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Chapter 2

University, 1885–1889

When Cody came to Toronto in 1885, it was a comparatively small place, judged by modern standards, with a population of about 90,000. The boundaries of settlement ran from the waterfront to south of St. Clair and from High Park to the region just east of the lower Don River. When Cody went to St. Paul’s later as curate, most of his parishioners lived in the region of Jarvis Street, then considered the best residential street in the city, or in nearby Rosedale.

The University of Toronto, too, was comparatively small. University College (UC), a beautiful Gothic structure built in 1859, was the principal building. The only other two structures, both located south of UC, were Moss Hall, built in 1850, housing the medical school (destined to be replaced by the biology building in 1888), and the first School of Practical Science building, completed in 1878; but neither medicine nor science were yet affiliated with the university.

Registration was comparatively small. University College had about 250 students in 1867, 351 in 1881, and about 500 in 1889.¹ The students were mainly from Ontario, a large number from families of modest means. Out of 53 who graduated, 8 were from Toronto and 45 from other parts of Ontario. Of the 45, 40 had been brought up on farms.²

Until 1884 UC had been an exclusively male institution, having up to that time resisted the attempts of women students to gain admission. When Agnes Walls, a friend of Cody’s, asked him in 1887 whether women could take university courses, she was touching a sensitive nerve.³ The demand for admission of women was part of the women’s rights movement that characterized much of the nineteenth century. Canadian periodicals, particularly the Canadian Monthly, ran many articles on the subject in the 1880s. Sir Daniel Wilson, who became president of the university in 1881, was particularly opposed to the admission of women. He thought women were entitled to university training but should be taught in separate, all-female institutions. He confided to his diary on February 3, 1882. “A deputation of ladies – strong-minded – bent on having the College thrown open to women, Parliament to be appealed to, etc., etc. I have had an inkling of this for some time, and kept it in view in writing certain letters to lady applicants which Parliament is welcome to peep into now if it has a mind.”⁴ In spite of Sir Daniel, the Ontario government accepted the principle of co-education in 1884, and in October nine women entered UC as undergraduates. In 1888–89, thirty-nine were in attendance. Cody’s friend Tommy Des Barres wrote to him ruefully in May 1888: “This will I think impress you – Miss Robson cleared all the fellows out in Moderns in our year.”⁵

The academic staff, while small, included some men of distinction. Sir Daniel Wilson, for instance, was a scholar of note in the fields of English and history. Cody later recalled, “It was his habit to read his familiar lectures with great enthusiasm, punctuated by his familiar phrase ‘Hence accordingly, gentlemen.’”⁶ It was Wilson’s task to pilot UC through the negotiations that culminated in university federation. Ever since the secularization of the University of Toronto, the Ontario government (Canada West until 1867) had been confronted with the problem of how to support the denominational colleges (Victoria, Trinity, St. Michael’s, et al.) as well as UC. The act of federation of 1887 laid the basis for the scheme that would eventually provide a solution. Wilson was endlessly suspicious of what he regarded as the designs of the church colleges, particularly Victoria, to erode the position of UC in the proposed federation. However, University College survived and so did Wilson, who remained as president until 1892. Wilson was an evangelical, a founder of Wycliffe College, but he was a strong believer in the secularization of education. He thought the churches should confine their activities to theological seminaries like Wycliffe and Knox, leaving education in science and the arts to the secular authorities.

Among the rest of the staff of UC were two notable scholars, George Paxton Young and Maurice Hutton. Hutton, who became professor of classical literature in 1880 and later principal of UC, was an eloquent exponent of the civilizing influence of classical studies. Cody recalled that he was “a lecturer of wonderful interest and possessed of the power of inspiring others in a marked degree” and that “he took an individual interest in his students, an obiter dicta on men, politics and world movements were always extremely stimulating.”⁷ Young, a great exponent of ethical idealism, will be discussed later.

W.J. Loudon, secretary of the class of 1880, provided a picture of student life in the period. He lived with his uncle, the dean of residence from 1867, and was himself an undergraduate from 1876 to 1880. Some of the students, chiefly the more affluent, lived in residence, where the cost was relatively high. The others, like Cody, boarded in the city and were called “outsiders.” Many of the outsiders supported themselves by outside jobs. One of Loudon’s friends was a boxing instructor in a city gymnasium. Loudon described the primitive character of college life.

The rooms in residence were heated by grate fires. The students studied by lamplight, a few by candle light in the earlier days. The dining hall of residence was heated by means of a large box stove, which burned wood. I have helped to chop down trees in the park to supply winter firewood for the residence stove. I have caught chub and shiners and an occasional speckled trout in the pond which lay near the road below Hart House, and have trapped wild rabbits in the bush which extended up the ravine to Bloor Street.⁸

The principal forms of non-academic activities in the college were the Literary and Scientific (later the Literary and Athletic) Society, formed in 1854. The “Lit” operated a reading room, supervised debates, and organized the great social event of the year, the Conversazione. Elections to the executive were fiercely contended and brought out the rivalry between the residence and the outsiders. In 1876 the presidential candidate of the Outside Party defeated the residential candidate after an all-night session. After 1876 election battles became less strenuous with the increase in the number of outside students, but the rivalry continued.

There was a good deal of drinking among the students. Loudon gave a spirited account of the Onion Club, a group of students that met in Sandy Innes’s rooms on Yonge Street. Fortified with beer, onions, cheese, and tobacco, they spent the evening in song, recitations, solos on the fiddle or banjo, and argumentative discussion.⁹ Not all the students were quite so uproarious. The non-drinkers enjoyed the staid activities of the YMCA, organized on the campus in 1873, and the University College Temperance League, established in 1883.

As a poor boy from rural Ontario, Cody was an “outsider.” He roomed for part of the time with his old friends the Bryants at 28 St. Mary Street, within easy walking distance of UC. One of his roommates was Howard Ferguson, later premier of Ontario. Ferguson, also a small-town boy, from Kemptville, Ontario, arrived at the university in 1887. He had arranged to room with Stephen Leacock, but his parents thought Leacock too sophisticated for Howard and arranged to have him room with Cody instead. It was the beginning of a life-long friendship, one of the most important Cody would have.

Cody went from one triumph to another in his academic career. He achieved high standing in the annual examinations, securing scholarships in classics, modern languages, and general proficiency in his first year, and in his second scholarships in general proficiency and modern languages, and medals in general proficiency, classics, and modern languages. At the beginning of his third year (in October 1887) he was awarded two additional scholarships, the Mulock and the George Brown. Cody was a little disappointed at his third-year results, but a confidential letter from a classics examiner, H.R. Fairclough, rather belied his pessimism. In four papers he had averaged over 88 percent.¹⁰

In his final year Cody swept the boards, winning the McCaul gold medal in classics, first-class honours in metaphysics, and the prize for the best English essay. He graduated with great credit in mathematics as well – his abilities and interests were not confined to the humanities alone.

By no means engrossed in his studies alone, Cody engaged in a wide range of extracurricular activities, many of them Christian in nature. He played a prominent part in the YMCA as a member of the executive and of the devotional committee. As an active member of the University Temperance League (a branch of the city Temperance League), he attended a number of temperance rallies in the city. Like some of his friends, Cody was horrified by the hazing of freshmen at the hands of second-year students. In his third year he helped to organize the Anti-Hazing League. He was elected president in February 1888, with A.T. DeLury (later a distinguished professor of mathematics) as secretary and Tommy Des Barres as third-year representative. But the league had only a brief career and was dissolved on February 8, 1889. Cody had some contacts with the Varsity, the student newspaper. After submitting an article by Archibald MacMechan, a former student, he was invited to submit articles of his own. He also participated in a few public debates at Convocation Hall, including one on December 16, 1886, on the resolution, “Resolved that a proper function of the state is to provide facilities for higher education of the subject.”

All these activities made Cody a well-known member of the student body, contributing to his greatest triumph as an undergraduate, his election as vice-president of the Literary Society in March 1888. This was a notable victory, particularly because Cody was an outsider, still a handicap though not as great as it had been a few years earlier. In the election of 1886 Cody had been defeated along with all outsider candidates. He did not run in the 1887 elections but continued to participate in the Lit debates. Finally, running as an “Independent” in 1888, Cody made it, defeating an old friend, A.H. Fraser, by a vote of 198 to 156.

Religion, politics, and university life comprised a full program for Cody, but he also took advantage of the theatrical attractions of Toronto, both professional and amateur. He saw The Merchant of Venice in the Grand Opera House; dramatic recitals by Mrs. Scott Siddons; Modjeska, the famous Polish actress, in Much Ado about Nothing; and Richard Keene as Richelieu and later Richard III. He saw an early performance of The Yeoman of the Guard, with Helen Lamont as Elsie Maynard, and The Bohemian Girl. There were also less prestigious performances like Mr. George Bedford’s dramatic and humorous recitals, including “The Midnight Charge of Rassassin.”

So much for the pattern of Cody’s university life. It remains to consider the broad areas of thought that occupied the university (and Cody) in this period. It was a time of intellectual ferment in the fields of politics, economics, and social development. There were signs of burgeoning Canadian nationalism, but the most obvious struggle was between those who saw Canada’s destiny as lying in close association with the United States (Goldwin Smith, Sir Richard Cartwright) and those who saw Canada’s destiny as lying within the British Empire (Macdonald, Sir George Parkin, D’Alton McCarthy, G.M. Grant, the Imperial Federation League). These latter saw no conflict between Canadian ambition and the British connection. They were Britons who were living in North America and were developing a unique culture, different from that of the mother country. Many of them regarded the United States as a money-grubbing, godless outfit. In the 1880s the National Policy was encountering opposition from western free traders, disgruntled labour people, and others. French ultramontanism (bishops Bourget and Laflèche) was regarded in Ontario as an alarming attempt to promote French Catholic culture in the West. The North-West Rebellion of 1885 widened the breach between French and English. It was a time when many kinds of reform were being demanded: prohibition, more rights for women, cleansing of municipal politics.

Cody took an active interest in politics during his university career. He was a member of the Political Science Club and attended many debates on subjects of public importance, sometimes at the university but more often in the city. He attended debates in Convocation Hall on such resolutions as “The present union among the provinces of Canada is not likely to be permanent” (October 30, 1885); “It would be to the advantage of Canada to substitute for responsible government a system similar to the U.S.” (December 4, 1885); “Canada should foster a military spirit” (November 9, 1888); and “The policy adopted by Great Britain towards the French Canadians has been conducive to the best interests of Canada” (December 14, 1888).

During the federal election of 1887, Cody attended a Tory meeting on February 12, at which the principal speaker was the Hon. Thomas White, the minister of the interior. On election night, he went downtown to hear the results of the election, another Tory victory. On January 25, 1888, he saw Sir Alexander Campbell, the lieutenant-governor, open the session of the Ontario Legislature.

Many political meetings concerned Irish Home Rule. Cody heard Michael Davitt and Justin McCarthy as well as Dr. Aubrey, “the defeated Gladstone candidate in Hackney.” On May 14, 1887, he attended a meeting called to oppose the activities of an Irish activist who was visiting Canada.

Cody found the pro-British and other sentiments of the Conservatives congenial, but his most immediate concerns were in the fields of religion and philosophy. For the most part, the theology of the churches with which he had been in contact was orthodox and conservative. Canada, however, was beginning to feel the impact of forces emerging in Europe, particularly in Germany, as well as in Great Britain and the United States. The challenge to orthodox Christianity initiated by the biologists and the biblical critics was under way in Great Britain, as evidenced by major publications in the period: Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859); Essays and Reviews, published by a group of biblical scholars in 1860; A.R. Wallace’s Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870); Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871); and Driver’s Israel Life and Times (1888).

Literary skepticism was also a challenge to orthodox Christianity. Matthew Arnold, who regarded the Old Testament as poetry, published Literature and Dogma in 1873 and God and the Bible in 1873. J.S. Mill presented a picture of himself as a rational unbeliever (Autobiography [1875]), and Leslie Stephen published Freethinking and Plainspeaking in 1873.

Meanwhile, Conservative theologians defended the orthodox interpretation of Christianity. Brooke Foss Westcott published the Revelation of the Risen Lord in 1883 and Alfred Edersheim, a converted rabbi, the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah in 1885.

In Canada the theologians and philosophers attempted an accommodation between the scientists and biblical critics on the one hand and traditional Christians on the other. Principal G.M. Grant of Queen’s University pleaded for a fair consideration of the scientists and biblical critics.¹¹ Idealist philosophers such as John Watson of Queen’s attempted to preserve the ethics of Christianity while questioning its supernatural basis. Clarke Murray, the McGill philosopher, shared his ethical idealism.

Cody was brought in touch with ethical idealism by the professor for whom he had the highest admiration, George Paxton Young. Young was a former Presbyterian minister whose philosophic development had by 1864 made it impossible for him to give to the Westminster Confession “the sort of assent expected by the Presbyterian Church.” In 1871 he had been appointed to the chair of logic, metaphysics and ethics in University College. Young, a bearded and venerable presence, was a popular lecturer. His message reassured a generation perplexed by the challenge of science to Christianity, helping them to see that it was possible to lead a moral and satisfying life without necessarily accepting the supernatural aspects of Christianity. The Ethics of Freedom, a volume based on Young’s lectures, is an illuminating indication of his ideas on the moral standard.¹² He declared that man’s chief good was “the realization of the moral ideal.” Man’s knowledge of the moral ideal, he argued, would always be imperfect, but the ideal could be known “insofar as the moral nature has unfolded itself and there exhibited the capabilities that are in it.” It was the function of conscience to reveal to man the moral law. Thus, Young attributed to the moral law an authority which Christians had accorded the Scriptures and the church.

Cody was one of Young’s brightest pupils. Not only did he sit at the feet of the Master in his lectures, he also went to tea at his home. It was Cody who drew up a testimonial the students presented to Young on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Cody was one of the guard of honour who stood beside Young’s coffin at his funeral in 1889. Years afterwards in an interview with the Toronto News, he recalled that Young had “left his mark on every man who ever sat under him. Not so much for the particular philosophy that he taught as for his power of inspiring thought and his love of truth before all things.”¹³

In 1950 Cody told John Irving, who was making a study of early Canadian philosophers, that Young “was held in real reverence by all the students. We had a feeling that here was a man at the very antithesis to the materialist, that here was a man who behaved in the dominance of the intellectual and the spiritual. We always had the impression that he was the typical seeker after truth.”¹⁴

One cannot avoid speculation as to the nature of Young’s influence on Cody. He was obviously impressed by Young at the time, but Young can scarcely have effected a lasting influence on Cody’s thinking. There was an obvious conflict between Young’s ethical idealism and the evangelical beliefs which constituted Cody’s position in early manhood. What he retained was an admiration for Young as a fervent seeker of truth.

While Cody was hearing the message of ethical idealism he was also being brought in touch with more orthodox Christian influences. Like some more recent university students, he attended a wide variety of churches, hearing sermons by the local clergy as well as by visiting preachers from Britain and the United States. He concentrated on Anglican churches, particularly the evangelical ones (St. Paul’s, the Church of the Redeemer, St. Philip’s, St. Peter’s), but he also attended other churches (Central Presbyterian, St. Andrew’s, Zion Congregational, Elm Street Methodist).

What proved to be the dominant influence in Cody’s career was the close connection he established in this period with the Wycliffe community and its principal, James Paterson Sheraton. Wycliffe, an Anglican theological college, had been established by a group of Anglican evangelicals in 1877, despite the opposition of Neil Bethune, the Bishop of Toronto. It had since become the centre of the evangelical community in the university and in the Diocese of Toronto. Sheraton gave it strong leadership until his death in 1906.

Cody’s connection with Wycliffe was likely through his University College friend Thomas Des Barres, whose father, the Rev. T.C. Des Barres, was rector of St. Paul’s Church and a strong evangelical. Tom was thus on the fringes of the evangelical community. He was familiar with their doings, but at the same time was critical, having begun the process of emancipation from his background.

Tom, effervescent, rather cocksure, but shrewd and enthusiastic, was Cody’s best friend at the university. He was the one who usually wired Cody his examination results when Cody was home on vacation. He wrote Cody long, gossipy letters and kept him posted on the doings of the Anglican Church and the evangelical community.

Cody’s initial contact with J.P. Sheraton, the Wycliffe principal, occurred at the end of his second year at UC. He received a note from Sheraton dated May 24, asking Cody to come and see him the next day after breakfast. Sheraton had heard from Des Barres that Cody had achieved a high standing and was leaving town the next day.

Cody’s subsequent interview with Sheraton must have been satisfactory, since it was followed by the development of their relationship in the fall of 1887. By October 14, Sheraton had developed such confidence in Cody that he made repeated efforts, apparently unsuccessful, to persuade Cody to act as his son’s tutor. He also asked for Cody’s help with a Bible class he had started for university students: “What about the Bible Class on Sunday afternoons? Will you help me, if I go on with it? I am reluctant to give it up, and yet I do not wish to begin unless the students cordially desire it.” Cody and Des Barres promised to lend a hand and Sheraton was grateful.¹⁵ Before long Sheraton relied on Cody as a faithful supporter. Their relationship was destined to continue.