78 Reviews - Recensions of integrating teaching, research and practice that face the modern universities will prove difficult to resolve but we can be grateful to Professor Ben-David for identifying their source, analyzing their development and charting their boundaries. John R. Mallea The Ontario Institute For Studies in Education Murray L. Ban, A Century of Medicine at Western. London, The University of Western Ontario, 1977. John R. W. Gwynne-Timothy, Western's First Century. London, The University of Western Ontario, 1978. Robert N. Sherville, ed., They Passed This Way - A Selection of Citations. London, The University of Western Ontario, 1978. Hilda Neatby, Queen's University, Volume 1,1841-1917, edited by Frederick W. Gibson and Roger Graham. Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978. This review article deals with four recent publications in the field of university history, three of them emanating from the University of Western Ontario and the fourth from Queen's. Only passing reference will be made to one of the Western volumes, Robert N. Shervill, editor, They Passed this Way — a Selection of Citations (for honorary degrees) 1878-1978, 1978, a handsome coffee table book. The main emphasis will be on two works which can be described as official university histories, and the question I have in mind in discussing them is, How successful has the author been in presenting both the facts of the university's development and the role it has played in the intellectual life of the communities it serves, specifically the city, the province and the nation? These are John R.W. Gwynne-Timothy, Western's First Century, 1978 and Hilda Neatby, Queen's University Volume 1,1841-1917, edited by Frederick W. Gibson and Roger Graham, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978. The fourth book, Murray L. Barr,^l Century of Medicine at Western, 1977 is a history of a single faculty, but here too the same basic question can be asked: Does the author succeed in clearly describing the development of the faculty and also relating this to the development of medicine in Western Ontario and in Canada? No such question can be asked of the Shervill book which makes no pretentions of being anything but a record of one aspect of life at the University, the convocation ceremony. This it does effectively. In addition to the citations, the text consists of brief but elegant essays on the procedures for selecting candidates and on the art of writing citations by D. Carleton Williams and on the trials, tribulations and triumphs of the organizers of such ceremonies by the editor, Robert Shervill. The three Western volumes have been published in connection with the University's centenary, and all are available at $15.00 from the University's Bookstore. This number of anniversary volumes is not unprecedented in Canada; Queen's produced three volumes at the time of its centenary in 1941, as did Saskatchewan for its semi-centenary in 1959. 79 Reviews - Recensions Nonetheless, the scale of the Western undertaking is unusual. The Gwynne-Timothy volume weighs five pounds and probably contains more words than the six Queen's and Saskatchewan works combined. Barr's is also a lengthy book. All three are generously illustrated, though with the exception of the coffee table book, with not much imagination; and certainly in today's market they are modestly priced. The late Dr. Neatby's volume is the first of two in the new Queen's history and will be followed by a volume by Professor Gibson extending the story forward to 1967 or beyond. It is a handsome and happily illustrated book and at $25.00 is a bargain. It could be argued that at $50.00, it would still be a bargain. As an institutional history, it is an almost flawless work, comparable in every sense to Charles Johnson's McMaster University: the Toronto Years. The development of the institution over an extended period of time is described in detailed and dramatic fashion; the unique character of Queen's is established as the drama unfolds, and both development and evolving tradition are explained in the context of the cultural, economic, political and social movements of the Province and the Canadian nation. Professor Neatby has combined institutional and intellectual history in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between the two. One other comment is in order — on the wonderful balance of Professor Neatby's treatment of the half-dozen major periods in Queen's first 75 years. To some extent, Queen's has suffered from the disproportionate attention that has been paid to its great principal, George M. Grant, while he receives his due from Professor Neatby, so do the other principals and such professors as Williamson, McKerras, Watson and Shortt. Particularly illuminating are the treatments of Grant's predecessor, William Snodgrass, and his successor, Daniel Gordon. Gwynne-Timothy's is not a flawless work; indeed, it is seriously flawed both by factual errors and in organization, though as we shall see, the latter was probably inevitable. It is, however, an important book and one which the author can look back upon with pride and satisfaction. He has attempted the impossible and has come respectably close to accomplishing it. Western's First Century is really the first serious effort to chronicle and to interpret the development of a Canadian multiversity from its origins to the date of publication, a task which among many other things involves the interrelating of dozens of, what are in most respects, independent units; faculties, colleges, schools, institutes, centres, affiliates, major administrative units (library, health services) . To draw a cohesive picture of the very complex institution that the University of Western Ontario has become is a formidable undertaking, and it is further complicated when the events being described and interpreted are ones in which the author and many of his colleagues have been fuctionally involved. Dr. Barr, in his volume on Western's medical school, has had to wrestle with the same problem though on a much reduced scale, since he has taken seriously the task of relating that school's development to that of the University as a whole. When the Barr and Gwynne-Timothy works are juxtaposed with Hilda Neatby's history of Queen's, it becomes obvious that hers, by comparison, was a relatively simple undertaking Not only had she the advantage of dealing with events at least 60 years in the past, but the institution itself was by modern standards quite small. In 1914-15, the year of peak enrolment in the period covered, Queen's enrolled approximately 1,500 full-time students in five faculties. In contrast, Western Ontario in 1977-78 enrolled 17,377 full-time students 80 Reviews - Recensions in 15 faculties and schools, one of which (Science) had twelve departments. It also had over 4,000 part-time students, three affiliated colleges, and administrative units almost too numerous to count. The dimensions of Gwynne-Timothy's task can be deduced from his index, which runs to over 60 pages. Barr's is contained in 20 pages, Miss Neatby's in seven. Throughout his 800 pages of text, Professor Gwynne-Timothy seeks conscientiously to provide the provincial, national, even the international context in which the University of Western Ontario has developed since the 1850's (his first 75 pages are concerned with the University's forerunner, Huron College, the Church of England theological college established in 1864 as an alternative to the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College, Toronto). In treating the University of Western Ontario Act of 1967, for example, he provides a highly relevant and lucid analysis of the 1966 Duff Berdahl report on university government in Canada. Again, his account of the Faculty of Medicine in the first 20 years of this century includes a detailed analysis of the Flexner Report of 1910. This is excellent; the University of Western Ontario's development cannot be understood unless the context in which that development occurred is provided. Unfortunately, a substantial number of factual errors have been made in the complicated process of sketching.in this background. Two examples will serve as illustration. Utilitarian trends led to the foundation at the provincial University of Toronto of schools of veterinary science, agriculture, engineering, forestry and similar disciplines. (28) The Ontario Veterinary College was established at Toronto in 1862 by Andrew Smith, a private citizen, who sold it to the Province in 1908. O.V.C. had become an affiliate of the University in 1897, as in 1889 had the School of Practical Science and the Ontario Agricultural College, established respectively by the Government at Toronto in 1873 and at Guelph in 1874. Second, referring to the 1853 University of Toronto Act and to subsequent attempts to subsume all Upper Canada universities within a single provincial institution, The (University of) London pattern commended itself as well on a smaller national or state scale as in England, Wales, Australia, South Africa or California. (140) The London pattern has never been adopted in Australia. It is difficult to see any connection between the California Master Plan of the 1960's and the University of London arrangements of the 1850's. These are unfortunate flaws in a laudable book which is based on a careful and exhaustive examination of the primary sources and which adds substantively to our knowledge of the institution; for example, the reason for the hitherto unexplained resignation in 1919 of President Braithwaite. The chink in his armor is his command of the secondary source material. What I have called the organizational flaw illustrates the difficulty faced by a historian who is dealing with a multiversity as distinguished from a university. Western's First Century is actually very neatly structured. There are eight Parts, of which the first three 81 Reviews - Recensions cover the years to 1947: "The Church Foundation" (Huron College), "The Church University" (from the founding in 1878 to the passage of the 1908 Act which removed the institution from denominational control), and "The Secular University" (1908-1947). Part 4 is "The Multiversity", and Part 8 is "The Great University", the division point between these being 1967, when D.C. Williams succeeded G.E. Hall as president. Part 5 to 7 deal with "The Professional Schools", "Auxiliary Activities" (Libraries, Sports, Military Services, etc.) and "Affiliated College". Basically, the time period covered in these three Parts is the years from 1947 on, i.e., embracing the Hall and Williams presidencies. The author, one assumes, found it necessary to separate out this material in this way rather than incorporating it with that presented in "The Multiversity" and "The Great University" because he found that there was simply too much to handle at one time. This was not a problem so long as Western remained a college or a small university; his approach in Parts 1-3 is essentially the same as Miss Neatby's, a combination of institutional and intellectual history. But at the point where the institution becomes large and complex, the approach changes. Institutional history becomes predominant in Parts 4-8, and little attention is paid to intellectual history. I suspect that what I have called the intellectual as distinguished from the institutional history of a multiversity can only be written by concentrating on one of the multiversity's many parts, its faculty of medicine, for example, and I wish that I could point to Dr. Barr's A Century of Medicine at Western as supporting evidence. This is an admirable book which certainly demonstrates that it is possible to provide a detailed chronicle of the development of a large and complex faculty up to the present time and to place this development in relation to that of the parent university. His treatment of the Faculty of Medicine is as detailed for the 1960's and 1970's as for the 1880's, no mean feat when one notes that biographical sketches of each of the original professors are included in the book as well as a floor by floor description of the rooms in the original building. What is less satisfactorily handled in the Post World War I period is the medical context — the changing state of medical education in Ontario, Canada, North America. There are chapters on Nineteenth Century Medicine and Early Medical Training in North America as background to the founding of the school, and there is adequate reference to the Flexner Report in the account of the changes that were made in the first two decades of this century. But there is no comparable setting for the dramatic changes that have occurred since World War II. These changes are fully described, but they are portrayed withing a narrow rather than a broad perspective. There are a number of different audiences for university histories: the alumni, the current teaching staff, persons directly concerned with the governance of the institution (lay, student and support staff members of the governing board), and those interested in the intellectual history of the country. For all but the latter group, it is of very great importance that they understand the nature of the institution with which they are concerned i.e., how it is presently structured. Since the structure involves the interrelation of the various parts — board, senate, faculties, colleges, departments, etc. — how these parts have developed over time and how they interact must be made clear. This is the first requirement of a university history no matter how large and complex the institution. If this is all that can be managed in a single work, it is all that should be attempted. A work so restricted 82 Reviews - Recensions is nonetheless ultimately a contribution to the more interesting task of establishing and assessing the institution's role in the intellectual life of its communities; one must understand the structure of a university before one can deal with the intellectual life that is its raison d'dtre. Institutional history is the basis of intellectual history. Robin S. Harris University of Toronto John A.B. McLeish, ,4 Canadian For AllSeasons (The John E. Robbins Story). Toronto, Lester and Orpen, 1978. Professor John McLeish's biography of John Robbins is not an easy book to review in terms which will be fair both to him and to his subject. It has a clear preponderance of admirable merit but is marred by some surprising and unnecessary defects. Part of the problem derives from the fact that Professor McLeish probably never quite differentiated between two distinct roles: helping John Robbins to write an autobiography, or writing a biography with an independent point of view of his own. The dilemma was perhaps natural enough in view of their close personal friendship, and the fact that the author was given such extensive and generous assistance by John Robbins himself who submitted to more than twenty interviews and who obviously made available his personal files, and gave advice about other sources of information and relevant documentation. Although Professor McLeish has most diligently assembled and presented, with commendable accuracy, essential historical data on developments in the academic world in particular, which might otherwise never be as usefully recorded, he lapses occasionally in his final chapters, as will be noted, into journalistic summaries which are disappointingly flat. There is a sustained glow of genial goodwill, if we except a few shafts despatched in the direction of Vincent Massey and MacKenzie King, and an absence of incisive and critical appraisal, of which John Robbins is altogether capable in realistic judgment of his own enterprises and of his associates in many good causes. As a result Professor McLeish somewhat undercuts the credibility of this sunny account for those who are not familiar with the extraordinary record which John Robbins has, in fact, achieved. One more general criticism must be offered before proceeding to the more congenial task of singling out the many merits of this book. The author does have a certain way with the English language! He uses "religiosity" in a favourable sense, is fond of "rationales", and of "valediction", and uses "prevision" for "foresight", minor surprises to startle the reader accustomed to more austere usage in these matters. Moreover, his style has its effervescent moments, bubbling over with such flourishes as: "The dropout rate was ferocious"; "The project was obviously intended to be an injection directly into the thin bloodstream of Canadian adult education... "; "the ideas (on TV) . . . were those which captured the attention of the volatile and almost incestuous semi-plastic world of the television-makers"; and, in this tribute to the severe winter weather in Brandon, "so intense that the blood in one's nostrils tingles like sparkling fire." These, however, are minor and incidental distractions along the way, and should not impede recognition of the substantial merits of the book as a whole.