Greg Frankson was studying concurrent education at Queen’s University when student activists told him the story of Robert Sutherland, a Black man who saved the school from financial ruin in the late 1800s.
Sutherland was the first Black student to attend Queen’s University, and went on to become Canada’s first Black university graduate and first Black lawyer. Studying classics and mathematics, he arrived at Queen’s in 1849—just eight years after the school was founded.
“Once I became aware of Robert Sutherland’s story, I realized that I had a lot in common with him,” Frankson said. “I was a student who had come from a family who was not of significant means, who was of Jamaican descent, just like he was, and came to a city where I didn’t live, just like he did.”
After his death in 1878, he left his entire estate to the school, and $12,700 (a much larger sum today) which he had amassed practicing as a lawyer in Walkerton, Ont., according to Duncan McDowall, a Queen’s professor who has written a history on the university.
His donation came at a time when the collapse of the banking industry put Queen’s survival in jeopardy and it was close to merging with the University of Toronto.
Despite the donation being the largest benefaction Queen’s had ever received, which allowed it to grow into one of Canada’s most prestigious institutions, Sutherland’s contribution soon slipped from memory.
No scholarships, bursaries, or awards were named in his honour for decades. Campus buildings were named after white benefactors who had contributed less money to Queen’s than Sutherland.
Sutherland is quoted as having said he was always “treated like a gentleman” by the school, according to McDowall. However, McDowall said the university’s historically white Anglo-Saxon and Protestant population made it “convenient to forget about Sutherland.”
“Sutherland just seemed to slip out of the memory of the university,” he said. “There’s no conscious act of suppressing his memory—he just sort of drifted out of it.”
Sutherland was first commemorated in 1975, when the City of Kingston was prompted by the Jamaican-Canadian community to donate a plaque in his honour. It sits in the front foyer in one of the university’s trademark limestone buildings dated to the early 20th century.
However, McDowall said Queen’s didn’t truly embrace multiculturalism until the 1990s, when it made a conscious effort to change its attitudes by incorporating a more diverse faculty and curriculum.
It was during this time Frankson arrived on campus. In 1996, he became the first Black president of the university’s student government, the Alma Mater Society. He immediately began working towards getting proper public recognition of Sutherland by attempting to get a campus building renamed in his honour.
Despite the creation of a task force and consultation with the university community, he said he was unable to find common ground on a location.
Instead, the task force pursued other avenues of commemorating Sutherland. This included an award given to a student of colour who has shown outstanding leadership, a prize for excellence in debating, and the creation of the Robert Sutherland Visitorship for speakers focusing on the subject of diversity, equity, and race relations. Those who have had the position include George Elliott Clarke, Canada’s recently named parliamentary poet laureate.
It wasn’t until nearly 13 years later that the Policy Studies Building was identified as a possible naming opportunity, yet even that wasn’t without some opposition.
“It got a little bit of pushback from people . . . saying that we needed to leave that building open for a naming opportunity for a major donor,” Frankson explained.
It was finally renamed Robert Sutherland Hall in 2009, once it was determined no new donor would want to place their name on an old building, according to Frankson.
“To a large extent, the university was pressured into going back to that decision and making it right away rather than trying to delay and stall that decision,” he explained, adding renaming a building for Sutherland was “the most appropriate way to remember the person who is responsible for the university continuing to exist.”
Recognition for Sutherland has continued to grow on campus. This year, the law faculty has initiated the Robert Sutherland Fellowship in Law.
And for Frankson—who is now a prominent poet—Sutherland’s influence is undeniable.
“When each student who is on campus finally graduates . . . they will be acknowledged as a graduate of Queen’s University at Kingston,” Frankson said. “If Robert Sutherland had not lived and died the way that he did, with his large gift to the university that saved it as an independent institution, they would never be receiving a Queen’s degree.”
“I can’t think of another person who students on campus should be remembering and honouring at every opportunity,” he said, “than the man who is responsible for their institution being around.”
