title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie becomes reclusive, but Megan arrives and motivates her to take control of her life. Annie resumes baking, gets her car fixed, and tries to make amends with Nathan, who ignores her. On the day of the wedding, Helen appears at Annie's doorstep begging for help finding Lillian, who has disappeared. Helen apologizes to Annie, revealing Lillian only hung out with her because she is good at planning weddings, and she does not have any true friends, even her husband does not spend time with her due to his work. Enlisting Nathan's help, they find Lillian at her own apartment, having become overwhelmed by Helen's extravagant wedding planning and fear of leaving her life in Milwaukee. Annie reconciles with Lillian and resumes her role as maid of honor.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: After the wedding, Annie and Helen finally become friends. Annie also reconciles with Nathan, and they ride away in his police car.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: The cast features brief appearances by several actors from the television series "The Office", including Jessica St. Clair, Nancy Carell, Hugh Dane and Andy Buckley.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: The script, originally titled "Maid of Honor", was written by actress and screenwriter Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig. Friends for years, they met at The Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improvisational comedy troupe where they wrote sketches with one another, in the early 2000s. The basic premise for the film originated in 2006, shortly after Wiig was cast in the supporting role of a passive-aggressive cable television executive in producer Judd Apatow's comedy film "Knocked Up" (2007). Recognizing her comedic talent, Apatow asked Wiig if she had any ideas for a screenplay herself – a practice which had previously led to Steve Carell's idea for "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" (2005) – and she and Mumolo soon came up with "Bridesmaids". Over the following years, writing commenced, with Wiig working on "Saturday Night Live" in New York City and Mumolo grinding out the script in Los Angeles. The two would meet on weekends and conduct semi-regular table reads of drafts for Apatow to get his suggestions and notes. Filmmaker Paul Feig came across Wiig and Mumolo's script in 2007. When Feig signed on as director and the script got the greenlight for production in 2010, Feig said, “There was an edict from Hollywood where they were all going, 'Okay this is a movie starring a bunch of women. If this works, we’ll greenlight more, and if it doesn’t, we won’t...I was really sweating because if this didn’t work then I’m basically the man who killed movies for women for eternity. So, thank God it worked.”


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Several actresses auditioned for the role of Megan, including Rebel Wilson and Busy Philipps, the latter of whom had worked with Apatow and Feig on their comedy-drama television series "Freaks and Geeks". Wilson, who improvised for Apatow and Feig for an hour during her audition, impressed them so much that she was later cast in the smaller role of Brynn. It marked her first appearance in an American production. Mindy Kaling read for the role of Lillian, eventually losing to Wiig's "Saturday Night Live" colleague Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne initially also auditioned for Lillian, but later took the opportunity to read Helen. Byrne was eventually chosen as the nemesis because she wasn't a comedian as Feig feared the character would be "coming out to be too arch if we had a funny woman doing it." Greta Gerwig and Judy Greer also auditioned for unspecific roles.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: "Bridesmaids" was budgeted at $32.5 million. Though primarily set in Milwaukee and Chicago, principal photography actually took place in Los Angeles, California. Production designer Jefferson Sage, who has worked with Apatow and Paul Feig since their "Freaks and Geeks" days, noted that the first fact that appealed to him about the project "was that you had these two disparate worlds: There was Annie's world in Milwaukee, and then there was Helen's world in Chicago. It immediately drew this dichotomy between the rivalry that developed between them." However, Sage acknowledged that it was a challenge to find "architecture that would give us those Midwestern worlds. Chicago is a beautiful, distinctive city architecturally, and restricted views of downtown L.A. feel like Chicago." The production decided to use the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden as the location for Lillian and Dougie's wedding. Additional scenes where Annie meets Officer Rhodes on the highways between Milwaukee and Chicago were filmed in Oxnard, California, which Sage described as a "broad, flat, green area away from mountains."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: "Bridesmaids" received positive reviews upon its release, with praise towards Wiig and Mumolo's screenplay and also McCarthy's performance. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 294 reviews, with an average score of 7.50/10. The site's critical consensus states: "A marriage of genuine characters, gross out gags, and pathos, "Bridesmaids" is a female-driven comedy that refuses to be boxed in as Kristen Wiig emerges as a real star." Metacritic gives the film a score of 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars of out 4, and said that "Bridesmaids" "seems to be a more or less deliberate attempt to cross the Chick Flick with the Raunch Comedy. It definitely proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity ... Love him or not, Judd Apatow is consistently involved with movies that connect with audiences."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Tamara Winfrey-Harris noted in "Ms." that, to her "enduring surprise," despite the involvement of Apatow, and themes that had been "done and done and done", the film passed the Bechdel test of female-driven storylines.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Critic Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" pointed out the significance of "Bridesmaids" success as follows: "So far, the message that Hollywood seems to have taken from the incredible success of "Bridesmaids" is a predictably reductive one, something along the lines of: Hey, look! Raunchy comedies for women with awesome grossout scenes in the middle of them can be big box office too!! The message that Hollywood "should be taking" is: A comedy that's raunchy and fearless, and also brilliantly written and shrewdly honest about what's really going on in women's lives, may actually connect with the fabled non-teenage audience (remember them?)."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Many critics, like Mary Elizabeth Williams of "Salon" (who called "Bridesmaids" the "first black president of female-driven comedies") labeled the film as "a breakthrough for female-centered comedy, and feminist to boot." It was also credited with proving that "women could pull off a good fart joke as well as the next guy, and did what seemed like the impossible: leading an all-female cast to blockbuster success."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Despite the majority of praise, the film was not without its detractors. Abby Koenig of "The Houston Press" enjoyed Kristen Wiig's comedic talents, but disliked the frequency of "raunchy jokes" throughout the film, writing that "we need more funny females getting the spotlight. However, we also need women that can crack you up without making you watch them have diarrhea". Karina Longworth of "The Village Voice" criticised the inconsistency of the film's tone, stating that certain scenes have "a kind of dumb crassness that works against "Bridesmaids"' often smart, highly class-conscious deconstruction of female friendship and competition. Comedy of humiliation is one thing; a fat lady shitting in a sink is another."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: "Bridesmaids" surpassed "Knocked Up" to become the top-grossing Judd Apatow production to date, grossing $26,247,410 on its opening weekend and settling for a strong second place behind "Thor". "Bridesmaids" grossed $169,106,725 at the North American domestic box office and $119,276,798 in international markets, totalling $288,383,523. Universal reported that males made up 33 percent of the movie's audience and that 63 percent of the audience was over the age of 30.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: McCarthy was nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: "Bridesmaids" was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in theatrical (125 minutes) and unrated (130 minutes) versions on September 20, 2011. Special features include a Line-O-Rama (a feature popular among Apatow releases), deleted, extended, and alternate scenes, and a Cholodecki's jewelry store commercial. Another edition commemorating the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios was released on September 4, 2012.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: In January 2012, industry sources reported that Universal was interested in developing a sequel to "Bridesmaids". When discussing the potential of a "Bridesmaids 2", producer Apatow was quoted as saying, "The key is we have to come up with an idea that is as good or better than the first one." In an interview with "Vanity Fair", director Paul Feig addressed rumors of a sequel, saying "Everyone's very busy right now is one of the problems, and kind of doing their own thing, but we're very open to it."


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: When asked about her potential involvement, Wiig told "The Hollywood Reporter", "We aren't working on that. Annie [Mumolo] and I aren't planning a sequel. We are writing something else." Following Wiig's statement, reports surfaced that Universal was interested in proceeding without her, instead focusing on developing a story about McCarthy's character Megan. McCarthy dispelled the rumors that she would consider returning for a sequel without Wiig saying, "God, I wouldn't want to. I would never want to. I think it's a terrible idea. I don't know anything about it. But I know that nobody wants to do it unless it's great. If it is, I will show up wherever those ladies are."


title: McGill University

text: McGill University () is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV, the university bears the name of James McGill, a Scottish merchant whose bequest in 1813 formed the university's precursor, University of McGill College (or simply, McGill College); the name was officially changed to McGill University in 1885.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's main campus is on the slope of Mount Royal in downtown Montreal in the borough of Ville-Marie, with a second campus situated in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, west of the main campus on Montreal Island. The university is one of two members of the Association of American Universities located outside the United States, alongside the University of Toronto, and is the only Canadian member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) within the World Economic Forum.


title: McGill University

text: McGill offers degrees and diplomas in over 300 fields of study, with the highest average entering grades of any Canadian university. Most students are enrolled in the six largest faculties, namely Arts, Science, Medicine, Education, Engineering, and Management. McGill is the most internationally diverse of any medical-doctoral research university in Canada, with international students comprising over 30% of its student population and hailing from more than 150 countries. Additionally, over 41% of students are born outside of Canada. McGill is ranked among the world's top universities by major educational publications, and has held the top position in the country for the past 18 years in the annual "Maclean's" Canadian university rankings.


title: McGill University

text: McGill counts among its alumni and faculty 12 Nobel laureates and 147 Rhodes Scholars, both the most of any university in Canada, as well as 159 Loran Scholars, 18 billionaires, the current prime minister and two former prime ministers of Canada, two Governors General of Canada, 15 justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, at least eight foreign leaders, and more than 100 members of national legislatures. McGill alumni also include 8 Academy Award winners, 13 Grammy Award winners, at least 13 Emmy Award winners, four Pulitzer Prize winners, and 121 Olympians with over 35 Olympic medals. The inventors of the game of basketball, modern organized ice hockey, and the pioneers of gridiron football, as well as the founders of several major universities and colleges are also graduates of the university.


title: McGill University

text: Notable researchers include Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the atomic nucleus and conducted his Nobel Prize–winning research on the nature of radioactivity while working as Professor of Experimental Physics at the university. Other notable inventions by McGillians include the world's first artificial cell, web search engine, and charge-coupled device, among others.


title: McGill University

text: McGill has the largest endowment per student with regard to financial endowments of over C$1 billion in Canada. In 2019, it was the recipient of the largest single philanthropic gift in Canadian history, a $200 million donation to fund the creation of the McCall MacBain Scholarships programme.


title: McGill University

text: The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning (RIAL) was created in 1801 under an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada (41 George III Chapter 17), "An Act for the establishment of Free Schools and the Advancement of Learning in this Province". The RIAL was initially authorized to operate two new Royal Grammar Schools, in Quebec City and in Montreal. This was a turning point for public education in Lower Canada as the schools were created by legislation, which showed the government's willingness to support the costs of education and even the salary of a schoolmaster. This was an important first step in the creation of non-denominational schools. When James McGill died in 1813, his bequest was administered by the RIAL.


title: McGill University

text: In 1846 the Royal Grammar School in Quebec City closed, and the one in Montreal merged with the High School of Montreal. By the mid-19th century, the RIAL had lost control of the other eighty-two grammar schools it had administered. However, in 1853 it took over the High School of Montreal from the school's board of directors and continued to operate it until 1870. Thereafter, its sole remaining purpose was to administer the McGill bequest on behalf of the private college. The RIAL continues to exist today; it is the corporate identity that runs the university and its various constituent bodies, including the former Macdonald College (now Macdonald Campus), the Montreal Neurological Institute, and the Royal Victoria College (the former women's college turned residence). Since the revised Royal Charter of 1852, The trustees of the RIAL are the board of governors of McGill University.


title: McGill University

text: James McGill, born in Glasgow, Scotland on October 6, 1744, was a successful merchant in Quebec, having matriculated into the University of Glasgow in 1756. Soon afterwards, McGill left for North America to explore the business opportunities there, especially in the fur trade. Between 1811 and 1813, he drew up a will leaving his "Burnside estate", a tract of rural land and 10,000 pounds to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning.


title: McGill University

text: On McGill's death in December 1813, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, established in 1801 by an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, added the establishing of a university pursuant to the conditions of McGill's will to its original function of administering elementary education in Lower Canada.


title: McGill University

text: As a condition of the bequest, the land and funds had to be used for the establishment of a "University or College, for the purposes of Education and the Advancement of Learning in the said Province." The will specified a private, constituent college bearing his name would have to be established within ten years of his death; otherwise, the bequest would revert to the heirs of his wife.


title: McGill University

text: On March 31, 1821, after protracted legal battles with the Desrivières family (the heirs of his wife), McGill College received a royal charter from King George IV. The charter provided the college should be deemed and taken as a university, with the power of conferring degrees. The third Lord Bishop of Quebec, The Right Reverend Dr. George Mountain, (DCL, Oxford) was appointed the first principal of McGill College and a professor of divinity. He is also responsible for the creation of Bishop's University in 1843 and Bishop's College School in 1836 in the Eastern Townships.


title: McGill University

text: Although McGill College received its Royal Charter in 1821, it was inactive until 1829 when the Montreal Medical Institution, which had been founded in 1823, became the college's first academic unit and Canada's first medical school. The Faculty of Medicine granted its first degree, a Doctorate of Medicine and Surgery, in 1833; this was also the first medical degree to be awarded in Canada.


title: McGill University

text: The Faculty of Medicine remained the school's only functioning faculty until 1843 when the Faculty of Arts commenced teaching in the newly constructed Arts Building and East Wing (Dawson Hall). The university also historically has strong links with the Canadian Grenadier Guards, a military regiment in which James McGill served as Lieutenant-Colonel. This title is marked upon the stone that stands before the Arts building, from where the Guards step off annually to commemorate Remembrance Day.


title: McGill University

text: The Faculty of Law was founded in 1848 and is also the oldest of its kind in the nation. In 1896, the McGill School of Architecture was the second architecture school to be established in Canada, six years after the University of Toronto in 1890.


title: McGill University

text: Sir John William Dawson, McGill's principal from 1855 to 1893, is often credited with transforming the school into a modern university. He recruited the aid of Montreal's wealthiest citizens (eighty percent of Canada's wealth was then controlled by families who lived within the Golden Square Mile area that surrounded the university), many of whom donated property and funding needed to construct the campus buildings. Their names adorn many of the campus's prominent buildings.


title: McGill University

text: William Spier designed the addition of the West Wing of the Arts Building for William Molson, 1861. Alexander Francis Dunlop designed major alterations to the East Wing of McGill College (now called the Arts Building, McGill University) for Prof. Bovey and the Science Dept., 1888. This expansion of the campus continued until 1920. Buildings designed by Andrew Taylor include the Redpath Museum (1880), Macdonald Physics Building (1893), the Redpath Library (1893), the Macdonald Chemistry Building (1896)—now known as the Macdonald-Harrington Building, the Macdonald Engineering Building (1907)—now known as the Macdonald-Stewart Library Building, and the Strathcona Medical Building (1907)—since renamed the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building.


title: McGill University

text: In 1899, the university established the McLennan Travelling Library - through this project, boxes of about thirty varied books were shipped all over Canada to places without libraries. The books were passed from home to home until most people had read all they had wanted to, then they were shipped back to be replaced by a new selection.


title: McGill University

text: "McGill University Waltz" composed by Frances C. Robinson, was published in Montréal by W.H. Scroggie, c 1904.


title: McGill University

text: Also the same year in 1905, the Bishop's University Medical Faculty Montreal who established in Montreal in 1871, closed and amalgamated with McGill University to create the new McGill University Faculty of Medicine, where BU graduates such as Maude Abbott, one of Canada's earliest female medical graduates transferred to work for McGill as the Curator of the McGill Medical Museum.


title: McGill University

text: George Allan Ross designed the Pathology Building, 1922–23; the Neurological Institute, 1933; Neurological Institute addition 1938 at McGill University. Jean Julien Perrault (architect) designed the McTavish Street residence for Charles E. Gravel, which is now called David Thompson House (1934).


title: McGill University

text: Women's education at McGill began in 1884 when Donald Smith (later the Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), began funding separate lectures for women, given by university staff members. The first degrees granted to women at McGill were conferred in 1888. In 1899, the Royal Victoria College (RVC) opened as a residential college for women at McGill with Hilda D. Oakeley as the head. Until the 1970s, all female undergraduate students, known as "Donaldas," were considered to be members of RVC. Beginning in the autumn of 2010, the newer Tower section of Royal Victoria College became a mixed gender dormitory, whereas the older West Wing remains strictly for women. Both the Tower and the West Wing of Royal Victoria College form part of the university's residence system.


title: McGill University

text: McGill University played a significant role in The Great War. Many students and alumni enlisted in the first wave of patriotic fervour that swept the nation in 1914, but in the spring of 1915—after the first wave of heavy Canadian casualties at Ypres—Hamilton Gault, the founder of the Canadian regiment and a wealthy Montreal businessman, was faced with a desperate shortage of troops. When he reached out to his friends at home for support, over two hundred were commissioned from the ranks, and many more would serve as soldiers throughout the war. On their return to Canada after the war, Major George McDonald and Major George Currie formed the accounting firm McDonald Currie, which later became one of the founders of Price Waterhouse Coopers. Captain Percival Molson was killed in action in July 1917. Percival Molson Memorial Stadium at McGill is named in his honour.


title: McGill University

text: The War Memorial Hall (more generally known as Memorial Hall) is a landmark building on the campus of McGill University. At the dedication ceremony, the Governor General of Canada (Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis) laid the cornerstone. Dedicated on October 6, 1946, the Memorial Hall and adjoining Memorial Pool honour students who had enlisted and died in the First World War, and in the Second World War. In Memorial Hall, there are two Stained Glass Regimental badges, World War I and World War II Memorial Windows by Charles William Kelsey c. 1950/1.


title: McGill University

text: A war memorial window (1950) by Charles William Kelsey in the McGill War Memorial Hall depicts the figure of St. Michael and the badges of the Navy, Army and the Air Force.


title: McGill University

text: A Great War memorial window featuring Saint George and a slain dragon at the entrance to the Blackader-Lauterman Library of Architecture and Art is dedicated to the memory of 23 members of the McGill chapter of Delta Upsilon who gave their lives in the Great War.


title: McGill University

text: Six other windows (1951) by Charles William Kelsey on the west wall of the memorial hall depict the coats of arms of the regiments in which the McGill alumni were members.


title: McGill University

text: There is a memorial archway at Macdonald Campus, two additional floors added to the existing Sir Arthur Currie gymnasium, a hockey rink and funding for an annual Memorial Assembly. A Book of Remembrance on a marble table contains the names of those lost in both World Wars. On November 11, 2012, the McGill Remembers website launched; the University War Records Office collected documents between 1940 and 1946 related to McGill students, staff and faculty in the Second World War.


title: McGill University

text: Beginning in the 1920s and continuing until the 1960s, McGill imposed a controversial quota which specified a maximum on the proportion of the newly admitted Jewish students. The quota limited the Jewish student population in medicine and law to at most 10%.


title: McGill University

text: McGill was instrumental in founding several major universities and colleges. It established the first post-secondary institutions in British Columbia to provide degree programs to the growing cities of Vancouver and Victoria. It chartered Victoria College in 1903 as an affiliated junior college of McGill, offering first and second-year courses in arts and science, until it became today's University of Victoria. British Columbia's first university was incorporated in Vancouver in 1908 as the McGill University College of British Columbia. The private institution granted McGill degrees until it became the independent University of British Columbia in 1915.


title: McGill University

text: Dawson College began in 1945 as a satellite campus of McGill to absorb the anticipated influx of students after World War II. Many students in their first three years in the Faculty of Engineering took courses at Dawson College to relieve the McGill campus for the later two years for their degree course. Dawson eventually became independent of McGill and evolved into the first English CEGEP in Quebec. Another CEGEP, John Abbott College, was established in 1971 at the campus of McGill's Macdonald College.


title: McGill University

text: Both founders of the University of Alberta, Premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, were also McGill alumni. In addition, McGill alumni and professors, Sir William Osler and Howard Atwood Kelly, were among the four founders and early faculty members of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Osler eventually became the first Physician-in-Chief of the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, US in 1889. He led the creation of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. Other McGill alumni founded the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in the 1880s.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's main campus is situated in downtown Montreal at the foot of Mount Royal. Most of its buildings are in a park-like campus (also known as the Lower Campus) north of Sherbrooke Street and south of Pine Avenue between Peel and Aylmer streets. The campus also extends west of Peel Street (also known as Upper Campus) for several blocks, starting north of Doctor Penfield; the campus also extends east of University Street, starting north of Pine Avenue, an area that includes McGill's Percival Molson Memorial Stadium and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. The community immediately east of University Street and south of Pine Avenue is known as Milton-Park, where a large number of students reside. The campus is near the Peel and McGill Metro stations. A major downtown boulevard, McGill College Avenue, leads up to the Roddick Gates, the university's formal entrance. Many of the major university buildings were constructed using local grey limestone, which serves as a unifying element. A number of these buildings are connected by indoor tunnels.


title: McGill University

text: The university's first classes were held in at Burnside Place, James McGill's country home. Burnside Place remained the sole educational facility until the 1840s, when the school began construction on its first buildings: the central and east wings of the Arts Building. The rest of the campus was essentially a cow pasture, a situation similar to the few other Canadian universities and early American colleges of the age.


title: McGill University

text: The university's athletic facilities, including Molson Stadium, are on Mount Royal, near the residence halls and the Montreal Neurological Institute. The Gymnasium is named in honour of General Sir Arthur William Currie.


title: McGill University

text: In 2012, "Travel + Leisure" rated McGill's campus as one of the 17 most beautiful university campuses in the world.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's residence system comprises 16 properties providing dormitories, apartments, and hotel-style housing to approximately 3,100 undergraduate students and some graduate students from the downtown and Macdonald campuses. With the exception of students returning as "floor fellows," few McGill students live in residence (known colloquially as "rez") after their first year of undergraduate study, even if they are not from the Montreal area. Most second-year students transition to off-campus apartment housing. Many students settle in the Milton-Park neighbourhood, sometimes called the "McGill Ghetto," which is the neighbourhood directly to the east of the downtown campus. Students have also moved to areas such as Mile End, The Plateau, and even as far as Verdun because of rising rent prices.


title: McGill University

text: Many first-year students live in the Upper Residence ("Upper Rez"), which consists of the 1960s-style dormitories McConnell Hall, Molson Hall, and Gardner Hall and are located on the slope of Mount Royal alongside historic Douglas Hall, another student residence.


title: McGill University

text: Royal Victoria College opened as a residential college for women in 1899, but its Tower section became mixed gender in September 2010 while its West Wing remains strictly for women. The college's original building was designed by Bruce Price and its extension was designed by Percy Erskine Nobbs and George Taylor Hyde. A statue of Queen Victoria by her daughter Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll stands in front of the building.


title: McGill University

text: A second campus, the Macdonald Campus, in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue houses the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Science, the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, the Institute of Parasitology, and the McGill School of Environment. As of fall 2020, despite a decrease in enrollment from the previous year's 1,962 students, the campus has a total of 1,892 actively enrolled students, including those studying part-time and full-time, across all available programs. Of the total, 1,212 students are pursuing an undergraduate degree, 374 are pursuing a Masters-level degree, and 248 are pursuing a Doctoral-level degree, respectively. The gender percentage is 70.7% female and 29.3% male. There is a high international student presence, where over 1 in 5 students studying are from outside Canada. Students attending Macdonald campus often nickname the campus as “Mac” campus. Its location near the St. Lawrence river makes the campus significantly quieter and nature dense than the Downtown Montreal campus. The Morgan Arboretum and the J. S. Marshall Radar Observatory are nearby.


title: McGill University

text: The Morgan Arboretum was created in 1945. It is a forested reserve with the aim of 'teaching, and public education'. Its mandated goals are to continue research related to maintaining the health of the Arboretum plantations and woodlands, to develop new programs related to selecting species adapted to developing environmental conditions and to develop silvicultural practices that preserve and enhance biological diversity in both natural stands and plantations.


title: McGill University

text: In 2019, McGill announced the construction of a new campus for its Faculty of Medicine in Gatineau, Quebec, which will allow students from the Outaouais region to complete their undergraduate medical education locally and in French. Medical students began using the new facility in August 2020. The new facility is located above the emergency room at Gatineau Hospital, part of the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de l'Outaouais, in addition to new offices for the associated Family Medicine Unit for residency training. Although the preparatory year for students entering the undergraduate medical education program from CEGEP was initially planned to be offered solely at the McGill downtown campus in Montreal, collaboration with the Université du Québec en Outaouais made it possible to offer the program entirely in Gatineau.


title: McGill University

text: In 2006, the Quebec government initiated a $1.6 billion LEED redevelopment project for the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). The project will expand facilities to two separate campuses and consolidate the various hospitals of the MUHC on the site of an old CP rail yard adjacent to the Vendôme Metro station. This site, known as Glen Yards, comprises and spans portions of Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood and the city of Westmount.


title: McGill University

text: The Glen Yards project has been controversial due to local opposition to the project, environmental issues, and the project's cost. The project, which has received approval from the provincial government, was, in 2003, expected to be complete by 2010. The new 'campus' has now been completed, and a massive effort of moving units from older hospitals, such Royal Victoria, Montreal Children's, and Montreal General, into the new McGill University Health Centre is underway.


title: McGill University

text: In 2007, McGill premiered its Office of Sustainability and added a second full-time position in this area, the Director of Sustainability in addition to the Sustainability Officer. Recent efforts in implementing its sustainable development plan include the new Life Sciences Centre which was built with LEED-Silver certification and a green roof, as well as an increase in parking rates in January 2008 to fund other sustainability projects. Other student projects include The Flat: Bike Collective, which promotes alternative transportation, and the Farmer's Market, which occurs during the fall harvest.


title: McGill University

text: Founded in 1989, the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning (MCLL) is an educational community for senior learners housed in the McGill School of Continuing Studies. The program was founded by Fiona Clark, then-assistant director of continuing studies at McGill, and drew inspiration from horizontal peer-led programs, including the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement. Its innovative educational model is notably different from an instructor-led approach, and instead sees seniors exploring educational interest as either study group moderators, or participants. A core team of volunteer seniors assists with all aspects of the organization's mandate with the support of McGill staff and facilities. The program brings together hundreds of senior members yearly and has acted as a springboard for numerous senior-led initiatives such as social events, educational symposiums, and cultural festivals, including an internationally recognized yearly Bloomsday event on the life and work of author James Joyce.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's Bellairs Research Institute, in Saint James, Barbados , is Canada's only teaching and research facility in the tropics. The institute has been in use for over 50 years. The university also operates the McGill Arctic Research Station on Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, and a Subarctic Research Station in Schefferville, Quebec.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's Gault Nature Reserve () spans over of forest land, the largest remaining remnant of the primeval forests of the St. Lawrence River Valley. The first scientific studies at the site occurred in 1859. The site has been the site of extensive research activities: "Today there are over 400 scientific articles, 100 graduate theses, more than 50 government reports and about 30 book chapters based on research at Mont St. Hilaire."


title: McGill University

text: In addition to the McGill University Health Centre, McGill has been directly partnered with many teaching hospitals for decades and has a history of collaborating with many hospitals in Montreal. These cooperations allow the university to graduate over 1,000 students in health care each year. McGill's contract-affiliated teaching hospitals include the Montreal Children's Hospital, the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Neurological Hospital, the Montreal Chest Institute and the Royal Victoria Hospital which are all now part of the McGill University Health Centre. Other hospitals health care students may use include the Jewish General Hospital, the Douglas Hospital, St. Mary's Hospital Centre, Lachine Hospital, LaSalle Hospital, Lakeshore General Hospital, as well as health care facilities part of the Centre intégré de santé et services sociaux de l'Outaouais.


title: McGill University

text: Until the late 19th century, McGill had also owned parkland atop the Westmount Summit, which was used as a botanical garden. In the early twentieth century, McGill donated the land to the City of Westmount on the condition it become a bird sanctuary.


title: McGill University

text: In 1998, the Faculty of Management launched their MBA Japan program, the first Canadian degree program offered in Japan, with teaching facilities at Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo.


title: McGill University

text: The university's academic units are organized into 11 main Faculties and 13 Schools. These include the School of Architecture, the School of Computer Science, the School of Information Studies, the School of Human Nutrition, the Bensadoun School of Retail Management, the Max Bell School of Public Policy, the School of Physical & Occupational Therapy, the Ingram School of Nursing, the School of Social Work, the School of Urban Planning, and the Bieler School of Environment. They also include the Institute of Islamic Studies (established in 1952), which offers graduate courses leading to the M.A. and PhD degrees, and covers the history, culture, and civilization of Islam; the institute is also served by one of the richest libraries in North America on Islamic studies.


title: McGill University

text: The Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS) oversees the admission and registration of graduate students (both master's and PhD). The GPS administers graduate fellowships, postdoctoral affairs, and the graduation process, including the examination of theses. In conjunction with other units, it conducts regular program reviews in all study disciplines.


title: McGill University

text: Founded in 1956, the McGill Executive Institute provides business seminars and custom executive education to companies, government services and non-profit organizations. Led primarily by McGill faculty, the executive courses and management training programs are designed for all managerial levels, from board members to senior-level executives to junior managers.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill coat of arms is derived from an armorial device assumed during his lifetime by the founder of the University, James McGill. It was designed in 1906 by Percy Nobbs, three years into his term as director of the University's School of Architecture. The University's patent of arms was subsequently granted by the Garter King at Arms in 1922, registered in 1956 with Lord Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh, and in 1992 with the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada. In heraldic terms, the coat of arms is described as follows: "Argent three Martlets Gules, on a chief dancette of the second, an open book proper garnished or bearing the legend "In Domino Confido" in letters Sable between two crowns of the first. Motto: "Grandescunt Aucta Labore"." The coat of arms consists of two parts, the shield and the scroll. The university publishes a guide to the use of the university's arms and motto.


title: McGill University

text: The university's symbol is the martlet, stemming from the presence of the mythical bird on the official arms of the university. The university's official colour is scarlet, which figures prominently in the academic dress of McGill University. McGill's motto is "Grandescunt Aucta Labore", Latin for "By work, all things increase and grow" (literally, "Things grown great increase by work," that is, things that grow to be great do so by means of work). The official school song is entitled "Hail, Alma Mater."


title: McGill University

text: McGill maintains ties with more than 160 partner universities where students can study abroad for either one or two semesters. Each year, McGill hosts around 500 incoming exchange students from over 32 countries. The university offers a multitude of activities and events to integrate the students into the university's community and introduce them to the North American academic culture. McGill is the home to more than 10,000 foreign students who make up of more than 27% of the student population.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill endowment provides approximately 10 per cent of the school's annual operating revenues. McGill's endowment rests within the top 10 percent of all North American post-secondary institutions' endowments. The endowment is valued at over $1.8 billion, the second-largest in Canada and, at $41,323 per student, the largest among Canadian universities on a per-student basis.


title: McGill University

text: McGill launched the "Campaign McGill" campaign in October 2007, with the goal of raising over $750 million for the purpose of further "attracting and retaining top talent in Quebec, to increase access to quality education and to further enhance McGill's ability to address critical global problems." The largest goal of any Canadian university fundraising campaign in history, the campaign was officially closed on June 18, 2013, having raised more than $1 billion.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is also the recipient of a $200 million donation to fund the creation of the McCall MacBain Scholarships programme, the largest single philanthropic gift to a Canadian university before the $250 million James and Louise Temerty gift was announced in late 2020 for the University of Toronto.


title: McGill University

text: McGill University has a highly competitive acceptance rate of 38.1% and a graduate acceptance rate of 29.2%, with an enrolment rate of 19% of all applicants. | 22% of all students are enrolled in the Faculty of Arts, McGill's largest academic unit. Of the other larger faculties, the Faculty of Science enrols 15%, the Faculty of Medicine enrols 13%, the School of Continuing Studies enrols 12%, the Faculty of Engineering and the Desautels Faculty of Management enrol about 10% each. The remainder of all students are enrolled in McGill's smaller schools, including the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Law, Schulich School of Music, and the Faculty of Religious Studies. Since the 1880s, McGill has been affiliated with three Theological Colleges; the Montreal Diocesan Theological College (Anglican Church of Canada), The Presbyterian College, Montreal (Presbyterian Church in Canada), and United Theological College (United Church of Canada). The university's Faculty of Religious Studies maintains additional affiliations with other theological institutions and organizations, such as the Montreal School of Theology.


title: McGill University

text: McGill undergraduates have the highest average entering grades of any Canadian university. Among admitted students, the median Quebec CEGEP R-score was 31.9, while the median grade 12 averages for students entering McGill from outside of Quebec ranged between 93.2% and 94.4% (A). For American students, the median SAT scores in the verbal, mathematics, and writing sections were 730, 730, and 730, respectively. The median ACT score was 32.


title: McGill University

text: Due to its bilingual nature, McGill's law school does not require applicants to sit the LSAT, which is only offered in English. For students who submitted LSAT scores in the September 2019 entering class, the median LSAT score was 163 (87.8th percentile) out of a possible 180 points. Of those students who entered with a bachelor's degree, the median GPA was 86% (3.8/4.0), and of those students entering from CEGEP, the average R-score was 34.29.


title: McGill University

text: For medical students in the 2020 entering class, of those students who entered with a bachelor's degree, the average GPA was 3.88 out of 4.0, and of those students entering from CEGEP, the average R-score was 37.10. McGill does not require applicants to its medical programme to sit the MCAT if they have an undergraduate degree from a Canadian university.


title: McGill University

text: In the Desautels Faculty of Management's MBA program, applicants had an average GMAT score of 670 and an average GPA of 3.3. MBA students had an average age of 28, and five years of work experience. 95% of MBA students are bilingual and 60% are trilingual.


title: McGill University

text: In the 2007–2008 school year, McGill offered over 340 academic programs in eleven faculties. The university also offers over 250 doctoral and master's graduate degree programs. Despite strong increases in university enrolment across North America, McGill has upheld a relatively low and appealing student-faculty ratio of 16:1. There are nearly 1,600 tenured or tenure-track professors teaching at the university.


title: McGill University

text: Tuition fees vary significantly depending on the faculties that aspiring (graduate and undergraduate) students choose as well as their citizenship. For the undergraduate faculty of the arts, tuition fees vary for in-province, out-of-province, and international students, with full-time Quebec students paying around $4,333.10 per year, Canadian students from other provinces paying around $9,509.30 per year, and international students paying $22,102.57–$41,815.92 per year.


title: McGill University

text: Since 1996, McGill, in accordance with the Quebec Ministry of Education, Recreation and Sports (Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport or MELS), has had eight categories that qualifies certain international students to be excused from paying international fees. These categories include: students from France and French-speaking Belgium, a quota of students from select countries which have agreements with MELS, which include Algeria, China, and Morocco, students holding diplomatic status, including their dependents, and students enrolled in certain language programs leading to a degree in French.


title: McGill University

text: In the 2008–2009 school year, McGill's graduate business program became funded by tuition. It was the last business school in Canada to do so.


title: McGill University

text: For out-of-province first year undergraduate students, a high school average of 95% is required to receive a guaranteed one-year entrance scholarship. For renewal of previously earned scholarships, students generally need to be within the top 10% of their faculty. For in-course scholarships in particular, students must be within the top 5% of their faculty. McGill itself outlines scholarship considerations as follows: "Competition for basic and major scholarships is intense at McGill. An extraordinary number of exceptional applications are received each year and therefore we cannot award scholarships to all good candidates."


title: McGill University

text: The university has joined Project Hero, a scholarship program cofounded by General (Ret'd) Rick Hillier for the families of fallen Canadian Forces members. McGill is also partnered with the STEM initiative Schulich Leader Scholarships, awarding an $80,000 scholarship to an incoming engineering student and a $60,000 scholarship to a student pursuing a degree in science/technology/mathematics each year.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is one of three English-language universities in Quebec; French is not a requirement to attend. The Faculty of Law does, however, require all students to be 'passively bilingual' since English or French may be used at any time. Over 40,000 students attend McGill, with international students accounting for approximately 29 percent of the student population. The majority of students are fluent in at least two languages. Francophone students, whether from Quebec or overseas, now make up approximately 20 percent of the student body.


title: McGill University

text: Although the language of instruction is English, since its founding McGill has allowed students to write their thesis in French, and since 1964 students in all faculties have been able to submit any graded work in either English or French, provided the objective of the class is not to learn a particular language. The university has a bilingual language policy and charter.


title: McGill University

text: In 1969, the nationalist "McGill français" movement demanded McGill become francophone, pro-nationalist, and pro-worker. The movement was led by Stanley Gray, a political science professor (and possibly unaware of government plans after the recent (1968) legislation founding the Université du Québec). A demonstration was held of 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, CEGEP students, and even some McGill students, at the university's Roddick Gates on March 28, 1969. Protesters saw English as the privileged language of commerce. McGill, where Francophones were only three percent of the students, could be seen as the force maintaining economic control by Anglophones of a predominantly French-speaking province. However, the majority of students and faculty opposed such a position.


title: McGill University

text: McGill ranked first in Canada among medical-doctoral universities in "Maclean's" Canadian University Rankings 2023. The university has held the top position in the ranking for 17 consecutive years. "The Globe and Mail"s Canadian University Report 2019 categorised McGill as "above average" for its financial aid, student experience and research, and as "average" for its library resources. Research Infosource ranked McGill second among Canadian universities with medical schools in its 2020 edition of Research Universities of the Year.


title: McGill University

text: Internationally, McGill ranked 31st in the world and first in Canada in the 2023 QS World University Rankings. It also ranked 27th in the world and second in Canada in the 2020-21 CWUR World University Rankings. It was ranked 46th in the world and third in Canada by the 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2022, the Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked the university 73rd in the world, and third in Canada. In the 2022–23 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Rankings, McGill was ranked 54th in the world and third in Canada.


title: McGill University

text: In the Global University Employability Ranking 2022, published by Times Higher Education, McGill ranked 29th in the world and second in Canada. Nature ranked McGill 67th in the world and second in Canada among academic institutions for high-impact research in the 2021 edition of Nature Index. According to Wealth-X's 2019 ranking of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) alumni — those with US$30 million or more in net worth — McGill ranked 34th in the world and eighth outside the United States.


title: McGill University

text: McGill's MBA program, offered by the Desautels Faculty of Management, has appeared in several rankings. Quacquarelli Symonds, in its Global MBA Rankings 2021, ranked McGill's MBA 59th in the world and second in Canada. The "Financial Times", in its 2020 Global MBA ranking, placed the MBA programme 91st in the world and second in Canada. In Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Best Business Schools ranking 2019–2020, Desautels was ranked seventh in Canada.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is a member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), composed of the presidents of 29 of the world's top universities. It is the only Canadian university member of GULF. McGill is also one of only two non-American universities to be a member of the Association of American Universities, an organization of research-intensive universities.


title: McGill University

text: Research plays a critical role at McGill. McGill is affiliated with 12 Nobel Laureates, and professors have won major teaching prizes. According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, "researchers at McGill are affiliated with about 75 major research centres and networks, and are engaged in an extensive array of research partnerships with other universities, government and industry in Quebec and Canada, throughout North America and in dozens of other countries." In 2016, McGill had over $547 million of sponsored research income, the second-highest in Canada, and a research intensity per faculty of $317,600, the third highest among full-service universities in Canada. McGill has one of the largest patent portfolios among Canadian universities. McGill's researchers are supported by the McGill University Library, which comprises 13 branch libraries and holds over 11.5 million items.


title: McGill University

text: Since 1926, McGill has been a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of leading research universities in North America. McGill is a founding member of Universitas 21, an international network of leading research-intensive universities that work together to expand their global reach and advance their plans for internationalization.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is one of 26 members of the prestigious Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), which acts as an intellectual community within the World Economic Forum to advise its leadership on matters relating to higher education and research. It is the only Canadian university member of GULF. McGill is also a member of the U15, a group of prominent research universities within Canada.


title: McGill University

text: McGill-Queen's University Press began as McGill in 1963 and amalgamated with Queen's in 1969. McGill-Queen's University Press focuses on Canadian studies and publishes the Canadian Public Administration Series.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is perhaps best recognized for its research and discoveries in the health sciences. Sir William Osler, Wilder Penfield, Donald Hebb, Donald Ewen Cameron, Brenda Milner, and others made significant discoveries in medicine, neuroscience and psychology while working at McGill, many at the university's Montreal Neurological Institute. The first hormone governing the Immune System (later christened the Cytokine 'Interleukin-2') was discovered at McGill in 1965 by Gordon & McLean.


title: McGill University

text: The invention of the world's first artificial cell was made by Thomas Chang while an undergraduate student at the university. While chair of physics at McGill, nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford performed the experiment that led to the discovery of the alpha particle and its function in radioactive decay, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. Alumnus Jack W. Szostak was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.


title: McGill University

text: William Chalmers invented Plexiglas while a graduate student at McGill. In computing, MUSIC/SP, software for mainframes once popular among universities and colleges around the world, was developed at McGill. A team also contributed to the development of Archie, a pre-WWW search engine. A 3270 terminal emulator developed at McGill was commercialized and later sold to Hummingbird Software. A team has developed digital musical instruments in the form of prosthesis, called Musical Prostheses.


title: McGill University

text: Since 2017, McGill has partnered with the Université de Montréal on Mila (research institute), a community of professors, students, industrial partners and startups working in AI, with over 500 researchers making the institute the world's largest academic research centre in deep learning.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill University Library comprises 12 branch libraries containing 11.5 million items in its collection. Its branches include the Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, which holds about 350,000 items, including books, manuscripts, maps, prints, and a general rare book collection. The Islamic Studies Library contains over 125,000 volumes and a growing number of electronic resources covering the whole of Islamic civilization, including approximately 3,000 rare books and manuscripts. The Osler Library of the History of Medicine is the largest medical history library in Canada and one of the most comprehensive in the world.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill University Archives – now administered as part of the McGill Library – houses official records of, or relating to, people and activities connected to McGill University. The collection consists of manuscripts, texts, photographs, audio-visual material, architectural records, cartographic materials, prints, drawings, microforms and artifacts. In 1962 F. Cyril James declared that the newly founded McGill University Archives (MUA), while concentrating on the institutional records of McGill, had the mandate to acquire private papers of former faculty members. In the 1990s drew back their acquisition scope, and in 2004, new terms of reference on private acquisitions were introduced that included a wider McGill Community.


title: McGill University

text: The Redpath Museum houses collections of interest to ethnology, biology, paleontology, mineralogy and geology. Built in 1882, the Redpath is the oldest building in Canada built specifically to be a museum.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill Medical Museum catalogues, preserves, conserves and displays collections that document the study and practice of medicine at McGill University and its associated teaching hospitals. The Medical museum features collections, individual specimens, artifacts, equipment logbooks, autopsy journals, paper materials and medical instruments and apparatus, 25 wax models, 200 mostly skeletal dry specimens, and 400 lantern slides of anatomic specimens. There is a special emphasis on pathology; there are 2000 fluid-filled preserved anatomical and pathological specimens. The Osler collection, for example, consists of 60 wet specimens, while The Abbott collection consists of 80 wet specimens, mostly examples of congenital cardiac disease.


title: McGill University

text: As of Fall 2021, McGill's student population includes 26,765 undergraduate and 10,411 graduate students representing diverse geographic and linguistic backgrounds. Of the entire student population, 46.8% are from Quebec and 22.8% are from the rest of Canada, while 30.4% are from outside of Canada. International students hail from about 150 countries, with many students coming from the United States, China, and France. Over half of McGill students claim a first language other than English, with 19.7% of the students claiming French as their mother tongue and 33.5% claiming a language other than English and French, compared to 46.8% who claim English as their mother tongue. In Fall 2021, 34,379 students were enrolled in full-time studies, while 4,888 students enrolled in part-time studies.


title: McGill University

text: The campus has an active students' society represented by the undergraduate Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) and the Post-Graduate Students' Society of McGill University (PGSS). Due to the large postdoctoral student population, the PGSS also contains a semi-autonomous Association of Postdoctoral Fellows (APF). In addition, each faculty and department has its own student governing body, the largest faculty associations being the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) and the Science Undergraduate Society (SUS). The oldest is the Medical Students Society, founded in 1859.


title: McGill University

text: SSMU supports more than 250 student-run membership clubs, which range from athletics, health and wellness, arts, and culture groups to professional development, charitable, volunteer, and political associations. It offers 17 student-run services, which provide services and resources to students regardless of membership, such as the Flat Bike Collective, Black Students' Network, McGill Students' Nightline, and Queer McGill (formerly Gay McGill), which has supported queer students since 1972. SSMU is also affiliated with 11 independent student groups, which operate on campus but are outside of the student society's governance structure. These independent groups include student media outlets, a legal clinic, AIESEC McGill, and the International Relations Students' Association of McGill (IRSAM), which publishes the world's only all-inclusive international relations research journal, the McGill International Review, and has consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. IRSAM has hosted the McGill Model United Nations for university students since 1990 and the Secondary Schools United Nations Symposium since 1993.


title: McGill University

text: Many student clubs are centred around McGill's student union building, the University Centre. In 1992, students held a referendum calling for the University Centre to be renamed for actor and McGill alumnus William Shatner. The university administration refused to accept the name and did not attend the opening because it traditionally names buildings in honour of deceased community members or major benefactors—Shatner is neither. Nevertheless, the University Centre has been informally referred to as the Shatner Building ever since.


title: McGill University

text: McGill has a number of student-run publications."The McGill Daily", first published in 1911, was previously published twice weekly, but shifted to a once-a-week publication schedule in September 2013 due to tightened budgets. The "Délit français" is the "Daily"s French-language counterpart. The combined circulation of both papers is over 28,000. The "McGill Tribune" currently publishes once a week, circulating approximately 11,000 copies across campus. "The Bull & Bear", operating under the Management Undergraduate Society, publishes 1,000 copies each month. CKUT (90.3 FM) is the campus radio station. TVMcGill is the University TV station, broadcasting on closed-circuit television and over the internet.


title: McGill University

text: The McGill University Faculty of Law is home to three student-run academic journals, including the world-renowned "McGill Law Journal", founded in 1952.


title: McGill University

text: The Greek system at McGill is made up of eleven fraternities and five sororities, including fraternities Alpha Delta Phi, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Sigma Phi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Delta Lambda Phi, Kappa Alpha Society, Phi Delta Theta, Phi Kappa Pi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi and Zeta Psi, and sororities Alpha Omicron Pi, Alpha Phi, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma. Phi Kappa Pi, Canada's only national fraternity, was founded at McGill and the University of Toronto in 1913 and continues to be active. The Greek letter organizations at McGill are governed by the Inter-Greek Letter Council, the school's second-largest student group. Over 500 students or approximately 2% of the student population are in sororities and fraternities at McGill, on par with most Canadian schools but below the average for American universities.


title: McGill University

text: McGill is represented in U Sports by the McGill Redbirds (men's) and the McGill Martlets (women's). Following a major restructuring of the varsity programme for the fall semester of 2010, McGill is currently home to 28 varsity teams. McGill is known for its strong baseball, hockey and lacrosse programs. McGill's unique mascot, Marty the Martlet, was introduced during the 2005 Homecoming game.


title: McGill University

text: The downtown McGill campus sport and exercise facilities include: the McGill Sports Centre (which includes the Tomlinson Fieldhouse and the Windsor Varsity Clinic), Molson Stadium, Memorial Pool, Tomlinson Hall, McConnell Arena, Forbes Field, many outdoor tennis courts and other extra-curricular arenas and faculties. The McGill Sport Medicine Clinic can also be found in the McGill Sports Centre.


title: McGill University

text: The Macdonald Campus facilities include an arena, a gymnasium, a pool, tennis courts, fitness centres and hundreds of acres of green space for regular use. The university's largest sporting venue, Molson Stadium, was constructed in 1914. Following an expansion project completed in 2010, it now seats just over 25,000, and is the current home field of the Montreal Alouettes.


title: McGill University

text: In 1868, the first recorded game of rugby in North America occurred in Montreal, between British army officers and McGill students, giving McGill the oldest university-affiliated rugby club in North America. Other McGill-originated sports evolved out of rugby rules: football, hockey, and basketball. The first game of North American football was played between McGill and Harvard on May 14, 1874, leading to the spread of American football throughout the Ivy League.


title: McGill University

text: On March 3, 1875, the first organized indoor hockey game was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink between two nine-player teams, including James Creighton and several McGill University students. The McGill University Hockey Club, the first organized hockey club, was founded in 1877 and played its first game on January 31, 1877. Very soon thereafter, those McGill students wrote the first hockey rule book. A McGill team was one of four that competed in the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, founded in 1886. AHAC teams competed for the first Stanley Cup in 1893; the AHAC became one of predecessor organizations of the National Hockey League. McGill alumnus James Naismith invented basketball in early December 1891. Norwegian Herman "Jackrabbit" Smith-Johannsen (later the coach of Canada's 1932 Olympic team) popularized cross-country skiing in North America from McGill's Gault Estate in Mont St. Hilaire.


title: McGill University

text: There has been a McGill alumnus or alumna competing at every Olympic Games since 1908. Swimmer George Hodgson won two gold medals at the 1912 Summer Olympics, ice hockey goaltender Kim St-Pierre won gold medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics and at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Other 2006 gold medalists are Jennifer Heil (women's freestyle mogul) and goaltender Charline Labonté (women's ice hockey).


title: McGill University

text: In 1996, the McGill Sports Hall of Fame was established to honour its best student-athletes. Notable members of the Hall of Fame include James Naismith and Sydney Pierce.


title: McGill University

text: A 2005 hazing scandal forced the cancellation of the final two games in the McGill Redmen football season.


title: McGill University

text: In 2006, McGill's Senate approved a proposed anti-hazing policy to define forbidden initiation practices.


title: McGill University

text: In 2018, after a slew of protests—both online and on-campus—an online vote revealed that 78.8 percent of the McGill student population were in favour of changing the varsity teams' "Redmen" name, with 21 percent against. The university's nickname emerged in the 1920s, and is thought to refer to the school's signature colour and Celtic roots. In the 1950s, both men's and women's teams came to be nicknamed the "Indians" and "Squaws", and some teams later adopted a logo of an Indigenous man wearing a headdress in the 1980s and '90s. In December 2018, McGill University released a working group report that revealed deep divisions between students and alumni who defend the nearly century-old name and those who feel it is derogatory to Indigenous students. In January 2019, it was announced that the principal Suzanne Fortier would decide whether or not to change the name by the end of the 2019 academic term.


title: McGill University

text: On April 12, 2019, an announcement confirmed that the Redmen name for its men's varsity sports teams was dropped, effective immediately. No new name was planned; the groups would be known as the McGill teams. However, on 17 November 2020, McGill University revealed that the varsity men's sports teams would now be known as the "Redbirds". The name carries historical links to several McGill sports clubs, teams, and events. The former name would remain in the McGill Sports Hall of Fame and on items such as existing plaques, trophies and championship photos.


title: McGill University

text: "The McGill University song book," compiled by a committee of graduates and undergraduates, was published in Montreal by W.F. Brown, circa 1896.


title: McGill University

text: McGill maintains an academic and athletic rivalry with Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Competition between rowing athletes at the two schools has inspired an annual boat race between the two universities in the spring of each year since 1997, inspired by the famous Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. The football rivalry, which started in 1884, ended after Canadian university athletic divisions were re-organized in 2000; the Ontario-Quebec Intercollegiate Football Conference was divided into Ontario University Athletics and Quebec Student Sports Federation. The rivalry returned in 2002 when it transferred to the annual home-and-home hockey games between the two institutions. Queen's students refer to these matches as "Kill McGill" games, and usually show up in Montreal in atypically large numbers to cheer on the Queen's Golden Gaels hockey team. In 2007, McGill students arrived in bus-loads to cheer on the McGill Redmen, occupying a third of Queen's Jock Harty Arena.


title: McGill University

text: The school also competes in the annual "Old Four (IV)" soccer tournament, with Queen's University, the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.


title: McGill University

text: McGill and Harvard are also athletic rivals, as demonstrated by the biennial Harvard-McGill rugby games, alternately played in Montreal and Cambridge.


title: McGill University

text: McGill counts among its alumni and faculty 12 Nobel laureates and 145 Rhodes Scholars, both the most of any university in Canada, as well as five astronauts, the current prime minister and two former prime ministers of Canada, the current Governor General of Canada, 15 justices of the Canadian Supreme Court, at least eight foreign leaders, over eight dozen members of the Canadian Parliament, United States Congress, British Parliament, and other national legislatures, at least 10 billionaires, six Academy Award winners, 3 Grammy Award winners, four Pulitzer Prize winners, two Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, and at least five Emmy Award winners.


title: McGill University

text: In education, McGill alumni have played pivotal roles in the founding of several institutions of higher education. These include the first President of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Frank Wesbrook, the current President of UBC Santa J. Ono, the co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine William Osler, and the first President of the University of Alberta Henry Marshall Tory. More recent academic leaders include pro chancellor of Khaja Bandanawaz University Syed Muhammad Ali Al Hussaini, President of Princeton University Harold Tafler Shapiro, President of Stanford University Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge Stephen Toope.


title: McGill University

text: In the arts, McGill students include four Pulitzer Prize winners, Templeton and Berggruen Prize winner Charles Taylor, essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul, and Emmy Award-winning actor William Shatner. Six Academy Award winners studied at McGill. Musical alumni include poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, composer and six-time Grammy award winner Burt Bacharach, and Win Butler and Régine Chassagne of the Grammy Award winning group Arcade Fire.


title: McGill University

text: In the sciences, McGill graduates and faculty have received a total of 12 Nobel Prizes in disciplines ranging from Physiology, Medicine, Economics, Chemistry and Physics. McGill has also produced five astronauts out of 14 total selected in the CSA's history. Other prominent science alumni include the inventor of the artificial cell Thomas Chang, inventor of the internet search engine Alan Emtage, inventor of the explosives vapour detector (EVD-1) Lorne Elias, and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio.


title: McGill University

text: In law and politics, McGill alumni include three Prime Ministers of Canada (John Abbott, Wilfrid Laurier and Justin Trudeau), one Governor General of Canada (Julie Payette), and 15 justices of the Supreme Court of Canada. Foreign leaders who have graduated from McGill include President of Costa Rica Daniel Oduber Quirós, President of Latvia Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Prime Minister of Egypt Ahmed Nazif. John Peters Humphrey, law professor and director of the United Nations Division on Human Rights, wrote with Eleanor Roosevelt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


title: McGill University

text: In sport, McGill students and alumni include 121 Olympians who have won 35 Olympic medals. Other notable sporting alumni include the inventor of basketball James Naismith, the first medical doctor to win a Super Bowl Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, and Triple Gold Club member Mike Babcock.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Brenton Thwaites (born 10 August 1989) is an Australian actor. Beginning his career in his home country in 2011, he had a starring role on the series "Slide" and later appeared on the soap opera "Home and Away". Since moving to the United States, Thwaites has had major roles in the films "" (2012), "Oculus" (2013), "The Giver" (2014), "Gods of Egypt" (2016), and "" (2017). In 2018, he began starring as Dick Grayson / Robin / Nightwing in the DC Universe / HBO Max series "Titans".


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Thwaites was born on 10 August 1989 in Cairns, Queensland. He has a sister. He graduated from Cairns State High School in 2006.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: During his youth, Thwaites was drawn to the idea of becoming a policeman or a firefighter, having been interested in movies involving the latter. However, his interests changed to filmmaking and "letting [one's] personality shine through so many different characters". At the age of 16, Thwaites gave his first performance in front of a live audience in "Romeo and Juliet".


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Thwaites studied acting at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for three years, before graduating in 2010. He then relocated to Sydney to join the long-running soap opera "Home and Away" before moving to the United States in 2011/12 to pursue his career in acting.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Prior to graduating from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Thwaites made his film debut in "Charge Over You", a 2010 independent film. After he graduated, Thwaites appeared in an episode of "Sea Patrol" and in the short film, "Headsmen".


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: In November 2010, Thwaites was cast in a new Fox8 Australian teen drama series, "Slide". The show follows five Brisbane teenagers making their way to adulthood. Thwaites believes his character, Luke Gallagher, "stands back a bit. He watches. He's struggling with family issues. He's drawn in as it was a chance to find better friends and an opportunity to be part of a group. He's a cool, accepted kid. Some friends he can love and help him mature." Thwaites made his first appearance on "Slide" in the series' premiere episode on 16 August 2011. The series ran one season.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Shortly after Thwaites moved to Sydney in April 2011, he was given a five-month recurring role of Stu Henderson in the 24th season of "Home and Away". Thwaites called the show a great learning experience and said his co-stars were easy to work with. Thwaites made his first appearance as Stu, a member of the River Boys, on 23 August 2011. Tristan Swanwick of "The Courier-Mail" said Thwaites was a "bit too pretty to be a bad-ass River Boy" but that some fake tattoos would balance that impression. Of his character, Thwaites said, "Stu's awesome, he has some fights, he gets the girls, it's awesome fun."


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Following Thwaites' relocation to the United States, he signed on to play the male lead in the 2012 television film "" opposite Indiana Evans. The film received generally mixed reviews, with "Zap2it" praising both Thwaites and Evans' "(mostly) believable" acting and "The New York Times" saying their performances were superior to those of the leads in the first film of the series.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: In 2013, Thwaites starred in the psychological/supernatural horror film "Oculus" as the male lead Tim Russell. Production on the film began in October 2012 in Alabama, and was completed a few weeks later. The film was first released on 5 September 2013, at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and received a worldwide theatrical release on 11 April 2014. His performance as Russell was well received by "Indiewire", which claimed that Thwaites maintained a "credibly frightened demeanor" throughout the film.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: In 2014, Thwaites briefly returned to Australia for the filming of crime thriller "Son of a Gun". Primarily shot in Perth, Kalgoorlie and Melbourne, Thwaites had to audition for the part of JR "up to 10 times before landing the role." Regarding his character, Thwaites said, "I jumped at the opportunity to audition when this came up and I found the character was a very vulnerable kid amongst strange men that are in some way an inspiration. I just thought that was interesting as a young man myself." Thwaites received critical acclaim for his portrayal of JR, with "Variety" contending that he "makes a suitably keen-eyed, clean-scrubbed lead, retaining a kind of porous naivete even as the character gets his blood up" and "The Sydney Morning Herald" praising his role as the embattled hero of the plot. The film premiered in Australia on 16 October 2014.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: In 2014, Thwaites appeared in "Maleficent" as Prince Phillip. A was released in 2019, but Harris Dickinson was recast in Thwaites' role as he was unable to return due to scheduling conflicts. Additionally, he starred in "The Signal" as the male lead, Nic Eastman. The film opened at the Sundance Film Festival in January, seven months after shooting on location in the desert of New Mexico. Thwaites received praise in a review by "The Plain Dealer" that noted his performance in "The Signal" was "as a compelling presence in the driver's seat as things get freakier and freakier around him."


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Later in the year, he also had the lead role in "The Giver", playing Jonas. Primarily filmed in South Africa, the film was met with generally mixed to negative reviews, with "The Telegraph" criticising Thwaites' portrayal for "he [struggled] to give us the layered, conflicted hero this film [needed]". However, his portrayal was well received by the "Huffington Post", who commended Thwaites' acting and by "The Plain Dealer", which noted that the "fast-rising Thwaites...does a nice job with the lead role." He was awarded the Australians in Film "Breakthrough Award" for his role in "The Giver".


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Thwaites starred in "Gods of Egypt". He played Bek, a human thief. Principal photography on the film began on 20 March 2014 at the Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, and the film was released worldwide on 26 February 2016.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Thwaites starred in the fantasy-adventure sequel "", which was released on 26 May 2017. Thwaites portrays Henry Turner, the son of franchise characters Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. Shooting of the film commenced in February 2015, on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Following "Pirates", Thwaites had a leading role in the 2017 Christian film, "An Interview with God", portraying a young journalist, Paul Asher. Thwaites was then cast as Dick Grayson / Robin in the DC Universe series "Titans" which began airing in 2018.


title: Brenton Thwaites

text: Thwaites has been in a relationship with Chloe Pacey since 2015, after the two had been roommates while Thwaites was filming "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" in Australia.


title: Trojan Horse

text: The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's "Iliad", with the poem ending before the war is concluded, and it is only briefly mentioned in the "Odyssey". But in the "Aeneid" by Virgil, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse at the behest of Odysseus, and hid a select force of men inside, including Odysseus himself. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night, the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of darkness. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city, ending the war.


title: Trojan Horse

text: Metaphorically, a "Trojan horse" has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. A malicious computer program that tricks users into willingly running it is also called a "Trojan horse" or simply a "Trojan".


title: Trojan Horse

text: The main ancient source for the story still extant is the "Aeneid" of Virgil, a Latin epic poem from the time of Augustus. The story featured heavily in the "Little Iliad" and the "Sack of Troy", both part of the Epic Cycle, but these have only survived in fragments and epitomes. As Odysseus was the chief architect of the Trojan Horse, it is also referred to in Homer's "Odyssey".


title: Trojan Horse

text: In the Greek tradition, the horse is called the "wooden horse" ( in Homeric/Ionic Greek ("Odyssey" 8.512); , in Attic Greek).


title: Trojan Horse

text: Thirty of the Achaeans' best warriors hid in the Trojan horse's womb and two spies in its mouth. Other sources give different numbers: The "Bibliotheca" 50; Tzetzes 23; and Quintus Smyrnaeus gives the names of 30, but says there were more. In late tradition the number was standardized at 40. Their names follow:


title: Trojan Horse

text: According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Odysseus thought of building a great wooden horse (the horse being the emblem of Troy), hiding an elite force inside, and fooling the Trojans into wheeling the horse into the city as a trophy. Under the leadership of Epeius, the Greeks built the wooden horse in three days. Odysseus's plan called for one man to remain outside the horse; he would act as though the Greeks had abandoned him, leaving the horse as a gift for the Trojans. An inscription was engraved on the horse reading: "For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena". Then they burned their tents and left to Tenedos by night. Greek soldier Sinon was "abandoned" and was to signal to the Greeks by lighting a beacon.


title: Trojan Horse

text: In Virgil's poem, Sinon, the only volunteer for the role, successfully convinces the Trojans that he has been left behind and that the Greeks are gone. Sinon tells the Trojans that the Horse is an offering to the goddess Athena, meant to atone for the previous desecration of her temple at Troy by the Greeks and ensure a safe journey home for the Greek fleet. Sinon tells the Trojans that the Horse was built to be too large for them to take it into their city and gain the favor of Athena for themselves.


title: Trojan Horse

text: While questioning Sinon, the Trojan priest Laocoön guesses the plot and warns the Trojans, in Virgil's famous line "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" ("I fear Greeks, even those bearing gifts"), Danai ( "Danaos") or Danaans (Homer's name for the Greeks) being the ones who had built the Trojan Horse. However, the god Poseidon sends two sea serpents to strangle him and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus before any Trojan heeds his warning. According to Apollodorus the two serpents were sent by Apollo, whom Laocoön had insulted by sleeping with his wife in front of the "divine image". In the "Odyssey", Homer says that Helen of Troy also guesses the plot and tries to trick and uncover the Greek soldiers inside the horse by imitating the voices of their wives, and Anticlus attempts to answer, but Odysseus shuts his mouth with his hand. King Priam's daughter Cassandra, the soothsayer of Troy, insists that the horse will be the downfall of the city and its royal family. She too is ignored, hence their doom and loss of the war.


title: Trojan Horse

text: Book II includes Laocoön saying: "" ("Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans [Greeks], even those bearing gifts.")


title: Trojan Horse

text: Well before Virgil, the story is also alluded to in Greek classical literature. In Euripides' play "Trojan Women", written in 415 BC, the god Poseidon proclaims: "For, from his home beneath Parnassus, Phocian Epeus, aided by the craft of Pallas, framed a horse to bear within its womb an armed host, and sent it within the battlements, fraught with death; whence in days to come men shall tell of 'the wooden horse,' with its hidden load of warriors."


title: Trojan Horse

text: There has been speculation that the Trojan Horse may have been a battering ram or other sort of siege engine resembling, to some extent, a horse, and that the description of the use of this device was then transformed into a myth by later oral historians who were not present at the battle and were unaware of that meaning of the name. Assyrians then used siege machines with animal names that were often covered with dampened horse hides to protect against flaming arrows; it is possible that the Trojan Horse was such. Pausanias, who lived in the 2nd century AD, wrote in his book "Description of Greece", "That the work of Epeius was a contrivance to make a breach in the Trojan wall is known to everybody who does not attribute utter silliness to the Phrygians"; by the Phrygians, he meant the Trojans.


title: Trojan Horse

text: Some authors have suggested that the gift might also have been a ship, with warriors hidden inside. It has been noted that the terms used to put men in the horse are those used by ancient Greek authors to describe the embarkation of men on a ship and that there are analogies between the building of ships by Paris at the beginning of the Trojan saga and the building of the horse at the end; ships are called "sea-horses" once in the "Odyssey". This view has recently gained support from naval archaeology: ancient text and images show that a Phoenician merchant ship type decorated with a horse head, called "hippos" ('horse') by Greeks, became very diffuse in the Levant area around the beginning of the 1st millennium BC and was used to trade precious metals and sometimes to pay tribute after the end of a war. That has caused the suggestion that the original story viewed the Greek soldiers hiding inside the hull of such a vessel, possibly disguised as a tribute, and that the term was later misunderstood in the oral transmission of the story, the origin to the Trojan horse myth.


title: Trojan Horse

text: Ships with a horsehead decoration, perhaps cult ships, are also represented in artifacts of the Minoan/Mycenaean era; the image on a seal found in the palace of Knossos, dated around 1200 BC, which depicts a ship with oarsmen and a superimposed horse figure, originally interpreted as a representation of horse transport by sea, may in fact be related to this kind of vessels, and even be considered as the first (pre-literary) representation of the Trojan Horse episode.


title: Trojan Horse

text: A more speculative theory, originally proposed by Fritz Schachermeyr, is that the Trojan Horse is a metaphor for a destructive earthquake that damaged the walls of Troy and allowed the Greeks inside. In his theory, the horse represents Poseidon, who as well as being god of the sea was also god of horses and earthquakes. The theory is supported by the fact that archaeological digs have found that Troy VI was heavily damaged in an earthquake but is hard to square with the mythological claim that Poseidon himself built the walls of Troy in the first place.


title: Trojan Horse

text: The term "Trojan horse" is used metaphorically to mean any trick or strategy that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected place; or to deceive by appearance, hiding malevolent intent in an outwardly benign exterior; to subvert from within using deceptive means.


title: Trojan Horse

text: Pictorial representations of the Trojan Horse earlier than, or contemporary to, the first literary appearances of the episode can help clarify what was the meaning of the story as perceived by its contemporary audience. There are few ancient (before 480 BC) depictions of the Trojan Horse surviving. The earliest is on a Boeotian fibula dating from about 700 BC. Other early depictions are found on two relief pithoi from the Greek islands Mykonos and Tinos, both generally dated between 675 and 650 BC. The one from Mykonos (see figure) is known as the Mykonos vase. Historian Michael Wood dates the Mykonos vase to the eighth century BC, before the written accounts attributed by tradition to Homer, and posits this as evidence that the story of the Trojan Horse existed before those accounts were written. Other archaic representations of the Trojan horse are found on a Corinthian aryballos dating back to 560 BC (see figure), on a vase fragment to 540 BC (see figure), and on an Etruscan carnelian scarab. An Attic red-figure fragment from a kalyx-krater dated to around 400 BC depicts the scene where the Greek are climbing down the Trojan Horse that it's represented by the wooden hatch door.


title: White South Africans

text: White South Africans generally refers to South Africans of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, they are generally divided into the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch East India Company's original settlers, known as Afrikaners, and the Anglophone descendants of predominantly British colonists of South Africa. In 2016, 57.9% were native Afrikaans speakers, 40.2% were native English speakers, and 1.9% spoke another language as their mother tongue, such as Portuguese, Greek, or German. White South Africans are by far the largest population of White Africans. "White" was a legally defined racial classification during apartheid.


title: White South Africans

text: Most Afrikaners trace their ancestry back to the mid-17th century and have developed a separate cultural identity, including a distinct language. The majority of English-speaking White South Africans trace their ancestry to the 1820 British, Irish and Dutch Settlers. The remainder of the White South African population consists of later immigrants from Europe such as Greeks and Jews from Lithuania and Poland. Portuguese immigrants arrived after the collapse of the Portuguese colonial administrations in Mozambique and Angola, although many also originate from Madeira.


title: White South Africans

text: The history of White settlement in South Africa started in 1652 with the settlement of the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) under Jan van Riebeeck. Despite the preponderance of officials and colonists from the Netherlands, there were also a number of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution at home and German soldiers or sailors returning from service in Asia. The Cape Colony remained under Dutch rule for two more centuries, after which it was annexed by the United Kingdom around 1806. At that time, South Africa was home to about 26,000 people of European ancestry, a relative majority of whom were still of Dutch origin. However, the Dutch settlers grew into conflict with the British government over the abolition of the slave trade and limits on colonial expansion into African lands. In order to prevent a frontier war, the British Parliament decided to send British settlers to start farms on the eastern frontier. Beginning in 1818 thousands of British settlers arrived in the growing Cape Colony, intending to join the local workforce or settle directly on the frontier. Ironically most of the farms failed due to the difficult terrain, forcing the British settlers to encroach on African land in order to practice pastoralism. About a fifth of the Cape's original Dutch-speaking white population migrated eastwards during the Great Trek in the 1830s and established their own autonomous Boer republics further inland. Nevertheless, the population of white ancestry (mostly European origin) continued increasing in the Cape as a result of settlement, and by 1865 had reached 181,592 people. Between 1880 and 1910, there was an influx of Jews (mainly via Lithuania) and immigrants from Lebanon and Syria arriving in South Africa. Recent immigrants from the Levant region of Western Asia were originally classified as Asian, and thus "non-white", but, in order to have the right to purchase land, they successfully argued that they were "white". The main reason being that they were from the lands where Christianity and Judaism originated from, and that the race laws did not target Jews, who were also a Semitic people. Therefore arguing that if the laws targeted other people from the Levant, it should also affect the Jews.


title: White South Africans

text: The first nationwide census in South Africa was held in 1911 and indicated a white population of 1,276,242. By 1936, there were an estimated 2,003,857 white South Africans, and by 1946 the number had reached 2,372,690. The country began receiving tens of thousands of European immigrants, namely from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, and the territories of the Portuguese Empire during the mid- to late twentieth century. South Africa's white population increased to over 3,408,000 by 1965, reached 4,050,000 in 1973, and peaked at 5,044,000 in 1990.


title: White South Africans

text: The number of white South Africans resident in their home country began gradually declining between 1990 and the mid-2000s as a result of increased emigration.


title: White South Africans

text: Whites continue to play a role in the South African economy and across the political spectrum. The current number of white South Africans is not exactly known, as no recent census has been measured, although the overall percentage of up to 9% of the population represents a decline, both numerically and proportionately, since the country's first non-racial elections in 1994. Just under a million white South Africans are also living as expatriate workers abroad, which forms the majority of South Africa's brain drain.


title: White South Africans

text: Under the Population Registration Act of 1950, each inhabitant of South Africa was classified into one of several different race groups, of which White was one. The Office for Race Classification defined a white person as one who "in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person." Many criteria, both physical (e.g. examination of head and body hair) and social (e.g. eating and drinking habits, familiarity with Afrikaans or a European language) were used when the board decided to classify someone as white or coloured. This was virtually extended to all those considered the children of two white persons, regardless of appearance. The Act was repealed on 17 June 1991.


title: White South Africans

text: In an attempt at post-Apartheid redress, the Employment Equity Act of 1994, legislation promotes employment of people (Black Africans, Indian, Chinese, Coloured and White population groups, as well as disabled people) according to the representation of their racial group as a proportion of the total South African population. Black Economic Empowerment legislation further empowers blacks as the government considers ownership, employment, training and social responsibility initiatives, which empower black South Africans, as important criteria when awarding tenders; private enterprises also must adhere to this legislation. Some reports indicate a growing number of whites in poverty compared to the pre-apartheid years and attribute this to such laws – a 2006 article in The Guardian stated that over 350,000 Afrikaners may be classified as poor, and alluded to research claiming that up to 150,000 were struggling for survival.


title: White South Africans

text: As a consequence of Apartheid policies, Whites are still widely regarded as being one of 4 defined race groups in South Africa. These groups (blacks, whites, Coloureds and Indians) still tend to have strong racial identities, and to identify themselves, and others, as members of these race groups and the classification continues to persist in government policy due to attempts at redress like Black Economic Empowerment and Employment Equity.


title: White South Africans

text: Since the 1990s, there has been a significant emigration of whites from South Africa. Between 1995 and 2005, more than one million South Africans emigrated, citing violence as the main reason, as well as the lack of employment opportunities for whites.


title: White South Africans

text: In recent decades, there has been a steady proportional decline in South Africa's white community, due to higher birthrates among other South African ethnic groups, as well as a high rate of emigration. In 1977, there were 4.3 million whites, constituting 16.4% of the population at the time. As of 2016, it is estimated that at least 800,000 white South Africans have emigrated since 1995.