McGill and its Story, 1821-1921. Cyrus Macmillan

McGill made his will—on March 8, 1811. He bequeathed to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, in trust, the sum of £10,000 and his Burnside Estate of forty-six acres, together with the dwelling house and other buildings, for the erection on the estate, and the endowment, of a University or College on the express conditions—and these were the only conditions imposed—that the University be erected and established within ten years of his death and that one of the Colleges to be comprised in the University should be called “McGill College.” If the College was not erected in the time specified the conveyance to the Royal Institution was to be null and void; and the estate and endowment were to revert to his widow, and after her death to her first husband's nephew, Francis Desrivières and to his legal heirs. He named as executors of the will John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and James Dunlop.

      These executors were all close personal friends of the testator. The career of John Strachan has already been outlined. Although it was not specified in the will that he should be connected with the proposed College, it may be assumed that because of his close friendship, his marriage connection, and his established reputation as a brilliant and successful educationalist with definite ideas on Canadian nationality, James McGill desired that he should have a prominent part in the organization of the College and that possibly he should be its first Principal. That this desire was stated to the trustees seems certain. In a letter written from Toronto some years after James McGill's death, while the trustees who knew the circumstances were still living, Bishop Strachan said:

      “If it had been my desire, it was certainly in my power to have been at the head of it [McGill College] for it so happened that I had some difficulty in prevailing with my friend, Mr. McGill, to forbear annexing it as a condition to his bequest that I should fill that situation;” and he added that “a Professorship in McGill College was never desired or thought of by me, nor could any situation in that institution have formed an inducement to me to leave this Province to which I have been for so many years devoted.”

      The three trustees associated with the Rev. Dr. Strachan as administrators of the will were all prominent in civic and provincial affairs. They were all Scotchmen and were connected with St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. John Richardson, partner in the mercantile house of Forsyth, Richardson and Co., was a native of Banffshire, Scotland. He represented the East Ward of Montreal in the first Parliament of Lower Canada, which met in 1792, and he took his seat at the same time as James McGill, his colleague from the West Ward. With the latter, he was one of the commissioners appointed for the removing of the old city walls in 1802 and it was through his influence that the bill providing for the construction of a canal to Lachine was passed. The firm of which he was a member contributed £20 towards the building of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and he personally subscribed £3 a year towards the minister's stipend; he occupied pews No. 6 and No. 47. He was one of a committee of three formed to purchase the land on which the General Hospital now stands; he was chairman of the committee which superintended the construction of the Hospital and was later chosen as its first president. He died in 1831, aged seventy-six.

      The Honourable James Reid, the second trustee named, was admitted to the Bar of the Province in 1794; he was raised to the Bench as a puisne Judge in 1807, and later in 1823 he was made Chief Justice of Montreal. He subscribed one guinea a year to the stipend of the first pastor of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and occupied pew No. 14. He died in 1848 at the age of seventy-nine. After his death, his widow erected to the memory of her husband the southwest wing of the Montreal General Hospital.

      James Dunlop, the fourth trustee named, settled in Montreal in 1777 and established a general store in St. Paul Street. He took an active part in the military organisation during the War of 1812, and served as Major under Brigadier General James McGill. He subscribed ten guineas towards the building of St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and his name appears for ten pounds on a special subscription list for liquidating the debt on the original building; he signed the manifesto in favour of the first pastor of the Church, the Rev. James Somerville; he contributed five pounds annually towards his salary and occupied pews No. 19 and No. 99. He died in 1815 at the age of sixty.

      James McGill's estate sloped from the base of Mount Royal towards the St. Lawrence River. It consisted of forty-six acres of fertile land extending south to what is now Dorchester Street and reaching from the present University Street on the east to what are now McTavish and Metcalfe Streets on the west. St. Catherine Street and Dorchester Street were not then in existence and Sherbrooke Street was but a narrow road running through the farm. East, west and south of the estate were open fields and a few scattered houses, and the city proper lay a long distance away, beside the water-front. A small stream of water passed through the farm. It entered from the east near the present Milton Street entrance on University Street; it then turned south and was increased in volume by the water from a spring near the site of the Macdonald Engineering Building. It passed on through the present tennis courts in “the hollow” by the Physics Building, crossed Sherbrooke Street where it was joined by another small stream from the southwest, and then flowed close to Burnside House and on towards the city. It is recorded that the name Burnside was given to the estate because of this stream or “burn” as the Scotch called it. James McGill's home, Burnside House, a large stone building, was situated on the present McGill College Avenue, about midway between the present Sherbrooke and Burnside Streets on the left-hand side looking south; it was demolished in 1860 to make room for the buildings now in that locality. A narrow road led from near the front of the house to what is now St. Antoine Street. The estate was divided into small sections which were later rented for purposes of cultivation or pasture. It contained numerous trees and shrubs, and was at that time regarded as one of the most valuable and desirable parts of the district of Montreal.

      In the days of James McGill, Montreal was a small town of from twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants, and of these the large majority were French. Indeed, the whole province had but a scanty population. One-third of the houses were wooden huts. The town stretched out along the water-front in a series of narrow blocks and straggling streets. The trade with foreign countries was exceedingly small. The entire carrying capacity of ships annually arriving at Quebec did not exceed 12,000 tons, and only a few of these ships went on to Montreal. In 1813, the year of James McGill's death, only nine vessels entered Montreal from the sea, and their total capacity was but 1,589 tons. At the end of the 18th century, the exports of furs and other products from the entire province was little more than half a million pounds sterling. Strange and primitive customs were still in vogue in the city. The price of bread was regulated by “His Majesty's Justices of the Peace,” and bakers were required to mark their bread with the initials of their name. Slavery was not unknown, and a sale advertisement towards the end of the century included in the articles to be sold “a stout, healthy negro man about 28 years of age—an excellent cook, and very fit for working on a farm.” A mail for England was dispatched about once a month. It went by way of New York and took from three to four weeks to reach that city; it was then forwarded by packet-ship to England, and usually at least four months passed before an answer could be received. The incoming mail was put off the New York packet at Halifax; it came overland from Halifax to Montreal, this part of the journey alone taking nearly four weeks.

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      The Burnside Estate

      Such was the somewhat primitive city in which James McGill lived and laboured and amassed his wealth. Such was the community to the service of which he contributed unstintingly of his material substance, his energy and his talent. Such, too, were the conditions in which this hard-headed, practical business man dreamed a dream—a dream of a greater Canada with a distinctly Canadian nationality trained to solve its own problems in its own way, and of the necessity for providing for the youth of the great land mirrored in his mind the privileges of an adequate education similar to that which he had enjoyed in his own native country. For James McGill seems to have been a combination of the practical Scottish business man and the dreaming Scottish mystic. Like the other early Canadian pioneers of his race he was a hard-fisted man battling by necessity in a hard-fisted new world, but he kept in that