SAC’s First Student

NUMERO UNO

The First on the Roll

By Julie Caspersen

Douglas Fraser ’06 was 11 years old when he started at St. Andrew’s College. Born in 1888 in Bowmanville, Ont., he was the first student – ever – enrolled at the school, located at Chestnut Park in mid-town Toronto on the estate of the late Sir David MacPherson. That first year, the student body was comprised of 43 boys.

“The reason I was the first boy enrolled was that when Dr. Bruce decided to establish a Presbyterian Boys School, among others he consulted was my father, who was in charge of Presbyterian publications for Canada. My father was enthusiastic about the project and was able to give the school publicity in all the Presbyterian churches, and he enrolled me at once,” Douglas reported in the September 1969 Andrean on the occasion of the school’s 70th anniversary.

“Those first years were very happy and interesting ones.”

Our records from the early 1900s don’t have as much information as we have access to these days, so details about Douglas aren’t as robust as we’d like. However, we know he played football for multiple seasons and subbed in as goalie in a hockey game on Feb. 2, 1903. Douglas’s father, Rev. Robert Douglas Fraser, was considered a good friend of the school and was often in attendance.

“The first gym was a metal building with a cinder floor. No indoor plumbing but two outdoor outhouses which were apt to be rocked by passers-by when they found someone inside,” Douglas recalled in the 1969 article.

“It was difficult to get enough football players for the 1st Team, and a 13-year-old, Billy McAndrew, Class of 1904, played full-back and did a good job of it. Though the scores against that team were astronomical, I later played on the first team to defeat UCC (1905).”

And there was no red and white theme back in the day: “Possibly not remembered by many is that the original SAC colours were the same as Queen’s – light blue with orange and black collars and cuffs.”

At some point in his student life, Douglas and a few classmates got into mischief: they dumped Vincent Massey, Class of 1906, into a tub of freezing water “when he was being too serious about some trivial matter.” This mischief was reported in the January 1978 Andrean by Drew Riddell, a boarder from 1900 to 1905. Mr. Massey went on to become the Governor-General of Canada in 1952.

Douglas also reminisced about another student from the Class of 1906 who went on to be a founding member of the Group of Seven and is acknowledged by many as one of Canada’s foremost landscape artists. “Even in those days, Lawren Harris was filling his notebook with drawings. He organized a hockey team with headquarters at his home on St. George Street.”

Douglas left SAC in December 1903. He attended the College Dance on April 28, 1905 as an Old Boy, and the St. Andrew’s Annual Dinner for Old Boys on May 26, 1905, hosted at an establishment called McConkey’s.

He went to the University of Toronto in 1907, the same year he was married. Douglas and his wife, Marie, had two sons who attended St. Andrew’s, Norman ’25 and Robert ’28. This was announced to much interest at the 16th annual Old Boys Association dinner on April 1, 1921 (the first held after the end of the First World War).

Douglas passed away in 1977. His sons have also passed away, Robert in 1985 and Norman in 1990. X

Opposite page: The first card in the box - Douglas Fraser’s enrolment card from 1899.

Left: Page 58 of the Easter 1921 Review showing Douglas with his two sons, Norman ’25 and Robert ’28.