Yesterday Steve and I went exploring and stumbled across MacDonald Campus. MacDonald campus is a part of McGill located outside of the downtown in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.
The campus was born in 1906, when Sir William Christopher Macdonald gave 300 acres of farmland and a $2-million endowment to McGill University with the idea of creating a revolutionary school that would "improve the lives of rural people in Quebec." Modeling the school after McGill, he established a farm laboratory where scientific farming could be tested and taught, the School of Household Science and the School for Teachers, because Sir William had the vision of schools becoming not only training centres, but the centres of the social life of the community as well.
When the doors first opened in 1907, 115 students were enrolled in the School for Teachers, 62 in the School for Household Science and 38 in the School of Agriculture.
Why this short lesson in history is exciting (besides the fact that I have a very useful degree in Canadian History) is because my Great Grandmother, my Grannie's mom, came over from England to Montreal to attended school here before the First World War broke out. I'm pretty sure that she was a student in Household Science.
I'm not sure where she stayed when she was here but I thought it was neat when we stumbled across the building Brittain Hall - maybe this is where she lived when she was here!
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