The Lives of Dalhousie University, Volume One (1818-1925)

315 Pages·2017·6.27 MB·English

The Lives of Dalhousie University
Volume One, 1818-1925: Lord Dalhousie's College
P.B. Waite
Dalhousie College ca. 1900, MS-2-718, Box 12, Folder 60, Dalhousie University
Archives.
© The Governors of Dalhousie College and University 1994 ISBN 0-7735-1166-0 Legal
deposit first quarter 1994 Bibliothèque nationale du Quebec
George Ramsay, ninth Earle of Dalhousie
George Ramsay, ninth Earle of Dalhousie (1770-1838), copied by Charles Comfort from
the portrait by Sir John Gordon
Table of Contents & List of Illustrations
Contents
Acknowledgment & Preface
1 . A Brave Beginning, 1816-1821
2 . New Building, Silent Rooms, 1821-1837
3 . One College or Several? 1838-1847
4 . Through the Shallows, 1848-1864
5 . Great Talent, Little Money, 1863-1879
6 . George Munro and the Big Change, 1879-1887
7 . A Maturing Confidence, 1887-1901
8 . Expanding: A Quest for Space, 1901-1914
9 . The Great War and After, 1914-1922
10 . Towards University Federation, 1921-1925
Bibliographic Essay
Appendices
Appendix 1: The Dalhousie Act of 1863
Appendix 2: Agreement of Association between Dalhousie University and King's College
Appendix 3: Enrollment at Dalhousie, 1863-4 to 1924-5
Appendix 4: Origin of Dalhousie Students, 1863 to 1930
Appendix 5: Two Dalhousie Student Songs
Table of Contents & List of Illustrations
List of Illustrations
Dalhousie College, about 1900
George Ramsay, ninth Earl of Dalhousie
Map of Halifax, 1900
The Grand Parade in 1817
Dalhousie College in 1825, looking north
Dr. Thomas McCulloch in the 1840s
Halifax Tandem Club, in front of Dalhousie College
Halifax in 1860, from Dartmouth
Dalhousie College about 1875, from Barrington Street
George Monro Grant
Sir Charles Tupper, c.1880
James Ross, Principal, 1863-85
Charles Macdonald, Professor of Mathematics, 1863-1901
John Johnson, Professor of Classics, 1863-94
William Lyall, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, 1863-90
George Lawson, Professor of Chemistry, 1863-95
James De Mille, Professor of History and Rhetoric, 1866-80
John Forrest, President, 1885-1911
George Munro
Dalhousie football team, 1908
Senior class, 1885
Eliza Ritchie, BL, 1887
Dean Richard Weldon, first dean of law, 1883-1914
Sir William Young, c.1880
Table of Contents & List of Illustrations
Entrance Hall, Dalhousie College, 1896
Library, Dalhousie College
Archibald MacMechan, Munro Professor of English, 1889-1931
Senior class, 1889-90
The staff of the Dalhousie Gazette, 1894
Dalhousie Drama Club, 1908-9
Dalhousie College about 1900
James G. MacGregor, Munro Professor of Physics, 1879-1901
George S. Campbell, chairman of the Board of Governors, 1908-27
The Murray Homestead, c.1947
Dalhousie debating team, 1910
A. Stanley MacKenzie, President, 1911-31
Frank Darling of Toronto, architect of Studley campus
The Science Building
The Macdonald Memorial Library: exterior
The Macdonald Memorial Library: interior
Damage to Science Building in the 1917 explosion
Alumni procession, 1919, forming up on the Grand Parade
Shirreff Hall: the Prince of Wales laying cornerstone
Shirreff Hall: construction
Shirreff Hall: dining room
Shirreff Hall: library and study room
The Studley campus, c.1924
Eben Mackay, Professor of Chemistry, 1896-1920
Dalhousie Student Council, 1922-3
Women’s basketball team, 1922
Federation meeting at Dalhousie, July 1922
Acknowledgments & Preface
Acknowledgments
The photographs in this book are mostly from Dalhousie University Archives. Dr Charles
Armour, university archivist, was able to provide some negatives; but for others the
professional skill of Findlay Muir, of Dalhousie’s Audio-Visual Services, has been essential in
re-doing old photographs. The overall selection of pictures is basically mine, but I have had
excellent advice, generously tendered, from Karen Smith, in charge of the Killam Library’s
Special Collections, and from Mern O’Brien, director of the Dalhousie Art Gallery. A word
about the Arthur Lismer sketches. He was principal of the Nova Scotia (then the Victoria)
College of Art and Design in Halifax from 1916 to 1919. When Dalhousie was considering
celebrating its centennial in 1918, it commissioned Lismer to do sketches for its historical
booklet. Not all the original sketches were published, nor have all the published ones
survived; but some of both have been reproduced here.
P.B.W.
Preface
In 1986, near the end of his term as president of Dalhousie University, W.A. MacKay invited
me to write Dalhousie’s history. His successor, Howard Clark, agreed. Submission of the
manuscript we established as 31 December 1992.
In that time I believed it possible to master the main sources of Dalhousie’s history. I was
partly right, but only partly. Dalhousie’s official records are substantial; they, and the
Dalhousie Gazette, were canvassed, as well as collections of private papers such as those
of the ninth Earl of Dalhousie (1770-1838) and Archibald MacMechan, professor of English
here from 1889 until 1931. What was impossible to master, save as the work of two lifetimes,
was Dalhousie in the Halifax newspapers. The references to newspapers are but samples
drawn from a sea of information. There were eleven newspapers in Halifax in the 1860s, and
if in time they became fewer, they also got thicker.
I once cherished the idea that Dalhousie’s history could be written in one volume, that the
current fashion of writing universities’ histories in two volumes, such as those of Queen’s,
McGill, McMaster, Mount Allison, was simply lack of control on the part of the author.
Ruthless principles of selection could surely get Dalhousie’s history within the covers of one
convenient volume. So indeed it could; but it would have been a stiff, dried-up book, full of
charters and statutes, stones and buildings, the humanity baked out of it. No reader, unless
he be a monster of determination (and digestion), would be able to read so dense a book as
Acknowledgments & Preface
that would have to be. So what has emerged has been, to continue the metaphor, a
Christmas cake: flour, butter, and eggs to be sure (the building materials of cakes), but with
cherries, raisins, candied fruit, and brandy mixed up in it. Thus the reader will encounter
poetry, real and doggerel, flippant remarks from the Dalhousie Gazette, nasty (and
elevating) comments from legislators, as well as usual accounts of buildings, finances,
appointments, and curriculum. A university is a place where human beings meet and work,
where professors teach students, and students even teach professors, and their lives and
thoughts are worth trying to recover.
Dalhousie was, and is, a university in Halifax, and it seemed essential, right from the start, to
give something of Halifax’s character and history. Dalhousie was also, for its first forty years
and more, a creature of Nova Scotian politics, at the centre of the one-college idea in the
1840s - an idea it never quite abandoned. A little of the history of that imperialism, as it may
well have been regarded by other colleges in Nova Scotia, was also inevitable.
This is a narrative history of Dalhousie. Analysis there is, but it is derived mostly from the
work of others on the social backgrounds and careers of Dalhousie, and other, students. I
have used their research with gratitude.
I have reason to be grateful to many people in this long process. Dr Charles Armour,
Dalhousie University archivist, put the full resources of the Archives at my disposal, and I
have imposed myself and my exigencies upon his good nature and that of his staff. Allan
Dunlop of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia has often suggested material relevant to
Dalhousie that I would not have found. The staff of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, that
wonderful place, have been unfailingly helpful. Mrs Carolyn Earle of the Maritime
Conference Archives at Pine Hill introduced me to papers that I should certainly have
missed otherwise. Many professors, students, members of the Board of Governors, alumni,
and others have given me their time and their recollections. They have been acknowledged
more specifically in the notes and bibliography.
The manuscript has been read by the doyen of Nova Scotian historians and political
scientists, Murray Beck, professor emeritus of Dalhousie. His Lunenburg background,
experience of Acadia University, eighteen years as Dalhousie’s professor of political science,
and especially his comprehensive knowledge of Nova Scotia’s history and politics, have
been brought to bear on this manuscript. I have taken his points unreservedly.
Dean Judith Fingard, of Dalhousie’s Graduate Studies, herself an expert on Dalhousie’s
history, found time to read the manuscript and make several suggestions which I trust I have
incorporated, not too imperfectly. Dr T.J. Murray, dean of medicine from 1985 to 1991, has
been good enough to read and comment on sections where I deal with the Medical School
and has saved me from several pitfalls. Denis Stairs, vice-president academic of Dalhousie,
1988-1993, to whom this project reports, has been a great help. In the midst of far more
weighty responsibilities he has answered requests quickly and dexterously.
Acknowledgments & Preface
Two anonymous reviewers evaluated the manuscript for McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Thankless labour that, for only a modest reward; but they made valuable suggestions. Mary
Wyman typed the whole manuscript into the History Department’s word processor, chapter
by chapter, revision by revision. Efficient, quick, amiable, she is a paragon. Diane Mew
edited the manuscript from end to end. She is the best editor in Canada I know, whose
information ranges from Caesar to Shackleton, whose travel from Shetland to South Africa;
best of all she is armed with an impatient disdain for prosy writing. She has spruced up the
whole text.
My wife, Masha, has read it all in draft and in proof and I have continually relied on her
judgment and good taste.
P.B.W.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 1993
1. A Brave Beginning, 1816-1821
(Return to Table of Contents)
.I.
A Brave Beginning
1816-1821
Lord Dalhousie comes to Nova Scotia. Halifax in 1816. The Castine Fund.
Presbyterian rivalries. Lord Dalhousie’s College approved. Scottish educational
traditions. Laying the cornerstone, 1820.
Dalhousie Castle lies a dozen miles southeast of Edinburgh, not far from the village of
Bonnyrigg, but out in the Scottish countryside, as befits an ancient establishment that dates
from the thirteenth century. Of that original building only the foundations and dungeon
remain; the main structure now visible was built about 1450, using the salmon-red stone
quarried across the South Esk. The castle stands between the South Esk and the Dalhousie
Burn that flows into it, two streams where salmon and trout still run.
The rivers flow north in this part of Midlothian. The whole countryside, Edinburgh included,
fronting on the Firth of Forth, is backed against the Moorfoot hills and the hills of
Lammermoor. The history of this Midlothian countryside is shot through with legend, and
with the wars against England. Sir William Ramsay de Dalwolsey swore fealty to the English
king, Edward I, at Dalhousie Castle, when Edward stayed there on his way to defeat William
Wallace at Falkirk in 1298. The Ramsay family were raised to the peerage in the time of the
Stuart king, James VI of Scotland and James I of England (1603-25); that did not prevent the
first Earl of Dalhousie from fighting with his regiment in 1644 at Marston Moor, down in
Yorkshire, on the side of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell himself wrote despatches from
Dalhousie Castle in 1648, a few months before the execution of Charles I in London in
January 1649.
After the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, the Ramsays and other Scots became
soldiers in the service of Great Britain. The fifth earl fought in the War of the Spanish
Succession, 1702-13; another Ramsay signed the agreement for the surrender of Quebec
on 18 September 1759. The ninth earl, George Ramsay, ours, fought with Wellington in
Spain in 1812-14, and at Waterloo in 1815. Watching the ninth earl’s panache that terrible
Sunday, 18 June 1815, Wellington said of him, “That man has more confidence in him than
other general officer in the army.” That confidence was not always justified; the ninth earl’s
1. A Brave Beginning, 1816-1821
compaigning in Spain did not earn him accolades from historians, who pictured him as slow
and methodical rather than decisive. Yet he must have been well regarded at the time, for
during and after the war he received honours from king and Parliament - a KB in 1813, after
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Waterloo a GCB, and the official thanks of Parliament .
All that did not help much to repair Dalhousie Castle, which Lord Dalhousie set about after
his return from Waterloo. He got an architect to help restore it to its original form, which cost
more than he had readily available. Like many British officers after the Napoleonic Wars, he
sought a colonial appointment to preserve his military rank and pension. His idea was to
follow Sir John Coape Sherbrooke as lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia and thence as
governor general of British North America to which Sherbrooke had been appointed in April
1816. The colonial secretary was Lord Bathurst, the longest serving colonial secretary in the
nineteenth century, from 1812 to 1827. His actual title was secretary for war and colonies, a
significant combination of responsibilities. He also found it easy to reward service in the
Peninsular War with positions in the postwar colonial service. Lord Dalhousie got his
appointment to Nova Scotia in July 1816. With his wife and the youngest of his three sons
he sailed from Portsmouth on 11 September in HMS Forth, a forty-gun frigate. It was a good
passage, via Madeira as was common in westward sailings, and she ran into Halifax harbour
on the morning of 24 October. Lord Dalhousie came ashore in state the same afternoon.
Lord Dalhousie took to Halifax and to Nova Scotia almost at once. He liked his house and he
noted that the “natives,” as he at first called Haligonians, “good quiet and plain Burgesses,
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are inclined to show us every attention." He was forty-six years old, fit, intelligent, and
active, driven by considerable curiosity about the world around him. He was a man trenchant
of mind and inclined to be authoritarian of decision, though cautious until he had duly
weighed up the options. He was experienced and knowledgeable on farming, and was much
given to improving old and slack methods in both farming and politics. In his early travels
around Nova Scotia he noted much land unfarmed, not because it was not owned, but
because the owners did not live up to the terms of the grant, holding it for opportunity to sell
it for a fat, but unearned, profit. With the help of Richard J. Uniacke, his attorney general,
Dalhousie was able, over the next year or so, to get some 100,000 acres returned to the
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crown for non-performance of the terms of the land grant .
His quest for knowledge of his domain is detailed in his journal, and it opens up fresh and
interesting vistas on the Nova Scotia of 1816-20, a period not otherwise well served by
newspapers and other records. Nothing seemed to give Lord Dalhousie more satisfaction
than to mount his horse and explore the Nova Scotian countryside, or to get the admiral on
the Halifax station to take him on a voyage around the coasts. Sometimes, as in 1817, he
combined both, taking a naval ship around to Pictou, and then riding back to Halifax via
Truro. Few governors have been so assiduous at seeing and describing their colony. And he
grew to be very fond of it. He wrote to Sir John Sherbrooke, now governor general of British