Adolphus Egerton Ryerson
1803 -- 1882
Ryerson's father was as unyielding as he was
uncharitable: "Egerton, I hear that you have joined the Methodists; you
must either leave them or leave my house." The eighteen year-old chose to
leave home.
One of nine children (including five sons who became
Methodist ministers) Egerton was born near Vittoria, a village close to
present-day Port Dover. His Dutch foreparents had been in the new world since
the early 1600s. When New Amsterdam fell to the British in 1664 and was renamed
New York, they anglicized the spelling of "Reyerzoon." Upon the
outbreak of the American Revolution their descendants declared their loyalty to
the crown and, together with thousands of other United Empire Loyalists,
migrated to what remained of British North America.
The farm boy found his way to a school in Vittoria
where James Mitchell, his teacher, fostered in him a love of learning and a
facility with the English language. He also exposed Ryerson to the surge of
world-occurrence and all it boded for actors and spectators alike.
The educational vista soon complemented a religious
vision, for the teenager had apprehended Jesus approaching him. Eager to refute
the scornful who sneered at religion as an excuse for laziness, Ryerson prepared
himself for the ministry by arising daily at 3:00 a.m. in order to study until
6:00, when he commenced the 14-hour day's work required of all farm labour.
His father, undeflectably Anglican, viewed Methodists
as near-American (the first Methodist Circuit in Upper Canada, established by
the American Methodist Episcopal Church in 1791, was part of the District of
Genesee, New York State) and near-anarchic, assuming republicanism and
revolution to imply each other.
Undiscouraged by his father's intransigence, Ryerson
became the itinerant preacher on the Yonge Street Circuit. Its boundaries were
Pickering, Weston and Lake Simcoe. He needed a month to visit the people in his
charge, delivering scores of sermons in scattered settlements. Always concerned
to enhance human well-being, he ministered in the First Nation community on the
Credit River where Peter Jones, an aboriginal Methodist, had evangelized the
Mississauga natives. Here he slept in a wigwam, learned the language and set
about erecting a multi-purpose building to serve as church and school. He
supplemented the natives' gifts with monies garnered from friends and former
members of his Yonge Street circuit -- none of whom was affluent. He had the
structure paid for in six weeks.
The challenge in this regard, however, was nothing
compared to that posed by his most formidable foe. Bishop John Strachan, of
Scottish Presbyterian background, had emigrated to Canada in 1799. Rejected as a
candidate for the Presbyterian ministry, he had joined the Anglicans, soon
becoming the episcopal power-broker and the implacable foe of all who threatened
the grip of the wealthy, oligarchic "Family Compact." The latter was a
handful of rich families whose stranglehold on business, finance and education
sought to petrify the social stratification it exploited. Newly admitted to the
Compact, Strachan spoke for it and speared any who opposed it.
Twenty-five years older than Ryerson, Strachan
denounced Methodists as poorly-educated, irresponsible and traitorous
(conveniently forgetting that they were descendants of United Empire Loyalists.)
Already denied the right to own land for churches and parsonages, as well as the
right to baptize and solemnize marriages, Methodist people were outraged. It
fell to the 23-year old "David" to confront "Goliath."
Ryerson penned a riposte brilliant and effective in equal measure. In
four years the Methodists were granted what they had long been refused.
Notorious now, Ryerson was appointed editor of a brand
new Christian Guardian, soon the most widely read newspaper in the
province, superseding many times over the official Upper Canada Gazette. The
Guardian followed up with a bookstore, and this in turn metamorphosed
into Ryerson Press, at one point the largest printing and publishing enterprise
in Canada. Operating until 1970, it did much to shape the Canadian identity
through the novelists, poets, biographers and historians whose works it
disseminated.
In 1836 the Methodists built Upper Canada College at
Cobourg, Ontario, expanding it into Victoria College (1841) and Victoria
University (1865, when faculties of law and medicine were added.) Named its
first principal, Ryerson announced a curriculum as broad as it was deep. In
addition to Classics (a mainstay at any university at this time), he added a
science department offering courses in chemistry, mineralogy and geography, as
well as new departments of philosophy, rhetoric and modern languages (French and
German.) Always eschewing one-sidedness anywhere in life, he insisted that each
student pursue a balanced programme of the arts and the sciences.
Yet Ryerson's monumental victory soon eclipsed the
achievements that had already made him a household name. Dismayed to see
one-half of school-aged children with no formal education and the remaining half
averaging only a year's, he knew himself handed unparalleled opportunity the day
he was appointed Chief Superintendent of Common Schools for Canada West in 1844.
(A "common" school was the social opposite of the elitist private
schools.) Only forty-three, Ryerson persuaded the provincial government to
assume responsibility for education. Soon common schools, aided by government
grants, appeared wherever twenty students could be gathered. The arrangement was
a quantitative leap over the log cabin schoolhouses whose instructors were
frequently minimally literate themselves.
Thinking ill of a British school system that
perpetuated the worst class divisiveness in Europe, Ryerson visited Continental
common schools in Holland, Italy and France, "bookending" his trip
with visits to Germany where he could observe the education system that Philip
Melanchthon had implemented 300 years earlier. Upon his return to Canada he
wooed the provincial government into marrying education and tax revenues,
thereby providing free education for all. Of course the rich objected, arguing
that they shouldn't have to support the schooling of their social inferiors.
Ryerson triumphed. His free education was soon compulsory as well. In it all he
elevated teaching from a miserable job to a calling akin to that of the ordained
ministry.
George Brown, editor of Toronto's Globe
newspaper, ranted that Ryerson had imported "Prussian" education into
Ontario. Ryerson, cultured where Brown was crude, quietly immersed himself in
French literature, having taught himself the language so well that he and the
pope had conversed in it during his visit to Italy.
His educational programme quickly spread to other
provinces, thereby magnifying his contribution to public life in Canada. The
Methodist people, who for several decades hadn't always appreciated what he was
coaxing into place for all Canadians, realized his accomplishment. In 1874 they
honoured the seventy-four year old giant by electing him the first president of
the General Conference of the newly-amalgamated Methodist Church of Canada.
Victor Shepherd 5th
October 2001
