L'Université Laval
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Séminaire of Québec floor plan by Father Adolphe Garneau, ca 1902. |
In 1972, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC) recognized the founding of Université Laval as an event of national historic importance. Established by the Séminaire de Québec (given HSMBC designation in 1929), Université Laval was granted its charter by Queen Victoria on December 8, 1852. The first French-language university in North America, it officially opened in 1854. Its first rector was Father Louis-Jacques Casault (1808–62). The university originally had four faculties: theology, arts, law and medicine. In 1876, Pope Pius IX issued a papal bull, Inter Varias Sollicitudines, naming Laval a pontifical university. Université Laval subsequently established a satellite campus in Montréal, and this became the Université de Montréal in 1919. Influential throughout the continent, Université Laval organizes activities of importance first to French-speaking Canada and then to Francophones around the world. Under Quebec's education reform, a 1970 provincial law gave Laval new legal status.
Université Laval has its roots in the Old City of Québec. Its first building was constructed in 1854 on the grounds of the Séminaire de Québec. Starting from the 1940s, the university underwent considerable expansion, leading it to find new quarters on Boulevard de l'Entente in Sainte-Foy. Plans for a campus were drawn up a few years later; work started in 1945 and picked up pace in the 1950s, with faculties and schools relocating to the new site one after another. Since 1989, the university has renewed its ties with the Old City as certain departments have returned to the original Vieux-Séminaire complex.
