The College on the Hill: A New History of the Ontario Agricultural College, 1874-1999 (review)

Abstract

Writing effective higher-education institutional histories is never easy. Too often, charting the development of universities in Canada has fallen into, rather than avoided, the pitfalls of mundanity, as if the history is allegorically representing the mortar itself. Chapter by chapter, the rise of the institution is hagiographically documented, through the laying of the cornerstone to the establishment of the mandate, to the appointment of [End Page 165] the administrators, the hiring of the professors, and the enrolment of the first students, then onto the success of these three groups of people over time. The university is on the road inevitably to bigger and better things. Histories are written to explain a current, most often positive, institutional disposition or embodiment and are endemically imbued with an intellectual bias. These parochialisms are difficult to avoid, even in the presence of a strong argumentative thesis.