en guineas towards the construction of the
building. He signed the call to the first pastor of the Church, the Rev.
James Somerville; he thereafter contributed three pounds a year to his
stipend and occupied pew No. 16 in the Church. His brother Andrew later
contributed five pounds towards removing the remaining debt from the
building. The Rev. Mr. Somerville, the pastor of the Church, officiated
at Andrew's funeral. There is little doubt from the records that James
McGill regarded himself as of the Church of Scotland although he was for
a time, in those days of somewhat surprising religious harmony and
tolerance, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Montreal.

One of James McGill's most intimate friends and confidants in Canada was
the Rev. John Strachan, afterwards the Right Reverend Bishop of Toronto,
who was thirty-four years his junior. He was a native of Aberdeen,
Scotland. He received his M. A. from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1797,
and then attended for some months Divinity Classes at St. Andrew's
University, near which he had a post as a Parish schoolmaster. Towards
the end of 1797, he came to Canada by invitation to organise a seminary
of learning in Upper Canada, but the plan was abandoned and he became
tutor in a private family in Kingston, Ontario. He offered himself as a
candidate for the pastorship of the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian
Church on September 21, 1802, but before his letter was received another
applicant, the Rev. James Somerville, had been accepted. Later he took
orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed to the Church at
Cornwall. He opened there a school and his fame as a teacher was soon
widespread. Among his pupils were the three sons of the Rev. John
Bethune who had established the first Presbyterian Congregation in
Montreal, one of whom afterwards became Rector of Christ Church and
acting-Principal of McGill University. In 1807, he married the widow of
James McGill's younger brother, Andrew, formerly Miss Wood of Cornwall,
and he was thus brought into closer relationship with the McGill
family. His enthusiasm for education and for its advancement in Canada
was unbounded and it is evident that he impressed his ideas as to ways
and means and methods on the mind of his wealthy merchant friend. James
McGill was a believer in the value of education; he knew what it had
done for his own home-land, and what Scotland, educationally, was doing
for the world. He determined that t