good
health, he presided at a meeting on behalf of a fund for the benefit of
the dependents of Scottish soldiers and sailors killed or disabled in
the war. While the meeting was in progress he was stricken with apoplexy
and partial paralysis. In the course of a few weeks he recovered his
speech almost entirely, and later he regained the partial use of his
right leg. When it became evident that he could not recover sufficiently
to resume his place at the head of the University he resigned, and after
May 1st he ceased to be Principal of McGill. On July the 24th he sailed
from Montreal for England, where he resided until his death in February,
1921.

Sir William Peterson was Principal of McGill University for a period of
twenty-four years, one quarter of its century of life. During that time
many honours came to him. He occupied the presidency of many learned
societies; he was knighted in 1915; he received honorary degrees from
the leading universities of Britain, America and Canada; he was Chairman
of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching; he won great distinction as a scholar and a writer. It
would be unwise here to attempt to estimate the significance of his work
as Principal of the University. We are perhaps too close to judge it
with correctness or with justice. The McGill he left in 1919 was not the
McGill he found in 1895. In the intervening years its development on the
sure foundations that had already been laid was extraordinary and
unprecedented for a university. Among the external evidences of growth
during that time are the McGill Union, the centre of student activities;
the Conservatorium of Music, with courses leading to the degree of
Bachelor and Doctor of Music; the establishment of a Department of
Dentistry, now grown to the stature of a Faculty; the acquisition of the
Joseph property at the southwest corner of the Yard, and the new Molson
and Law properties, consisting of 25 acres, the site of the Molson
Stadium, and of the gymnasium and student residences of the future; the
new Medical building; the establishment and development of the Graduate
School, and of the Departments of Commerce, Social Service and Physical
Education, and above all, the addition of Macdonald College with its
vast acres at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where the work of the Faculty of
Agriculture, Household Science and the training of teachers is carried
on. In these twenty-five years the numbe