McGill University is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Canada, officially founded by royal charter in 1821. The University bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Scotland whose bequest in 1813 formed precursory McGill College.
McGill's main campus is set at the foot of Mount Royal in Downtown Montreal with the second campus situated near fields and forested lands in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, 30 kilometres west of the downtown campus on the Montreal Island. All the academic units are organized into 11 main Faculties and Schools.The University is one of the two members of Association of American Universities located outside the United States.
McGill offers degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of studies with the highest average admission grade of any Canadian university.Most students are enrolled in the five larger Faculties, namely Arts, Science, Medicine, Engineering, and Management.Tuition fees vary significantly between in-province, out-of-province, and international students, and scholarships are generous yet highly competitive and relatively difficult to attain, compared to other institutions in the country.
McGill counts among its alumni 12 Nobel laureates and 138 Rhodes Scholars, both the most in the country, as well as three astronauts, three Canadian prime ministers, 13 justices of the Canadian Supreme Court, four foreign leaders, 28 foreign ambassadors, nine Academy Award winners, three Pulitzer Prize winners, and 28 Olympic medalists. Throughout its long history, McGill alumni were instrumental in inventing or initially organizing football, basketball, and ice hockey.McGill or its alumni also founded several major universities and colleges, including the Universities of British Columbia, Victoria, Alberta, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Dawson College.
James McGill, born in Glasgow, Scotland on 6 October 1744, was a successful English- and French-speaking merchant in Quebec, having matriculated into Glasgow University in 1756.Between 1811 and 1813,he drew up a will leaving his "Burnside estate", a 19-hectare (47-acre) tract of rural land and 10,000 pounds to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.
Upon McGill's death in December 1813, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, established in 1801 by an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, added the establishing of a University pursuant to the conditions of McGill's will to its original function of administering elementary education in Lower Canada. As a condition of the bequest, the land and funds had to be used for the establishment of a "University or College, for the purposes of Education and the Advancement of Learning in the said Province.The will specified that a constituent college would be required to bear his name and the school must be established within 10 years of his death; otherwise the bequest would revert to the heirs of his wife.
On March 31, 1821, after protracted legal battles with the Desrivières family (the heirs of his wife), McGill College received a royal charter from King George IV. The Charter provided that the College should be deemed and taken as a University, with the power of conferring degrees.
Though McGill College received its Royal Charter in 1821, it was inactive until 1829 when the Montreal Medical Institution, which had been founded in 1823, became the college's first academic unit and Canada's first medical school. The Faculty of Medicine granted its first degree, a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, in 1833; this was also the first medical degree to be awarded in Canada.The Faculty of Medicine remained the school's only functioning faculty until 1843 when the Faculty of Arts commenced teaching in the newly constructed Arts Building and East Wing (Dawson Hall).The university also historically has strong linkage with The Canadian Grenadier Guards, a military regiment in which James McGill served as the Lieutenant-Colonel. This title is marked upon the stone that stands before the Arts building, from where the Guards step off annually to commemorate Remembrance Day. The Faculty of Law was founded in 1848 which is also the oldest of its kind in the nation. 48 years later, the school of architecture at McGill University was founded as well.
Sir John William Dawson, McGill's principal from 1855 to 1893, is often credited with transforming the school into a modern university.He recruited the aid of Montreal's wealthiest citizens (eighty percent of Canada's wealth was then controlled by families who lived within the Golden Square Mile area that surrounded the university), many of whom donated property and funding needed to construct the campus buildings. Their names adorn many of the campus's prominent buildings. William Spier designed the addition of West Wing of the Arts Building for William Molson, 1861.Alexander Francis Dunlop designed major alterations to the East Wing of McGill College (now called the Arts Building, McGill University) for Prof. Bovey and the Science Dept., 1888.This expansion of the campus continued until 1920. Buildings designed by Andrew Taylor, include the Redpath Museum (1880), Macdonald Physics Building (1893), the Redpath Library (1893), the Macdonald Chemistry Building (1896), the Macdonald Engineering Building (1907)—now known as the Macdonald-Stewart Library Building, and the Strathcona Medical Building (1907)—since renamed the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building.
In 1900, the university established the MacLennan Travelling Library. McGill University Waltz composed by Frances C. Robinson, was published in Montréal by W.H. Scroggie, c 1904.
McGill University and Mount Royal, 1906, Panoramic Photo Company
In 1885, the university's Board of Governors formally adopted the use of the name "McGill University". In 1905, the university acquired a second campus when Sir William C. Macdonald, one of the university's major benefactors, endowed a college in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, 32 kilometres west of Montreal. Macdonald College, now known as the Macdonald Campus, opened to students in 1907, originally offering programs in agriculture, household science, and teaching.
George Allan Ross designed the Pathology Building, 1922–23; the Neurological Institute, 1933; Neurological Institute addition 1938 at McGill University. Jean Julien Perrault (architect) designed the McTavish Street residence for Charles E. Gravel, which is now called David Thompson House (1934).
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