History of St. Dunstan's University

St. Dunstan's University was born in response to the needs of the Roman Catholics of Prince Edward Island. Seeking a way to educate both prospective clergy and lay leaders of the newly created Diocese of Charlottetown, missionary bishop Andrew MacEachern opened St. Andrew's College in 1831 in his own home in the heart of the Island's Highland Catholic community. Although humble and unpretentious, it was the first institution of higher learning in the colony.

As population and conditions changed, so did the college. In January 1855, MacEachern's successor, Bishop B. D. MacDonald, re-located the college to a hilltop site just outside the Island capital of Charlottetown and re-named it St. Dunstan's College, after the ancient Anglo-Saxon saint and bishop. For the next 114 years, despite a perpetual want of human and financial resources, St. Dunstan's proudly served the Diocese that had fostered it. Over time it built up an enviable record in inspiring young men to follow religious vocations, and within its traditional classical curriculum it adhered to a larger mission to nourish the physical, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of all of its students.

 

In 1892, St. Dunstan's negotiated an affiliation agreement with the prestigious Laval University of Quebec, which allowed the Island school to award Laval degrees to graduating students who had completed the Laval program. This made St. Dunstan's for many years the only degree-granting institution in the province. In 1917, SDC received its own university charter from the Island government, and after two decades devoted to building up its programs and facilities, it began granting degrees in its own name in 1941. The first person to receive an SDU degree was also the first woman graduate, Sr. Bernice Cullen, CSSM. The following year, St. Dunstan's became fully co-educational, graduating its first lay-woman graduate, Gertrude Butler, in 1944.

 

The post-World War II era saw a continuous expansion in the facilities, programs, and enrollment at St. Dunstan's, as Prince Edward Island rapidly modernized and the University adapted to the changing needs of its diocesan constituency. By the early 1960's, the school operated much like other small, liberal arts universities in Canada, but the spiraling costs of higher education had made it increasingly reliant on government funding in order to continue. Even as the Island government embarked on a massive comprehensive development planning exercise for the province, St. Dunstan's reluctantly made the decision to close its doors.

In 1969, SDU held its largest-- and last-- convocation. The campus was sold to the provincial government to house the newly created University of Prince Edward Island, and many SDU faculty and staff carried their school's educational legacy into the new institution. While it no longer operates a campus, the Board of Governors of St. Dunstan's University continues its traditional mandate to foster and promote Catholic education for the people of the Diocese of Charlottetown.

-- Dr. Edward MacDonald

a site by Sustain Creative