[3][4] Conversely, Ryerson was passionate about Christianization, favouring missionary work and protesting the removal of the Bible from Ontario schools.

[3] Following his time as a missionary to the Mississaugas of the Credit River, Ryerson became founding editor of The Christian Guardian, and the first principal of Victoria College.

The circuit took four weeks to complete on foot or horseback, as it encompassed areas with roads in extremely poor condition.

"[11] In an assembly, Ryerson explained to them the source of their misery: "I explained to the assembled Indians, the cause of their poverty, misery and wretchedness as resulting from them offending the Great Being who created them but who still loved them so much as to send His Son to save them and give them new hearts, that they might forsake their bad ways, be sober and industrious; not quarrel, but love one another, etc.

[citation needed] On 16 December, he reported: "I have this week been trying to procure for the Indians the exclusive right of their salmon fishery, which I trust will be granted by the Legislature".

[citation needed] According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report of May 2015, and noted that "he even learned their language, worked in the fields with the people of the settlement and became a life-long friend of future chief Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers), known in English as Peter Jones".

[citation needed] In April 1831, Ryerson wrote in The Christian Guardian newspaper, On the importance of education generally we may remark, it is as necessary as the light – it should be as common as water and as free as air.

Education among the people is the best security of a good government and constitutional liberty; it yields a steady, unbending support to the former, and effectually protects the latter...

Governor General Sir Charles Metcalfe asked him to become Chief Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada in 1844 and remained in the position until 1876.

In 2017 the university was urged to change its name in response to a campaign in social media, student organizations and petitions.

It held hearings, accepted briefs and letters and in 2021, reported with a recommendation to drop the name Ryerson and permanently remove his statue from the campus.

His major innovations included libraries in every school, an educational journal and professional development conventions for teachers, a central textbook press using Canadian authors, and securing land grants for universities.

That system utilized University Regents to create a list of acceptable texts from which the schools purchased books.

"[22] Ryerson was also responsible for developing the first Ontario Readers for Canadian students to replace British, Irish and American textbooks.

[19] With the intent of providing education for all Canadian children, Ryerson began lobbying for the idea of free schools in 1846.

[10] In his Circular to the County Municipalities, in 1846, he argued the following: "The basis of this only true system of universal Education is two fold": Ryerson was also determined to provide education to those less privileged, as a means of improving the opportunities of all; or as he described it as the "only effectual remedy for the pernicious and pauperizing system which is at present.

Ryerson was persuasive in his arguments such that principle for free education, in a permission form, was embodied into the School Law of 1850.

Extra funding was provided for collegiate institutes "with a daily average attendance of sixty boys studying Latin and Greek under a minimum of four masters.

[28] Ryerson replied with a five-page handwritten letter, later printed in 1898 as an appendix to a report on residential schools by the Indian Affairs Department.

"[30] The academic subjects recommended were: reading, principles of the English language, arithmetic, elementary geometry, geography, history, natural history, agricultural chemistry, writing, drawing, vocal music, book keeping (especially farmers accounts), religion and morals.

Sources of Ryerson’s work in education, similarly, include no mention of residential schools (Putnam, 1912; Harris and Tremblay, 1960), nor the entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Gidney).

The curriculum largely followed Ryerson's outline, which was itself in agreement with Methodists' plans to educate the indigenous.

Instruction in Christianity was considered a primary means of effecting change and consisted not only of daily prayers and attendance at church, but also the memorization of long passages of Scripture.

The consequences of the system, which ran for over a century, are well-known and formal apologies would later be made by the Government of Canada and the Pope of Rome.

Secondary literature on Ryerson focuses on his role in the development of the Ontario public school system.

It was placed on the grounds of the Education Department, site of the old Normal School founded by Ryerson and the first teacher training college in Canada.

"[45] In 1950, it was proposed to move the statue to Queen's Park by Keith Balfour, a Toronto mining company executive.

[46] On 18 July 2020, three people were arrested for splattering pink paint on the statue – in addition to two others of John A. Macdonald and King Edward VII at the Ontario Legislature – as part of a demand to tear down the monuments.

[48] On 1 June 2021, following the discovery of soil disturbances at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, widely reported by the media as sites of 215 unmarked graves,[49] the statue was vandalized again, this time with red paint.

[53] After the events around the statue, on 8 June 2021, the town of Owen Sound, Ontario removed the name plaque of Ryerson Park.