McGill's most important legacy was the £10,000 and his summer home that he left to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning. The bequest not only funded McGill University, but it also stretched to establish several other colleges and universities, including the University of British Columbia, which was known as the McGill University College of British Columbia until 1915; the University of Victoria, an affiliated junior college of McGill until 1916; and, Dawson College which began in 1945 as a satellite campus of McGill to absorb the anticipated influx of students after World War II.