Notre histoire

On November 22, 1919 a fire swept through the main building on Saint-Denis Street. Reconstruction began the following year, but it swallowed up part of the money from the first fund-raising campaign. The university was thus unable to carry out its plans to purchase equipment and hire professors. Two years later, there were two more fires, one on Saint-Denis Street and the other in the dentistry building on Saint-Hubert Street. This forced the University to seriously consider moving into a new more spacious location that was more in line with the community’s needs.

In compliance with Rome, the Université de Montréal adopted a civil charter and integrated most of the faculties and schools that had until then been simply affiliated. Between 1920 and 1925, seven new faculties were added to the three founding ones: philosopher, letters, science, veterinary medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and social, economic and political sciences. Three schools kept their status as affiliated institutions: the École Polytechnique, the École des Hautes Études Commerciales and the agricultural institute in Oka.

Vice-rector Émile Chartier created the Université de Montréal’s coat of arms, described in heraldic language as “azure, a castle two towered or, in base a mount of the same tincture, in chief dexter an estoile or, in chief sinister an estoile argent.” The two towers refer to the Society of Saint-Sulpice and the Congregation of Notre-Dame, which were the two institutions that first educated Amerindians in Montréal. The golden and silver stars represent faith and science, respectively, in reference to the University’s motto: Fide splendet et scientia (“it shines by faith and science”).

Édouard Montpetit was the first secular professor asked to create the foundations of the newly independent Université de Montréal. In 1920, he established the Faculty of Social, Economic and Political Sciences, which later became the Faculty of Social Sciences before it was integrated into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1972. Montpetit served as Secretary General until 1950, and his name has remained associated with the development of all the University’s faculties and major schools, including the HEC. In 1967, the Université de Montréal honoured him with a statue in front of the residences overlooking the street that bears his name.

In 1921, the Government of Québec purchased 1.25 grams of radium for $100,000. It entrusted it to Dr. Ernest Gendreau, who was a professor in the Faculty of Science, as well as a medical doctor and radiologist trained at the Institut du radium in Paris. The following year, Dr. Gendreau founded the Université de Montréal’s radium institute. The institute’s purpose was to do clinical research on cancer, and it was located in the basement of the Saint-Denis Street building. It was the first in America to use a 200,000 volt X-ray machine to treat cancer.

When it was first established, the Université de Montréal’s student union, the AGEUM, had 2022 members. Its mandate was to “respond to the collective and individual needs of students, defend and demand their rights, and fulfill the obligations of the student class in society.” The Association gained its independence from the University’s administration and authority in 1940. It set up many services, including the student aid service, and reached its peak in the 1960s. However, it was dissolved in 1969 owing to criticism of its political orientation. At the time it had 13,622 members.

Ernest Cormier was chosen to draw up the plans for the University’s new campus on land that it had newly acquired on the north slope of Mount Royal in the Côte-des-Neiges Quarter. On March 26, 1926, the well-known architect submitted his first overall plan for the new campus, of which the central pavilion was the focal point. Originally designed to house a university hospital, the building is remarkable for the modernity of its architecture and the simplicity of its lines. Construction officially began in 1928, but the first earth was not actually turned until two years later.

The Western world’s Great Depression forced the University to suspend construction of the new buildings. The ensuing financial disarray imperilled not only the new campus but the very existence of the Montréal institution. Employee salaries had to be suspended several times, and throughout the 1930s a rumour periodically surfaced that the University was considering selling the unfinished central pavilion to pay its debts. The “tower of hunger,” as it was nicknamed at the time, remained on the drawing board for over 10 years.

The Université de Montréal was still young, but it already had alumni. It was to them it turned when the Depression was at its deepest. Incorporated on June 15, 1934, the alumni association adopted the mission of increasing the University’s prestige and providing it with financial support. On May 29, 1936, 2000 members of the association assembled in the unfinished buildings of their alma mater for the first alumni banquet. The banquet has become an annual event for alumni, of whom there were 160,000 in 2002.

When Montréal’s botanical institute was founded in 1920, Marie-Victorin began inventorying the plants of Québec. Fifteen years later, he published the fruit of his labour in the largest work in Québec’s scientific history: La Flore laurentienne. The groundbreaking book contains information on specimens that Marie-Victorin had collected from the four corners of Québec, and has become a reference work that has made its author internationally famous. Its publication coincided with the beginning of construction on Montréal’s Botanical Garden under Marie-Victorin’s supervision. The Garden opened in 1939.

Armand Frappier founded the Microbiology and Hygiene Institute, Québec’s first basic research centre in medicine. Trained at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, Armand Frappier was well known for his work on treating tuberculosis. He was one of the first North American researchers to confirm the safety and effectiveness of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) in the development of a vaccine against tuberculosis. The Microbiology and Hygiene Institute was renamed the Institut Armand-Frappier in 1975.

The Government of Québec adopted an act to assist the Université de Montréal. It resulted in the creation of an administration corporation for UdeM that, over the following decade, acted as the University’s owner and trustee. In other words, the University was placed under trusteeship and public power was introduced into the institution’s administration. However, many people remember this time as when construction on campus was completed, for work recommenced in 1941.

Discovered in 1865 in the Richelieu River basin, it was not until 1942 that the Moxostoma hubbsi was officially recorded in scientific literature thanks to Vianney Legendre, Professor of Biology at the Université de Montréal. Better known in French as the “suceur cuivré” the fish is one of 30,000 species that have been identified in the world. In the 1990s, it was renamed the Copper Redhorse owing to its “large scales reminiscent of knights’ armour both with respect to their metallic sheen and their protective role.”

Considered to be the father of psychoanalysis in Québec, Noël Mailloux, a Dominican and Professor in the Department of Philosophy, founded the Université de Montréal’s psychology institute. The institute, which later became the Department of Psychology, courageously introduced Freud’s work into university teaching in Québec. One year later Mailloux set up an orientation and rehabilitation centre for problem youth. His work on juvenile delinquency contributed to the development of new psychotherapeutic methods for rehabilitating young delinquents.