civilizing
the Indians, and, what is of more importance, those who corrupt them."

Simcoe's proposals had one result. After his departure from the
province in 1796, the legislature of Upper Canada presented a joint
address to the king, praying that a portion of the waste lands of the
Crown might be appropriated for the support of grammar schools and
of a College or University. The report of 1798 suffered the fate of so
many communcations addressed in those days to the Colonial Office;
it was not answered. The executive government of Upper Canada had,
however, its own way of dealing with the immobility of the Colonial
Office. I t did not wait for an answer, but in the dying days of 1798 it
instructed the surveyor-general of the province to set aside, for purposes
of education, twelve townships. In this way the original basis of what
was to be, in part, the endowment of the University of Toronto came into
existence.

In 1825 the time was ripe to bring into operation the long-deferred
plan of establishing a university. I t was proposed that the lands set apart
for the endowment of the university should be exchanged for crown lands
more readily saleable; and in 1826 there was sent to England, for the