Daily Bulletin

Tuesday, October 28, 1997

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Yesterday's Bulletin | Previous days | UWevents | UWinfo home page

The unconventional founding of UW

Gerry Hagey, UW's founding president, had been president of Waterloo College since 1953. He retired from UW in 1969, and died in 1988.

Ken McLaughlin's long-awaited history of the University of Waterloo is out, and guess what: it's not really a history of UW, but a study of only a short period at the beginning of Waterloo's forty years. The title tells the story: Waterloo, The Unconventional Founding of an Unconventional University.

The 240-page book is for sale now in the UW bookstore (price $40) and is being launched at a by-invitation reception this afternoon.

Rather than tracing UW's history from its founding to the 40th anniversary that's now being celebrated, McLaughlin has told a more manageable story, telling how UW came into existence as the brashest -- and maybe most successful -- of the postwar universities. It's a story of community boosterism, industrial support, church politics, academic suspicion, personal conflict, naive confidence, provincial lobbying, typewritten minutes, temporary buildings, and faculty members with attitude.

Says McLaughlin (who is UW's official historian, and former dean of St. Jerome's College) in a Postscript to the book:

This book has been about the often complex founding of this very unconventional university. From the earliest days in 1956, Gerald Hagey and the board of governors of the then Waterloo College Associate Faculties were committed to creating a university that would be relevant for the lives of Canadians in a rapidly-changing world. Their credo was a curriculum that combined the best in science, technology and the humanities, setting a course that looked to the future rather than one based on past university precedents.

Many people know the outline of the story: Gerald Hagey, president of little Waterloo College, led the creation of Waterloo College Associate Faculties, which began offering engineering classes in the summer of 1957. By 1960, the Associate Faculties were "the University of Waterloo"; the existing St. Jerome's College, previously based in Kitchener, had become federated with UW; and Waterloo College was left behind to be "Waterloo Lutheran University" and later Wilfrid Laurier. But there were many twists and turns along the way, says McLaughlin as he tells about the influences exerted by, or on, the Ontario government, the Lutheran and Roman Catholic authorities, the University of Western Ontario, civic leaders and national corporations.

The book has dozens of photos -- some of them familiar, others newly found in archives. (Among the most amusing is the one on page 145, showing a dozen Knights of Columbus in comic-opera regalia, complete with swords, at the ceremonial opening of St. Jerome's College.) A number, including a convocation shot of an impossibly young Doug Wright with a toothy grin, are presented as colour snapshots.

McLaughlin also reproduces a number of documents, such as the 1959 affiliation agreement among UW, St. Jerome's and the Lutheran seminary, and some of UW's early brochures and published advertisements. The book includes a detailed chronology, an affectionate introduction by university secretary Lois Claxton, and a number of contemporary colour photos by Chris Hughes of the central photographic service.

Today's reception to launch the book is scheduled for the lobby of the Dana Porter Library, following the afternoon board of governors meeting. Attendance is by invitation. A number of book signings across campus are to be scheduled soon.

Board of governors meets

Everything from the 1996-97 financial statement to a review of the "campus master plan" is on the agenda for UW's board of governors this afternoon. The board, the university's top governing body, meets four times a year, and this fall meeting has a long agenda. The meeting starts at 2:30 p.m. in Needles Hall room 3001.

It's open to the public except for a confidential session at the end, which will deal with a number of matters. Among them -- and perhaps a little ironically in view of yesterday's events on the stock markets -- will be a change in how some of the pension fund's investments are managed.

The agenda for the open session includes approval of the next phase of Village I renovations; approval of a fee ($30 a term) for the Waterloo Environmental Studies Endowment Foundation; and discussion of academic department reviews and the state of first-year admissions this fall.

Also today, and soon

Models created by students in Architecture 292 will be on display today and tomorrow in the concourse of South Campus Hall. "The wooden displays reflect a stick-by-stick, unit-by-unit framing model of a building built to scale," says Brendan Beasley of the bookstore, which is hosting the display. They're being evaluated by a panel of judges, and the bookstore is offering prizes.

Ericsson Communications Canada hosts a reception this evening for "faculty, graduating students in electrical and computer systems design engineering, and other VIPs" to find out more about Ericsson and the possibility of careers in wireless communications. The reception runs from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Davis Centre lounge.

On Thursday, a seminar on "Usability Issues for WWW Sites" will be offered by Tammy te Winkel, who's described as a research associate at UW and a partner in Convivia Interaction Design. Her talk is sponsored by the teaching resource office, the Telelearning Research Network and the InfraNet Project. It starts at 3:00 Thursday in Davis Centre room 1302.

Library system is delayed

The long-awaited "Voyager" computer system in UW's library will have to be awaited a bit longer. Things are running behind schedule and Voyager can't be introduced until March or April, says a memo from the heads of the libraries at UW, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph, which are adopting it together.

Voyager, a product of Endeavor Corp., was supposed to arrive in December, in time for students, faculty and staff to be using it in the winter term. Aspects of Voyager include a new circulation system; a catalogue to the material in all three libraries, with a Web-style interface to library materials that are available electronically; and computer support for behind-the-scenes work such as acquisitions and cataloguing of new items.

"There have been significant delays," says the memo from UW's Murray Shepherd and his Guelph and WLU colleagues. "We cannot achieve December implementation without serious risk to the success of the operation and stress to the libraries' staffs." The memo adds that "it is not in the interest of our user communities to introduce a new system mid-term", so Voyager won't be put into operation in January or February. The Voyager project management group "will prepare a revised implementation schedule" with a target at the end of the winter term instead, the memo says.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY October 28, 1994: The visitor centre moves from the Optometry building to South Campus Hall.

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
Comments to the editor | About the Bulletin | Yesterday's Bulletin
Copyright © 1997 University of Waterloo