Addressing a petition to the Legislature of Nova Scotia in 1866, Bishop MacKinnon described St. Francis Xavier College of Antigonish as having “spacious and commodious buildings’’ and an enrolment which had “reached the high number of fifty-eight.” He pointed out that “the said College is the only institution in Eastern Nova Scotia, inclusive of Cape Breton, in which the sciences of Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Moral and Dogmatic Theology are now taught,” and he asked that it “be empowered by charter to confer degrees on such of its pupils as after due examination shall have been. proved worthy of the honour.” The power was granted, and eighty years have passed since the Bishop signed his petition. The two wooden houses which seemed “spacious and commodious” to him have become a campus in brick and stone, and the student body has grown from fifty-eight to over seven hundred.

The institution with this humble beginning has become better known than perhaps any other small university in the world. The good Bishop would be pleased with that, but he would be amazed to find that it has achieved this fame for work which he never thought of as a university function. Eighty years ago—and indeed almost down to our own day—the university concerned itself solely with those attending regular intramural classes.