History
The origin of St. Thomas University dates back to 1860 when James Rogers, the newly appointed Bishop of Chatham, founded St Michael's Academy. Bishop Rogers's successor Bishop Thomas F. Barry, Bishop of Chatham, invited the Basilian Fathers of Toronto to assume charge of St Michael's, an institution in Chatham, New Brunswick, providing education for boys at the secondary and junior college levels. The Basilians agreed to do so in 1910, insisting on changing the academy's name to St Thomas College so as to avoid confusion with their St Michael's College in Toronto. The chancellor of the college remained the Bishop of Chatham.
The Basilian Fathers remained at St. Thomas until 1923. That year Bishop Patrice Chiasson, an Acadian who had succeeded Bishop Barry in 1920 as bishop of Chatham, managed with the help of a few priests to keep the college operating. From 1910 until 1934, St. Thomas College retained its original status as a High School and Junior College. It became a degree-granting institution upon receipt of a University Charter on March 9, 1934, at which time the provincial legislature of New Brunswick enacted the following:
“St. Thomas College shall be held, and taken, and is hereby declared to be a University with all and every power of such an institution, and the Board of Governors thereof shall have full power and authority to confer upon properly qualified persons the degree of Bachelor, Master, and Doctor in the several arts and faculties in the manner and upon the conditions which may be ordered by the Board of Governors.”
In 1938, Chiasson, with the permission of the Vatican, transferred the See of the Diocese from English-speaking Chatham to French-speaking Bathurst, which caused considerable concern among St Thomas's supporters in Chatham. In 1959, after six years of secret negotiations, the predominantly English-speaking section of Northumberland County, including within its territorial limits Chatham and St. Thomas College, was transferred from the Diocese of Bathurst to the Diocese of Saint John, making Alfred Leverman, Bishop of Saint John since 1953, St. Thomas's new chancellor.
In 1953, St Thomas granted its first honorary degree to Lord Beaverbrook, a keen supporter of the college. The St Thomas graduating class of 1953 made his lordship an honorary member of their class.
In 1960, an act of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick changed the name of St. Thomas College to St. Thomas University, reflecting its expanded departments. The following year, the high school courses were eliminated from the curriculum.
From the middle 1950s, the President of UNB, Colin B. Mackay, pushed to have St Thomas moved to the UNB campus in Fredericton. After much political maneuvering on the part of Bishop Leverman and the new president of St Thomas since 1961, Msgr Donald C. Duffie, in the spring of 1962 it was finally announced that, as a recommendation of the Deutsch Royal Commission, St Thomas would be moving to the UNB campus in Fredericton. The announcement engendered a major controversy, the move being opposed by St Thomas's loyal supporters in Chatham. In 1963 an agreement was drawn up between St. Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick. According to this agreement, St. Thomas University would be an "affiliated university" with UNB, with a 99-year lease to a large portion of the UNB campus. It would continue to grant its own undergraduate degrees in arts and education but gave up its former right to grant degrees in Nursing or graduate degrees. The agreement further provided that St. Thomas University would retain control of the content and administration of its curriculum. President Duffie agreed that its new academic and residential buildings would be designed by UNB's noted architectural firm Larson & Larson. To avoid duplication, and in return for a portion of St Thomas's provincial grant turned over to UNB, the two universities would share various services and facilities such as the library holdings and various scientific, cultural, and athletic facilities.
On September 2, 1964, St. Thomas University opened its new premises in Fredericton. Since its relocation, the university has undergone significant growth in the number of students, faculty, and facilities. From less than 500 students, 22 faculty and 3 buildings at that time, St. Thomas has grown to nearly 3000 students, 121 full-time faculty and 12 buildings.
St. Thomas is now nationally recognized for the beauty of its campus and the quality of its learning environment. In 1964, the institution consisted of the Administration Building (now George Martin Hall), Harrington Hall (residence), and Holy Cross House (classrooms, faculty offices and residence). Vanier Hall (residence) was added in 1965; Edmund Casey Hall (classrooms and faculty offices) in 1969; a new wing to Edmund Casey Hall in 1985; Sir James Dunn Hall (student area, classrooms) in 1994, and the J.B. O'Keefe Fitness Centre and the Forest Hill Residence (now Harry Rigby Hall) in 1999.
The new century saw the opening of the Welcome Centre (Admissions) and Brian Mulroney Hall (classrooms, faculty offices, and student areas) in 2001; Chatham Hall was added to the Forest Hill Residence in 2003. During that year, St. Thomas University also began leasing classroom space in a CBC broadcast facility for use by its journalism programme, a unique and beneficial arrangement. Margaret Norrie McCain Hall, an academic building consisting of a large auditorium, a two-storey student study hall, and numerous classrooms and seminar rooms, opened for students in January 2007.
Read more about this topic: St. Thomas University (New Brunswick)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)