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Updated: April 30, 2025
To this letter the Secretary of the Board replied: "The Board was only originally induced to make the grant of £75 on the 14th of November last, for the repairing of the Burnside House and fences in the expectation that the same would be made tenantable and be let to the advantage of the Trust, and have learned with much dissatisfaction that the House is to be occupied by the acting-Principal without any advantage to the Trust; and a personal interest thereby given to him to prevent the College going into speedy operation; and that the Board do also think it necessary to record their opinion that as the Visitors of McGill College they are at all times entitled to inquire into the management of the Burnside property, especially when a demand is made upon the Board for a grant of money to be laid out on the said property.
The united testimony of the College Officers induces the Board to believe that one main reason of the College having received so little support is that the acting-Principal does not enjoy that confidence on the part of the public of which an individual, standing in his position, ought to be possessed....
It was the task of the newly appointed acting-Principal to carry out these plans and to take up the administration of the University in one of the most difficult and critical periods of its existence. The years that followed were to be troubled years of poverty, anxiety and controversy, not unmixed with bitterness, during which, at times, extinction and oblivion threatened the University's life.
The Rev. John Bethune, appointed acting-Principal of McGill in temporary succession to Principal Mountain on November 18th, 1835, was a Canadian by birth and education. His father, the Rev. John Bethune, a native of the Island of Skye, Scotland, and a graduate of King's College, Aberdeen, emigrated to America before the War of Independence.
These provisions, together with the fact that the acting-Principal, who was also Rector of Christ Church, had just been appointed Professor of Divinity, gave rise to critical discussion, and made Lord Metcalfe, the Governor-General, pause before advising the Colonial Office to obtain the Royal ratification of the Statutes.
He then removed to Williamstown in the county of Glengarry, where he became minister of the Church of Scotland. Dr. John Bethune Actg. The future acting-Principal of McGill, the Rev. John Bethune, the younger, was born at Williamstown, Glengarry County, in January, 1791. He received his education at the school of the Rev. Dr. John Strachan at Cornwall, already referred to.
Soon after his appointment, the acting-Principal entered into negotiations with the Board of the Royal Institution on the question of the erection of a suitable building on the Burnside Estate for the reception and instruction of students, as required by James McGill's will.
These liabilities, however, were all liquidated later by the Royal Institution. The eleven years that had passed since the acting-Principal assumed office were among the most critical in McGill's history. They were fraught with a hopeless misunderstanding arising from a dual control, the causes of which have been made sufficiently clear in the documents quoted.
He was stationed for a time at Brockville and vicinity, and in 1818 he was made Rector of Christ Church, Montreal, where he remained for more than fifty years, eventually becoming Dean of the diocese. He was acting-Principal of McGill from November, 1835, until May, 1846. He died in August, 1872.
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.
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