The new vision for theological education underpinning the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology (RSM)  has been given a significant boost with a major donation from the Basilian Fathers of the University of St. Michael’s College. 

The funding supports the position of the Father Terrence Forestell CSB Dean of the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. The Faculty’s current Dean, Prof. Jaroslav Skira, will be the first person to hold the new deanship.  

“I am deeply honoured to serve in this role at such an important time for RSM,” Prof. Skira said. “It is thanks to the teaching and research of gifted Faculty members like Fr. Forestell that RSM continues to have a world-class profile. It is a privilege to build upon that legacy.” 

The position’s title recognizes long-time Faculty member Fr. Terrence (Terry) Forestell CSB, who taught Old and New Testament at the Faculty from 1968 to 1985, eventually specializing in the latter.  

Educated at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute and École biblique in Jerusalem, Fr. Forestell was known as an innovative thinker. The entry on him in the Basilian Biography notes that his lectures while teaching at St. Basil’s Seminary prior to arriving at the Faculty were “inspiring” and “courageous.” 

“The Basilian Fathers of USMC are pleased to provide financial support for the Father Terrence Forestell CSB Dean of the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology,” says Rev. T. Allan Smith CSB, who is Rector, Basilian Fathers of the University of St. Michael’s College. “Over the years, Regis and St. Michael’s have worked independently but collaboratively on ensuring the best theological education for future ordained and lay ministers, religious educators, and aspiring professional theologians. The recent happy federation of the two institutions will build on their past excellence to ensure a bright future. Our contribution, made in the name of the many Basilians who studied and taught at the Faculty of Theology, is a symbol of our confidence in this new venture.”  

Now in its second year of operation, RSM is a federation of Regis College, rooted in the Jesuit-Ignatian tradition, and the University of St. Michael’s College, rooted in the Basilian tradition. The new, harmonized Faculty, with shared academic and administrative units, heightens the ability of RSM to address critical issues of the day while continuing to provide the essential foundational courses to prepare students for ministry, teaching, and service to the Church and the broader community. 

“The University of St. Michael’s College remains grateful to the Basilian Fathers, and especially to the priests who have served on this campus since 1852,” said University President David Sylvester. “Their friendship and support will help Regis St. Michael’s continue in its goal of serving the Church and society in innovative ways and respond to Pope Francis’ call in Ad theologiam promovendam for a renewal in theological education to respond to the profound cultural changes the world faces.” 

Fr. Owen Lee, CSB, received an honorary doctorate at a Faculty of Theology convocation in 1999.
Fr. Owen Lee, CSB received a Doctorate of Sacred Letters from the St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology at a convocation ceremony in 1999. Photo courtesy of the University of St. Michael’s College archive. 

The University of St. Michael’s College remembers and celebrates the life of Fr. Owen Lee, CSB, a graduate of St. Michael’s who taught classics here and elsewhere while also building a career in public education and scholarship. This arc reached its apex with a longstanding appointment with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, for whom Fr. Lee provided engaging commentary during the intermissions of broadcast opera performances on Saturday afternoons. His most important request related to his Saturday engagements was to be able to return home to Toronto in time to celebrate Sunday morning Mass.

Fr. Lee heard his first opera on the radio when he was 11 years old. “The music swept over me like a tsunami,” he said, according to his biographical page on the website of the Basilian Fathers. He entered the Basilian novitiate in 1947, and made use of his longstanding enthusiasm for opera to pursue the education in classics that would prepare him to teach. Fr. Lee would tell fellow Basilian Fr. James Farge that he had attended “over 950 different operas” during his lifetime.

Graduating from St. Michael’s with a B.A. in sacred theology in 1957 after having completed another B.A. and an M.A. at the University of Toronto, Fr. Lee received his PhD from the University of British Columbia and began his first appointment at St. Michael’s College as a lecturer in 1960; he became an associate professor in 1963.

He would retire to the status of Professor Emeritus in 1995, after decades of teaching in Toronto as well as a variety of other locations. Along the way, he would pick up four honorary doctorates and a University of Toronto teaching award. Upon hearing news of his death, a former St. Michael’s student who took Latin with Fr. Lee tweeted that he was a “talented, engaging, and personable man.”

It was in 1983 that he received the call inviting him to participate in the Met’s broadcasts, and he became a fixture of the airwaves; according to an obituary appearing in the New York Times, he gave his last appearance on-air in 2006. During the broadcasts, he would offer commentary during the first intermission, and sit on a panel of experts fielding questions about opera from audience members in a quiz-show format during the second. As the Times reports, “The Met broadcasts were such a part of his life that Father Lee occasionally gave them up for Lent.”

Fr. Farge discussed Fr. Lee’s radio broadcasts while giving remarks for the dedication of the Basilian Common Room in Brennan Hall in October of 2017. “He became known all over the world,” Fr. Farge said, reaching an estimated audience of “as many as 8 to 10 million people once a month.” Many of his broadcasts were transcribed for publication in book form; according to the website of the Basilian Fathers, he wrote a total of 22 books, including an introduction to Wagner’s Ring Cycle, collections of transcripts of his radio commentary, and Father Lee’s Opera Quiz Book, a collection of difficult opera-related questions from those on-air quiz panels.

In correspondence with Fr. Farge, an American musicologist wrote that Fr. Lee “brought to the understanding of opera a level of sophistication and communicativeness to which only the best musicologists aspire, and few achieve.” A wide-ranging treatment of Father Lee’s cultural interests can be found in his semi-autographical account of a year teaching in Rome, A Book of Hours: Music, Literature, and Life: A Memoir.

In his books and in the lives of his students and listeners, the life and work of Fr. Owen Lee continues to yield fruit as a testament to the legacy of the Basilian Fathers at St. Michael’s.


We invite our community to attend a Funeral Mass that will be celebrated for Fr. Lee on Saturday, August 10 at St. Basil’s Church. Visitation will be from 9 to 10 a.m., and the Funeral Mass will begin at 10 a.m.
Fr. Peter Swan, CSB, in an official photo for his installation as president and vice-chancellor of St. Michael's in 1978.
Fr. Peter Swan, CSB, in an official photo for his installation as president and vice-chancellor of St. Michael’s in 1978.

The University of St. Michael’s College today remembers Fr. Peter Swan, CSB, who passed away on Nov. 15 after nearly a century of life. Fr. Swan served as president and vice-chancellor of St. Michael’s from 1978 to 1984, overseeing the the opening of Alumni Hall and the adoption of the Memorandum of Agreement (1984) with the University of Toronto. Fr. Swan also sent a design for a new Coat of Arms to the College of Arms in London, England; the Queen approved the design for use on diplomas and other school-related documents in August of 1979, and it still adorns the wrought-iron gates of Elmsley Place.

Raised in an English expatriate family in Duncan, British Columbia, Fr. Swan was educated in a small private elementary school and at Duncan High School. Graduating from secondary school at age sixteen, Swan entered St. Michael’s College in September 1935. After graduating with a BA from the University of Toronto in 1938, he joined the Basilians in 1939. He was ordained in 1943 and in 1946 he completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. That year he was assigned to Assumption College and named an Associate Professor of Philosophy. In 1949, Swan became Registrar there; in 1958, Vice-President Academic. In 1961, Swan was appointed Superior and Principal of Thomas More College in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he served for sixteen years prior to his appointment at St. Michael’s.

In June of this year, Fr. Swan was presented with a medal in celebration of the 80th anniversary of his graduation from St. Michael’s College. We join the Basilian Fathers in mourning the loss, honouring the work and celebrating the life of Fr. Swan.

Fr. Swan’s funeral Mass will be celebrated on Friday, Nov. 30 at 10 a.m. in the Chapel of the Cardinal Flahiff Centre. Visitation is immediately before the Mass.