The roots of Catholic higher education in Toronto are French, since it was French-born Bishop Armand-François-Marie de Charbonnel who invited two religious communities from his native country to establish educational institutions in Toronto. The Sisters of St Joseph arrived from Le Puy in 1851, followed closely by the Basilians from Annonay in 1852.⁴⁸

But these religious communities were not intended to minister to Toronto’s French-speaking population, which according to statistics remained very small. It was the English majority the bishop wished these French sisters and priests to serve, a population he humorously referred to as barbarian in a Latin couplet written after his return to France: “Venio de Toronto, apud lacum Ontario, de




populo barbaro – Benedicamus Domino.”⁴⁹

In 1852-53 some of these “barbarians” were admitted to the Basilian school, first housed in a red brick building at 67 Queen Street East, just west of Church Street, named Saint Mary’s Little Seminary, then briefly in the Bishop’s Palace on Church, hence the name St Michael’s after the nearby cathedral. “On 14 February 1853, the minor seminary was transferred to the palace, where it took over the college students [taught by Christian Brothers] and itself became known as St Michael’s College. Results justified the move. The new St Michael’s grew steadily as a combined college and seminary and by November had an enrolment of 47 students, 30 of them boarders. Almost all years of the college and seminary programmes were now being provided.”⁵⁰ After this modest beginning, St Michael’s moved in September 1856 to its present site, then called Clover Hill,





on a piece of land donated by the Hon. John Elmsley. An article in the Toronto Mirror on 19 September 1856 explains: “The College of Clover Hill ... is destined to be the focus endowed with a double power of attraction – the centre of convergence and divergence whence will go forth intelligence to every household, and to which, as to the alma mater of Canadian Catholic literature, the youthful worshippers of the arts and sciences will resort to drink of the fountains of immortality, in knowledge of the pillars and groundwork of the truth.”⁵¹

The emphasis on things Catholic in this statement of purpose is a reflection of the mistrust by the bishop of the intentions of the University of Toronto vis-à-vis “the youthful worshippers of the arts and sciences.” “In the University of Toronto, degrees are granted to Catholics if they reject their faith ... Catholics are excluded





from burses.

... They follow courses determined by the state and are instructed in history and philosophy by Protestants ... Nine-tenths of the students and nineteen-twentieths of the professors are Protestants.”⁵² In spite of these misgivings, Bishop Charbonnel continued to seek affiliation with the non-sectarian University of Toronto, but this would not take place for several decades, even though his successor, John Joseph Lynch, made it known that he did not see the academic programme at St Michael’s College as being entirely successful. “It served the needs of the younger boys and of older students going on for the priesthood, but it was not geared to the university patterns taking form throughout Canada. Boys who really wished to attend university in the full sense had either to break the





sequence of the college programme and prepare to take the university’s matriculation examination or they had to enter philosophy with the intention of transferring later to an American college or professional school.”⁵³

In the years leading up to the affiliation of St Michael’s College and the University of Toronto, there are only three individuals who appear in the records as having taught French: a layman, Hugh Ferguson, of whom nothing is known, and two Basilians, Charles Vincent and Francis M.I. Walsh.⁵⁴ In 1852 Vincent⁵⁵ had been the first French Basilian to volunteer for service in Toronto, a fact that is surprising given that he did not, at the time, speak a word of English. “He was much at sea when given his first appointment in the college, to take charge of the study hall ... He was forced never to refuse permissions for he did not know one request from





another. Frequently some wag asked permissions in words similar to this: ‘You are a fool.’ A nod of the head was the response, so the youth bowed his thanks and went his way, as he wished.”⁵⁶ Things obviously improved over the years, for Vincent was to become superior of the college and was the first member of the Congregation of St Basil to serve on the University of Toronto Senate, at the time of affiliation in 1881. Francis Walsh, the other Basilian who taught French at the college, though it is not at all clear at what level, was a St Michael’s graduate of 1867. He was apparently completely bilingual, frequently preached at Sacré-Coeur, the French-Canadian parish founded in Toronto in 1887, and liked to be called “Père Walsh.”⁵⁷

It seems obvious, from the dearth of information concerning early teaching of French, that this task was passed around among members of the staff,





many of whom could handle it easily, either because it was their first language or because of the regular practice by North American Basilian fathers of spending two or more years of study in France. It was also common for one teacher to cover all subjects at a given level, even in the last years of the Classical programme.⁵⁸

Although the federation of St Michael’s College with the University of Toronto did not occur until 1906 (provisionally in that year, fully in 1910), sixteen years after Victoria and two years after Trinity, Father E.J. McCorkell has rightly pointed out that St Michael’s led the way. ⁵⁹ In 1881 the college became affiliated with the university, with the special privilege of teaching and examining its





own students in History and Philosophy, a privilege it has exercised only in the case of Philosophy.

For this landmark year of 1881, the St Michael’s calendar states that there were three levels of study: Elementary, Commercial, and Classical. The curriculum was a replica of what was taught in Annonay, France, and in the classical colleges of the province of Quebec. There does not seem to have been any French in the Elementary programme (the approximate equivalent of grades 6, 7, and 8), but it is listed as a subject for the Commercial course, as well as in the latter part of the seven-year Classical course (the approximate equivalent of grades 9, 10, 11, 12, and three years of college), for which the following curriculum was announced: THIRD YEAR French. Grammar – (De Fivas⁶⁰) – Etymology. De Fivas’





Reader. FOURTH YEAR Grammar – (De Fivas) – Etymology, Syntax; Lazare Hoche; Translation into English. FIFTH YEAR French. Grammar – Revision. Souvestre – Philosophe sous les toits. Racine, Iphigénie. Translation into French⁶¹

The texts prescribed, along with a number of major works by seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century French authors, were available to students in the embryonic college library.⁶⁴

Even though affiliation with the university was announced with enthusiasm, it does not seem to have changed much in the lives of the students and faculty of St Michael’s College, for students continued to follow the prescriptions of the Classical programme. Belles Lettres and Rhetoric, followed by Philosophy i and ii, were the equivalent of an arts course, but students who chose this route were





not awarded a degree. After 1881, though students could in theory take Philosophy and History at St Michael’s for university credit, they in fact had to register at University College or Victoria in order to obtain this credit. Very few did so in Philosophy, and History was never taught. Not surprisingly, most St Michael’s students opted for the classical college education offered intra muros.

Changes, though slow to come, did finally take place. The St Michael’s calendar of 1902-03 (61, 64) announced the establishment of a “Collegiate Course,” approximating the University of Toronto General Course, with French and German in all four years: Grammar, Dictation, and Translation were to be continued throughout the course, with Conversation added in the last two years. Third-year students would be examined on Bossuet’s Oraison funèbre d’Henriette de France, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie, and Daudet’s




Le Siège de Berlin et autres contes; fourth-year students on La Fontaine’s Fables, Book v, Racine’s Andromaque, Molière’s Précieuses ridicules, Hugo’s Hernani, Augier’s Gendre de M. Poirier, and selected French verse. The same calendar also contains a brief general statement about French and German that merits quotation in full.

Education includes modern languages, foremost among which come French and German, because they form an important part in mental training; for the culture bestowed to reach the gems of the languages; and for their practical use. Educators concede the last to be the least important, and this is why men can with apparent justice cast reproaches upon the usefulness of Modern Languages as taught in our High Schools and Colleges. Keeping in mind the two most important objects, the course given tries, also, as much as possible, to enable the Student to





converse in these languages at the end of his college career. One Modern Language is obligatory, but selection is optional. The course embraces seven years and gives moderately close intimacy with the best authors in either language, ability to read at sight, facility in writing and speaking, besides a knowledge of the literature of the languages.

This statement, repeated in St Michael’s calendars until 1911-12, is less explicit than the detailed explanations of the scope and aim of the General and Honour courses offered in each language that appeared in the University College calendar of 1894-95 or even the more condensed statements that appeared in the next few years, but it offers an interesting commentary on the role of modern languages in education at the beginning of this century.⁶³