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I understand he comes from a college...." Then he turned directly towards me and said in a loud voice, "What was the name of that college over there you said you came from?" "McGill," I answered equally loudly. "He comes from McGill," the chairman boomed out. "I never heard of McGill myself but I can assure him he's welcome. He's going to lecture to us on, what did you say it was to be about?"
The Professors in the Medical School resented the suggestion that the "actual working of the College" had yet to be commenced. In answer, it was resolved that "in the opinion of Corporation it is expedient that a College be built before the 29th of June next on the Burnside Estate as the surest means of securing the bequest of the late Mr. McGill."
It was further resolved that in the meantime until endowments for Professorships were available from the McGill bequest, "gentlemen resident in Montreal qualified to give lectures should be appointed on the same footing as the four Professors in the Medical Faculty and that they should receive fees from their students ... with the duty annexed of delivering occasional lectures, fees being paid by those who will attend them according to a regulated scale, there being at present no means of endowing Professorships with salaries."
The Governors showed little sympathy with the idea of admitting women students to men's classes; they had no objection to a distinct women's College, but no funds for such an undertaking were available. Dr. Dawson then appealed for help to the women friends of McGill, and his appeal at once met with a ready response.
But Principal Dawson was an earnest and enthusiastic believer in women's education, and early in his connection with McGill he formed plans for the providing of facilities to make such education possible in the University. Because of the indifference and the opposition to what was looked upon as a useless innovation, these plans were slow in maturing and in actual accomplishment.
He wrote to Lord Stanley, "The main point involved in these questions is whether the Religious Instruction to be given at McGill College shall be exclusively that of the Church of England.... "The grounds on which the Governors have adopted the affirmative of the proposition, and appointed a Divinity Professor of the Church of England, are ably stated in their letter to me.
If you move me on from here, of course I'll go; but I warn you I shall lie in wait for Mr. McGill just down this road. I'm here to sell this caravan of culture, and by the bones of Swinburne I think your brother's the man to buy it." My blood was up now, and I'll admit that I said my next without proper calculation. "Rather than have Andrew buy your old parcheesi," I said, "I'll buy it myself.
As a result he appointed him the following year to the commission formed to report on the re-organisation of the University of New Brunswick, which was then in a precarious state. In 1854, the Governors of McGill, on the advice of Sir Edmund Head who was about to become Governor-General of Canada in succession to Lord Elgin, offered the Principalship to William Dawson.
The McGill Union, erected on Sherbrooke Street, as a centre of student activities, was also the gift of Sir William Macdonald, McGill's greatest benefactor, whose donations to the University during the Principalships of Sir William Dawson and Sir William Peterson amounted to over twelve million and a half of dollars.
In these circumstances of unexampled difficulty, the Institution once more humbly pray that your Excellency in transmitting their Memorial to His Majesty's Government, will be pleased to accompany it with such representations as to your Excellency may seem best calculated to relieve them from the extreme embarrassment of their situation; from which, if it is not speedily extricated, not only must all hope be relinquished of the actual establishment of McGill College, already erected by the Royal Charter, but their operations must be suspended altogether and their very existence as a Corporation virtually cease."
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