Today we are going to discover the cultural center of the city of Ontario: the University of Toronto. Founded in 1827 by the Royal Charter, it was the first secondary school headquarter in the area. It is a collegiate university, with eleven autonomous or semi-autonomous colleges. Furthermore, the seat in Toronto is only one of the three campuses that make up the U of T. It houses humanities faculties, including Letters, Social Assistance, but also Music. Scientific faculites, such as Forestry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Medicine and Dentistry. But also Engineering, Architecture, Political Sciences and many more.
It is impossible to deny the value and importance that the University of Toronto has had and still has for the whole world. Why? Because his students begun research on insulin and stem cells. Here the first electron microscope was used. Important schools of thought emerged from here. Here the first black hole was identified. In addition, this campus gave birth to four Canadian prime ministers and three governors-general. In addition to leaders of other states and Supreme Court judges.
The architecture of the campus
The main campus of the University of Toronto, St. George, is located near Queen’s Park. The land extends over 70 hectares, constituting a real urban park in the center of the city. It consists of various buildings with different architectural styles, ranging from Romanesque to Gothic, built from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Front Campus is the main building. Erected in 1857, it presents a unique style characterized by the mixture of Romanesque and Norman elements. Particular is also the Convocation Hall with its green dome supported by Ionic columns. Another prominent building is the neo-Gothic Hart House, the student complex characterized by large windows. While the tallest structure is the Soldiers Tower. It is 44 meters high and the names of men killed during the world wars are engraved on the arches.
All students who dropped out of school to go to fight and never returned are also remembered by the sound of the 51 bells on the Memorial Day. But there are many other structures scattered over the 71 hectares: the Trinity College building, the Varsity Arena, Victoria College and Knox College. The most modern part of the campus, however, is the western one. Built after the Second World War, it features modern concrete buildings characterized by geometric figures. Among them the complex of the Robarts Library stands out. It’s the Sidney Smith Hall, home of the Faculty of Letters and Sciences. The most recent of the buildings, as well as the most technological one, dates back to 2006 and is the Leslie L. Dan where Pharmacy students study.
History of the University of Toronto
It was Lt. John Graves Simcoe who wanted an education center in Upper Canada to counter US republicanism. Work began at the end of the 1700s in what was then the city of York. But we have to wait for the royal decree of King George IV, arrived in 1827, to consider this college a real university, called King’s College. It was an institution with religious character governed by the British Church. But the government opposed this control and fought for college secularization. In fact, in 1849 ties were cut with the Church. It ceased to be King’s College to become in effect the University of Toronto. Applied Sciences and Engineering was the first faculty to open, followed by the Faculty of Medicine a few years later.
And did you know that only men were allowed to study there? This until 1884, the year of the turning point, the year in which women also began to sit on those desks and come out with the graduation hat. In 1890, large part of the interior of the main building was destroyed by a fire mainly spreading over the library: over 30,000 volumes burned in flames. In a few years, however, it returned to its former glory. Over the years, the University opened up to other institutes by forging partnerships with Trinity College of Strachan, the Royal Conservatory of Music and the Royal Ontario Museum, among others. And the new century was welcomed with the establishment of the University of Toronto Press: the first academic publishing house in the Country. Two satellite colleges opened in Scarborough in 1964 and Mississauga in 1967.
Featured image: painting by Sir Edmund Walker representing the University in 1858. License: Public Domain
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