Situated on an island thirty-two miles long and from four to eight miles wide, at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, Montreal is a seaport, although a thousand miles from the sea; for the construction of a thirty-foot channel enables the largest ocean vessels to sail to her docks. The Canadian canals enable the steamers of the Great Lakes to sail to the harbour of Montreal, where they transfer their cargoes to the ocean steamers. Montreal has, indeed, almost unrivalled facilities by both rail and water. Her harbour is under the control of a Board of Commissioners appointed by the Government of the Dominion, and twenty-seven millions of dollars had been spent in providing the most approved modern facilities up to the beginning of 1916, with nine millions more for the same purpose already available. Both her export and import trade have been increasing so rapidly that even these liberal endowments are taxed to the utmost. With this commercial supremacy, the City of the Royal Mountain offers educational advantages and scientific culture of the highest order. The great value of the McGill University is not only the distinction of its intellectual position, or the high quality of its work, but also its guarantees of equality of educational opportunity to all whose career comes within the sphere of its influence. The princely endowments of the late Lord Strathcona and of Sir William Macdonald provided a {77} foundation whose far-reaching value can hardly be estimated, and the university has been singularly fortunate in the character and endowments that have graced her staff of professors. While McGill offers special training of the most advanced type in preparation for the various professions, and for the acquirement of technical qualifications, she has never yielded to any purely utilitarian standards. She has held to the ideal that Education is primarily for the soul herself, and not, as said the Grecian philosopher of old, "to be undertaken in the spirit of merchants and traders, with a view to buying or selling." It is the glory of McGill that she sends forth, not only culture and trained skill, but men prepared for the duties of citizenship, and the obligations, the privileges, the responsibilities that await them as members of society. [Illustration: Montreal City] McGill celebrated in 1904 her seventy-sixth anniversary, and in the lofty and glowing address made on that occasion by Principal and Vice-Chancellor Peterson, we find him saying--