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It might surprise people today to learn that that the first endowed research chair at McGill was not in medicine or law or science, but was “the Molson Chair of English Language and Literature,” created in 1857 by the Molson brothers, John, Thomas and William.

The Molsons’ choice of field was quite remarkable. English was not a part of most university curricula until the very end of the 19th century. Before then, education had been based on the classics, and especially the study of the Latin and Greek languages. The gradual turn to English as both language and subject of instruction was motivated by a number of educational reforms, especially the spread of education to women and members of the lower classes, for whom the knowledge of Latin and Greek was not seen as necessary. Before it entered the universities, therefore, English began to appear as a kind of poor man’s classics in places like working men’s colleges. There was some resistance as it began to move to the universities, especially from some of the oldest institutions where the classics were most firmly entrenched.