97 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus The cost and physical size, however, probably make this volume unavailable to many who would benefit from the content. I would have liked to see a more manageable book with a more careful selection of material. Ten key articles (my s u g g e s t i o n s : C l i f f o r d ; S a n d l e r ; M o o r e & S a g a r i a ; Clichy & Zimmerman; Smith, Aisenberg & Harrington; Clark & Corcoran; Astin & Leland; Minnich, Schuster & Van Dyne) would have accomplished as much as the whole current volume and in a much more accessible and reader-friendly way. We would then have a much more useful book, with the rest of the material still available in its original published form. ©ooooooooooooooooooo Waite, P.B. The Lives ofDalhousie University, Volume One, 1818-1925: Lord Dalhousie's College. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994. Pages: xii, 338. Price: $39.95 (cloth). Reviewed by Paul Axelrod, Faculty of Arts, York University. The early history of Dalhousie University is unusual even by Canadian standards. Initiated in 1818 by Lord Dalhousie, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, the "institution" took in not a single student until 1838, closed seven years later, and reopened on a continuing basis in 1863. Its founding, intermittent death, and subsequent emergence as the leading centre of higher education in the Maritime provinces are the subjects of Peter Waite's engaging study, the first of two volumes. This is a story that can only be told in the context of the religious and political history of Nova Scotia, and few are better equipped to tell it than Waite, a distinguished historian of the Maritime region. He guides the reader through the Nova Scotian nether world of sectarian and community rivalries, symbolized and perpetuated by the conflicts over the Dalhousie university project. Established (unlike the Anglican controlled King's College) on the principle of "Religious Toleration", Dalhousie was dominated unofficially by Presbyterians, who themselves were deeply divided for the first half of the nineteenth century. Mistrustful of Dalhousie's ambitions, Baptists began Acadia College at Wolfville, Catholics opened St. Mary's College in Halifax, and Methodists established Mount Allison College in nearby Sackville, New Brunswick. As Waite notes, "A college with no denomination behind it, in a world where denominational rivalries and loyalties were a fundamental way of life, was almost doomed."(p. 35) Political and theological tensions cooled sufficiently for Dalhousie to reopen in the 1860s, still as a non-sectarian institution; 98 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus but the prospects for a cooperative federation of Nova Scotian universities, however sensible, remained dim and unrealized. Waite's book is a timely backgrounder to the current politics of higher education in Nova Scotia. Funding exigencies are now rekindling the cause of university rationalization, including federation. Deep-rooted local loyalties, as always, are likely to fuel resistance. Such divisions led in 1881 to the withdrawal of provincial funding from all of Nova Scotia's universities. Dalhousie survived the next four decades on the basis of sober leadership, good teaching and, literally, good fortune. The latter came in the form of a series of gifts from a Nova Scotian named George Munro who became a successful New York publisher. For reasons that are not crystal clear, he was enamoured with Dalhousie, and funded five university chairs with an endowment totalling $330,000 (equivalent to 8 million 1993 dollars). Subsequent support from Maritime philanthropists, particularly from wealthy Presbyterians, and from the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, sustained the medical school and facilitated additional university expansion. By the 1920s (following another failed attempt at university federation) Dalhousie could be cautiously optimistic about the future, more so than its struggling institutional rivals. One of them, King's College, did affiliate with Dalhousie - trading autonomy for survival. The people who taught and studied at Dalhousie are portrayed with great affection by the author. Reverend John Forrest, President of Dalhousie from 1885-1911, his successor A.S. Mackenzie (1911 to 1931) and professors William Lyall (Philosophy), Charles Macdonald (Mathematics) and Archibald McMechan (English), reflected and shaped Dalhousie's values: liberal education, devotion to the Scottish tradition of accessible education, philosophical pragmatism, and, in its treatment of students, benign paternalism. Waite uncovers no rogues or scandals in Dalhousie's first half century. His most critical comment - characteristically understated - is directed at James Ross, the first principal, who provided lame leadership from 1863 to 1885. "Ross may well have been one of those unremembered presidents who are better at preventing evil than doing good." (p. 103) Student life, too, is warmly recounted, and was not diminished (at least in Waite's eyes) by the violence of initiations and "scrimmages" between freshmen and sophomore students. The author is not especially impressed by recent anthropological and cultural explanations for these aggressive male rituals. For Waite, their popularity merely symbolized strong school spirit; and their decline, a regrettable student apathy. Women, who were admitted to Dalhousie in 1881, and who by 1900 constituted 25 per cent of the class, did not generally participate in these uncivil rites. 99 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus Instead, they brought maturity and studiousness to Dalhousie, while enhancing the social life of men. Waite treats the subject of gender respectfully, but perfunctorily. The complexity of women's experience - how they viewed and grappled with their subordinate status - is probed more thoroughly in a previous article by Judith Fingard, which the author cites. But feminist historiography of the late Victorian era is not one of Waite's major interests. Nor are some other preoccupations of recent educational historians. Newer literature on the introduction of professional education into universities probes critically the social construction of occupational status at the turn of the century. But for Waite, Dalhousie's entry into legal and medical education was simply the sensible and pragmatic thing to do. Similarly, the author overlooks some provocative studies which raise questions, without rejecting entirely, the myth of the democratic Scottish-Presbyterian educational tradition. In his book, Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland (1983), R.D. Anderson notes that the growth of Scottish universities in the late 19th century did little to reduce social class divisions in the community. University was still largely inaccessible to the children of "labourers, miners, or crofters" (p. 318). The same might be said of Dalhousie. Most students were not rich, but relative to the population at large they were still relatively privileged, and the university played a role in furnishing local elites. However liberal its soul, Dalhousie was something less than a populist institution. Its significance within the class structure of Halifax and environs deserves additional study. While some interesting historiographical questions linger, Waite has largely succeeded in his attempt to evoke the era and the aura from which Dalhousie emerged. The author's focus - the contest of religion, education, and politics - is captured in lively and graceful prose. The sequel should be no less intriguing. oooooooooooooooooooo Killtop, A.B. Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Price: $75.00 (cloth); $35.00 (paper). Reviewed by Barry M. Moody, Department of History, Acadia University. With his book, Matters of Mind, A.B. McKillop has provided us with a large step forward in understanding not only the evolution of the university in Canada, but also the development of intellectual trends in this country during the past 150 years. Although focused solely on the university in Canada West/Ontario, the study has relevance, interest and importance far beyond those narrow geographic boundaries.