A Journey through History
"The Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa owes its existence to people of vision, who fought tenaciously to give the field of education its rightful place among the University's teaching and research disciplines." This commentary on the unique odyssey of the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Education comes from Doctor Lionel Desjarlais, founding dean of Ontario's oldest home of bilingual teacher education.
The early development of teacher education in Canada's Capital, however, preceded the foundation of the actual Faculty by nearly a century. On October 22, 1875, honourable Egerton Ryerson, Ontario's education superintendent-in-chief at the time, inaugurated the Ottawa Normal School, which later became the Ottawa Teachers' College. In an era of great political turmoil, less than a decade after Confederation, the opening of this first teacher training school in Ottawa allowed then Premier of Ontario, honourable Oliver Mowat, to announce the imminent establishment of a provincial department of education, which would later become the Ontario Ministry of Education.
About half a century later, in 1923, public dissatisfaction with Regulation 17 (a law forbidding instruction in French beyond the first two years of primary school) led to the creation of the francophone École de pédagogie by the University of Ottawa's Senate. Under the leadership of Father René Lamoureux, O.M.I., this institution adopted the name École normale de l'Université d'Ottawa in 1927.
Fate brought more changes in the post-war years and, following numerous discussions with the Ontario government, the Institute of Education and Psychology for graduate studies opened its doors in 1965. Two years later, it was divided into two separate entities with the birth of the Faculty of Education on April 10, 1967. Doctor Lionel Desjarlais was the first dean.
Between 1955 and 1967, the University of Ottawa conferred 372 baccalaureate degrees in education, 244 master's and 57 doctorates. "We now have, in the field of education and research, an experience as rich as that of any other Ontarian institution," declared the rector of the University, Father Roger Guindon, O.M.I., during a convocation ceremony on June 4, 1967.
On August 14, 1969, the École normale de l'Université d'Ottawa, which had operated under provincial authority, was integrated into the University of Ottawa's new Faculty of Education. Five years later, on September 1, 1974, following the McLeod Report recommendation regarding the transfer of normal schools to the domain of universities, the Ottawa Teachers' College (formerly the Ottawa Normal School) was annexed to the Faculty of Education.
At this time, however, the offices accommodating the various Faculty units had not yet been grouped together under one roof. For example, the francophone normal school, whose head office was still located in the former Greater Seminary of Ottawa on Kilborn Street, was six kilometres off from the main campus. At the same time that the eastern bank of the Rideau Canal was undergoing a modernizing expansion, the University of Ottawa erected Lamoureux Hall, named in honour of the first director of the École de pédagogie in 1923. The building was completed in 1978.
The Faculty of Education entered a new era in 1995 with the opening of the Learning Resource Centre and the Resource Center for Research in Education, while important changes to the administrative structure and to programs considerably modified its curriculum. The Ontario College of Teachers was established in 1996 and officially recognized the baccalaureate in education programs (Teacher Education and Formation à l'enseignement) in 1999.
"The history of the Faculty of Education is again the building of a tradition of excellence which over the years has constantly impregnated the teaching and research carried on within all of its graduate and undergraduate programs. Finally and most importantly the history of the Faculty of Education is a commitment to a humanistic vision of Education, its distinctive trait", concludes Doctor Lionel Desjarlais.