Ryerson Memorial Volume: Prepared on the occasion of the unveiling of the Ryerson statute in the grounds of the Education department on the Queen's birthday, 1889Hodgins, J. George (John George)
History
Ryerson Memorial Volume: Prepared on the occasion of the unveiling of the Ryerson statute in the grounds of the Education department on the Queen's birthday, 1889
Hodgins, J. George (John George)
Education -- Ontario; Ryerson, Egerton, 1803-1882
But it is not here, faithful as the bronze may speak of the man,
that his most fitting and most enduring monument must be found.
The group of happy faced children which throng our sidewalks
wending their way each morning to our schools, the pupils of
our Model Schools, our High Schools, the under-graduates of our
Universities, and these seen not only in their school period, but
in their subsequent career taking their place in our country as
its legislators, its professional men, its merchants, mechanics,
farmers, its matrons, taking their places in life, and taking them
all the better for their own good and that of their country for the
training, sound, thorough and scholarly, which they have received in
the schools, colleges and universities of their own country, helping
them to make their homes homes of comfort, elegance and refinement.
Here must be found the true and abiding monument of the man; here
the enduring fruit of his life-work, more imperishable also than
either brass or marble.
Statistics have been freely given, and these need not be repeated.
Not often does it fall to the lot of one man to leave behind him
such a record as that left by Dr. Ryerson in his life-work of
thirty-three years.
To see the old-log school house, with its imperfect appliances,
supplanted by the palatial school buildings with their perfect
equipment of our own day.
To see the work done by our High Schools, our Colleges and
Universities, which challenges not the attention only, but the
admiration of other countries, that is an honour, even with the
capabilities which exist in a young country like ours, reserved
but for few, and yet among that number he stands out promptly
whose statue has this day been unveiled by His Honour the
Lieutenant-Governor.
Any words of mine are poor and weak indeed in dealing with a matter
so full of interest, not to the people of Ontario only but to the
people of Canada, but full of interest to my own mind, as it must
be to the mind of others, is the estimate placed upon Dr. Ryerson's
work by many eminent men, all well qualified to judge from an
educationalist standpoint. Dr. Hodgins has spoken of the late Dr.
Fraser, Bishop of Manchester.
Few men were so well able to form an opinion upon any educational
system. Himself a great scholar, an Oriel man, an enthusiast on all
matters connected with the educational system of his own country,
appointed by the Royal Commission as an assistant commissioner
to visit and report upon the educational system of the United
States and Canada, thus speaks of our school system and of Dr.
Ryerson. After referring to the system says: "It shows what can be
accomplished by the energy, determination and devotion of a single
earnest man. Through evil report and good report, he has found
others to support him in the resolution that free education shall be
placed within the reach of every Canadian parent for every Canadian
child."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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