It is also no surprise to find the voice of Bishop John Strachan absent from the strident debate of 1860 on the University Question. That, as we have seen, was a Methodist and Presbyterian outcry against the way the provincial endowment for advanced education had been wrested from the Anglicans only to become a





University of Toronto monopoly, misused, in their eyes, by University College “to deal out snatches of knowledge” at the expense of the traditional disciplines. The seventy-year-old bishop, undaunted by worldly adversity, had made his active protest a decade earlier. Foreseeing the inevitable fate of his storm-buffeted King’s College, he had resigned in 1848 to start working for a new and independent Anglican college. In launching the vigorous campaign that would lead to the opening of Trinity College in 1852, a year before University College was created as the teaching arm of the secularized University of Toronto, he castigated the “spurious counterfeit” of education to be offered by the university, as being not only “a training for this world alone, without caring for the next” but also a “pandering to a corrupt appetite for unseasonable knowledge.”⁴²

In the light of such a thunderbolt, one might be tempted to see more than





coincidence in the fact that instruction in French began at Trinity only in 1867, the year of Strachan’s death. Happily, investigation reveals that the stigma of “unseasonable knowledge” had faded from modern languages while the bishop was still alive. The last meeting of the Trinity Corporation he attended was on 12 March 1867, and already on 10 July the previous year it had been resolved “that Mr. Pernet be employed as teacher in French in Trinity College at a salary of £50 for one year.”⁴³ Corporation minutes record no debate on this subject, but we can hope that the bishop even welcomed this enrichment of the Trinity curriculum, perhaps aware of Pernet’s contribution to the cultural programme of Bishop Strachan School. So for fifteen years M. Émile Pernet made his way down to Queen Street twice a week from his duties as lecturer at University College. (This early example of the sharing of staff among Toronto’s institutions of higher learning indicates a kind of co-operation that would be much in evidence both before and





after federation and prefigures the system of “cross-appointments” of the late twentieth century.) In 1881 Pernet’s teaching hours were increased from five to six and a half hours per week and his salary from $300 to $400 per annum.⁴⁴ He took part in the musical programmes of the annual conversazione, giving talks on French music. His contribution to Trinity was long remembered. At the time of his death in Philadelphia in 1917, the Trinity University Review records that Émile Pernet in his house on Isabella Street “had a theatre in which French plays used to be acted by and for his friends.”⁴⁵

At first, French at Trinity was a side attraction, mentioned in the calendar only after the outline of the curriculum. Voluntary attendance at the lectures of “Mons. Pernet” was open to students, but in lieu of academic credit, prizes of the value of $10 each were awarded according to the “results of an Annual Examination.”





Student response was good for five years, but there followed three years with no prize winners for French. Then in 1875 it was announced that marks in French would be counted for credit, and French became a regular elective subject.

The year 1883 is important for the appearance of Modern Languages and

Literature in the final (third) year, as one of five special Pass courses which, with Divinity (later Religious Knowledge) and Classics, might be taken for a ba. This meant French and German, except in the new “Course of Study for Women” established in the same year (for certificates of standing only), where Italian was an option. Honours prescriptions, begun in 1886-87 for matriculation examinations, were introduced in French and German only in 1888-89 (the year before St Hilda’s College received its charter and degrees in arts were thrown open to women).

Already by 1886 students were being examined on texts by Molière, Hugo, Balzac, and Taine and were studying the historical grammar of Brechet and Amère. The programmes in French for Trinity students of second and third years appear to have been comparable to those of third- and fourth-year students at





Victoria and nearly as demanding as for third- and fourth-year students at University College. Although Trinity would wait eighteen years before entering federation, its curriculum shows a clear intention to emulate that of University College by presumably almost a double load of work in the third and final year.

In 1889-90 a Trinity candidate for an Honour ba in Modern Languages had to face two examinations in each language and literature. Each examination tested on composition and conversation, sight translation from modern French authors, and a considerable number of medieval and sixteenth-century texts, while on the first examination “the Candidate will be expected to show a reasonable acquaintance with the chief works of Molière, and their relations to the general and social history of his times,” and on the second the same kind of knowledge was required of “the life and writings of Victor Hugo and his influence upon the political and





religious thought of France.” (For the two examinations in German, the corresponding authors were Goethe and Lessing.) The first four lists for “Honours granted at b.a.” (1890-93) are headed by women from St Hilda’s, but Trinity men rallied to top the lists for the next four years.

When Dunlop died in 1891, the Corporation of Trinity College paid tribute to this “lecturer so universally esteemed and of such wide and varied learning.” It recorded as well a letter from A.F. Chamberlain, then professor of Anthropology at Clark University, who had taught French at University College from 1887 to 1890 and continued as examiner in French for Trinity after leaving Toronto for Clark in 1890. Chamberlain expressed his deep sense of Trinity’s misfortune in losing such “a gentleman and an enthusiastic teacher and student of languages.”⁴⁶

Dunlop’s successor was Archibald Hope Young, who had graduated from University College with honours in Modern Languages in 1887 and had taught at Upper Canada College before his appointment in 1892 as lecturer in Modern Languages and Philology at Trinity. He shared the teaching of French at St Hilda’s with its first principal, Ellen Patteson (later Mrs Rigby). Named professor in 1900, he continued to teach French and German until Trinity became a federated college within the University of Toronto in 1904. He then taught German until his retirement in 1931. During his long career at Trinity he served as librarian (1896-1902) and dean of residence (1914-22), and after his retirement he was named a research professor. His outside fields of interest were mainly Canadian history, particularly church history. His retirement dinner held in Hart House was attended by over four hundred persons, and messages poured in from Trinity men





and women everywhere, testifying to the high esteem in which “Archie” Young was held.

Professor Young had taken a sabbatical year in 1902-03. The Trinity University Year Book reports: “Commenting on the arrangements made by Corporation for granting Professor Young leave of absence, a business man who is a benefactor of Trinity said: ‘It is good business.’ It is hoped that the statement will prove to be true, so that Corporation may feel encouraged to repeat the experiment as occasion arises and as finances permit. The practice is one which has found favour pretty generally in the United States.”⁴⁷ Young’s place was taken by Robert S. Jenkins, a brilliant Honours graduate of University College in both Classics and Modern Languages. Jenkins left a fellowship in Romance Languages in the University of Chicago to take the appointment at Trinity, where he gave





such satisfaction that he remained for a second year as lecturer in French. When the college was unable to offer him a permanent position, he left in 1904 to study in Europe. He then resumed his fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he would have a distinguished career.