Trinity College, Toronto
Trinity College is a federated college of the University of Toronto located on its St. George campus in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The college was founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Strachan originally intended Trinity as a university of strong Anglican alignment, after the University of Toronto severed its ties with the Church of England. After five decades as an independent institution, Trinity joined the university in 1904 as a member of its collegiate federation.
Today, Trinity College consists of a secular undergraduate section and a postgraduate divinity school which is part of the Toronto School of Theology. Through its diploma granting authority in the field of divinity, Trinity maintains legal university status. Trinity hosts three of the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science's undergraduate programs: international relations; ethics, society and law; and immunology.
More than half of Trinity students graduate from the University of Toronto with distinction or high distinction. The college has produced 43 Rhodes Scholars as of 2020. Among the college's more notable collections are a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, two first-edition theses by Martin Luther, numerous original, signed works by Winston Churchill, a 1491 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy censored by the Spanish Inquisition, and Bishop Strachan's silver epergne.
Among the University of Toronto Colleges, Trinity is notable for being the smallest by population, and for its trappings of Oxbridge heritage. Trinity manages its student government through direct democracy, and hosts a litany of clubs and societies.
History
Founding
was an Anglican priest, Archdeacon of York, and staunch supporter of Upper Canada's conservative Family Compact. Strachan was interested in education, and as early as 1818 petitioned the colonial House of Assembly for the formation of a theological university. In 1826, Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland commissioned Strachan to visit England and obtain a royal charter for a provincial university. Strachan was successful, and returned in 1827 with a charter from King George IV to establish King's College in Upper Canada. King's College was effectively controlled by the Church of England and members of the elite Family Compact, and at first reflected Strachan's ambition for an institution of conservative, High Anglican character. Strachan objected to proposals for the provincial university to be without a religious affiliation, dubbing such a suggestion "atheistical, and so monstrous in its consequences that, if successfully carried out, it would destroy all that is pure and holy in morals and religion, and would lead to greater corruption than anything adopted during the madness of the French Revolution."In 1849, over strong opposition from Strachan, Robert Baldwin's Reformist government took control of the college and secularized it to become the University of Toronto. Incensed by this decision, Strachan immediately began raising funds for the creation of a new university. Strachan canvassed Great Britain and Upper Canada for donations, and although he fell short of his goal of £30,000, he received significant commitments from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Duke of Wellington, William Gladstone, and Oxford University. Despite Strachan's public anti-Americanism, the project for a new Anglican university attracted substantial donations from a fundraising campaign in the United States by The Reverend William McMurray.
On April 30, 1851, now-Bishop Strachan led a parade of clergy, schoolboys, and prospective faculty from the Church of St George the Martyr to the site of the new Trinity College. There, Strachan delivered a speech repeating his condemnation of the "destruction of King's College as a Christian institution," and promised that Trinity would fulfil the role of a church university. The Provincial Parliament incorporated Trinity College as an independent university on August 2, 1851. The following year, Strachan, now in his 70s, obtained a Royal Charter for Trinity from Queen Victoria. The college opened to students on January 15, 1852. Most of the first class of students and faculty came from the Diocesan Theological Institute, an Anglican seminary in Cobourg also founded by Strachan in 1842, which dissolved itself in favour of Trinity.
Unlike the University of Toronto, all of Trinity's students and faculty were required to be members of the Anglican Church. This was actually a stronger condition than the original King's College, which only held a religious test for faculty members and students of divinity. Applicants to Trinity's Faculty of Arts were required to pass exams in biblical history, Latin, Greek, arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid. Applicants for the divinity school were required to have a bachelor's degree in arts, and to pass oral exams from the Provost in the New Testament, church catechism, Latin, and Greek.
At the opening of the college, Bishop Strachan used the metaphor of the family to describe Trinity. Per Strachan, Trinity would "constitute a great Christian household, the domestic home of all who resort to it for instruction, framing them in the Christian graces, and in all sound learning, and sanctifying their knowledge, abilities and attainments to the service of God and the welfare of their fellow-men." The usage of the family metaphor was common at the time, and reflected a common view in Upper Canada that schools were extensions of the family model.
Early years
Designed by Kivas Tully, the original Trinity College building was constructed in 1851 on Queen Street West, in what was then an undeveloped western end outside the Toronto city bounds. The building featured Gothic Revival design, and was inspired by St. Aidan's Theological College, Birkenhead.Discipline in the early years was strict. All students were subject to a rigid curfew, and daily chapel attendance was mandatory. If a student wished to leave college grounds, they were required to wear a cap and gown. The college was deliberately built away from the temptations of the city proper. This was all part of Strachan's plan to counteract the University of Toronto's secularism through modelling his vision of conservative Anglican education. Strachan was supported in these efforts by George Whitaker, a clergyman from Cambridge University who served as Trinity's divinity professor and first Provost. Strachan's hatred of the secular university was so great that Trinity's student athletes were forbidden to compete against students from the University of Toronto. It is not well known what the general student body thought of these rules, although there are records of students having cached their formal garb in the college ravine and clandestinely visiting town in informal clothes. Despite the rigid rules and church culture, beer consumption formed an important element of student life, and students purchased over 100 gallons of ale a year from a nearby brewery.
Bishop Benjamin Cronyn of Huron led an attack on the teaching of Trinity College in the early 1860s. Cronyn was an evangelical low church Anglican, who accused Provost Whitaker of spreading "dangerous" Romish doctrines. The College Corporation struck an investigatory committee to investigate Cronyn's claims. After the committee published its findings, Provost Whitaker received votes of confidence from the corporation, the Synod of Toronto, the Synod of Ontario, and the House of Bishops. Bishop Cronyn responded by resigning from the corporation, withdrawing all connections between the Diocese of Huron and Trinity College, and founding Huron College. In 1877, Evangelical Anglicans affiliated with St. James Cathedral founded Wycliffe College as a low-church alternative to Trinity within Toronto.
Bishop Strachan died on November 1, 1867. Provost Whitaker committed to maintaining Strachan's vision for the university, and continued to run the institution in strict conformity with conservative church principles. While Whitaker slowly permitted new courses to be offered, Trinity's core subjects remained theology, classics, and mathematics. Despite the urges of the College Council and some students, Whitaker steadfastly rejected federation with the University of Toronto. To Whitaker, the benefits of joining the larger, secular University were outweighed by the "priceless benefits of such an education as can be given only on Christian principles, and under the hallowed shelter of the Church of Christ."
In 1879, Provost Whitaker lost a contentious election to become Bishop of Toronto. This was his third failure seeking the position, and after the loss he resolved to return to his home in England. Whitaker left in 1881, and in his place the College Council appointed the Reverend Charles Body, another clergyman from Cambridge. Body was thirty at the time of his appointment, and significantly reformed the curriculum and policies of Trinity College. Under Provost Body, religious entry-requirements were abolished for non-divinity students, and the first female students were admitted to study. The requirement to wear a cap and gown while leaving College grounds was dropped, although chapel attendance remained mandatory for both divinity and arts students. Body's reforms succeeded in attracting new students, and within a decade enrollment more than doubled.
The original College building suffered from architectural defects. The building was cold in winter, and fireplaces filled the residence rooms with smoke. Until 1888, the college used coal for heating, which generated noxious fumes. Over time, additional wings were added to the college, such as a convocation hall added in 1877 in memory of John Strachan. A designated chapel was built in 1883; previously, chapel had been held in a room originally intended for the college's library. Enrolment grew substantially under Provosts Body and Welch, such that in 1894 the college erected an east wing devoted entirely to student residences.
Under Provost Body and his successor Edward Welch, Trinity College gradually expanded its teaching beyond arts and divinity. By the end of the 19th century Trinity offered degrees in a variety of disciplines, including medicine, law, music, pharmacy and dentistry. The connections between the professional faculties and the college proper were however somewhat tenuous, as students generally took classes elsewhere in Toronto, and only came to the Queen Street campus to write exams and accept degrees. Trinity was founded with a medical school run by six Toronto doctors, and the first lecture ever given at Trinity was on "medical jurisprudence". However, the medical faculty dissolved itself in 1856 in protest of the religious entry requirements. Trinity Medical School re-founded itself in 1871, and taught students in a separate building in Toronto's east end. The school existed as an independent legal body in voluntary association with Trinity College. Trinity's Faculty of Music started offering degrees in the 1880s, and offered examinations for degrees in London, England, and New York City, as well as Toronto.
In 1884, Helen Gregory enrolled as the first female student at Trinity College. Gregory graduated with three degrees, and later became a judge in the Vancouver Juvenile Court. St. Hilda's College was created in 1888 as Trinity's women's residence. For the first six years of its existence, female students lived and took all their classes in St. Hilda's. Under Provost Welch, co-education came to Trinity, and the two teaching staffs and sets of courses merged into one.