This article describes a brand-new liberal-arts university which promises a different approach to teaching. Quest University is the first private, nonprofit, secular college in Canada. It has attracted professors with stellar credentials. Of its 79 freshmen, most are graduates of the rigorous International Baccalaureate high-school program, and half come from outside Canada. Yet the college has also attracted skepticism from within the country's largely public higher-education system. Some academics have questioned the need for a private college, arguing that public institutions do just fine at educating Canada's students. The success of Quest's students will determine whether the untested college, with its small classes and interdisciplinary core curriculum, becomes a player in Canada's undergraduate market or is dismissed merely as a dream of its founder and chancellor, David W. Strangway.