FRENCH STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
1 W. Stewart Wallace, A History of the University of Toronto, 1827-1927 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1927), 130.
2 President’s Report 1915-16, 2. Copies of the published presidents’ reports cited in this chapter are in the University of Toronto Archives.
3 John Squair, The Autobiography of a Teacher of French (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1928), chap. 13.
4 University of Toronto Archives (UTA), John Squair, B77-0027/001(001), 66-7.
5 UTA, James Loudon, B72-0031/016(011), 79-81. Loudon’s story reveals some of the infighting involved in this battle. Beyond Wilson’s hostility, he alleges that of Vice-Chancellor William Mulock
, whose constant cry of “no funds” masked his secret enmity toward Van der Smissen (who had failed to vote for him at the first Senate election in 1873) and consequently toward Van der Smissen’s close associate, Squair. He also describes the open oppositi
on of Maurice Hutton of Classics, reportedly the author of a hostile letter to the Mail signed “Graduate,” which “got such a terrible mauling from a ‘Toronto Graduate,’ said to have been Mr. Fraser, that he never forgave the letter.”
6 University Monthly 18, no. 9 (June-July 1918): 323-6.
7 According to Squair’s Autobiography, chap. 24, the persons most active in organizing the Bonne Entente were, in Ontario, the lawyer J.M. Godfrey and the journalist Arthur Hawkes; in Quebec, Si
r George Garneau and Z. Hébert. Squair called the exchanges “very successful” and lamented their discontinuance. Arthur Hawkes wrote glowingly of the first two exchanges: “Nothing so heartening had happened since Confederation.” (“The Bonne Entente,” Univ
ersity Monthly 17, no.6 (1917): 213-7.)
8 J.S. Will, “The Modern Language Course,” University Monthly 15, no.6 (April 1914): 305, 307.
9 Victoria University Archives, Senate, 91.117c, box 23, Minutes, 3 Dec. 1948, resolution re Professor Edgar.
10 Acta Victoriana 48, no.1 (Oct. 1923): 9. A caption to the portrait reads: “P.E— / Who, to Freshman, / Rarely unbends, but / Never unwinds.”
11 C.B. Sissons, A History of Victoria University (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1952), 221.
12 Acta Victoriana 29, no. 4 (Jan. 1906): 294-5.
13 Sissons, Victoria University, 271. Sissons must have had grounds for venturing to say that Snow “left Toronto in a whirlwind of Debts,” but his reliability is weakened by his reference to Sn
ow as a Harvard PhD and in later life, an organist in Phillip Brooks’s old church in Boston. This may have been one of Snow’s sons by his first marriage; he himself lived in New York City after 1919 until his death in 1949.
14 ”A Plea for the Encouragement of the Study of the Russian Language,” University Monthly 16, no.4 (1915-16): 182-8.
15 The appendix to the twenty-fifth anniversary report of the Harvard class of 1903 devotes a half-page to his writings in various areas. The fiftieth anniversary report contains a good summary
of his career, including a period late in World War i when he was head of the Russian Bureau in the U.S. Committee on Public Information and later service as managing editor of the New York Times Current History Magazine.
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16 A.H. Young, “Federation,” Trinity University Year Book 8 (1903-04): 46, 47-8.
17 Trinity University Year Book 10 (1905-06): 69.
18 Biographical details about J.W.G. Andras are provided in obituaries in the Globe, 2 Feb. 1912, and the Evening Telegram, 1, 3 Feb. 1912.
19 St Michael’s College Archives, Henry Carr to Robert J. Scollard, 21 March 1963, in “Historical Notes on the History of the Congregation of Priests of Saint Basil”, collected by Robert J. Sco
llard, 19:116-7.
20 Laurence K. Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education in English-Speaking Canada: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 152-3.
21 Robert J. Scollard, Dictionary of Basilian Biography, 1822-1968 (Toronto: Basilian Press, 1969), 48.
22 These quotations are all from “Father McBrady, an Appreciation,” The Thurible, 1937, 8, 84.
23 Scollard, Dictionary, 87.
24 University of Toronto Calendar, 1919-20, 101.
25 From an interview with Father Bondy, taped by C.D. Rouillard on 24 Feb. 1976.
26 Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education, 155.
27 Sister Mary Aloysius Kerr, Dictionary of Biography of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in North America (Toronto: Mission Press, 1984), 5.
28 ”Notes – Social, Literary and Musical,” The Echo (St Michael’s College yearbook), 1913, 59.
29 W.H. Fraser, Pass French and German in the University of Toronto (Toronto: Printed at the office of “The Week,” 1892), 13. Fraser, in a paper originally read before the Modern Language Assoc
iation of Ontario on 20 April 1892, reported language requirements of French and German in leading universities of the United States (both required at Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard; two years of either at Princeton and Yale; French at Michigan State) and
stated that in France, Germany, and Italy one or more of the foreign languages was everywhere obligatory, while Great Britain and Ireland were exceptions.
30 Religious Knowledge was taught at the denominational colleges, Victoria, Trinity, and St Michael’s, but not at the secular University College. In later years, students at University College
were required to take in its place a “religious knowledge option” (RKO), a Pass course in another subject.
31 University of Toronto, Senate, Committee on the Present and Prospective Revenues of the University and of University College, Revenues and Requirements: Report of a Committee Appointed by th
e Senate of the University of Toronto, and also by the Board of Trustees, April 13th, 1891 (Toronto: Printed by Warwick & Sons, 1891), 71.
32 Ibid., 64.
33 Ibid., 61.
34 Phonetics was first taught to all modern language students by W.H. Fraser of the Department of Italian and Spanish, co-author of the Fraser and Squair French grammar, which in its 1900 editi
on introduced the International Phonetic Alphabet. After Fraser’s death in 1916, Phonetics was long taught by his colleague, Milton A. Buchanan, and its description in the calendar, while separate, usually came in the area of Italian and Spanish. In the M
odern Languages listing it remained a first-year requirement for almost twenty years; in 1913-14 it moved to third year; in 1919-20 it was given in second year, its slightly modified description now reading “Elementary physiological phonetics, with practi
cal exercises in the sounds of the various languages studies.”
35 University Monthly 15, no.1 (Nov. 1913): 20-33.
36 R.K. Gordon, University Monthly 15, no.3 (Jan. 1914): 169-70.
37 Young’s letter to the editor is in the issue of Jan. 1914 (170-1), Van der Smissen’s in Feb. 1914 (212-7). See also Clark’s rejoinder in March (260-2) and Van der Smissen’s bristling rebutta
l in May (358-9), with some misunderstanding of Clark.
38 University Monthly 15, no.6 (April 1914): 303-14.
39 ”The business of the course is not to train teachers, but to educate men and women ... its goal is life, not the Faculty of Education,” declared Will, so breaking with the department’s tradi
tional assumption that an appreciable number of the men and women they educated would, as teachers, share that education with pupils and students of the following generation. From 1895 on, by taking some Honour History in third and fourth years as an opti
on for Italian and Spanish, graduates of Toronto’s Honour Moderns could satisfy the requirements of the Ontario Department of Education for “non-professional qualification for Specialist Standing.”
40 Others in the French Department must have shared Will’s unhappiness about the course called English and History, Moderns Option, which had already dropped its prescription of a crowning four
th year with full Honour French and German, in favour of a fourth-year option between the basic two hours of French or German, and in 1914-15 announced the complete elimination of fourth-year Honour French.
41 It is stated in Modern Language Instruction in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1928), 2:263, that these essays were “allowed in the two final years as optional for religious kn
owledge, a pass subject.”
42 Quoted in Squair, Autobiography, 236.
43 Ibid., 237.
44 See Peter N. Ross, “The Origins and Development of the Ph.D. Degree at the University of Toronto, 1871-1932” (EdD thesis, University of Toronto, 1972), 97-8.
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45 James Loudon, “Post-Graduate Courses,” Canada Educational Monthly, Jan. 1898; quoted in Norman L. Nicholson, “The Evolution of Graduate Studies in the Universities of Ontario, 1841-1971” (Ed
D thesis, University of Toronto, 1975), 117.
46 Ross, “The Origins and Development of the Ph.D. Degree,” 204.
47 Minutes of the Senate, 16 April 1909; cited in Ross, “The Origins and Development of the Ph.D. Degree,” 278.