When Canadian Methodists sought to establish a “Seminary of Learning” in 1830, they probably didn’t think that their legacy would be a Torontonian institution with co-ed residences and secular education. Victoria University may no longer be a symbol of Methodist strength in Upper Canada, but its relationship with the church over the past 186 years has been dynamic, to say the least.
In the British Empire during the early nineteenth century, religion was viewed as a necessary companion to academic learning. The question for grammar schools in Upper Canada was not if there would be Christian teaching, but often which Christian teaching.
Canada’s intwinement with Christianity began with the voyages of Jacques Cartier and the establishment of New France in 1534. Cartier claimed an area of land along the Gulf of St. Lawrence on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church of France, which he sought to protect from the “wicked Lutherans, [and] apostates”—despite the land belonging to the Haudenosaunee Nation. Although Cartier was successful for some time, the settlement eventually collapsed in 1763, with the cession of New France to Britain.
The Church of England hoped to dominate the new territory. In 1791, the Crown reserved one-seventh of all public lands in Canada for a Protestant clergy, but discovered a weakness in political popularity. The well-established French Catholics challenged the English Protestants, as the two groups loomed over the land.
By the 1790s, a new player had joined the game: United Empire Loyalists fleeing the United States came by the thousands to spread their Evangelical ways to the Canadian population. These Methodists hoped to prove themselves as a formidable group in the years before Confederation, gaining some popularity as the underdog.
A young Christian leader who had been evicted from his home at 18 for converting to Methodism had unwavering views about access to education; Egerton Ryerson criticized clergy reserves, tuition costs, and the decentralized system of education in Upper Canada. When the Methodist Conference was held in 1829 to discuss congregational plans, education was a top priority. The proposal for a Methodist seminary was drafted and filed, but denied by the Legislative Assembly and Council in an act of religious prejudice. Lieutenant Governor Colborne ruthlessly stated that “the system of Education which has produced the best & ablest men in the United Kingdom will not be abandoned here to suit the limited views of the leaders of Societies, who perhaps have neither experience nor judgment to appreciate the value or advantages of a liberal education.”
Five years later, after an appeal to the British Crown and a trip to London, England by Ryerson, a charter was eventually granted—the first charter given to a nonconformist body for an educational institution.
In 1836, Ryerson wrote to the Law Officers of the Crown that “an institution, the primary object of which, as clearly expressed, is the education of youth, of poor young men of religious character and promising talents, and of native Indian youths connected with the Methodist congregations, ought to be placed substantially under the pastoral head of the Church.” Ryerson’s obsession with the importance of Christianity in education led him to later play a role in the disastrous residential school system of Canada.
The Royal Charter of Upper Canada Academy boasted that “no religious test or qualification shall be required of, or appointed for, any person on his admission as a Student or Scholar into said Academy.” The newly established board provisioned for a more equal admittance of students—so long as they expressed a willingness to adopt Christian values.
This was a bold contrast to the sectarian model of Canadian education, which saw the Anglican Bishop’s University founded in 1843, the Presbyterian Queen’s College in 1841, the Roman Catholic Regiopolis College in 1837, and the Baptist Acadia College in 1839. While Upper Canada Academy certainly joined the list as Canada’s standard Methodist institution, its openness to applicants was unusual.
Although the academy’s willingness to accept Indigenous students and students of any Christian denomination was extremely progressive for the time, it was done, unsurprisingly, under a veil of indoctrination. The school was established by the Methodist Church with the intention of combining secular and religious studies, which they believed to be inseparable.
In a similar manner, women students were widely accepted into the school, with the 74 women of the student body of 1840 nearly equaling the 96 men. While this policy was at the forefront of women’s education in Canada, it still existed within the scope of academic inequalities and segregated schooling, dining, and housing—the latter two of which existed at Vic until 1988 and 1995, respectively.
Vic’s transformation from Upper Canada Academy to Victoria College in 1841 saw little change in the religious model of the school until the addition of the Faculty of Theology in 1871. But this period also saw the revoking of admittance of women students, who had previously been welcomed from 1836 to 1841. Many clergymen believed that women should assume a traditional “homemaker” role after attending grammar school, while post-secondary institutions should be reserved for men. Once Victoria became a degree-granting institution, it followed in the footsteps of other colleges of the time and excluded women from admittance. This thirty-year stain was only reversed during the year that theology was introduced as a faculty.
In 1903, Margaret Addison’s first year as Dean of Annesley Hall, the “… majority [of the students] were Methodists or Presbyterians, a sprinkling of Anglicans, Baptists, and “others” leavened the mix; all professed some sort of religious belief and, for many, it was a cornerstone of their lives.” A proper religious lifestyle was critical to Addison and the administrators of Victoria College when pioneering Canada’s first women’s university residence; bigoted views of the Church translated into Victoria’s principles and actions. Margaret Proctor Burwash, a founding member of the Annesley Hall Building Committee, argued, “The higher education of women brings bane instead of blessing unless it gives them a higher ideal of the nobility and sacredness of their calling as homemakers.” Burwash and Addison struggled with progressive student views on one side, and the beliefs of authoritarian Methodist men on the other. During her time as Dean (until 1931), Addison’s strides to grant independence and responsibility to the girls were often met with opposition. Albert Carman, general superintendent of the Methodist Church, heard from Chancellor Nathanael Burwash about the Dean’s “‘night watch keys’ for girls, of students returning to their rooms from amusements ‘after midnight,’ of their ‘attendance upon theatres and dances’” and responded, “This is not Methodism: I fear it leagues aside: this is not the pathway of healthful discipline or of sound and safe scholarship…” Margaret Addison’s willingness to bend rules and provide more autonomy to the Victoria Women’s Student Union contributed to Mr. and Mrs. Burwash’s 1913 resignations from the school, as they faced pressure from Methodist Church leaders like Carman.
It was not until the Methodists joined a group of Presbyterians and Congregationalists to form the United Church of Canada in 1925 that Vic saw drastic changes for its Methodist men. Disputes about the union of the Church and the Presbyterian Knox College eventually led to the creation of Emmanuel College in 1928, which formalized Victoria’s existing religious teaching into a separate institution. However, it would be naïve to say that this entirely removed the Christian undertones of Victoria’s student life.
From its inception as a college, Vic saw Christian values and lectures on theology mixed into students’ liberal arts studies, with many Victoria grads entering the ministry themselves. Each of the first principals and presidents had been affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church in some capacity, and most of them were ordained as ministers. Even into the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this student–minister–administrator pipeline held true for Samuel Nelles, Nathanael Burwash, Richard P. Bowles, Edward W. Wallace, and Northrop Frye. As recently as 1992 to 1998, Sang Chul Lee held the Chancellorship of Victoria College. An advocate for oppressed groups in the Church, Lee was the thirty-second Moderator of the United Church of Canada. Grace before meals, the celebration of exclusively Christian holidays, and the sentiment of faculty and students alike continued institutional Christian ties throughout most of the twentieth century.
Today, the influence of the United Church at Victoria is at an all-time low. Emmanuel College now teaches a wide variety of theology, ranging from Islamic to Buddhist, Hindu, and Indigenous belief systems; fewer administrators than ever have ties to the United Church. In 2008, the United Church archives were finally separated from the Victoria University archives, which had been housed together since their origins. However, 13 of the 37 appointees of the Board of Regents remain members of the United Church of Canada, and an annual $200,000 grant from the Church has been given to Vic as late as 2019.
While we may no longer share the same values or perspectives as Albert Carman or Egerton Ryerson, Victoria’s history of adversity and religious prominence provides a more holistic view of the Vic we know today. As said by Vic and Emmanuel alumnus, United Church minister, Principal, and Chancellor Northrop Frye: “Victoria has a heritage and that heritage is not a buried treasure or a transmitted secret, but an experience renewed by everyone who comes in contact with it.”
