Community

McGill’s open gates symbolize the University’s role as a resource for the Montreal community.

Our campuses host public lectures, film screenings, conferences and symposiums – as well as upwards of 700 musical performances each year at the Schulich School of Music. Thousands of people visit the diverse collections of our five museums – including the dinosaur fossils and Egyptian mummies at the Redpath Museum (established in 1882), Canada’s first purpose-built museum. Montrealers exercise in our fitness facilities, and explore more than 1,000 hectares of primeval forest, woodland marshes, swamps, wetlands and urban greenspaces.

McGillians reach out, too. Our commitment to helping our neighbours has roots older than the university itself: Our founder, James McGill, was an active citizen in his adopted home of Montreal, serving for many years as an elected member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and driving important grassroots initiatives such as a volunteer fire brigade. In 1891, 30 female graduates established the Girls Club and Lunch room, which provided affordable meals to women working in Montreal shops and factories, as well as financial support for unemployed women and programs for their children. An endowment started by the MWAA in 1932 still provides financial support to women studying at McGill.

The University has spawned many other community organizations and services, during its almost 200 years, including: the Montreal Council of Social Agencies (1921-1976), the Point St. Charles Community Clinic (established in 1968) and Project Genesis, which is marking 20 years of providing Montrealers with free, confidential help relating to housing, welfare, pensions, and family allowances.

Here are just a few of the other ways the University’s people help to shape, and are shaped by, our fellow Montrealers:

• Since 2002, McGill staff and students have raised more than $5 million for Centraide, which supports more than 350 agencies dedicated to providing services to low-income, socially marginalized and vulnerable populations in and around Montreal. The funds support everything from promoting self-reliance and empowerment among at-risk children and youth, to providing seniors with healthy food, to helping people secure stable housing. An estimated one in seven people in Montreal receive assistance from a Centraide-supported agency.
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  Jim Lund Dental Clinic
  An innovative partnership between McGill’s Faculty of Dentistry and the Welcome Hall Mission, the Jim Lund Dental Clinic is Montreal’s first permanent, free dental care clinic. Each year, McGill faculty and students provide dental care to some 3,400 people from low-income families, homeless men and women, and new immigrants who cannot otherwise afford care. In the last five years alone, the clinic has provided almost $2-million worth of free dental care. For almost two decades, the Faculty has also operated a Mobile Dental Clinic that provides basic dental care to over 300 patients annually in the Montreal region.
• Since 2000, student volunteers from the Faculty of Law have reviewed more than 1,000 legal cases through the McGill chapter of Pro Bono Students Canada. The students offer free legal services to approximately 20 different community organizations located throughout Montreal. Their clients include organizations working with or for refugees, immigrants, the LGBT community, women, and low income individuals. Another student-led initiative, the Innocence McGill legal clinic works to secure the freedom of wrongly convicted Quebecers who are serving prison sentences.