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Article Excerpt
If it is so, as one of the great sages of professional baseball has claimed, that "the game ain't over til' it's over," a parallel course of reasoning might lead to the conclusion that most, if not all, great stories "begin before the beginning." Both conclusions come readily to mind when contemplating the course of Brandon College's history. Selecting the date of 1 June 1900, the day on which Royal Assent was given to an Act incorporating "Brandon College" as the one which marks the birth of the new institution on the banks of the Assiniboine, satisfies only legal niceties. Even to go back of that date to such others as 1 August 1899, to the announcement of the opening of the College as carried in the denominational journal, leaves much that is relevant to the story unsaid. The same might be said of moving still farther back to the June 1898 meeting assembly of the Manitoba and Northwest Convention that took the decision to establish a college, which would provide instruction both in Arts and in Theology. Such dates recognize only decisions made and actions taken to meet the demands and realize the possibilities of a newly opening Canadian West. (1)
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The challenges confronting the Baptists in the Canadian West were not dissimilar from those which the denomination had faced in earlier years when settling in what was then Canada West. The responses of those times, in terms both of ideas and institutions, formed the most important part of the baggage carried into the new land in the missionary venture launched by Eastern Baptists, latecomers to the Western sweepstakes. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians were already hunkered down in the Red River Valley, their institutions, including their colleges, already well established. However, it was for the Baptists to be to the fore when settlement finally burst from the Red River Valley on to the hitherto avoided uplands of Manitoba.
The history of Brandon and of its College form an integral part of the story of the march of the forces of Ontario Protestantism into the new and, for much the greatest part, unoccupied (at least in Euro-Canadian parlance) land. It was, in its own right, a country, and one which for two centuries had been held, virtually in economic thrall, by the Hudson's Bay Company. During the time of the Company's supremacy, it had been challenged only by periodic, if at times violent, intrusions of less privileged traders seeking to share in the rich harvest of furs. Settlement in the days of the fur economy was confined for the most part to such river valleys as the western plains provided, and of these, only that of the Red River could be regarded as being of consequence. As J. W. Dafoe explained in describing the bleak land of the north-west: "Portage la Prairie was the extreme westward outpost of what was called the Red River Settlement. Beyond it stretched for nearly eight hundred miles the vast plain, tenantless except for the location at strategic points of the forts of the Hudson's Bay Company. (2)
The Red River settlement itself might well be regarded as something of a phenomenon, existing in defiance of proclaimed laws of nature, which decreed the prairie reaches of British North America to be suited only to the requirements for fur-bearing animals and migratory Aboriginals. It existed in a land, proclaimed, if only by and in the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, to be otherwise, unproductive and uninhabitable. With the "surrender" of its rights to the new Dominion of Canada in 1869, the song changed dramatically.
Under the new authority the western land, both in public thought and in public policy, came to be seen and treated in a new light. Contrary to past contentions, the western territory was now to be seen as a promised land; one that held out opportunities for a substantial measure of prosperity, if not unlimited wealth, for those willing and able to make the necessary effort to grasp them. The surge of westward migration marking the response to this lure brought with it a concern within Canadian church communities for the settlers moving into a land seen to be destitute of the institutions of civilized communities. This concern was compounded for Canadian Baptists, faced as they were when the westward race began, with the total absence of church brethren, much less organized church institutions, in the newly opening domain. (3)
Though the Eastern Baptists may have been somewhat tardy in meeting the challenge that was before them, when in time they did respond, the mission-minded brethren who came forward, carried with them to the new land certain convictions as to the role of their denomination in matters both evangelical and educational. While it is from the perspective of the latter that this narrative is primarily focused, it will be seen, as the story of Brandon College unfolds, that the two were inextricably, some might argue even fatally, entwined. Taken together, as they existed in the minds of those first coming to the scene, they provided the rationale, the guiding philosophy and institutional structure for the creation of a new college.
To arrive at the origins of the ideas which came to life anew, prevailing in the building of Brandon College, history must be pushed back almost half a century from the day in 1900 when the College assumed its chartered existence. And even then, in tracing the evolution of what became effectively "the Brandon idea," selection must be made from among a variety of dates and circumstances. At least as early as 1838, the Baptists of Ontario and Quebec, in their efforts to set out their role in higher education, had, in the words of the Baptist Year Book, launched their struggles "against the vicissitudes" of their situation, leading to a catalogue of ventures which were in some ways heroic, if not uniformly successful. (4)
However, in selecting a specific date that most likely marks the beginning of the "idea" carried into Manitoba, choice most properly falls on I December 1855. On that day, the denominational journal, The Christian Messenger carried a letter headed "A Proposal." It was signed only by "F." The letter was addressed to the need for the Baptist community, acting in the light of its denominational requirements, to define its role in the field of higher education. It was a letter...
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