The British Columbia University Act of 1908 formally called a provincial University into being, although its location was not specified, University of British Columbia diploma. The governance was modelled on the provincial University of Toronto Act of 1906 which created a bicameral system of university government consisting of a senate (faculty), responsible for academic policy, and a board of governors (citizens) exercising exclusive control over financial policy and having formal authority in all other matters, replace Canada diploma. The president, appointed by the board, was to provide a link between the two bodies and to perform institutional leadership. The Act constituted a twenty-one member senate with Francis Carter-Cotton of Vancouver as chancellor.
Before the University Act, there had been several attempts at creating a Qualification-granting University with help from the Universities of Toronto and McGill. Columbian College in New Westminster, through its affiliation with Victoria College of the University of Toronto, began to offer university-level credit at the turn-of-the-century, but McGill came to dominate higher education in the early 1900s.
