The City of Cambridge Cambridge • Ontario • Canada

Hall of Fame Members

William Tassie

Inducted 1995

William Tassie was born in Dublin Ireland in 1815 and emigrated to Canada with his family in 1834. He is said to be a graduate of the University of Toronto and taught in Oakville and Hamilton before being called to replace Michael Howe as headmaster of the Galt Grammar School in 1853.
The school had been formed in 1852 as a "prep" school to prepare students for "exhibitions in Upper Canada College and for scholarships in Trinity College and the University". When Mr Tassie arrived, the school had 12 students and was housed on the upper floor of the old Township Hall. It was apparent that this facility would soon be inadequate and in 1854 a new stone building was erected on a site overlooking the Grand River on Water Street North (then Hunter Street).

Mr Tassie drew around himself an excellent band of teachers and developed, for the school, a reputation for excellence. He modelled his school on the great British public schools of the day such as Eton, Rugby and Harrow and it was not long before the public mind held the Galt Grammar School to be the best preparatory school in the province and second in reputation, perhaps, only to Upper Canada College.

By 1859, the original 12 students had grown to about 100 scholars on the way to an average annual enrolment of 220 boys. More than half those students came to Galt from other parts of Ontario, from Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and from the United States. Many graduates from Mr Tassie's school went on to hold prominent positions in education, religion and the law as well as in the legislatures of both Canada and the United States.

Mr Tassie was a man of stern discipline who has been described as "absolutely upright and sincere". He was described as industrious, energetic and conscientious in the performance of his duties and he expected the same of his students. Known as "Old Bill" and "The Lion Tamer", Mr Tassie did not shy away from corporal punishment when he thought it was necessary. Some suggest that he thought it necessary far too often and in many cases the strap "was resorted to without justifiable cause". Yet while he was stern and aloof possessing in considerable abundance what has been described as "the grand air", Mr Tassie, nevertheless, gained the respect of his students and many felt that he was most revered for imparting to his students the qualities of "manliness, sincerity, truthfulness, perseverance, diligence and thoroughness" which contributed significantly to their later success.

Others noticed Mr Tassie's success and in 1871 Queen's University in Kingston conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws in recognition of his "indefatigable exertions" and the well-earned reputation for excellence enjoyed by his school. The following year the Galt Grammar School headed the list of six schools in Ontario upon which were conferred the "name and privilege" of Collegiate Institutes.

With this change came a number of obligations, both of which were destined to cause problems for Mr Tassie. The first was the requirement that the school, once the exclusive domain of male scholars, be now opened to girls. Mr Tassie did not favour higher education for girls and acceded to the requirement only reluctantly, opening a separate division for girls in the old Wesleyan Chapel.

The second obligation was to have more far-reaching implications for Mr Tassie since they were directly related to his teaching methods. New teaching standards and methods established by the Board of Education and introduced throughout the Province exposed a major defect in the methods that Mr Tassie had thus far employed with great success. Mr Tassie's method had required his pupils in all classes to commit to memory the information in the texts and be able to repeat it verbatim. There was no place in this method for any discussion of the content and meaning of the material being studied. Annual examinations set by the Department of Education reflected the new teaching methods which Mr Tassie was unable or unwilling to implement and students at his school began to fail. Criticism of his methods became more common and according to one commentator "his reputation as a teacher soon vanished". Mr Tassie continued to resist the ever increasing pressure to change his teaching methods until finally he could resist no further, and in 1881, he resigned his position as headmaster and took a position as principal of the Peterborough Collegiate Institute. He died in Peterborough in 1886.