so my question is, what is the mininum number of courses that you can take first year? If relevant, I'm hoping to go into honours social psych second year. I know that psych and sociology are compulsory and that the max. full course load is 30 units. I think I read somewhere that the min. full course load is 26 units, is that true?

Yes it is. I'm in Humanities and it has the same requirements as Social Sci.