The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)Dent, John Charles
History
The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)
Dent, John Charles
Canada -- Biography
He received the degree of B.A. in 1859, and of M.A. in 1862, in due
course from the Wesleyan University, and in 1873 the honorary degree of
LL.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Victoria College,
Cobourg, Ont. In 1876 he was appointed by the Executive Government of
Nova Scotia a Fellow of the Senate of the University of Halifax. In the
hope of unifying and improving the higher education of the Maritime
Provinces Dr. Allison had given the scheme for establishing such a
University, modelled on that of London, an earnest, and at a critical
juncture, most valuable support, and still vigorously sustains the
experiment of an Examining University as under the circumstances of the
case contributing to the satisfactory solution of a difficult problem.
That the proposed scheme was open to some of the objections vigorously
urged against it by the Rev. Mr. (now Principal) Grant and others he did
not attempt to deny. But who could propose any measure directed towards
the improvement of advanced education in Nova Scotia which was not open
to objection? The existing Colleges, five or six in number, were feeble
and ill-equipped, but they had become strongly entrenched in the
affections of religious denominations, whose unwillingness to surrender
real or seeming advantages in connection with these institutions was
proportioned to the sacrifices by which these advantages had been
secured. Assuming this unwillingness of the Colleges to surrender their
chartered privileges, as the first and indeed fundamental condition of
the establishment of a genuine Provincial University to be inexpugnable,
the projectors of the University of Halifax sought to give a steady and
appreciable value to Collegiate degrees conferred in the Province, to
reduce to something like order the chaos of divergent systems, and to
send down into the strata of primary and intermediate education an
uplifting influence from above. Should even these more limited objects
be unattained through the failure of the Colleges to practically aid a
measure designed at least in part for their benefit, it may in the end
appear that the indifference of these institutions was not dictated by
the highest wisdom even as regards their own interests.
THE HON. THOMAS GALT.
Judge Galt is the second son of the late John Galt, who was for some
time the Canadian Commissioner of the Canada Company, and who was the
author of numerous dramas and works of fiction which once enjoyed great
popularity. Some account of the life of the late Mr. Galt has been given
in the sketch of the life of his youngest son, the Hon. Sir Alexander
Tilloch Galt, which appeared in the second volume of this series.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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