The Toronto Years is the first of three volumes relating the history of McMaster University. It is not simply an institutional chronicle, which lists names for the record; it is a dramatic and colourful story that shows how the university grew out of earlier Baptist educational endeavours and describes its eventful first forty years, spent on the Bloor Street Campus in Toronto.

McMaster University was established in 1887 as a trust of the Baptist constituency, which helped to ensure vital and ongoing financial support, but which also embroiled the school in the often bitter theological debates sweeping through the churches. In the 1920s, the struggle between modernism and fundamentalism threatened the university’s very existence. Fluctuating enrolment, wartime stresses, and education continually forced confrontations over the question of federation with the provincial university in Toronto.

Charles Johnston describes the achievements of a small group of courageous and skilful administrators amid the conflicting currents of educational and religious development in Canada during a period when universities were the targets of traditional criticisms of urban values. This volume will be of interest to anyone concerned with the cultural and intellectual growth of the nation.

Charles M. Johnston is professor emeritus of history at McMaster University and the author of McMaster University, Volume 2: The Early Years in Hamilton, 1930–1957.

Charles M. Johnston's profile page