The President of the University of Toronto, David Naylor, presented the following address to the Canadian Club of Toronto on Nov. 20, 2006:
I am delighted to be here today, and grateful to the Canadian Club for this opportunity to address such a distinguished audience. I am also humbled to speak on behalf of an institution whose history, for 179 years, has been woven into the fabric of our city, province and nation.
More than a million University of Toronto graduates have gone on to help build our country up to its present stature. Today the University has 11,000 employees. We spend about $1.7B per year, serving over 65,000 students, 7,000 of whom are international. And we are busy not only sharing knowledge but creating new knowledge. Based on total publication output in computerized indices compiled by Thomson ISI, the University of Toronto generates more research than any other publicly-funded university in the world. Add in the private universities and only Harvard publishes more.
It has obviously been a long journey for what began as King’s College in the Town of York, a small university chartered to fill a colonial vacuum. In this afternoon’s remarks, however, I want to look around and forward, not back, and talk to you about what I believe is a critical moment in the evolution of Ontario and Canadian society.
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