Governance and Development The University of Alberta was a bold
dream conceived by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first
Premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, a professor of
mathematics and physics at McGill University in Montreal.
Without the development of the university’s governing and
administrative bodies, Rutherford’s and Tory’s dream would have
remained little more than an abstraction. Overall governance of
the University of Alberta was established soon after the passing
of An Act to Establish and Incorporate a University for the
Province of Alberta, (also known as the University Act) by the
Alberta Legislature in May of 1906. Rutherford, who had
corresponded extensively with Tory over the type of university
Alberta should have—publicly funded, non-denominational, co-
educational—immediately approached Tory to take the position of
university president in November 1906;the University Act,
however, did not make provisions for the appointment until the
legislation was amended the following year.*