Edward Beatty served as McGill's Chancellor from 1920 to 1943. His relationship with McGill began when he was elected a governor of the university in 1919, just a year after becoming president of the CPR. Beatty's election came as no surprise. McGill and the CPR traditionally had close ties and he was personally interested in youth work. Beatty also served as president of the Canadian Boy Scouts Association and established several annual student scholarships at McGill.
Beatty stands to the left of British Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald at his honorary degree ceremony in 1929. Image: McGill University Archives.
Installation as Chancellor
At the time, then-Canadian-Prime-Minister Sir Robert Borden served as Chancellor. In 1920, Borden resigned due to poor health and Beatty was appointed to replace him as Chancellor of McGill. Beatty's installation took place with little fanfare, just as he wanted. According to the McGill News, "there was no installation ceremony, little publicity, and no ballyhoo... anything even faintly dramatic or theatrical rang false in his ear and worried him". Beatty made his first public appearance as the Chancellor when he presided over McGill's Centenary Convocation. Fifty-four honorary degrees were conferred including on the Governor General, the President of Yale and the Chief Justice of Canada. According to that week's McGill News, "our rookie Chancellor stepped straight into a world-series convocation and calmly hit a home-run".
A line from Beatty's opening speech characterized him well: "I feel myself lacking in many of those personal and official qualities which should be possessed by the incumbent of this high office... I may as well admit frankly and publicly that I was not selected because of academic distinction or a profound knowledge of the classics. The dead languages are very dead to me."
Beatty also stated that McGill's top tier position could only be maintained "if it keeps step with the times, maintains an elastic curriculum and faculties receptive to new conception of education." That year McGill introduced continuing education lectures in banking and industrial chemistry plus two-year courses in social sciences, topped off with a complete reorganization of the Faculty of Medicine.
Beatty (left) at the installation of Principal Morgan (centre) in 1935. Image: McGill University Archives.
Leading McGill
Beatty's chancellorship spanned the tenure of four McGill principals. In 1933, McGill Principal Sir Arthur Currie died and Beatty took over the administration of McGill until Principal Arthur Morgan was instated in 1935. Beatty also saw the installation of Principal Lewis Douglas in 1937 and Principal F. Cyril James in 1939.
As he did in his role as CPR President, Beatty steered McGill through the boom, bust and war years. Major milestones that took place during his tenure included: the opening of the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Research Institute of Endocrinology, the establishment of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, the Faculty of Music, the School of Graduate Nurses, the construction of the Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Gymnasium, the completion of a new wing of the Royal Victoria College and the enrollment of over 6000 McGill women and men in the Canadian Armed and Auxiliary Forces at the start of World War II. From 1935 to 1939, at the peak of the depression, Beatty created the governor's guarantee fund which required McGill's governors to provide enough funds to balance the university's books.
Despite these achievements, Beatty is perhaps best remembered for the time he had for students. As Principal James would later recall, "At Convocation, the jaunty angle of his cap was somehow more important than the solemn formality of the gold laced gown, and his message to the graduating class was the counsel of an elder brother who understood his fellows and loved them." In 1926, Beatty presented McGill with two annual scholarships, one for Greek and Latin, one for mathematics.
Sir Edward bestows Ms. Effie Astbury with a Bachelor of Library Science in 1939.
She would eventually become a professor and director at McGill’s Graduate School of Library Science. Image: McGill University Archives.
The Great Depression Years
The Depression years left a lasting impact on Beatty. During a speech given to students in March 1939, Beatty stated, "I think that the historians of the future will give the youth of this generation great credit for their refusal to accept the doctrines of despair which have been so sedulously inculcated in them in recent times."
Always a headstrong leader, in the speech Beatty went on to instruct: "Yet I should like to remind you that youth still has the most priceless asset of all - long years of activity... In addition, the opportunity which the generations before you have used has been converted into a mass of physical wealth which lies there, available for you to use. Cities and railways; homes and factories; mines and machines; power plants and the tools and implements of every science and trade have been created and are at your disposal."
A caricature of “The Chancellor” by F. M. G. Johnson, dated 1935, that now hangs in McGill's Faculty Club. Image: McGill Visual Arts Collection.
In Beatty's address to McGill's graduating class of 1934, he stated: "What are the qualifications for success? What will be the evidence that the years spent within these walls have not been wasted? Not wealth. Not visible and material success as the world has measured it in my lifetime. I suggest to you that your generation will be wiser than those who preceded you, and that you will know that success is but another name for happiness and that happiness lies within the reach of every human being."
Edward Beatty at a 1942 convocation ceremony. Image: McGill University Archives.
"McGill Was Truly In His Heart"
Beatty served as Chancellor from 1920 until his death in 1943. As noted by Beatty's biographer, "McGill was truly in his heart. Anything that affected the University was a matter of deep concern to him, and he was tremendously proud in an unobtrusive way of his Chancellorship." His glowing obituary in the McGill News underscored this: "Finally when the doctors ordered him to drop as much as possible of the voluntary burden he carried, McGill was something he would not yield, and he died our Chancellor."
In his obituary for Beatty in the McGill Yearbook, Principal James recalled that when the Chancellor first fell ill in 1940, he briefly left the hospital to participate in a Convocation ceremony while seated in his car on the fringe of the crowd. According to James: "One of the greatest Canadians is gone from us... For more than twenty years the welfare of the University had been continually in his mind and during the closing days of his life he was still seeking news ways in which to aid her steady growth… Words that are spoken now can add nothing to the great stature of a man whose deeds are a living memorial... His deep interest in education, and his wise counsel, have contributed to the University in such measure that no man knows the true sum of his accomplishments."
Photo of a 1946 portrait of Edward Beatty (oil painting) by Francis Harby, now located in McGill's Redpath Hall. Image: Queens University Archives.
Image on section homepage courtesy McGill University Archives.