UC: The Land and Endowments
The University of Toronto dates its origins to 1827 when a Royal Charter was granted for a new institution to be called King’s College, which was controlled by the Church of England. The college opened in 1843, but from the onset the institution was enmeshed in religious and political debates.
With the aim of creating a secular university, King’s College was closed and a new institution was formed: the University of Toronto. In 1853, University College became the founding college of this new university, and from its beginnings the college was non-sectarian.
When the University of Toronto was formed, it inherited the crown reserves that had been allocated to King’s College. The land endowment, at over 225,000 acres, has been described by historian Douglas Richardson as “magnificent,” spread across the length and breadth of Upper Canada.1
These crown reserves had been appropriated from Indigenous peoples in the region. As Dr. Caitlin Harvey has observed, the endowment constituted “an enormous wealth transfer in land from Indigenous communities” to the university.2
Over the next decades, this land was leased, mortgaged and sold to fund the University of Toronto's activities. University College played a significant role in the financial decision-making as it had strong representation on the university’s Board of Endowments,3 and the college was thus intimately involved in the transfer of wealth from Indigenous peoples to the university.
It was from the land endowment that funds were secured for the construction of the University College building. This was at the recommendation of John A. Macdonald—later Canada’s first Prime Minister—who sought to protect the funds from other religious interests in Upper Canada by investing in “bricks and mortar”.4 On October 4th, 1856, the foundation for the University College building was laid.
Learn More About UC's Land and Endowment History
- Caitlin Harvey (2021) “The Wealth of Knowledge: Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context” Native American and Indigenous Studies 8(1): 97-105.
- Caitlin Harvey (2023) “University Land Grabs: Indigenous Dispossession and the University of Toronto” Presentation given at University College, January 12.
1 Douglas Richardson (1990) A Not Unsightly Building: University College and Its History; Toronto: Mosaic Press. 2.
2 Caitlin Harvey (2023) “University Land Grabs: Indigenous Dispossession and the Universities of Toronto and Manitoba” Canadian Historical Review 104(4): 467-493.
3 Douglas Richardson (1990) A Not Unsightly Building: University College and Its History; Toronto: Mosaic Press. 3.
4 Douglas Richardson (1990) A Not Unsightly Building: University College and Its History; Toronto: Mosaic Press. 3.