(fl. 19th century), teacher, mission worker. (other spellings of surname found) Colin McKercher, for two or three years in the 1860s, not long after the Great Revival, operated a school called the Bethel Hill Seminary at the place now known as St. Elmo. GC. An article in the Montreal Daily Witness of 26 July 1867 stated, “Three years ago, a revival of religion took place in the congregation over which the Rev. D. Gordon is pastor. Among the converted are several young men, some of whom expressed a desire to enter the ministry. In order to give them the advantage of a preliminary education, preparatory to entering college, the friends of education have secured the services of Mr Colin McKercher, an experienced educationalist, having gone through a lengthened course of training for the profession of teaching, both in Toronto and Edinburgh. The class was formed and the privilege of attending extended to all who wished to avail themselves of it… a large number of pupils was collected; so that what was formerly but a nucleus has now risen to the dignity of an educational institution, known as the ‘Bethel Hill Seminary’, entirely supported by private funds.” The article reported on the annual (public) examination which had taken place 10 days earlier. The students had been studying, and were examined in, the classics, mathematics and English. “Another feature, and one worthy of imitation in our public schools, is the introduction of military instruction into the school. The pupils were put through a variety of movements in squad, company, and light infantry drill, all of which were very well executed…” In 1924, near enough to the time for authentic memories still to survive, it was stated that the academic classes of the seminary were “taught in the vestry” of the Gordon Church.

     Charles R. Sinclair remembered that “At the close of the Bethel Hill seminary’s first term the teacher Colin McKercher and his pupils had a social,” and that they held a debate, perhaps at the social, on the merits of the married versus the single life. He adds also that the students at the seminary “came from the surrounding country some fifteen miles, but boarded in the neighbourhood.” Ralph Connor (C. W. Gordon) remembered from the Fenian Raid alarm of 1866, “the surprising arrival of Colin McKerracher [sic], who was studying for the ministry, resplendent in his new uniform, to bid us farewell on his way to the front.” The military exercises at the seminary no doubt reflected the Fenian threat of the period, and McKercher’s own interest in the militia.

     Despite the above reference to Toronto in the Witness, Colin McKercher was evidently never a student at the University of Toronto. However, he did attend the Toronto Normal School in the session Nov. 1854-May 1855. An 1898 publication of the school gives the following information (copied completely here): “McKerchar [sp. thus], Colin: Taught in public schools in Victoria, Ontario, Glengarry, Essex, Stormont, Middlesex and Oxford Counties, and in a private academy in Glengarry–over twenty years in all; studied for the Presbyterian Ministry, and has spent over five years in home mission work in Manitoba, Algoma and Argenteuil.” He was apparently a primary schoolteacher in Cornwall in the 1870s. Nothing further has been discovered about his career. It is to be regretted that the seminary did not develop into a college, similar perhaps to the private academies so important in the education of national and local leaders in the 19th-century United States. See also Angus MacMillan, the farmer and diarist, for what appears to be a reference to a woman student at the seminary.

1847-1897: Toronto Normal School Jubilee Celebration (October 31st, November 1st and 2nd, 1897 (Toronto 1898) 118-119 * “taught in the vestry”: G. Watt Smith p. 7, as per Blair and Ross, The Gordon Church, in notes to G. Watt Smith * Sinclair 7, 8, 9 * C.W. Gordon, Postscript to Adventure (1938) 21 * MacGillivray & Ross 239 * information from UTA and Ontario Institute for Studies in Education * Senior 300 * Standard Freeholder 22 Sept. 1947: report on letter of Colin McKercher’s nephew (John A. McKercher) in Winnipeg to Dorothy Dumbrille; John A. McKercher’s obituary is in SFH 21 Feb. 1949