This year’s Toronto TAIWANfest at Harbourfront Centre includes a Dialogue with Scotland. Organizers plan on highlighting how 19th and early 20th-century Scottish and Scottish-Canadian missionaries played a pivotal role in modernizing Taiwan’s healthcare and education.
A major figure was George Leslie Mackay, the first Presbyterian missionary in northern Taiwan. Mackay was Canadian—born into a Scottish family in Oxford County in southern Ontario. In 1872, he moved to Tamsui, a seaside district in what is now New Taipei City.
Mackay married a Taiwanese woman, learned the local language, and created a network of 60 churches. He lived in Tamsui until his death in 1901.
Much has been written about Mackay building northern Taiwan’s first Western medical institution in 1879. He also founded two major modern schools, Oxford College and Taiwan’s first girls’ school, in the early 1880s. But it took a Taiwanese-born Toronto architect, Ron Shieh, to figure out how Victorian-era architecture in southern Ontario—and particularly Toronto—influenced the built environment in northern Taiwan.
Toronto TAIWANfest will tell this story in an exhibition called The Red Brick Era of Northern Taiwan. Guided by Shieh’s research, curated by Rita Chen, and illustrated with Taiwanese architectural historian Li Chien-lang’s cutaway drawings, this free display will be in the North Orchard at Harbourfront Centre. It runs from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday (August 29) and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday (August 30).
In 2023, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture granted Li the National Cultural Heritage Preservation Award for his lifelong contribution to preserving architectural memory.
“Visitors will step into a gallery styled like an unfolded old newspaper, combing column by column through the conflict and reconciliation hidden inside churches, hospitals and schools—watching brick after brick be endlessly deconstructed, translated, and given a new identity across the long river of history,” the Toronto TAIWANfest website states.
Missionaries in Taiwan were well-informed
In an interview with the Toronto Spark, Shieh tells a remarkable story about how architectural approaches from Victorian-era Toronto were transplanted to Taiwan. Mackay kept a daily diary throughout his time in Taiwan.
According to Shieh, this diary reveals that Mackay and his contemporaries, including Canadian-born missionary William Gauld, were very up-to-speed with developments in other parts of the world, thanks to visitors from abroad and various reports.
The Toronto-educated Gauld designed several red brick buildings in Taiwan for the British Presbyterian Church.
“So, I believe they were very informed,” Shieh emphasizes. “They knew what was going on in England. They knew what was going on in Toronto and in Vancouver.”
That extended to building materials and architectural styles. And it helps explain the beginning of the Red Brick Era in northern Taiwan, which is most famously expressed in the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. This edifice was completed in 1919 under Japanese colonial rule.
“Taiwan’s architectural historians were wondering why the current Taiwan presidential palace is red brick with a white stripe,” Shieh says. “I would term that as a Queen Anne Revival Style popular for commercial and institutional buildings in Victorian Toronto.”
The Toronto architect adds that Canadian missionaries created 60 to 70 institutional buildings in northern Taiwan—including many made with red bricks—before Japan took control of the island in 1895. Yet when historians write about red brick buildings in this part of Taiwan, they often link this development to Japanese colonization. In particular, these historians point to English architect, Norman Shaw, who influenced the most famous Japanese colonial building, the Presidential Palace.
Shieh highlights Canadian connections
However, Shieh points out that Japanese colonizers greatly respected Mackay and his contemporaries, even hiring some as architectural advisors. While London was still going for ghosting and stone in its architecture, different architectural approaches had emerged on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean that were showing up in Taiwan.
“I studied most Toronto and southern Ontario building styles in the Victorian era,” Shieh says. “Virtually, the default material would be brick—red brick—also a bit wide, puffed, cut-out brick. And it happened to be similar to Taiwan while Mackay was there.”
Nearly four decades before the opening of the Presidential Office Building, Mackay commissioned an iconic red-brick building of his own. He created Oxford College—named after the county where he was born—in Tamsui. According to Mackay’s diary, he instructed contractors on how to create sun-dried bricks.
“At the time, Toronto was starting building with red bricks versus in Pennsylvania and Detroit where they favoured Carpenter Gothic,” Shieh reports. “But here, we call it the Vernacular Gothic Style.”
Oxford College is now a museum on Aletheia University (真理大學) campus. Believed to be the oldest red brick building in Taiwan, Oxford College includes a rectangular courtyard in the centre.
“The style is different from the two wings,” Shieh says. “The two wings are more like an ornated gingerbread gable building with half-round Romanesque Revival style windows on each side…and then represented more progressive value than like a Gothic frontage.”
According to Shieh, Taiwanese architectural historians “don’t understand why the centre includes three-column bays with Classical/Renaissance Revival architraves and cornices in between”. But Shieh links it back to Toronto Normal School, which was designed in the 1850s by architects Thomas Ridout and Frederick William Cumberland.
Echoes of Toronto Normal School in Taiwan
Mackay graduated in 1866 from Toronto Normal School. Former chief superintendent of education Egerton Ryerson established this institution, a precursor of Ryerson University and then Toronto Metropolitan University
The London-born Cumberland studied at King’s College, as did Ridout, the son of an Upper Canada banker. Shieh notes that Cumberland understood Gothic Revival, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival styles, as well as Palladian architecture.
“He brought all the British traditions, yet he was versatile in design,” Shieh says.
The architects created the exterior of Toronto Normal School in a classic Renaissance Revival style with Palladian elements as opposed to Gothic or Romanesque Revival. This made it appear more non-denominational or secular for education. Mackay mimicked that approach at Oxford College with a traditional Chinese rectangular courtyard style while making use of red bricks and wood, thereby combining Eastern and Western influences.
Meanwhile, Gauld designed the House of Maidens school for women and girls (photo above) in Tamsui. It opened in 1906 with a rounded arch motif resembling the arches built into University College in Toronto.
Shieh has also examined churches that Mackay attended in southern Ontario before he moved to Taiwan—as well those that Mackay visited on return trips from Tamsui. As a result of all this research, Shieh concludes that there is “Canadian DNA” within certain architectural styles in northern Taiwan.
Even Mackay’s son, George William Mackay, commissioned a large, red brick church in Tamsui, which opened in 1932.
Oxford College and many other red brick buildings in northern Taiwan were built after the restoration of imperial rule in Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. To modernize Japan and resist colonial attacks, the emperor embraced more westernization, including in architecture. Meanwhile, the Victorian era began in Taiwan with the arrival of Mackay and other British Presbyterian Church missionaries in the 1870s.
Mackay promoted egalitarian education
Shieh feels that the strong Toronto connection to red brick buildings in northern Taiwan is under-appreciated. He attributes this to historians’ emphasis on Japanese architectural styles in Taiwan post-1895, as well as Japanese administrators’ admiration for English architect Norman Shaw.
It’s not just the architectural styles that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Canada. Mackay also promoted egalitarian education, offering learning opportunities to both boys and girls. Shieh suspects that he was influenced in this regard by the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute. Founded in 1830, it eventually became Toronto’s first public library.
Moreover, Toronto Normal School offered a wide-ranging education. It included Canada’s first publicly funded museum, which later evolved into the Royal Ontario Museum. Along similar lines, Mackay advanced wide-ranging education at Oxford College as well.
“I see this as part of our Toronto and southern Ontario cultural extension to another land from Mackay and his descendants, not just himself,” Shieh declares.
Toronto TAIWANfest will present The Red Brick Era of Northern Taiwan exhibition from noon to 7 p.m. on August 29 and from noon to 6 p.m. on August 30. Rita Chen curated this free show in North Orchard at Harbourfront Centre. For more information, visit the Toronto TAIWANfest website.
Toronto TAIWANfest runs from August 28 to 30 at Harbourfront Centre. All events are free though there is a small supplies fee to attend cooking workshops led by Taiwanese celebrity chef Ted Liao.
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