Spray & Rhinelander, History of St. Thomas University: The Formative Years 1860-1990 -- page 183
CHAPTER 4 GROWING PAINS AT POST-WAR ST. THOMAS: 1945 – 1952
Sheep without Shepherds Administering St. Thomas's affairs was becoming increasingly difficult. The senior priests and the bishop of the diocese ran the college responsibly and as best they knew how, but along traditional, hierarchical lines. Decisions were taken in camera by the senior priests, which in practice meant the rector and his longest-serving teaching priests, sometimes just the rector himself without consultation with anyone. In such a closed, hierarchical system, personalities played a crucial role. In 1938, as we saw, the francophone bishop of Chatham, Patrice Chiasson, had removed his See to Bathurst. Not wishing further to tread on anglophone toes in Chatham, he had left affairs at St. Thomas entirely in the hands of the rector, Fr. James Hill. Hill, by nature a private and exclusionary person, was left to run St. Thomas by his own lights, which suited most of the older teaching priests, although some younger ones new on faculty bridled at the constraints. These Catholic shepherds had to address the broader issue of how to adapt St. Thomas as a Catholic, rural institution to post-war, secular Canada and the consequent demands and methods of a modern education. The old coat needed new seams, indeed needed to take on a whole new and often unfamiliar shape. To become modern, the institution needed new facilities, new courses especially in the sciences, new professionally qualified teachers. But such things entailed huge expenses, and the