university of toronto

The University of Toronto (U of T, UToronto, or Toronto) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario,Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in the colony of Upper Canada. Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed the present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution. As a collegiate university, it comprises twelve colleges that differ in character and history, each retaining substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs. It has two satellite campuses located in Scarborough and Mississauga.

Academically, the University of Toronto is noted for influential movements and curricula in literary criticism andcommunication theory, known collectively as the Toronto School. The university was the birthplace of insulin and stem cell research, and was the site of the first practical electron microscope, the development of multi-touch technology, the identification of Cygnus X-1 as a black hole, and the theory of NP-completeness. By a significant margin, it receives the most annual research funding of any Canadian university. It is one of two members of the Association of American Universities located outside the United States.

The Varsity Blues are the athletic teams representing the university in intercollegiate league matches, with particularly long and storied ties to gridiron football and ice hockey. The university's Hart House is an early example of the North American student centre, simultaneously serving cultural, intellectual and recreational interests within its large Gothic-revival complex.

The University of Toronto has educated two Governors General and four Prime Ministers of Canada, four foreign leaders, fourteen Justices of the Supreme Court, and has been affiliated with ten Nobel laureates.

The founding of a colonial college had long been the desire of John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada.^[5][6] As an Oxford-educated military commander who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, Simcoe believed a college was needed to counter the spread of republicanism from the United States.^[6] The Upper Canada Executive Committee recommended in 1798 that a college be established in York, the colonial capital.^[6]

A painting by Sir Edmund Walkerdepicts University College as it appeared in 1858.

On March 15, 1827, a royal charter was formally issued by King George IV, proclaiming "from this time one College, with the style and privileges of a University ... for the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, and for their instruction in the various branches of Science and Literature ... to continue for ever, to be called King's College."^[7] The granting of the charter was largely the result of intense lobbying by John Strachan, the influential AnglicanBishop of Toronto who took office as the first president of the college.^[7][8] The original three-storey Greek Revival school building was constructed on the present site of Queen's Park.^[9][10][11]

Under Strachan's stewardship, King's College was a religious institution that closely aligned with the Church of England and the British colonial elite, known as the Family Compact.^[12] Reformist politicians opposed the clergy's control over colonial institutions and fought to have the college secularized.^[13] In 1849, after a lengthy and heated debate, the newly electedresponsible government of Upper Canada voted to rename King's College as the University of Toronto and severed the school's ties with the church.^[8] Having anticipated this decision, the enraged Strachan had resigned a year earlier to open Trinity College as a private Anglican seminary.^[14] University College was created as the nondenominational teaching branch of the University of Toronto. During the American Civil War, the threat ofUnion blockade on British North America prompted the creation of the University Rifle Corps, which saw battle in resisting the Fenian raids on the Niagara border in 1866.^[15]

Established in 1878, the School of Practical Science was precursor to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, which has been nicknamed Skule since its earliest days.^[16] While the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1843, medical teaching was conducted by proprietary schools from 1853 until 1887, when the faculty absorbed the Toronto School of Medicine.^[17]Meanwhile, the university continued to set examinations and confer medical degrees during that period.^[17] The university opened the Faculty of Law in 1887, and it was followed by the Faculty of Dentistry in 1888, when the Royal College of Dental Surgeons became an affiliate.^[8] Women were admitted to the university for the first time in 1884.^[18]

A devastating fire in 1890 gutted the interior of University College and destroyed thirty-three thousand volumes from the library,^[19] but the university restored the building and replenished its library within two years.^[19] Over the next two decades, a collegiate system gradually took shape as the university arranged federation with several ecclesiastical colleges, including Strachan's Trinity College in 1904. The university operated the Royal Conservatory of Music from 1896 to 1991 and theRoyal Ontario Museum from 1912 to 1968; both still retain close ties with the university as independent institutions.^[20][21]The University of Toronto Press was founded in 1901 as the first academic publishing house in Canada.^[22] The Faculty of Forestry, founded in 1907 with Bernhard Fernow as dean, was the first university faculty devoted to forest science in Canada. In 1910, the Faculty of Education opened its laboratory school, the University of Toronto Schools.