The Principal and the Dean

On a beautiful day in May 1916, a graduation convocation was taking place at the Royal Victoria College assembly hall at McGill University in Montreal. The events of this assembly were related years later by Dr. Harold Segall, who was present at the convocation as a freshman in the McGill Medical School. The convocation was proceeding as scheduled. The new graduates in medicine had been capped, and the various prizes had been awarded. The moment for the delivery of the valedictorian address arrived and Harry Goldblatt, the valedictorian and first in the senior class came up to the podium to deliver his address. He began by paying tribute to the great men of the university who were responsible for McGill’s reputation as one of the leading medical schools in the country. Then, as freshman Harold Segall reported the proceedings, Harry exploded a bomb. He stated that the reputation of McGill was in great danger and that measures should be taken to save it. Harry mentioned that the Carnegie Foundation which had given McGill an “A” rating in 1909 was about to reduce it to a “B.” He enumerated McGill’s deficiencies, contended that the medical school was living off the reputations of Osler and Roddick in the 1880s and 1890s and stressed the lack of adequate facilities for and interest in research.