Trinity College (occasionally referred to as The University of Trinity College) is a college federated with the University of Toronto, founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Strachan originally intended Trinity as a university of strong Anglican alignment, after the University of Toronto severed its ties with the Church of England. After five decades as an independent institution, Trinity joined the university in 1904 as a member of its collegiate federation.
Today, Trinity College consists of a secular undergraduate section and a postgraduate divinity school which is part of the Toronto School of Theology. Through its diploma granting authority in the field of divinity, Trinity maintains legal university status. Trinity hosts three of the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Sciences' undergraduate programs: international relations; ethics, society and law; and immunology.
More than half of Trinity students graduate from the University of Toronto with distinction or high distinction. The college has produced an unusually high number of Rhodes Scholars for an institution of its size, being a total of 43 as of 2020. Among the college's more notable collections are a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, two first-edition theses by Martin Luther, numerous original, signed works by Winston Churchill, a 1491 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy censored by the Spanish Inquisition, and Bishop Strachan's silver epergne.
Among the University of Toronto Colleges, Trinity is notable for being the smallest by population, and for its trappings of Oxbridge heritage; the college hosts weekly formal dinners, maintains the tradition of academic gowns, manages its student government through direct democracy, and hosts a litany of clubs and societies.
History
Founding
The Reverend John Strachan (1778-1867) was an Anglican priest, Archdeacon of York, and staunch supporter of Upper Canada's conservative Family Compact. Strachan was interested in education, and as early as 1818 petitioned the colonial House of Assembly for the formation of a theological university. In 1826, Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland commissioned Strachan to visit England and obtain a royal charter for a provincial university. Strachan was successful, and returned in 1827 with a charter from King George IV to establish King's College in Upper Canada. King's College was effectively controlled by the Church of England and members of the elite Family Compact, and at first reflected Strachan's ambition for an institution of conservative, High Anglican character. Strachan objected to proposals for the provincial university to be without a religious affiliation, dubbing such a suggestion "atheistical, and so monstrous in its consequences that, if successfully carried out, it would destroy all that is pure and holy in morals and religion, and would lead to greater corruption than anything adopted during the madness of the French Revolution."
In 1849, over strong opposition from Strachan, Robert Baldwin's Reformist government took control of the college and secularized it to become the University of Toronto. Incensed by this decision, Strachan immediately began raising funds for the creation of a new university. Strachan canvassed Great Britain and Upper Canada for donations, and although he fell short of his goal of £30,000, he received significant commitments from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Duke of Wellington, William Gladstone, and Oxford University. Despite Strachan's public anti-Americanism, the project for a new Anglican university attracted substantial donations from a fundraising campaign in the United States by The Reverend William McMurray.
On April 30, 1851, now-Bishop Strachan led a parade of clergy, schoolboys, and prospective faculty from the Church of St George the Martyr to the site of the new Trinity College. There, Strachan delivered a speech repeating his condemnation of the "destruction of King's College as a Christian institution," and promised that Trinity would fulfil the role of a church university. The Provincial Parliament incorporated Trinity College as an independent university on August 2, 1851. The following year, Strachan - now in his 70s - obtained a Royal Charter for Trinity from Queen Victoria. The college opened to students on January 15, 1852. Most of the first class of students and faculty came from the Diocesan Theological Institute, an Anglican seminar in Cobourg also founded by Strachan in 1842, which dissolved itself in favour of Trinity.