History of the Position

On March 15, 1827, the University of Toronto, then called “King’s College”, was granted its royal charter by King George IV. In the years since its founding, the university has been home to a series of colourful presidents who, together with an extraordinary cast of faculty, staff, and students, have guided the university through a history filled with dramatic events — from the admission of women in the 1880s, the University College fire of 1890, two world wars, the student protests of the 1960s, decades of growth and underfunding, to the new wave of building, renewal, and excellence today.

Below is a list of the University of Toronto’s past presidents. Click on a name to show (and hide) a relevant quote from Martin Friedland’s University of Toronto: A History.

• The Honourable and Right Reverend John Strachan – 1827-1848

  

  Strachan was asked by [Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Sir Peregrine] Maitland to prepare a document to take to England, outlining why a university was necessary. As Simcoe had done a quarter of a century earlier, Strachan warned on the danger faced by sending students to the United States for their education. In the United States, he wrote, ‘politics pervade the whole system of instruction. The school books … are stuffed with praises of their own institutions, and breathe hatred to everything English … Some may become fascinated with that liberty which has degenerated into licentiousness, and imbibe, perhaps unconsciously, sentiments unfriendly to things of which Englishmen are proud.’ Three quarters of the doctors in the province, he went on to say, had studied in the United States. Moreover, he wanted to be able to train Church of England clergy to act as teachers: ‘It is of the greatest importance that the education of the Colony should be conducted by the Clergy,’ that is, the Church of England clergy. ‘Nothing can be more manifest,’ he wrote, ‘than that this Colony has not yet felt the advantage of a religious establishment.’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 6)

• The Reverend John McCaul – 1848-1880

  Although there was nothing in the University of Toronto Act specifically excluding women, they were not admitted to University College. President McCaul certainly did not favour their admission. Emily Stowe, later to be the first Canadian woman licensed to practice medicine, sought to take classes at University College in chemistry and physiology in 1869, but her request was denied by the senate. McCaul conveyed the decision to her. When she predicted that ‘these university doors will open some day to women,’ McCaul, according to Stowe, answered ‘with some vehemence’: ‘Never in my day Madam!’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 85)

  

• Sir Daniel Wilson – 1880-1892

  

  Wilson felt that the system of separate colleges ‘under lady principals and other efficient oversight … is the one best calculated to promote the refined culture and high intellectual development of women.’ He was concerned about the ‘physical differences that distinguish the sexes.’ He was also concerned about the moral breakdown that might result from ‘bringing scores of young men and women into intimate relations in the same institution at the excitable age of 18 to 22.’ ‘It is not in the lecture room that trouble is to be apprehended, or danger incurred,’ he wrote. When a group of male students assured Wilson that women would be welcome at the University, Wilson replied, ‘That’s not what I fear, Gentlemen; what I fear is that your reception will be too cordial.’ Furthermore, Wilson himself was concerned about delivering his classes in English literature to a mixed audience. He confided to his friend Dawson of McGill that it would be ‘a painful ordeal to some; a source of mischievous jest to others.’ He would have to avoid discussing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure or Othello. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 89)

• James Loudon – 1892-1906

  In October 1892, just as in previous years, there was a physical ‘hazing’ by the sophomores (the class of ’96). The faculty tried to stop the action by turning a fire house on the students. James Loudon, who had become president of the University just a few weeks before, actually manned the hose. (Presidents, it is safe to advise, should not turn fire hoses on students.) The university council decreed that any repetition of the hazing would lead to expulsion. One of the leaders of the strike and another future politician, Arthur Chisholm, later reminisced in the U of T Monthly: ‘Obviously no student can wrest a fire hose from the hands of a president and turn it on his sacrosanct person. It is academic suicide … By pardonable oversight we had neglected to cut the hose.’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), pp. 160-61)

  

• Sir Robert Alexander Falconer – 1907-1932

  

  President Falconer gave an impressive and important [inauguration] address. ‘The University of Toronto,’ he stated at the outset, ‘is a great university.’ The ideas expressed in his speech were those he strove to implement over the next twenty-five years. He stressed the central position of arts in a university. This was a shift from the royal commission’s view that culture and science had an equal place ‘under the same academical roof.’ ‘A university,’ he reminded those advocating practical education, ‘is not a technical school.’ Another departure from the report of the royal commission was his emphasis on research and graduate work. ‘There must be,’ he said, ‘an increase in post-graduate courses and research.’ The University of Toronto, he went on, ‘should occupy more and more a national position … by attracting graduates from every part of Canada … The true university is a centre for both instruction and research for the impartation of knowledge already gained, and for the extension of the boundaries of knowledge.’

  It was a fine speech that would appeal to the academic staff, particularly when Falconer said that professors’ salaries should be raised and that academic freedom should be protected. His expressed view that the University ‘does not belong to any privileged class’ would appeal to the ordinary citizen. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 219)

• The Honourable and Reverend Henry John Cody – 1932-1945

  In the early 1980s, the professor of higher education Robin Harris tried to find out what the members of the university community of the time thought about Cody’s appointment. He received more than a dozen replies… E. Horne Craigie of zoology, for example, gave a typical response: ‘We accepted it simply as a fait accompli and regarded it definitely with apathy, certainly not with satisfaction.’ Most of the respondents were too junior in the early 1930s to offer much that was helpful. The poet and academic Earle Birney, for example, replied that he was ‘a feckless grad student unconcerned and uninformed about matters of university government other than the Dean of Men’s rules about liquor, poker and women visitors at 73 St. George.’ The distinguished classicist Eric Havelock probably got it right, in noting that ‘Massey was talked of as an ideal candidate for the post, particularly I think in the colleges,’ but that ‘it was accepted widely that Cody was the ideal person to conciliate the Tory political structure and obtain the necessary funding.’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 323)

  

• Sidney Earle Smith – 1945-1957

  

  It is not easy to characterize Smith or his achievements as president. In addressing the senate after his departure, his friend Caesar Wright, the dean of law, said that ‘most members of this body would not hesitate’ to describe him as a ‘great’ university president. That was also Eric Phillips’ view. Others saw him differently. Eric Arthur, for example, said that ‘everything about him was superficial and jovial, you know, always the back slapper. I don’t know into what fraternity of Lions or Elks I’d put him, but in one of those he’d find his spiritual home.’ Wright, on the other hand, who knew him well, described him as ‘a complete extrovert on the surface but actually deeply introspective, and Phillips referred to his ‘complicated simplicity’. [Claude] Bissell wrote: ‘He belonged to no stereotype. He was something at once more simple and more complex: a highly intelligent man with a flexible point of view.’ ‘His success,’ according to Bissell, ‘was based not so much on mastery of detail as on skill in choosing his associates, his emphasis on basic principles, and his driving concern for harmony and strength.’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 412)

• Claude Thomas Bissell – 1958-1971

  Over a two-day period in October, 1958, the 42-year-old Claude Bissell was installed as the eighth president of the University. The brilliant blue presidential gown was placed over his shoulders by Principal F.C.A. Jeanneret of University College and Dean J.A. MacFarlane of medicine, and the cap was presented by Dean R.R. McLaughlin of engineering. The installation, Bissell recorded in his journal, was ‘a great success,’ which brought him ‘a sense of relief.’ In part, this was because he had been suffering from nosebleeds and had had a ‘stubbornly assertive fear’ that one would occur during his speech. The University of Toronto, he told the audience in Convocation Hall, was ‘the custodian of the excellent,’ with a ‘tradition of vigorous individualism.’ Those in the audience probably felt the same confidence in the future of the University as had those attending Robert Falconer’s installation fifty years earlier. After his speech, students in the top balcony sang the Toronto song, ‘The Blue and White’ (‘Old Toronto mother ever dear …’). Bissell’s delighted reaction was captured in his favourite academic picture…. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), pp. 421-22)

• John Robert Evans – 1972-1978

  

  Evans’ [installation] speech carefully laid out the agenda he was to follow over the next six years. Directing his remarks to Premier Bill Davis, he asked for greater resources from the province and pleaded that these funds not be obtained by raising tuition fees. ‘The combination of higher tuition fees and more limited bursary assistance,’ Evans observed, ‘will act as a serious deterrent to individuals from lower income groups, from large families, and from families who have come recently to Ontario and who are least certain about the future.’ Another theme was a restructuring of the role of the colleges. ‘It seems to me highly desirable,’ he stated, ‘for the colleges to attempt to establish a distinctive educational flavour, and I recognize that this may be impossible to accomplish within the framework of the traditional college subjects.’

  Still another concern was part-time students. Such students, he said, ‘are in special need of linkages and interactions because of the shorter time they can spend on campus. We might well explore whether the college system can help to provide such linkages, either through a part-time students’ college, or some part-time membership in existing colleges, or both’. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 553)

• James Milton Ham – 1978-1983

  Ham’s personal style was almost completely different from that of Evans. Evans gave ‘incisive solutions’; Ham asked ‘incisive questions.’ Furthermore, observed The Graduate, ‘he often spends a long time agonizing over decisions,’ at times ‘losing his listeners in a convoluted maze of abstractions.’ Sometimes his speculations, such as those engaged in during a public musing about the closing of Scarborough and Erindale colleges, would get him into trouble. The then vice-principal of Erindale, the historian Desmond Morton, who would later becomes its principal, demanded a public apology. Principal Joan Foley demanded and received an undertaking from Ham that he would write to all students accepted into Scarborough, assuring them that the college ‘offers excellent opportunities for undergraduate learning and that the University has a sustained commitment to its staff and students.’ The very week of his appointment he was criticized by the Globe and Mail for stating in an interview that ‘the university is not about vocation’. ‘How can universities possibly avoid being “about vocation”?’ the paper asked editorially. ‘How can universities avoid participating in the real world?’ (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 583)

• David William Strangway – 1983-1984

  Among the scientists [at the University of Toronto's Erindale College, now UTM] was the geophysicist David Strangway, who had been head of geophysical research for the American space agency NASA. He was an expert in the magnetic properties of minerals and continued his work with NASA by analysing moon rocks at Erindale. One one occasion, 3,000 people lined up to see samples. Strangway would become provost of the University and, for one year, its president… (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 457)

  Before leaving office, Strangway appointed the University’s first status of women officer, senior administrator Lois Reimer. There had been an equity commissioner in the 1970s, but the office had been closed down in 1981 for financial reasons. Strangway also provided money for research on the history of women at the University in preparation for the centenary celebrations of the admission of women to University College in 1884. Great interest in women’s issues had developed throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Women were first admitted to Hart House in 1972 and to Massey College in 1974. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 591)

• George Edward Connell – 1984-1990

  George Connell’s discussion paper, Renewal 1987, was released in March 1987, after widespread consultation within the University community. Connell had actively worked on it for some ten months, prompted by his conviction that there was ‘abundant evidence of the effects of financial attrition and a widely-shared view that the University is not achieving its full potential.’ He had considered appointing a committee of distinguished persons from both inside and outside the University to prepare a report, but was persuaded that he himself should undertake the task. ‘The University of Toronto’ he wrote, ‘has legitimate aspirations of greatness,’ but before it could reach what he referred to as ‘the pinnacle of Parnassus,’ there must be ‘a consensus within the University about the goals we should pursue and the pattern of conduct which will conform to those goals.’ Renewal 1987 was written to help shape that consensus. The decade and a half since 1970, he wrote, had been ‘years of uncertainty … No coherent policies were framed to replace the concerted drive for expansion that characterized the 1960s.’

  The University took his challenge seriously and engaged in a wide-ranging discussion of the many issues raised by the paper. A positive mood was growing on the campus, helped by the spotlight on the University as a result of Polanyi’s [Nobel] prize as well as by the publicity given a few months later to the discovery at the University’s astronomical observatory in Chile of a supernova by a young Toronto scientist, Ian Shelton. Named ‘Supernova Shelton,’ the discovery was featured on the cover of Time magazine. The financial climate was slowly changing. Polanyi publicly noted that one of Toronto’s most talented scientists, the immunologist Tak Mak of the biophysics group, had resisted the lure of an American offer and had decided to remain in Toronto. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), pp. 605-607)

• John Robert Stobo Prichard – 1990–2000

  Although in late 1992 the business board questioned whether tenure was necessary, Prichard argued that ‘our focus should be on performance, not on the institution of tenure itself.’ Tenure is important in a university. Not only does the system help to ensure that those given continuing appointments are of high quality, but, as law professor Stephen Waddams argued in the Bulletin in response to the business board’s speculation, its principal justification is ‘to encourage original thought and research by professional scholars … The only way in which the university can effectively encourage new ideas is to make it clear that they will not bring adverse consequences to their originators, however uncomfortable the ideas may be.’ Moreover, argued [Provost Adel] Sedra, ‘our top departments compete with the large public universities in the US. If we changed the tenure system, nobody would look at us.’

  Prichard later stated that the University ‘is unequivocally committed to tenure, as the centerpiece of both academic freedom and our mission as one of the world’s great public research universities.’ Tenure decisions – both positive and negative – were carefully reviewed by the president, and on occasion he would call the members of the tenure committee to meet with him to explain their decision. The faculty association, however, took the position that the president was exceeding his authority and brought the issue before a grievance panel, which after a lengthy hearing held that the president indeed was responsible for reviewing tenure decisions. He could not call the members of the tenure committee to justify their actions, however, but instead had to work through the chair of the committee. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), pp. 631-632)

• Robert Joseph Birgeneau – 2000-2004

  ‘I was a child of the 60s,’ Birgeneau said. ‘I knew society wasn’t going to change if people didn’t act.’ ‘One of my primary goals,’ he said, ‘will be to increase the diversity of the faculty so that it properly reflects the wonderfully heterogeneous community that it serves.’

  The new president took over on July 1, 2000. He inherited the largest university in North America (among those that belong to the American Association of Universities) in number of students. Its three campuses have more than 50,000 full-time and part-time students, about 3,000 full-time equivalent faculty, and a substantially greater number of staff positions. ‘The University of Toronto is an outstanding institution on the brink of truly international status,’ was Birgeneau’s prediction on his appointment. (Martin L. Friedland, The University of Toronto: A History, University of Toronto Press (2002), p. 665)

• C. David Naylor – 2005 …

  To be continued…