Henry Marshall Tory: A Biography

Alexander D. Gregor is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the
University of Manitoba.

This publication is the rechristening of a work published in 1954 under
the title Henry Marshall Tory: Beloved Canadian. The subtle change in
title reflects a concern voiced by University of Alberta historian Doug
Owram in his introduction to the new edition, and by the university’s
chancellor, Sandy A. Mactaggart, in his foreword. In the latter’s
words, “We no longer believe in heroes as we used to, and in this work
of the 1950’s, the author’s admiration of his subject has a
different quality than that of a contemporary writer.” Contrasts in
both tone and substance with contemporary historical writing are
evident. As Owram observes, “In the tradition of both the genre of
biography as tribute and the age in which it was written, Tory’s
public and private lives are kept distinct.”

And yet, like so many of the pioneering figures in North American
education, Tory does seem larger than life. An unembellished list of his
accomplishments is humbling: “He became successively (from 1905 on),
founder of McGill College in British Columbia, later to become the
University of British Columbia; founder and first President of the
University of Alberta; founder and President of Khaki University during
World War I; President of the National Research Council; and at his
death was President of Carleton College, Ottawa, an institution he had
been largely instrumental in establishing a few years earlier.”

Robert C. Wallace, then Principal of Queen’s University, described
Tory in the 1954 introduction as a “builder.” A second label is just
as important: he can be seen as a “bridge between the old world and
the new.” With whatever departures from current historiographical
style, Corbett, who was himself a close associate of Tory, presents a
fascinating and most readable insight into the development of higher
education in Canada at the start of this century, and into the factors
that shaped that unique development—factors like frontier populism,
Christian idealism, denominationalism, and the country’s parochialism
in the realm of research and development. This reissue is a welcome
refurbishing of our sparse popular literature in that area.