Earlier this month, more than 1,500 students took part in an exercise that has been repeated annually since it all began 65 years ago.
Each individual crossed the stage at the Fraser Auditorium to collect their diploma and become another small part of their alma mater’s history. Today, we are going to take a look at the early history of the centre of post-secondary education in the North for nearly seven decades, Laurentian University.
To a far greater extent than for most post secondary institutions, Laurentian University was founded as the result of a grassroots campaign from the people in this region. It came into being as a monument to a uniquely happy co-operation among churches, industry and community. Life in this city was different then. Sudbury was still king of the world nickel market, a smaller city, and in some ways more intimate and indeed more insular, but it was full of ambition.
Rooted in religion
The roots of Laurentian dig deeply into the past and can be traced to the College du Sacre Coeur which was established here, through Royal Charter, by the Jesuit Fathers, in 1913. At first, the college was affiliated with the University of Ottawa, and in 1927 to Laval University.
Later, agreements were made with the University of Toronto in 1935 and the University of Western Ontario in 1942. During the 1940s, the idea was floated for abandoning its wholly French orientation and reclaiming its degree-granting powers to transform the college into a non-denominational university, called the University of Sudbury, offering courses in both French and English.
Francophone leaders at the time even convinced the region's member of parliament to introduce a bill to this effect, but the initiative was unsuccessful. Around 1950, Sudbury's Francophones undertook a half-million-dollar fundraising campaign for the construction of this proposed university.
In 1955, an Ottawa lawyer, who had examined the original charter of the Collège du Sacré-Coeur, confirmed that this institution had the authority to administer a university in Northern Ontario. With this knowledge, a proposal establishing the University of Sudbury was approved on March 30, 1957.
During its early years, the University of Sudbury was only able to accommodate a limited number of students. Furthermore, as it was a denominational institution run by a religious order, it could not receive funding from the province. Its ambitions for expansion were hindered by provincial resistance to the notion of public funding for a church-related university.
Luckily, during this time several other groups and associations, notably representing the United Church and the Anglican Church, had also taken steps to create their own vision of a university in Northern Ontario.
In 1958, members of the United Church formed the Northern Ontario University Association (NOAU), with other associations and community leaders to channel their common aims and their interest in establishing a Protestant university or, as an alternative, a non-denominational university for Sudbury. Rev. E.S. Lautenslager, minister at St. Andrew's United Church, headed the association.
In 1959, a special committee was set up by the University of Sudbury, under the chairmanship of Inco vice president Ralph D. Parker. With that, representatives of the University of Sudbury, the United Church and the Anglican church began hammering out possible federation plans that would result in a major inter-denominational university.
Agreements of federation were reached in September 1960 with the University of Sudbury, the Roman Catholic institution, and with Huntington University, which had been incorporated earlier in 1960 as an institution sponsored by the United Church of Canada. Thorneloe University of the Anglican Church of Canada joined the federation in January 1963.
With three differing institutions involved in this federation, the name that was chosen for the new school ― Laurentian University of Sudbury ― was made clear to all as being a compromise.
“The name is acceptable to us in that it is Canadian and northern, and Sudbury is on the Laurentian Shield," said Lautenslager, the representative for the United Church, in commenting on the choice of name. "We would have liked ‘of Ontario’ in the title, but there has to be compromise in a project like this.”
Reverend W.L. Wright, archbishop of the Algoma Diocese of the Anglican Church, said that the name of the proposed university “does not worry me too much. I think the name chosen is as good as can be suggested at the present time."
University of Sudbury president Rev. Emile Bouvier was quoted at the time, saying, "The great venture is settled from our point of view. It is merely a matter of details now."
With the basics of the federated university plans discussed and agreed upon by the three interested parties, a private member’s bill was presented on Feb. 11, 1960, during the Ontario Legislature’s winter sitting. “An Act to incorporate Laurentian University of Sudbury” spelled out the terms of the university federation.
The act established Laurentian University as a non-denominational, bilingual institution and was passed by the Ontario Legislative Assembly, receiving Royal Assent on March 28, 1960.
With that out of the way, a dynamic plan for creating a great institution of learning on the south shore of Ramsey Lake was quickly unfolded before a distinguished group of leaders in government, industry and education. Laurentian University's ambitious $15,000,000 development program was slated to begin almost immediately with the acquisition of land for a campus.
The birth of Laurentian was an important trifecta for Sudbury, the city’s then-mayor Bill Edgar said at the time. "Sudbury long has been the industrial centre and the mining centre of the North, Laurentian University will also make us the educational centre of the North.”
For Osias J. Godin, then MP for Nickel Belt, Laurentian University represented opportunity. “An institution of higher learning has a benevolent effect upon the community,” he said. “Such an establishment not only gives the nearby residents the opportunity for education which they might otherwise forego, because of travel distances and expense…”
City Controller (and future mayor) Grace Hartman, concurred. "Sudbury has excellent primary schools,” she said. “In fact, our schools are second to none in the province (and) I fully expect that Laurentian University will sustain and add to this tradition. The advent of this university is beyond words as a boon to family life here. No longer will Sudbury parents have to contend with travelling expenses and away-from-home board, the two things which often make university just impossible for young people.”
On May 7, 1960, the board of governors held its first meeting and Ralph D. Parker, a senior vice-president of Inco and the chief promoter of the Laurentian University federation, was made chairman at the board. The governors then went to work to prepare this new institution of higher learning for a fall start, as well as beginning the search for a plot of land to call its home.
Laurentian opened for business on Sept. 19, 1960 and thus began its pursuit of light and truth (Laurentian’s motto being “Emitte lucem et veritatem”, which translates as “Send forth thy light and thy truth”).
University, no campus
These were quite different days as Laurentian University of Sudbury assembled its students and faculty for the first time. For all those involved, it was a somewhat ramshackle start, but it was a start and quite an achievement nonetheless.
To begin with, Laurentian had no campus yet. Its main classroom building was in rented office space above the downtown Empire Theatre. This makeshift arrangement was inherited from the University of Sudbury, which had launched its own program there three years earlier. A couple of blocks away, Huntington College was located in the former Jackson and Barnard Funeral Home, 83 Larch St., next to Knox Presbyterian Church. It was able to accommodate its own courses, provide student and staff lounges and office facilities, a library and a chapel, while also renting lecture room accommodations to Laurentian.
The third federating partner in Laurentian, Thorneloe University of the Anglican Church, existed only as a legal corporation at this time, with a view toward embarking on the founding of an actual college expected at the start of the 1962 academic year.
As local writer Bill Bowdidge wrote a quarter century after the school's founding, "What it may have lacked in real estate, however, Laurentian made up in high hopes. This was to the North's university, created by Northerners to answer a Northern need. It was bilingual, inter-denominational, multicultural and an example of 20th Century Canadianism to the staid and stuffy established institutions.”
As written in The Sudbury Star that September, "With the assembly today of the first classes of the Laurentian University of Sudbury, the greatest experiment ever to be undertaken in Canadian higher education became a working reality… ."
Since Laurentian had its beginnings in the efforts of the churches to found a university for the North, the school found itself with some interesting quirks in balancing the differing expectations of the founders. Thus, it was that freshmen in the sciences found themselves studying philosophy and religious knowledge as compulsory college subjects from the outset.
At Huntington, it was suggested that students and staff wear academic gowns while dashing about the city from one building to another, which would have given Sudbury a sort of "Oxford air” but few of the gowns were ever seen on the streets. Of course, Oxford doesn't have to cope with Sudbury's wild winter season.
For students and faculty alike, coping with classes in temporary quarters had its irritations and sometimes its humor. One cold December morning at Huntington, the principal's secretary was heard to complain of inadequate heat, "It's like a morgue in here.”
Almost at once after the official launching of the university, a search was under way for suitable land on which to build a campus. Obtaining a campus was seen as the necessary first step in amalgamating the various facets of education and administration that were at the time spread over several parts of the city. At one point, land in New Sudbury was under consideration. Then there was even a suggestion that the Idylwylde Golf and Country Club would serve the purpose admirably and the golf club could relocate.
Finding a campus
On February 7, 1961, through a unanimous decision of city council in voting a bylaw for a one-mill levy to the university for the next five years, the money to purchase campus land was to be provided by the taxpayers (amounting to 10 cents a week). The total contribution to the university by the citizens of Sudbury was to then be in the region of $500,000. This made true a promise by Mayor Bill Edgar who had previously stated, to a cheering audience, that “under the late Mayor Bill Beaton, council passed (a) resolution that we would provide land for a university in this city."
Unfortunately, the city's gift to Laurentian University for purchase of a campus had to be changed from a bylaw committing the city to some $100,000 a year for five years to a "gentleman's agreement" to pay the money. City council had to officially rescind the 1-mill bylaw passed earlier after it ran into a snag with the Ontario Municipal Board.
Laurentian University Finance Committee Chair D. L. James said at the time that he was “not concerned that the city would break faith on its pledge, but that he would confer with city officials so that the university buy its campus property and begin its building campaign with confidence.”
At that point, the university held, or had options on, land to the east of the Idylwylde Golf and Country Club. It valued that land at $100,000 and proposed to include it in a cash and exchange deal whereby the club would be given $340,000 and the land in exchange for the present course and some land bordering Walford Road (33 lots). Thus, the university argued it was prepared to pay $440,000 for the golf course site.
It was also a part of the university proposal that the golf club would be allowed continued uninterrupted use of its course for the following five years, while a new golf course was being developed on this new land to the east.
On March 9 1961, the shareholders of the Idylwylde held a meeting to vote on whether to accept or reject this proposal, which had been approved by the majority of the Idylwylde directors and recommended by them to the shareholders. Only one director, Ben F. Merwin, was opposed to the university’s offer and sent to each club shareholder a minority report calling for its rejection.
Finally, after much wheeling and dealing to assemble the appropriate parcel, the present campus area was selected. The City of Sudbury “bought” the land as its gift to the fledgling university by donating money on behalf of its citizens and in a subsequent financial campaign, International Nickel Company of Canada Ltd. made a donation of $2,500,000, at that time the largest single donation ever made by a corporation in Canada to an institution of higher learning. A second major gift came at year end from Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd. with a $500,000 cheque given to Laurentian’s president Dr. Harold Bennett.
Development of more than 500 acres within the city limits into one of the most beautiful university campuses in Canada had moved another step closer to reality.
The final site abutting the east side of the Idylwylde Golf Club was selected by the board of governors after a decision that the university should still be built in the vicinity of Idylwylde. The golf club property remained intact. And, as federating partners of Laurentian, Huntington University, Thorneloe University and the University of Sudbury were also committed within the plan to lease land on the new campus for their own buildings.
The L-shaped area selected lies to the easterly boundary of Trout Lake (now Nepahwin). The property skirts the eastern limits of Idylwylde on a north-south line extending approximately one mile south from the shore of Ramsey Lake.
The westerly boundary on Ramsey is in the vicinity of property known as Reedy Bay, opposite land owned by the Howe family and previously purchased by the university. The property connects with three lakes ― Trout (Nepahwin), Ramsey and Pike (now Bethel Lake) with South Bay Road traversing the property. City authorities and businessmen lauded the decision to build in the Idylwylde area and were quick to point out that it assured a perpetual greenbelt and beauty spot.
D. L James, chair of the Laurentian finance committee, was unfortunately forced to squelch rumours at the time that some people had been profiteering by buying land cheaply and selling it to the university at a high price. The highest-priced parcel, he said, cost only $25,000. A rumour that someone bought a property for $20,000 and sold it to Laurentian for $95,000 was pure fabrication, he said.
Dr. Thomas Howarth, who held the chair of architecture at the University of Toronto, was retained as planning consultant for the project. He was authorized to begin development of the master plan for the design and location of buildings on the site immediately. The university hoped to spend a minimum of $15,000,000 on buildings and equipment over the next 15 years.
The location for Laurentian's campus had been selected with the aid of the city's property and assessment committee, city engineer T. L Hennessy and planning director Klemens Dembek to combine “the advantages of rolling topography, neat woods and water with close proximity to churches, schools and downtown Sudbury.”
Conversations with architect Howarth at the board’s first meeting in Sudbury centred around which buildings would be required first for the new university. This would be followed by a staged program of development where the physical growth of the university would be intrinsically tied to its academic growth. Buildings, they stated, would be erected as they are needed over the years with no stop-and-start rush program.
Building a university
When Howarth began his work, the land did not look like much of a site for a university. Rocky outcroppings, a trail or two and scrub bush were its only features.
A story told at the time (apocryphal perhaps) related that a government official sent from Ottawa to inspect the site for some bureaucratic reason or other, was among the first to tread the future home of the Laurentian University of Sudbury.
It was a cold day with rain carrying sleet and snow, while wind whistled among the rocks and small trees. As he looked around from a hilltop, he was said to have asked in apparent disbelief, "My god, who would want to build a university here?"
Dr. Faustina Kelly Cook, a member of the Laurentian board at the time, felt the rocky nature of the Canadian Shield should be incorporated into the design.
“I hope," she said, “that the board of governors will select an architect who knows ROCKS. We should make an asset of the characteristics of our northern landscape, rather than disguise them. The rocky outcroppings should be integrated with the buildings to give an effect which would only be possible upon the sort of terrain which Sudbury offers."
While the preparation for a campus of its very own continued, the school year came and went and Laurentian University's first convocation arrived in June 1961, an historic occasion. Bishop Alexander Carter of the Roman Catholic Sault Sault Ste. Marie diocese, stated at the time, "I would say that the legacy of Laurentian is very promising. The very fine spirit among all groups shows great promise for the future of Northern Ontario, in education."
His words were echoed by Emile Bouvier, the president of Laurentian, who pointed to the representation at the convocation of people from widely scattered communities in Northern Ontario, and of all religious denominations. As the first federated university in Northern Ontario, it has already been crowned with distinction in proving that instruction can be given in both the English and French languages. It was what Ontario Premier Leslie Frost described as "a novel experiment.”
An honour student with the distinction of being valedictorian of the first graduating class, Ronald F. Macnab, in his address at the convocation, commented on the grand experiment that is Laurentian University.
“In a sense, we have grown with Laurentian University. We have witnessed and participated in a most remarkable experiment … formation of our country's first bi-cultural, non denominational university,” he said.
“It has been a privilege to have studied here for the past few years, because we found ourselves in a unique position. A position comparable to that of pioneers in a new land.
"Any school or university is only as good as the students it turns out … . As the first graduating class, we go out into the world, and will try to impress it with the merits of Laurentian. We expect you to do the same.”
Well dear readers, those students who began their university careers back on Sept. 19, 1960 were part of a grand experiment, a serious academic endeavour for us here in the North. The goals outlined at the time have been reshaped somewhat in the intervening years but the process continues to this day.
Now, we turn to you, former students and faculty, to let us know your memories (good, bad or otherwise) of your time inside the hallowed halls of that grand experiment along the shores of Ramsey Lake.
And, to the graduating class of 2025, congratulations, félicitations, and n’maamiikwenmanaa ekinoomaagzijig gii giizhiitaad. You are now a part of history 65 years in the making.
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.