Ryerson University - A Unicorn Among Horses

By John Downing

Few blocks in Canada match the golden history of St. James Square purchased in 1850 by that Canadian giant, Egerton Ryerson. One of the great innovators and entrepreneurs in education! This tells how he founded Ontario's school system there after a long fight to get schools for every one. The Square was more than just the first hom

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Downing
• Release date: Apr 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995939318

Book preview

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Birth Pains

I

t all began in the restless search of pioneers for an education better than their meagre schooling or what they could learn from the few books available to humble families. Surely in their new land, even the poor could get some learning, and real education would not continue as the preserve of the rich.

The pioneers also wanted uniformity in what was taught. They worried about all the untrained teachers whose only qualifications were smarmy smiles and the inability to find other work. There were many proposals, some of them heated by religion, about what would be taught.

Settlers from England fancied schools modeled after the fabled public schools of Eton and Rugby. Scottish settlers stressed the Bible and Catechism. No separation between church and school for them, as long as they could chose the church part. Irish settlers desired a stress on difficult arithmetic.

And the United Empire Loyalists, a feisty lot who had left behind Yankee schools, wanted to reproduce their spelling matches and examination day dialogues. (The Yankees left behind were also struggling over religion in their schools, which became an eternal debate, and there was tension, especially in the state and city of New York, over parochial schools.)

In Toronto in 1850, settlers and pioneers from Great Britain, including those who had tried the U.S. and had been thrown out, thought they were the only ones who mattered. This added a host of demands in addition to the basic problems. There were no authorized texts or curriculums, no inspectors, indeed no standards. No skeleton of education existed because there was no department or school board because there was not yet a province or even a country.

There had been attempts to bring order out of what was a void dotted with private attempts at a school. Reports, even going so far as to draft bills, were presented during the 1830s. It seemed safer to do nothing but in 1839, due to unhappiness about this indecision, a commission was formed dominated by important clergy. It recommended uniform schoolhouses, how to examine and train teachers, and called for a model school.

Then Upper and Lower Canada were united but it was not used as an excuse to delay on education. Lord Sydenham, the governor general, said in his speech to the first parliament: A due provision for the education of the people is one of the first duties of the state, and, in this province especially, the want of it is grievously felt.

Finally Upper Canada got 50,000 pounds (about $200,00) to establish public and common schools. This is a considerable sum, but translating the modern value of currencies used in Upper Canada is a slippery topic. In 1841, one Halifax pound was worth four U.S. dollars. Then came wrangling because Mother Britain vetoed anything to do with the Yankees, then grumpily decided never to get involved again with the colony’s money. One novel guide as to what a pound was worth came in the famous living-within-your-means quote where Charles Dickens settled on 20 pounds as the usual annual salary.

The provincial secretary was made responsible for education with two assistants. Ryerson became the second one in charge of Canada West on Sept 28, 1844, elated that now he could do more than just recommend.

His ancestors were Danish farmers who settled in New Jersey. During the American Revolution, his father fought as a loyalist and was exiled in punishment. He was given 600 acres for his service to the King and settled south-east of London in Charlotteville, Norfolk County.

When Egerton was born on March 24, 1803, he was named after two of his father’s army buddies. At 18, after grammar school and a brief study of law, he entered the Methodist Episcopal ministry and was disowned by his prominent Anglican father. He became a leader in the criticism of the clergy reserves of land that the Crown donated to the Church of England for the maintenance of its ministers. Ryerson demanded equal rights for all denominations. His target was a main enemy of the Methodists, Rev. John Strachan, a key member of the Family Compact that ruled everything.

He became a circuit rider for his church in the Niagara area, carrying in his saddle bags the classics that he devoured until he became a self-taught Renaissance man. He emerged as one of Methodism’s most articulate defenders as the humble church demanded more rights. Ryerson became the founding editor in 1829 of an influential Methodist newspaper, the Christian Guardian.

He became a famous reformer after he wrote a scathing review of a Strachan sermon for the Colonial Advocate, signed A Methodist Minister. The Advocate burns on in history because its publisher was William Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto’s first mayor, leader of the ill-fated Upper Canada Rebellion, and grandfather of Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister.

Ryerson produced a torrent of pamphlets and letters for any publication that would print them. Almost all were anonymous. It was a common strategy, especially in Toronto, where libel suits were used by the Compact to punish critics, or hired toughs dumped your press and type in the harbour.

Despite that, Ryerson grew more determined and confident —enemies called him arrogant — as the young city was tugged between the haughty Anglicans and everyone else. Yet he was staunchly loyal to other British and Canadian institutions and had a conservative churchman’s distrust of radicals. This brought him into conflict with Mackenzie who didn’t tolerate wavering. Their close association ruptured when Ryerson was impressed by the Whigs and moderate Tories on a visit to England.

Mackenzie attacked him in 1833, feeling betrayed. Then after Ryerson’s condemnation hurt him in elections, the firebrand considered Ryerson such an enemy that he told everyone that one of the first goals of his rebellion was to hang Ryerson from the nearest tree. (Yet the two spoke kindly of each other in old age.)

Ryerson’s star soared when on an 1836 trip to England, he obtained a Royal charter for a college, the first in the colonies to be free of the Church of England. It opened in Cobourg as Upper Canada Academy. It was incorporated as a university in 1841 and named Victoria College. It moved to Toronto and in 1890 became one of the venerable foundations of the University of Toronto. Ryerson, who had never been to university, was its first principal.

He could have stayed in that comfortable post and also continued as a leader in his church that later elected him as national president for four years. Yet he wanted to do so much more in education because he believed that compulsory and universal education would not only improve every man and woman but also society.

He yearned for a new post as Education Superintendent, although he didn’t accept immediately when it was offered. Off he went to England and Europe for more than a year. By modern political standards, it was astonishing how often he took long trips to the Old Country. Yet these travels produced more ideas for his 1845 report than a rich Christmas cake has nuts and fruit. He would stud the land with appropriate school houses. . .supply appropriate books and teachers. . .raise wretched employment to an honourable profession. . .give uniformity, simplicity and efficiency to a general system of elementary educational instruction. . .establish a library in every district. . .leaving no effort unemployed within the limited range of my humble abilities to make Western Canada what she is capable of being made, the brightest gem in the crown of Her Britannic Majesty.

Not only was this report the foundation for education in Ontario, it rippled through the country. He wanted one comprehensive and unique system from the a,b,c, of the child up to the matriculation of the youth into the Provincial University. The report also called for a textbook publisher and the creation of the controversial residential schools for natives, even though he had lived as a missionary in 1829 with the Ojibways.

Education didn’t get its own department at first, and bounced around between Kingston, Toronto and Cobourg, ending in unsuitable quarters for the Normal School and Model School. A Toronto Normal School to elevate teaching to the ranks of a profession was founded on Oct. 24, 1847, and housed in the ballroom of the former government house at King and Simcoe. (Because a church, pub and Upper Canada College were at the other corners, the quip was it became the intersection where Education, Salvation, Legislation and Damnation met.) The Model School began in a refitted stable. Then the government needed the space because of consolidation after the Montreal riots in 1849 and ordered their move.

Which brought Ryerson to Gould St., which was in what officials titled the Liberties, because he found nothing suitable on the two major streets then of King and Yonge. The owner, Peter McGill, the Bank of Montreal president, had inherited the land from his uncle, Captain John McGill, who had served under John Graves Simcoe in the American Revolution. All the land was a reward for his friendship with the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada since the two had been jailed in that war and had attempted to escape together.

The names of neighbours to Ryerson’s purchase in the Liberties remain on street signs. Or the signs recall their friends. Each Liberty was a strip of 100 acres between Lot (Queen) and Bloor. William Jarvis was prominent locally but Sir Henry Dundas was a British politician. Gould was named after a Montreal friend of McGill’s who was a director of the same company as Shuter. Bond was a brick maker. Victoria was named for the Queen. Church was named after its cathedral. Eugene O’Keefe founded the brewery that perfumed the air for decades.

Ironically, McGill wasn’t named after Peter McGill, who had his name changed legally to qualify for his uncle’s will and land fortune, but after a widow who had married Strachan. In 1842, assessment records in elaborate ink script showed McGill owned 36 vacant acres there but he sold the inheritance in chunks, such as six acres for St. James Cathedral. Officials tried to help development by planning to extend Bond north through the Square, but that never happened, even though a map drawn by James Cane in 1842 showed it.

That map also showed two tiny buildings near Church and Gerrard but they weren’t close to the roads and probably were abandoned cabins. The most significant feature was the creek that ran under what is now the east wing of the Kerr quadrangle. The eastern branch of Taddle Creek started nine blocks to the north and ran south to feed a swamp near the Square’s southeast corner.

Ryerson probably gave little thought to the creek because they were common. However, they wrecked havoc throughout the city’s growth. The two Taddle branches interfered with construction around such major buildings as Maple Leaf Gardens, Park Plaza Hotel and Royal Ontario Musuem. When the builders for Ryerson in the centre of the Square uncovered the Taddle from where it was imprisoned deep in sewers and tunnels, like so many others, they were just the latest victims in a city that thought it could bury the little rivers and forget about them.

When Ryerson bought the Square, there were few buildings once you moved east from the strip along Yonge. A map prepared in 1851 by a young surveyor named Sandford A. Fleming — who had not yet become famous and a Sir for inventing, among other things, Standard Time — shows that the Victoria St. side was empty from Gerrard to Dundas. So was Gould over to Bond. There were about eight houses on the north side of Gerrard near Yonge.

The one house on the stretch of Gould between Bond and Church stood out, and that was the idea. William Thomas, an architect/engineer born in Stroud, England, built Oakham House in two years from fees he made designing St. Michael’s Cathedral in 1845. When the grand Gothic house opened in 1848, everyone knew. There must have been talk about the link between the grand house and the Mother of Parliaments.

Thomas’ brother John designed the great carved figures which decorate the walls of the Houses of Parliament in London. And the brothers are believed to have shared early schooling in design and carving. William certainly wowed Torontonians with his design and decoration at Oakham House. The main entrance was framed with the sculptures of two red mongrels, which then described most of the dogs of Canada, breeds not yet being fashionable. (The dogs, now black, are in the university archives after having been missing for decades.)

There are mysterious pages in Thomas’ history. Just why didn’t he live longer in the mansion? It was only several years before he left for Montreal. Indeed, just why was he in Toronto? After all, he had been doing well in England where commissions would be larger and more plentiful. One of his houses in Leamington is a national historic site. He left his mark here on more than just Oakham, which has fame as one of the few great houses of the 19th century in Toronto still standing. He designed such famous structures as St. Lawrence Hall, the monument to Brock where the general fell at Queenston Heights, and seven churches besides St. Michael’s.

The young Globe reported on Sept. 28, 1850, that the Council of Public Instruction had met to decide on the best design for the Normal School for the nearly 500,000 citizens of Upper Canada. George Brown’s newspaper approved of the bargain Ryerson had made for the site. Ryerson got 15,000 pounds placed in the budget and then 10,000 pounds was added for a theatre or lecture hall

The contract was given to Frederick William Cumberland and Thomas Ridout. Col. Cumberland had been born in London, educated at Cambridge and had studied in the office of Sir Charles Barry when Barry was working on the Houses of Parliament. In 1850, he and Ridout, who had been born in Canada, had won the competition to rebuild St. James Cathedral, which had burned in one of the great fires that were the routine city curses of the 19th century.

Cumberland was flooded with work because he was so talented. Then the projects, such as building a railway line and the Collingwood harbour, overwhelmed him. He was praised by Eric Arthur in his classic book about Toronto called No Mean City as a great architect who left his impression more than any other architect (with one exception.) But even a great architect and generous leader has only so much time. His slowness to produce led to a provincial censure.

Arthur, the U of T professor who produced the best guide to early Toronto buildings, wrote that Cumberland must have thumbed through some history of architecture from Roman to Gothic, using both in the Normal School. The building was 185' long with its main feature, a Roman centre, characteristic of the school of Andrea Palladio, an Italian architect in the 16th century. Four pilasters or pillars half-projecting from the walls climbed two storeys to a pediment crowned by a classic Doric cupola.

Cumberland placed the auditorium at the rear, curving from the back wall so that light would enter the church-like windows. It accommodated up to 500 people on uncomfortable wooden chairs with folding seats. It was small by modern standards but a century later, the noted drama critic, Herbert Whittaker, called it a famous old auditorium which was the city’s first hall of any size. Arthur called it beautiful, with its Gothic cast-iron decorations and intimacy.

The Model School held 600 pupils and was placed to the rear. Naturally, there were matching separate entrances for boys and girls in both the auditorium and school because for more than a century, no architect or principal dared let boys and girls use the same doors.

On March 17, 1851, an agreement was signed with contractors James Metcalfe, Duncan Forbes and Alexander Wilson to erect the building for 8,790 pounds. But things didn’t go smoothly, not when there was a prosperous bustle with buildings rising everywhere, causing a shortage of supplies. The architects reported they were having trouble obtaining stone from Ohio which every building in town that has much stone work about it has felt. Then the firm failed and Ryerson had to draw new agreements with the trades to complete the building.

The corner stone was laid July 2, 1851 by the Governor General, the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine. It was a gala occasion. If you were important, you made sure you were there so others could see you. Its inscription said this institution is designed for the Instruction and Training of School Teachers upon Christian Principles. For Ryerson, Church and State could be intertwined; what he fought was one church connecting with the state by what it said was divine right.

The importance of religion in education was stressed with Toronto’s leading church dignitaries present to give support. Lord Elgin stressed that education was rooted deep in the firm rock of our Christianity. Ryerson said the building has been designed with a view rather to utility than to effect. He also had a significant and surprise announcement, that in addition to classrooms, there would be space for a school of art/design and museum. (He repeated that when the Upper Canada Normal School opened on Nov. 24, 1852, it would be more than a school for teachers, it would be the centre of the publicly supported school system of the province. )

Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson gave a vigorous defense of free education for those who didn’t like the new tax and wanted a return to the old days. He said: It would be as wise to reject the use of railways because an occasional train runs off the track as to hesitate to give education to the multitude for fear it might be in some instances, as no doubt it will, be perverted to bad purposes. Robinson, a key member of the Family Compact, said that the design was handsome but subordinate to the system of religious, intellectual and moral training that is to be carried out within these walls. The Globe raved about the elegant, imposing brick.

Arthur in his famous book included the Normal and Model schools in a flattering grouping. He wrote: A feeling of security brought about by unprecedented prosperous conditions in the business community permitted money to go into many civic improvements, and some of our best buildings date from this time. St. Lawrence Hall (1850), St. James Cathedral (1850), the Normal and Model schools (1851), Trinity College (1851), the seventh Post Office (1853), the Toronto Exchange, (1856), University College, (1856), Yorkville Town Hall (1859) and St. Paul’s Bloor Street (1860), all belong to this period, and all but four still stand.

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An accounting of what the school construction had cost came to 18,593 pounds. The largest item was the 8,399 pounds to Metcalfe for construction. On top of everything, literally, was 92 pounds for the casting of the bell for the cupola.

Ryerson set no curbs on his dreams. When he found 90 pounds were left after construction, as a passionate reader he immediately spent the money on books for a library. A depository of texts, books, maps and school equipment was housed in the Normal School too.

An agriculturist was appointed to take charge of the grounds. Some anticipated this would mean only formal gardens, but Ryerson had in mind much more than nice flowers. He conducted botanical and agricultural experiments. Two acres, just under a third of the Square, were planted with various cereals to see what varieties flourished in the Ontario climate.

Non-native trees were planted in an arboretum to see which would survive Toronto’s winters. This must have generated mixed emotions because of all those who had just finished the back-breaking work of clearing farms out of the bush. Many rare trees flourished and were a source of curiosity and pleasure before they died or had to be removed because of the dictates of so-called progress. However, their planting was a green symbol, a living proof for decades, that Ryerson never intended the Square to be just another public space.

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Spreading His Wings

T

he thrusts of Ryerson away from concentrating on a school system must have surprised some colleagues but delighted others. After all, when he spoke about how he wanted a museum and gallery, he was outside his mandate. Previous attempts had failed because it was felt the young city had more important needs. But the demand was obvious.

While such great museums as the British Museum had been established in 1753, there was no rush in the colonies across the seas to have museums and galleries because so much else was needed first. The oldest continually operating museum in the larger and more prosperous United States, the Wadsworth Atheneum, was founded in 1842. The Met in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston both started in 1870, a year after the American Museum of Natural History was founded in Manhattan.

Upper Canada didn’t suffer by comparison. Its first attempt to have a museum came nearly a decade before the Wadsworth in 1833, but in the end there was just glowing talk about a Lyceum of Natural History and Fine Arts. Nothing happened for 20 years until Ryerson persuaded the Legislature in 1853 to allow him to spend 500 pounds annually on a museum/gallery.

It started modestly, buying a collection of old books on Canada. Over two years, stuffed animals and birds and eggs were gathered. Then 200 specimens were bought from J. W. Dawson, a famous educator and geologist in Nova Scotia. Yet rocks and stuffed animals were hardly a fine arts museum useful in teaching and displays.

On June 30, 1855, the opportunity came that Ryerson wanted, and needed, and had lobbied for, a chance to view the museums and galleries of Europe. Provincial Secretary George-Etienne Cartier made Ryerson an honourary member of the commission running the Canadian section of the Paris Universal Exhibition. Ryerson said the appointment had been suggested by his friend, John A. Macdonald, who was then Attorney-General, on course to be the first prime minister.

It was Ryerson’s sixth trip to Europe, two years of travelling and collecting which would bring 2,000 objets d’art to his simple museum. When he sailed from Boston in 1855, he had goals besides buying books and exhibits, not the least of which was showing his 19-year-old daughter Sophia the wonders of Dickens’ London. He would also study schools and buy instruments to track weather.

That grew out of a suggestion by John Henry Lefroy, a colonel of the Royal Engineers who in the 1840s had conducted a magnetic survey of British North America. He told Ryerson it would be good if his masters conducted observations that would aid agriculture. It was smart for Ryerson to listen, especially when he was ranging so far from his legal duties, since the colonel’s father-in-law was Robinson, the influential Chief Justice.

Ryerson adopted another Lefroy idea when he was having breakfast with the colonel and Robinson. Lefroy suggested he follow a policy started in England where local museums did not collect praised paintings and sculptures but copies and plaster casts. Ryerson later asked Lefroy to put that in a letter in case he was challenged. The letter argued it would save money. There was another more dubious reason. Antique sculptures from classical mythology may not be appreciated by most Canadians whose education stops short of all classical lore. In paintings, there should be at least one copy of a characteristic work by each great master.

It was sensible but a radical change, so Ryerson protected himself further, writing his boss, the provincial secretary, on Nov. 21, 1855, that he had told government members visiting London what he was doing. He also went over Cartier’s head and informed Lord Elgin. He claimed all warmly approved of his efforts to stay within his budget.

And so the colonial with little formal education was free to buy far more with far less in the art treasure houses of Europe. So in typical fashion, he immersed himself in art, grilling the experts, and looking over the shoulders of copyists in the great museums, buying when he approved of how accurate their work was.

It was a smart policy. Before the world was transformed by the miraculous growth of printing, photography, television and computers to bring any image into any home, the Mona Lisa was only a black line drawing in a rare and costly book. It could not be viewed except for a costly and tedious trip before you stood in line in the Louvre for hours. There were no post cards in the lobby, no instant viewing in colour on the laptop.

For those who couldn’t afford the grand tour of the rich gentlemen, Ryerson’s copy was the only way to see the Mona Lisa and then argue about the smile. So his museum, only a hitchhiker on his main work in education, became a wonderful feature in the first decade of the Square. An era that wouldn’t be matched in importance in the province until the tumultuous 1940s.

Let us pause in the chronicle of the Square for a time out from detailing the extraordinary evolution there to outline briefly that second great decade of transformation. Then back to the early history to show how all the buildings and memoirs and events interlocked finally into a grand jigsaw puzzle that was a picture of a university.

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The Ryerson Institute

of Technology

T

he three-column advertisement in The Evening Telegram on Sept. 4, 1948, was a surprise to all but a handful at Queen’s Park and in the old main building at 50 Gould St. It is also the first public mention of something called the Ryerson Institute of Technology.

Great care had been taken in the creation of the ad. After all, if it didn’t work, a century of education at the Square would crash into oblivion. H.H. Kerr, the principal, and Cliff Hawes, the printer, worked as if it was the Magna Carta. Kerr agonized over every word, seeking to cloak the birth with all possible prestige. And Hawes, the old pro, used all his mastery of typography and layout to try to impress readers to trust this mystery in education.

Ryerson appeared to be a century-old institution jogging the public’s attention about its courses. The ad certainly didn’t read like a pitch for a school which had not yet enrolled a student or had a hour of class because it was just days old.

The ad stood out inside a heavy border, topped by the provincial coat of arms followed by the titles of Department of Education and Province of Ontario. Only then came Ryerson Institute of Technology, and the address burnished by decades of use, 50 Gould St. Below came the names of the Honourable George A. Drew, Minister of Education, and P.S. Rutherford, Deputy Minister.

The school was unknown but the crest and the premier certainly weren’t. So the baby clung to the parent typographically, which would be the pattern for years. For Kerr at this time, image was the most important element in education. The ad announced these courses would be offered on Sept. 21, 1948:

Electronics (Radio Communication, Radio and Appliance Servicing), Industrial Electronics, Electrical laboratory practices, Marine operating, *Radio Announcing and Production

Jewellery and Horology (Goldsmithing and Gem Setting, Watchmaking and repairing

Business (*Retail Merchandising, *Business Machines, Draughting (Architectural and Structural Draughting and Design)

Furniture Crafts (Cabinet Making and Design, Upholstering, Wood Finishing)

Photography (Portraiture, Commercial, Industrial)

Fashion Crafts (Costume Design, *Women’s Tailoring, *Men’s Tailoring)

Food Technology (Commercial Cooking, Commercial Baking)

Machine Tool Technology (General Mechanical, Tool Design, Tool and Die Making, Mechanical

Draughting, Advanced Machine Shop)

Graphic Arts (Hand Composition and Typography, Letterpress Presswork, Linotype and Intertype, Monotype, Photo Lithography, Offset Presswork, Printing Design and Layout)

Welding (Welding Technician, *Welding Operator)

Stationary Engineering

Cosmetology (Hairdressing, Advanced Hair Styling) Barbering.

What a stew! But then, Kerr had been left with a battered military base filled with specialized equipment not worth much in a sale. If he found a machine in a vacant room, and someone on his staff could run it, he built a course around it. Or so his staff joked! Some courses were the bare bones for schools that would endure into the university. Then there were rudimentary ones like barbering that would be hung as a slur around the institute’s neck as it grew.

Courses with an asterisk were nine months. The rest two years. Yet Kerr, not wanting to lose one student, said he could arrange shorter courses or special courses for industry. Then came significant language that reflected his philosophy. The first year would be general with specialization in second year.

Admission was open to anyone at least 18 who had passed Grade 12. (There was still a Grade 13 for those bound for the few universities.) Yet Kerr would admit anyone if he liked their background. There were loopholes for veterans and dropouts. After all, veterans used to rough regimentation and even battle didn’t want to bother with the red tape of a diploma.

Fees were $25 a year. Non-residents who were British subjects (the Commonwealth had not yet lost its majesty) paid $200. If they weren’t British subjects, it was $300. There was a $10 registration fee, a $15 lab and shop deposit, and a $5 student council fee.

Kerr and his instructors hoped this would work but didn’t dare sit back. A typical anecdote is related by Bert Parsons, who played an important role this month, and indeed for many years. "Kerr called me into that big office once used by Ryerson and said stores had approached him about putting on a retail course. Would I work out a program? I got brochures from various schools in the States. The course at Southern California Institute is one I followed closely. Then I arranged with various stores to take our students part time.

Then I phoned principals and got names of the students who had flunked Grade 12 and weren’t going back. I phoned them and told them what we were doing. I got 25 or 30 pretty well as a result of that solicitation. They came to school in the morning and worked in the stores in the afternoon. They also worked Saturdays and the entire month of December. Eaton’s was one of the best stores, and so was Simpson’s. At one point Eaton’s volunteered to take all our students. We had the Canadian Retail Federation director as head of our advisory committee.

The department store giants have vanished, along with their giant catalogues and the endless stories of how they were used as pads in street hockey, or in outhouses, when rural mothers weren’t using them for most of their store-bought shopping. Also forgotten now is their contribution to the country’s first post-secondary co-op program.

There may be a gulf of time and culture between the purchase of the Square and its inheritance by the baby institute. Yet the history of this gulf shows that this was the natural habitat for this newfangled school.

So back through the years to the raw beginning and then the growth of a mosaic that made the birth of an institute of technology as logical as it was inevitable.

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Ryerson’s Great

Adventure and Spree

A

century before, the man that created the Square was to spend much of his time away from it. No doubt a Renaissance man like Ryerson hungered for the culture and wit of the Old Country where he could meet the great men he could only read about at home.

Naturally he launched his cultural expedition at his mecca of museums, the British Museum. Then across to the Louvre and the National Gallery of France. He wandered Paris from lofts to the Sydenham Palace. His first big purchase of 250 antique busts was from the Beaux Arts Museum molder. He assured his boss that they cost an incredibly low price and that on his return to London he would procure a selection of the busts of great men who have adorned the annals of British history.

He traded material from the Canadian display to the Austrian exhibit and shipped home 36 masks, some of them death masks of notables such as Newton and Napoleon, 36 models of agricultural experiments, ancient armour, and maps and globes.

He raved in a letter from Antwerp about the many artists there copying masters like Rubens and Van Dyke and that he could buy copies for about 10 pounds each because this is the best season for buying paintings cheap here. All those copies added up because after Antwerp, his purchases stood at 162 paintings for around a thousand pounds. There were several Flemish and Dutch originals and several hundred lithographs and engravings.

Obviously he had ignored his budget, the annual 500 pounds for a library and museum. Ryerson had drafted the motion, allowing him to collect as widely as he wanted, but that didn’t help him now. So he wrote his deputy Hodgins to transfer money from the library to the museum. A typical gambit in government but it doesn’t solve the problem, only delays the reckoning.

His enthusiasm was galloping miles ahead of any politician. The collection had grown beyond the two rooms set aside, so Ryerson wondered about using his iron gem of a theatre too. Perhaps he could compress the space consumed by the birds, the first exhibit. His dreams grew so rosy, he imagined a separate building towards which the leading men of all parties will agree to grant a sum. . .

Ryerson pressed on to Germany, Rome, and the cultural paradise of Florence, ignoring the budget. Then came the curses of the 19th century for comfortable gentlemen who traveled and dined a lot. Gout! Lumbago! Sciatica! It was a major embarrassment, a Canadian clergyman struck down right in the Vatican, requiring four men to carry him back