A prodigious number of the men and women who advanced our nation over the past 100 years are U of T alumni. You’ll meet just some of them in our list of 100 alumni who had an impact on the 20th century, which we have compiled to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the University of Toronto Alumni Association. The list is by no means exhaustive; indeed, so many alumni have earned the right to be included that it was a real challenge to stop at a mere 100 names. You won’t find such well-known alumni as Paul Martin or Atom Egoyan. Instead, you’ll meet some less familiar graduates, like Dr. Marion Hilliard, a pioneer in women’s medicine, or Wilbur Franks, whose work prefigured the spacesuit.

The early grads who helped shape the future of law, politics and the sciences include Augusta Stowe Gullen, the first woman to graduate from medical school in Canada, economist (later prime minister) William Lyon Mackenzie King and Frederick Banting, discoverer of insulin. Later, U of T alumni helped establish Canada as a leader among nations. When told he had won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize, Lester B. Pearson could only mutter, “Gosh,” a testament that in the ’50s, we were still a small, self-conscious country. Yet Canada flourished in the post-war period. Just as Banting and Charles Best had established Canadians as pre-eminent doers, Pearson, along with grads such as Escott Reid, established us as great thinkers. Artists such as William Hutt and Margaret Atwood cemented our reputation as great creators.

All of our 100 grads made their mark on Canada, even the world, but first they made their mark at U of T. We think you’ll find, as U of T alumni, that you are in great company.

The thinkers you will read about in the following pages work in fields as diverse as economics and English, and all have had a profound influence in their area of study. Northrop Frye, for example, almost single-handedly established literary criticism as a respected area of study. When we examined the lives of the scientists here, we were struck by how many were first in their field, as in, “developed the first laser” or “built the first G-suit.” We were also impressed with the progress women made in science at U of T in the early part of the 20th century. By 1928 – 25 years after the university awarded its first PhD to a woman – 28 of the 30 doctorates that females earned were in the sciences.

Following the First World War, medical school graduate Davidson Black accepted a teaching post in anatomy at Peking Medical Union College in China. Black had developed an interest in anthropology, and when an expedition was organized to study a site near Peking, he was asked to lead the dig. In 1927, Black (MB 1906, BA 1911 UC, MA 1924, MD 1928, DSc 1930) and his team discovered Peking Man. His work on those remains forms the basis of today’s knowledge of our ancient ancestors.

Regarded as the world’s leading expert on lemmings, Dennis Chitty (BA 1935 UC) was also one of the first researchers to make systematic studies of animal ecology. His work culminated in the Chitty Hypothesis, which states that population growth is halted by the interactions of animals that lead to the genetic selection of those with highly aggressive traits.

Wilbur Franks (1901-1986) was head of RCAF medical research during the Second World War. There, Franks (BA 1924 Victoria, MA 1925, MB 1928) invented a pressure suit allowing pilots to carry out high-speed manoeuvres without blacking out. His “G-suit” was the precursor of the pressure suits worn by today’s astronauts.

Wilfred Bigelow (BA 1935 UC, MD 1938, MS 1949) concentrated his early work at U of T on using cold to protect the heart and brain during surgery. His groundbreaking research led to the creation of the implantable heart pacemaker.

Marian Packham (BA 1949 Victoria, PhD 1954) is a world authority on the biochemistry and physiology of blood platelets and has done pioneering work on using drugs to prevent blood clots. Another grad, Fraser Mustard (MD 1953) is also known for his work on platelets. As the founder of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Mustard has encouraged scientists to become involved in social policy and has actively promoted early childhood education.

One of the most influential proponents of Keynesian economics, John Kenneth Galbraith (BASc 1931) has held sway with prime ministers and presidents for 50 years. But, Galbraith reveals, “I was not, in my college years, well regarded.” Beginning in 1926, he attended the U of T-affiliated Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. Years later, upon receiving an honorary degree, he ran into one of his old Guelph professors, who told him that instead of bestowing the new degree upon him, administrators should be taking away the one he already had.

Universally respected scholar and literary critic Northrop Frye (1912-1991) became famous for his studies of poets, the Bible and Shakespeare. His work is standard study for English literature students around the world. After visiting Toronto in 1929 to take part in a national typing contest, Frye decided to remain and study at Victoria College, where he received his bachelor of arts degree in 1933. While at U of T and as a graduate student at Oxford, he began formulating his ideas for Fearful Symmetry, his analysis of William Blake’s poetry. He taught at Victoria College from 1939 until his death 52 years later.

The work of Kathleen Coburn (1905-1991) was instrumental in deepening scholarly understanding of the English romantic poet Samuel Coleridge. In 1951 Coburn (BA 1928 Victoria, MA 1930) founded the Coleridge Project, which is still in progress and dedicated to transcribing Coleridge’s 70 personal notebooks.

By the time Marion Hilliard (1902-1958) arrived at medical school in the ’20s, the atmosphere was easier than it had been for women, but still not hospitable. “The girls had to sit in the front row and you could hardly say we were welcomed,” she later wrote, “but we certainly were not outcasts.” A hockey star at U of T, Hilliard (BA 1924 Victoria, MB 1927) later headed the obstetrics and gynecology department of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, where in 1947 she helped develop the Pap test, a simplified procedure for the early detection of cervical cancer.

Bora Laskin (1912-1984) was Canada’s pre-eminent legal mind in labour and constitutional law. Interestingly, Laskin (BA 1933 UC, MA 1936) never practised law; after completing his law education at Harvard University he began a long teaching career which ended at U of T in 1965, the year he was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal. He was named to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1970 and became chief justice three years later.

Sir John Cunningham McLennan (1867-1935) was the first student at U of T to receive a doctorate in physics (as well as one of the first three PhDs awarded) and went on to establish the university’s physics department as a world leader in areas ranging from low-temperature physics to spectroscopy. McLennan (BA 1892 UC, PhD 1900) did innovative research in the use of radiation to treat cancer.

Selected for the Canadian astronaut program in 1992, Julie Payette (MASc 1990) was the second female grad into space (Roberta Bondar was the first), when the shuttle Discovery lifted off last May. While completing her engineering studies, the accomplished musician sang with Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Choir.

Following high school, J.J. Robinette (1907-1996) took a year off before attending U of T, not because he wanted a break, but because at 15 he was still a year shy of the required entry age. He was an over-achiever once on campus, but socially awkward. One of the few people he befriended was Lois Walker, his future wife, whom he had first met in Sunday school. During his 62-year career, Robinette (BA 1926 UC), one of Canada’s greatest trial lawyers, was involved in some of the most sensational criminal trials in our history and saved 16 people from the gallows.

J. Tuzo Wilson (1908-1993) received U of T’s first bachelor of arts degree in geophysics (1930 Trinity). Best known for his work on plate tectonics, Wilson was also an international expert on glaciers and the formation of mountains. An adventurer and mountain climber (Mount Tuzo in the Rockies is named for his mother), he was the second Canadian to fly over the North Pole. Wilson taught at U of T from 1946 to 1974 and was principal of Erindale College. His popular writings on China are said to have helped improve relations between the West and the communist nation.

NOBEL LAUREATES
The University of Toronto boasts six Nobel laureates among its grads, a total unequalled by many nations. Perhaps the most famous is Lester B. Pearson, who won the 1957 Peace Prize for his role in negotiating a UN-brokered peace in 1956 following the Suez Canal crisis. Pearson had to wait 38 years after graduating to receive his prize, but James Orbinski (MA 1998) accepted a Nobel prize barely a year after leaving U of T. Last year Orbinski was at the helm of the humanitarian group Médecins sans frontières, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on its behalf.

The first U of T recipients were Frederick Banting and John Macleod, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923. All Canadians think of Banting and Best when they think of insulin. Although the Nobel Institute didn’t name Charles Best (1899-1978) because he was a graduate student during the research, Banting (see “Heroes & Icons“) shared half of his award money with his younger colleague. Best (BA 1921 UC, MA 1922, MB 1925, MD 1932), who gained his spot on the research team after winning a coin toss with another student, later succeeded Macleod as professor of physiology at U of T.

The strength of the math and physics programs at the university can be measured by the fact that they have produced three Nobel laureates: Arthur Schawlow, Bertram Brockhouse and Walter Kohn.

Schawlow (1921-1999) grew up in Toronto during the Depression. Hoping to study engineering but unable to afford tuition, he sought and won a scholarship in math and physics instead. He was only 16 when he arrived at U of T in 1937. Credited with co-inventing the laser, Schawlow (BA 1941 Victoria, MA 1942, PhD 1949) did his earliest work on light spectrums at U of T and won his Nobel Prize for physics in 1981. Schawlow might have bumped into both Brockhouse and Kohn on campus during his tenure.

Brockhouse (MA 1948, PhD 1950) first charted his course toward Stockholm at the low-temperature labs in the physics department after his World War Two service.

Kohn (BA 1945 UC, MA 1946) arrived on campus in 1942 after fleeing the Nazis in his native Austria. Brockhouse and Kohn were co-recipients of the Nobel prize in 1994 and 1998 respectively, Brockhouse for his examination of materials at an atomic level, and Kohn for helping scientists to better understand complex molecules.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

The university has helped generations of young men and women to discover talents they didn’t always know were there. Jack McClelland, for example, arrived at U of T expecting to become an engineer, and Dennis Lee, a minister. We’re happy their original intentions did not come to pass.

Liona Boyd (BMus 1972) burst into tears during her first day at the Royal Conservatory while trying to harmonize “O Canada.” But the greatest challenge for the future guitar virtuoso was the requirement to play keyboards. She was the only student in her year with no piano experience and she was handicapped by her long nails which, though an asset for guitar, were a hindrance at the keys. Boyd played her first major concert while in second year.

Morley Callaghan (1903-1990) had a strong attachment to U of T, which is revealed in his 1948 novel, The Varsity Story, a thinly veiled depiction of life at the university. In particular, Callaghan (BA 1925 SMC) writes of his love for Hart House, where he escaped the “conservative” atmosphere of the campus to read modern literature.

While studying political science during the ’60s, novelist Matt Cohen (1942-1999) fought to ban the bomb and took pride in belonging to self-described “jazzy, New Left, new-style, all-movement-and-no-organization organizations.” When not studying or rabble-rousing, Cohen (BA 1964 UC, MA 1965) imagined a time when he could “string together enough big words to stun myself into believing it is possible” to be a writer.

Bill Glassco (PhD 1966) came to U of T in 1959 to teach literature and pursue a doctorate. Disenchanted with university life, he increasingly sought refuge in theatre and in 1964, together with Dennis Lee, started the Muddy York Theatre Club. He directed his first play in a student lounge at Victoria College. As artistic director of Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre from 1971 to 1982, Glassco helped promote Canadian theatre and develop a host of new Canadian talent.

Phyllis Grosskurth (BA 1946 Trinity) is an English scholar and authority on psychoanalysis who has written a series of remarkable biographies on such figures as Freud and Lord Byron. Her brilliance was apparent at Trinity where she wrote poetry. One of her treasured memories is the “magical” moment come third year when she finally was allowed to freely roam the library stacks.

Student enrolment exploded in the late ’40s with the arrival of war veterans on campus. Among them was William Hutt (BA 1948 Trinity), whose “agreeable arrogance” quickly won friends. When he wasn’t acting at Hart House, he could be spotted leaving the Trinity residences in the early hours hauling bags of empty beer bottles. A fixture at the Stratford Festival, Hutt is regarded as one of Canada’s finest actors.

Jack McClelland (BA 1946 Trinity) claimed that his sole motivation for interrupting his studies to join the navy was the increasing difficulty for able-bodied men to get dates on campus. The comment is characteristic of the quick-witted former president of McClelland & Stewart Inc., who returned to campus after the war and there developed his love of Canadian writers. As a publisher, he nurtured our literature by consistently promoting homegrown talent.

Before receiving his bachelor of music degree in 1950, Elmer Iseler (1927-1998), director of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir for 34 years, conducted the U of T student orchestra and the All-Varsity Mixed Chorus. Later, with his own Elmer Iseler Singers, he created a distinctive Canadian sound by blending British and American choral traditions.

Teresa Stratas (DIP MUS 1959) sang Greek pop songs at 13 before studying music at U of T. Auditioning for the Royal Conservatory, she sang Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Despite the unorthodox selection, the strength of her voice won the young soprano a place in the program. The year she graduated, she debuted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

Ted Kotcheff (BA 1952 UC) joined CBC television after graduating. He was one of a handful of Canadian directors (including Norman Jewison, BA 1949 Victoria) who cracked the Hollywood scene and provided inspiration for young filmmakers back home. Kotcheff went on to make successful features including Rambo, First Blood and Fun with Dick and Jane.

Caroline Roe’s thesis, “Vernacular didactic literature in England in the 12th and 13th centuries,” may not sound like a best-seller, but it could be seen as the precursor to her series of mystery novels, which are attracting readers worldwide. Roe (BA 1962 UC, MA 1967, PhD 1974) publishes under the pen name of Medora Sale.

FUNNYMEN
Uof T’s first great satirist was Stephen Leacock (BA 1891 UC), who became a famous economist, not to mention the English-speaking world’s best-known humorist of his time. These are astounding accomplishments, especially since during Leacock’s U of T days, he later claimed, English was barely taught (he received a C in the course he took in his final year), and economics “was conspicuous by its entire absence.” (He completed his PhD in economics in Chicago in 1903.) Co-education was new at the university, and uncertainty existed about how the sexes should mix. “The result of our timidity,” Leacock regretted, was that no less than three female classmates married professors.

The irreverence Leacock often displayed has been a hallmark of Canadian funnymen. That is especially true of Lorne Michaels (BA 1966 UC), who produced and directed the UC Follies. That experience came in handy in 1975 when he launched Saturday Night Live, the NBC comedy show.

Our most unlikely comic is one of our most recent. When Mark Rowswell arrived at U of T to study how to promote Canadian trade in China, he didn’t know he would himself become one of Canada’s best-known exports to the Orient. One of China’s most popular entertainers, he may even have surpassed Norman Bethune as the ultimate Canadian icon there. Rowswell (BA 1988 UC) took East Asian studies before winning a scholarship at the University of Beijing. There he stumbled into entertaining after being asked to act in a student variety show. On the strength of the huge number of his Chinese fans, Rowswell is no doubt one of the most famous Canadians in the world.

MASTERS OF THE LAST WORLD
During its history U of T has always produced women graduates with forceful and articulate voices. Not the least of those voices belong to these three print journalists.

Columnist Barbara Amiel (BA 1963 UC) has always been political, and her days on campus in the ’60s were no different. As a self-proclaimed lefty, Amiel was a delegate in 1962 to the Communist World Youth Festival in Helsinki, Finland. After graduating she worked at the CBC, Maclean’s and the Toronto Sun, before life with Canada’s biggest publishing mogul, Conrad Black.

Rona Maynard (BA 1972 UC) grew up exposed to the feminist ideas of her journalist mother, Fredelle. Although Rona’s fiction was published while she was still in high school, it was her sister Joyce who became famous as a writer (mostly for her confessions about J.D. Salinger). Maynard, who now edits Chatelaine magazine, married and became pregnant while still in university. All of these experiences led her to closely examine women’s issues.

Bonnie Fuller (BA 1977 UC) began her journalism career at The Varsity, but thought editing wasn’t meant to be her vocation – she was going to become a lawyer like her father. After a year at law school she was drawn back to print, and in 1982 at only 26, she became editor of Flare magazine. Today she is editor-in-chief of Glamour in New York.

POETS
Canada’s foremost poet during the first half of the 20th century was E.J. Pratt (1882-1964), whose school years successfully mixed academic excellence with a love of partying. Pratt (BA 1911 Victoria, MA 1912, PhD 1917) loved the combination so much that he once sold a gold medal he received for scholarship to pay for one of his famous “stag parties.” After graduation, he taught at Vic until the early ’50s. Legend has it that prospective college hires were vetted at Pratt’s house. The poet would ask worthy candidates to start a fire with pages from Pratt’s own thesis. If they hesitated they didn’t get the job.

Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996) experienced little of the collegial atmosphere Pratt revelled in. After winning a literary contest in second year, she found herself shunned. Literary clubs at the university were still the province of men, and women writers were not widely accepted. Livesay (BA 1931), who published her first book of poetry, Green Pitcher, in 1928 while at U of T, became one of Canada’s most highly regarded poets.

Forty years after Livesay, another uncompromising woman poet arrived at the university. Dionne Brand (BA 1975 Erindale, MA 1988 OISE) moved to Toronto from Trinidad in 1970. Poet, novelist and community activist, she won a Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1997.

Dennis Lee (BA 1962 Victoria, MA 1965), who is beloved for his children’s works, especially Alligator Pie, arrived at U of T in the late ’50s uncertain whether to become a United Church minister or a magician. He took an interest in Acta Victoriana, Vic’s student literary magazine, and in 1958 became one of its managing editors. He and Margaret Atwood wrote satirical pieces together for Acta under the pseudonym of Shakesbeat Latweed.

PAINTERS
Hart House has always played a leading role in the development of Canadian art. Among those who displayed their work there was Lawren Harris (1885-1970), who arrived at U of T in 1903 but did not graduate. Harris was more interested in sketching in his notebooks than working on his studies. On the recommendation of one of his math professors, he soon left for Berlin to study art. He later became leader of the Group of Seven and had a seminal influence on modern Canadian artists.

A direct line might be drawn from the Group of Seven to another grad known for her expressive landscapes – Doris McCarthy (BA 1989 Scarborough). As a teacher, McCarthy in turn influenced and inspired scores of young female artists, among them Joyce Wieland. McCarthy returned to school in the 1980s to study literature and earned her degree at age 79.

Two other well-known artists, Charles Pachter (BA 1964 UC) and Robert Bateman (BA 1954 Victoria), attended U of T 10 years apart, but a lot can happen in the space of a few years. Bateman, clinical and controlled, and Pachter, flamboyant and irreverent, reflect different artistic planets, not just different decades. Acknowledged for his realistic scenes of animals in their environment, Bateman received training as a naturalist at the Royal Ontario Museum after attending U of T. Pachter drew inspiration from Toronto’s bohemian artists, writers and musicians during the ’60s. A former classmate of Margaret Atwood, he has collaborated with her on many projects.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was considered by other students to be either “rather shy” or “one of the most egotistical students … ever.” However he was perceived, Billy King (BA 1895 UC, LLB 1896, MA 1897) was mostly unsuccessful in getting elected to university associations. As a freshman, the top student sent some of his poetry to The Varsity. Associate editor Stephen Leacock decided it had no literary merit and sent it back with a rebuke.

Oronhyatekha (1841-1907) was likely the first native to get a medical degree in Canada (MB 1866, MD 1867). As supreme chief ranger of the Independent Order of Foresters, he travelled the world promoting its egalitarian message and his Mohawk heritage.

The first woman to graduate from medical school in Canada, Augusta Stowe Gullen (1857-1943), became an expert in pediatrics. Shy and sensitive as a teen, Gullen (MD 1883 Victoria, MDCM 1887 Trinity) needed all the courage she could muster to register in the “great friendless halls” of the male- dominated institution. She carried on, although “wet lashes closed her eyes on many nights.” Gullen was active in the suffrage and temperance movements and helped found the National Council of Women in 1893.

Political activism motivated Norman Bethune (1890-1939) from an early age and twice interrupted his medical studies at U of T. The first break was in 1911-12 when he joined Frontier College to teach workers in the bush; the second was in 1915 when he served with Canadian forces in France. He finally earned his medical degree in 1916. His dogged devotion to political causes would later make him a hero in China. His yearbook entry summed up the way he lived his life: “Born – 1890. Lived – First Canadian Contingent. Death – Predicted, but date unknown.”

Known as “the mother of birth control in Canada,” Marion Powell (1923-1997) was a pioneer in women’s health and family planning. Powell (MD 1946, Dip Public Health 1962) was one of only four women in her class when she entered medicine in 1941. In 1966 she helped found the first public birth-control clinic in Canada in Scarborough, Ont.

Rev. Susan Mabey (BA 1975 Victoria, MDiv 1980) won an important court decision in 1988 that the United Church could not bar homosexuals from the ministry solely on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Trained as a social worker, William Thomas McGrath (1918-1999) fought for social justice reform in Canada. An opponent of the death penalty, McGrath (BSW 1947, MSW 1948) was instrumental in the debate that finally ended public executions in this country.

WORLD AT THEIR FEET
Some who arrived from other shores, like writer Austin Clarke (BA 1959 Trinity), remained to enrich our nation, while others, like those below, used the expertise they gained here to improve their homeland.

Dame Nita Barrow (1926-1995), who graduated with certificates in public nursing in 1944 and nursing education in 1945, returned to her native Barbados to work as a health planner. She served her country as ambassador to the United Nations and finally as governor general. Some credit Barrow, the first foreign official to visit Nelson Mandela in jail, with helping to convince South African authorities to free him.

Syringa Marshall-Burnett (BScN 1967) earned certificates in hospital and public health nursing in 1962 and 1964. She is president of the upper chamber of Jamaica’s Senate and an educator who advises the World Health Organization on nursing.

In June 1999, Vaira Vike-Freiberga (BA 1958 Victoria, MA 1960) was elected president of Latvia and became the first female head of state of a former Soviet republic. Known in her native country as the philosopher president, Vike-Freiberga is an expert in Latvian folk culture.

Noor Hassanali (BA 1947 Victoria) was a prominent lawyer and respected Supreme Court judge as well as a two-term president of his native Trinidad and Tobago.

Chao-Shiuan Liu (PhD 1971) was appointed vice-premier of Taiwan in 1997, following a distinguished career at the National Tsing Hua University.

NUTS ABOUT NATO
The careers of three remarkable graduates converged with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Escott Reid (BA 1927 Trinity) worked from 1946 to 1949 as chief aide to then foreign affairs minister Lester B. Pearson to help shape the defence alliance. Hume Wrong (BA 1915 UC), Canadian ambassador to Washington, drafted parts of the NATO treaty in 1949, while George Ignatieff (BA 1936 Trinity) served as permanent representative to NATO during the ’60s. Although all were estimable students, there was little in their pursuits at U of T to foreshadow their enormous international impact.

MESDAMES
Adrienne Clarkson (BA 1960 Trinity, MA 1962) became Canada’s governor general last year, but it was her work as a CBC broadcaster that made her a household name. Clarkson arrived with her family in Canada from Hong Kong in 1941 in the wake of Japanese invasion. As a student, she was sensitized to politics as vice-president of the Students’ Administrative Council and head of St. Hilda’s College.

Margaret Norrie McCain (BSW 1955) was lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick from 1994 to 1997. A noted philanthropist, she is particularly known for her work in fighting family violence. She and her husband Wallace have established a chair at U of T in child and family studies.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

Jennie Smillie Robertson (1878-1981) was teaching school in rural Ontario early in the last century when she began saving money for tuition at Kingston’s Ontario Medical College for Women. (In 1906, during her second year, the college was absorbed into the University of Toronto’s medical school.) She graduated (MB 1909), but no Toronto hospital would accept female interns, so she was forced to go to a Philadelphia institution. When Smillie Robertson returned to Toronto in 1911 she was one of the first women in Canada to perform surgery, albeit in a private home because of the difficulty in finding a hospital that would sponsor her. No wonder she worked earnestly to help establish Women’s College Hospital and the Federation of Medical Women of Canada. She was the first woman to do major gynecological surgery in Canada.

The first black Canadian man to become a doctor was Anderson Ruffin Abbott (MB 1857). After graduating, he departed for the US to join the Union Army during the American Civil War. After the war, he opened a practice in Chatham, Ont. and became coroner of Kent County in 1874. He died in Toronto in 1913.

In 1939 Canadian soldiers were prepared for combat – down to the teeth – thanks to Brigadier Frank Melville Lott, director general of the Canadian Dental Corps. Lott (DDS 1923, BScD 1930, MScD 1936, PhD 1940) brought dentistry to the front through mobile clinics – trucks with their own water and electrical supply, X-ray and folding dental chair. “No army was ever so fit from a dental standpoint,” said a dental journal in 1945.

Stella Tate (1922-1999) was a pioneer in the field of occupational therapy in Canada. She established the OT program at Toronto’s Hugh MacMillan Rehabilitation Centre during the ’60s and 10 years later helped develop Ontario’s first home-care program, allowing patients in need of therapy to be treated at home. Tate began her string of firsts after graduating from U of T in 1942 with a diploma in occupational therapy. She was hired as a civilian typist with the Royal Canadian Navy, but was promptly commissioned as a lieutenant and became the navy’s first occupational therapist.

Alice Klein (BA 1975 Woodsworth) co-founded Now magazine, Toronto’s alternative news weekly, in 1981. Her involvement in progressive politics began during the ’60s while she was still in high school. She launched Velvet Fish, a feminist publication, in 1970.

Maureen Kempston Darkes (BA 1970 Victoria, LLB 1973) is president of General Motors of Canada Limited, as well as one of Canada’s most visible business leaders. She studied history and political science as an undergraduate, then went on to U of T’s law school where she met her future husband on their first day of classes.

Arthur Irwin (1898-1999) was an ardent nationalist who shaped the definitively Canadian point of view of Maclean’s magazine. While at Victoria College, he played a little shinny and attended dances, where he met his future wife (in the early ’20s dancing was still taboo on campus, and Vic mixers had to be held off campus). After his third year in 1920, he was hired as a full-time reporter at Toronto’s Mail and Empire newspaper, but managed to continue his studies. Irwin (BA 1921 Victoria) joined Maclean’s in 1925 and, following a 25-year stint there, he headed the National Film Board, then served in Canada’s diplomatic corps.

After graduating from U of T in natural science, Willet Green Miller (1866-1925) became Ontario’s first provincial geologist. His pioneering work in applying science to prospecting opened up Ontario’s north for mining and led to the first precious-metal mines in Canada. Miller (BA 1890 UC, MA 1897) received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the university in 1913.

George Klein (1904-1992) was a mechanical designer whose interests were astoundingly diverse. He worked on projects ranging from wind tunnels to gunsights, but is best known for leading the team that built the first atomic reactor outside the United States at Chalk River, Ont., in 1944-45. An active debater at university, Klein (BASc 1928) is said by many to be the greatest mechanical design engineer this country has ever
produced.

Raymond Moriyama (BArch 1954) is one of Canada’s most accomplished architects. Among his major works are the Ontario Science Centre and Toronto’s Metro Reference Library. He also designed the Bata Shoe Museum, at the northern edge of the campus at the corner of Bloor and St. George.

Ted Rogers (BA 1956 Trinity) is probably the only law student to moonlight by running an FM-radio station he had just purchased. Rogers, who shared classes with Peter Gzowski and Stephen Lewis and later studied law at Osgoode Hall, now heads one of the world’s largest cable television holding companies.

Dame Rosanna Wong Yick-ming (MSW 1979) has had a distinguished career in Hong Kong as a top-level administrator. A member of the island’s executive council, Wong played a prominent role during Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997. She is currently head of the housing authority and active as an advocate for children’s charities.

As executive chair of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, Philip Yeo (BASc 1970) helps plan the economic future of the Asian nation. He has been instrumental in fostering trade and development links with other nations and, as the first chair of Singapore’s National Computer Board from 1981-1987, spearheaded the island’s passage into the information age.

FLYING HIGH
Few grads reached the heights as often as Elizabeth “Elsie” Gregory MacGill (1905-1980). MacGill was the first woman to receive an electrical engineering degree in Canada (BASc 1927) and the first woman in North America to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering (at the University of Michigan in 1929).

MacGill may have inherited her soaring spirit from her mother, Helen Gregory MacGill, who was Trinity College’s first female graduate and one of Canada’s first woman judges. (The elder MacGill was Trinity’s first female student in 1883, but not the first woman to try. Before MacGill, Emma Stanton Mellish tried to gain admission by passing herself off as a man, but was refused when her real gender was discovered.)

For more than 50 years Elsie MacGill built aircraft. She helped design and supervised production of the Hawker Hurricane, and her Maple Leaf II trainer is likely the only plane completely designed by a woman. Sadly, as a result of polio, she couldn’t fly her creations, but she always joined the pilots on test flights.

Two other high-flying U of T grads, Paul Dilworth and Winnett Boyd, earned their bachelor’s degrees in engineering in 1939. Together they developed the Chinook, Canada’s first jet engine, in the late ’40s. Boyd was head designer, while Dilworth was manager and chief engineer on the project. In 1948, at the age of just 31, Boyd became the youngest person ever awarded the U of T Alumni Medal for excellence in engineering.

THE IRON RING CEREMONY
Herbert Haultain (1869-1961) was educated at U of T (SPS Dip 1889) and, after inventing new techniques to mine ore, returned to the university in 1908 as a professor of mining and engineering. It was while teaching that he developed the ceremony used to induct engineering graduates into their profession. During the proceedings, participants receive an iron ring, which must be worn on the little finger of their working hand. Haultain contacted Rudyard Kipling to write the engineers’ creed and a poem for the ceremony. The ritual, first performed by U of T engineers in 1926, is administered by an independent body known as The Corporation of the Seven Wardens.

A U OF T CORNERSTONE
Vincent Massey (1887-1967) was a distinguished civil servant and diplomat, as well as our first Canadian-born governor general, but a single project he completed while still a young man likely had a greater influence on many Canadians than his later accomplishments: his building of Hart House in 1919. Massey (BA 1910 UC) conceived Hart House as a place where students (officially, until the early ’70s, only male students) could gather and explore extracurricular interests. Previously, there was no dedicated place for students to socialize, debate issues or pursue the arts. The theatre and music programs at Hart House helped to establish the careers of scores of international stars, including Donald Sutherland, Teresa Stratas and Kate Reid, not to mention Massey’s own brother Raymond, who became one of Canada’s most famous actors. Over the decades, the House speaking series enabled students to hear figures as diverse as singer and socialist Paul Robeson and Senator John F. Kennedy. Hart House has opened the worlds of culture and ideas to generations of students.

THE GREENSPANS
It’s not unusual for siblings to attend the same university, but few have shared the success of the Greenspans – two brothers and a sister who make justice their passion.

Edward (BA 1965 UC) and Brian Greenspan (BA 1968 UC) both knew in high school that they wanted to become lawyers – like their father Joseph (BA 1939 UC) – but Edward’s path to law school was nearly blocked while he was studying for his undergraduate degree.

After taking his savings (a pocketful of pennies, nickels and dimes) to be traded for crisp bills at a student snack bar, Greenspan found himself being interrogated by police as a suspect in a coffee-truck robbery and being told not to leave town. The misunderstanding was soon cleared up, but the incident instilled a lasting sense of the importance of justice in the former president of the UC Lit, University College’s student council.

Although Brian and Edward maintain separate practices, they occasionally work together and are recognized among their peers as exceptional legal practitioners. Their high-profile clients include Garth Drabinsky, Alan Eagleson and former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan.

Their sister Rosann (MA 1973) also chose a career in justice. A criminologist in Washington, D.C., she’s the research director of the Police Foundation in the national capital.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

When Caroline Macdonald (1874-1931) decided to enter the math and physics department of U of T, she demonstrated her determination to go places others thought she shouldn’t. In her second year she entered an essay contest sponsored by the political economics department and shocked the other contestants, all male, by winning. She earned her bachelor’s degree from University College in 1901, but turned down an offer to do graduate work in physics. Macdonald went on to establish the Young Women’s Christian Association in Japan and initiated prison reform in that country. She was the first woman awarded an honorary doctorate by U of T, in 1925.

It was perhaps during his days as a political science student that the Rev. Bill Phipps (BA 1962 Victoria), moderator of the United Church of Canada, first found his calling. Phipps later took part in civil rights marches in Chicago during the ’60s and eventually decided against his planned career as a lawyer.

Robert Rumball (BA 1952 Victoria) is executive director of the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf in Toronto and has worked for years to improve conditions for deaf people in Canada. Rumball was a halfback for the Varsity Blues football team and later played for the Toronto Argonauts and Ottawa Rough Riders.

As the head of the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control, Wendy Cukier (MA 1981, MBA 1986) has spent more than 10 years fighting for more stringent gun laws. When she began her efforts following the shooting deaths of women engineering students at Montreal’s l’Ecole Polytechnique, she had no political experience. Today, the coalition she heads is credited with creating an effective lobby for better gun-control laws in Canada.

A champion of the underdog, Anne Golden (BA 1962 UC, PhD 1970) has demonstrated her ability to deal with divisive public issues. During the late ’90s, the chair of the United Way of Greater Toronto headed the Greater Toronto Area Task Force and the mayor’s task force on homelessness.

Since 1992, Toronto lawyer Julian Falconer (BA 1984 Innis) has appeared at inquests into the deaths of four schizophrenic men. His efforts have publicized the needs of mentally ill people and prompted coroners’ juries to recommend safeguards for them.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM
Two unusual grads have been driven by their love of the natural world to work towards building a healthier planet.

When social worker Kerry Bowman (MSW 1987, PhD 1997) isn’t examining the links between health and culture in Toronto, he works with the African Gorilla/Chimpanzee Protection Project to save primates in central Africa.

Two decades before Bowman stepped on campus, Monte Hummel (BA 1969 Victoria, MA 1970, MSc Forestry 1979) became energized by the fledgling environmental movement on campus and helped to found Pollution Probe in 1969. He is now president of World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

Frederick Banting (1891-1941) enrolled at U of T in 1910 to study general arts and immediately produced marks so dismal he was told not to return. He managed, however, to convince the university senate he was worth a second chance. He was granted conditional acceptance to medical school (due partly to the fact that there were few applicants), where he was better known for his rugby prowess than his academic skills. He graduated (MB 1916), served in France, then later developed his surgical techniques at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. In 1922, working with U of T colleagues, Banting developed insulin. During his lifetime he was considered the most famous living Canadian. Indeed, his fame was such that he received mail from around the globe, including a letter from Denmark addressed simply to: “Professor Bentin, Esq., Inventor of Serum against Sugar Disease.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897-1972) enrolled at U of T in 1913, but when war broke out he was one of the first students to enlist. Hit by a bus in London in 1917, he returned to Canada to complete his studies. An all-round athlete, Pearson (BA 1919 Victoria) played football, basketball, tennis and hockey and was elected president of the Union Literary Society. Later, he was chancellor of Victoria College from 1952 to 1959. Canada’s foremost diplomat, he developed our basic post-war foreign policy in the late ’40s and was prime minister from 1963 to 1968.

Novelist Margaret Atwood (BA 1961) chose Victoria College because she was told it had a professor named Northrop Frye, and “if I knew what was good for me I should go there.” Frye and another Vic teacher, Jay Macpherson, greatly influenced her early poetry. Atwood first met poet Dennis Lee, who attended Vic at the same time, at a first-year mixer. She also worked with Donald Sutherland (BA 1958 Victoria) on plays at Hart House Theatre, where her drawings graced the covers of theatre bills.

Canada’s first female astronaut, Roberta Bondar (PhD 1974) flew on the NASA space shuttle Discovery in 1992. A medical clinician and researcher, Bondar, who studied at the Mississauga campus while at U of T, has focussed her research on the human nervous system and inner ear balancing. Canadians undoubtedly will remember her, however, for her ability to articulate the beauties of space.

Barbara Frum (1937-1992) was one of Canada’s foremost journalists, known for her pointed CBC interviews with foreign leaders. Like the Mounties, she didn’t give up until she got her man. When she began university, however, she was cautious about the one event that could get in the way of graduation – marriage. During her first year, 1955, it wasn’t unusual for women to be engaged by spring and leave university immediately after marriage. “All the girls here are getting married, it seems,” she wrote her family. “Every day we hear about someone else. I know of at least 10 girls from Soc. & Phil. getting married in May.” Unswayed, Frum completed her BA in history at University College in 1959.

Peter Gzowski’s fractured time at university is best viewed as a journalism career interrupted by studies. He left the campus for periods to be a reporter at the Timmins Daily Press and the Toronto Telegram and in 1957, still a few credits short of his degree, he left school for good to work at a paper in Moose Jaw. The future host of CBC’s Morningside found time during his final two years at U of T to edit The Varsity. Among his year (“the class I didn’t graduate from,” he calls it) were businessman Ted Rogers and politician Stephen Lewis.

Johnny Wayne, born Lou Weingarten (1918-1990), and Frank Shuster had almost more names for their comedy duo than skits. They performed at U of T as Weingarten and Shuster, Shu and Lew, Frankie and Johnny and finally Wayne and Shuster. As English graduate students in 1941, they were hired by local radio station CFRB after making a splash in the UC Follies. Shuster, who completed his BA at University College in 1939 (Wayne graduated in 1940), later joked that although both of them worked on The Varsity, the fact that neither became editor drove them into radio. By 1954, the funnymen had moved from radio to television and widespread success.

THE WARS
The 20th century’s two great wars were periods of massive disruption. The post-war impact was equally profound on campus, especially after the Second World War, when Ottawa funded tuition for veterans and enrolment exploded. Writer Morley Callaghan referred to those who returned from the war as “men in a hurry.” The changes the wars produced have become so familiar it is easy to lose track of how they happened. The memory of two U of T war heroes, however, will help ensure that we never take for granted those who fought and those who never came back.

Every Remembrance Day we think of poet John McCrae (1872-1918), author of “In Flanders Fields.” McCrae (BA 1894 UC, MB 1898, MD 1910) wrote his famous poem in 1915, while waiting to treat wounded soldiers. He died of pneumonia in 1918, age 46.

Major Fred Tilston (1906-1992) won a Victoria Cross during World War Two for gallantry while leading his company against overwhelming German opposition. Alone and wounded three times, he held a key position from which the Allied forces later launched further attacks. After the war, Tilston (BPharm 1929) returned to Canada to work as a pharmacist and later headed a large drug company.

Research by Rebecca Caldwell.

Sod-turning ceremony in 1904 for Convocation Hall marked one of the first and finest achievements of the UTAA.

Naturally upset, Loudon immediately wrote to Chancellor Edward Blake in England, complaining about the “spirit of secrecy” and “conspiracy” that characterized this affair. But the timing was all wrong for Blake to come to Loudon’s aid: Blake had just sent the university an irrevocable letter of resignation, effective immediately.

“The counsel I failed to get from Mr. Edward Blake,” Loudon wrote in his unpublished memoirs, “I received from my wife [Julia], who on [Blake’s] resignation being received, advised me forthwith to appeal to the graduates and form an Alumni Association.” Taking the advice of his wife, he managed to save his job, but of more lasting importance to the university he established the alumni association, now a century old. Its founding is described by university historian Stewart Wallace in his 1927 book, A History of the University of Toronto, as “the greatest constructive feat” of Loudon’s administration.

The turn of the 19th century was a time of hope mixed with despair. The first issue of The Varsity in the 20th century referred to a “revived spirit in university life” and predicted brighter days in store. Financially, matters could not have been much worse. For four years, the average total university income had been about $125,000 a year, of which the government contributed only $7,000. In contrast, American public universities, as Loudon (and most future presidents) pointed out, were much more generously funded. The University of Michigan, with state financial support, spent about $500,000 annually.

Loudon’s (and Mrs Loudon’s) plan to unite the university’s 10,000 alumni was timely. After all, it was the graduates who had saved the university in the 1860s from the designs of the denominational colleges that wanted a share in the endowment. Perhaps alumni could turn things around again.

Of course, other important forces were at work to help create the organization. Toronto graduates living in Ottawa, where many worked for the federal government, had formed a strong local group in 1894 and wanted a wider association of graduates, similar to the University of Michigan Alumni Association. An organizational meeting was planned for the Easter break in April 1900, at a time when the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, which included a large number of Toronto alumni, was meeting in Toronto.

More than 200 people met on a rainy April evening in the chemistry lecture hall, the largest meeting place on campus. Loudon was elected honorary president of the organization and Dean R. A. Reeve its president. Reeve was a good choice, being the dean of medicine, a graduate of University College, and – of importance to Victoria College – a Methodist. Moreover, he had an interest in putting pressure on the government for a new medical building. The secretary of the association was John McLennan, a physicist, who was effective and full of contagious enthusiasm – and who wanted a physics building. A number of women were elected to the council, including Gertrude Lawler, a graduate of University College and the head of English at Harbord Collegiate.

In the beginning, the association cast a wide net, including graduates and undergrads as well as those who had attended for only a term. Members were organized on the basis of local branches. By the end of the first year of operation there were 17. In the summer of 1903, Loudon and McLennan travelled west to meet alumni and were surprised at how many Toronto graduates they found. In Edmonton, for example, where they expected perhaps half a dozen, they met with 35. McLennan also used the occasion to promote graduate studies wherever he went, hoping that westerners would come to Toronto rather than go to the United States.

By June 1904, there were 33 branches, 23 of them in Ontario. In its first year, the association instituted the annual gathering of alumni at the June graduation exercises. Four hundred alumni attended a banquet in the gymnasium the night before graduation. There was a garden party on the front campus after the graduation and a moonlight boat cruise on Lake Ontario in the evening. No doubt, sitting through convocation in the examination hall of the old engineering building helped persuade alumni that a proper convocation hall was required to replace the one destroyed in the University College fire of 1890.

The first real test of the new organization’s strength came in early 1901, when the association lent its support to the university’s plea for more government funding for science and engineering. What was needed, the university had been arguing, was general support and a new building. Loudon complained that the government was starving Toronto, the state university, while generously supporting Queen’s, a denominational university, with funds for a science and engineering school. One of the reasons for a demand for engineers was the opening up of Northern Ontario. The Globe predicted that “the wealth in the forest, in mineral deposits, in the wasted energy of great waterfalls … is certain to be developed as the world’s demands and discoveries of science make such development remunerative.”

The alumni association made an appointment to see Premier Ross to back the university’s case for support. The meeting was attended by 300 graduates from 18 Ontario counties and took place on March 13, 1901 – one week after a group of 200 engineering students had helped pave the way by personally delivering a persuasive petition to the government outlining why funds were required.

Premier Ross listened but made no promises. He was worried about the political consequences of giving too much support to what many considered an elite group. “I think that the University question is the most dangerous one we have taken up this session,” he wrote to a cabinet colleague in 1901. “Although our followers will stand by us, I am quite uneasy as to the effect upon the country.”

Ross was also being pushed by the leader of the Conservatives, James Whitney, who, the evening before the alumni meeting, had given a major address in the legislature. In it he promised that his Conservatives would give greater financial support to the university, and he suggested an annual payment to U of T from provincial succession duties. If the province does not do something, he predicted, “our young men will go elsewhere for higher education.”

The meeting with Premier Ross was followed by swift action. Exactly a week afterwards, the government introduced a bill that went a considerable way towards meeting the university’s requests. The government would pay all of the annual salaries and other costs of the science departments. The university would also get a new building – the present mining building on the north side of College Street – at a cost of about $200,000, which would more than double the space available for engineering.

The association had further success in promoting construction of the present Convocation Hall. The initial plan was to raise $25,000 from the alumni to build a hall in memory of those who had fallen in the Fenian raids and the Boer War, but plans kept expanding. Eventually the government agreed to contribute another $50,000 if the alumni could raise a similar amount. The sum was raised and the cornerstone of the present Convocation Hall was laid in June 1904. Modelled on the Sorbonne theatre in Paris, the building seats 2,000 people.

Another building owes its existence to the alumni association – the physics building, known today as the Sandford Fleming Building and home to engineering students. Early in 1904, members of the association had sought another interview with the premier, but Ross was reluctant to meet them. Eventually, he met with 300 alumni, backed up by a student petition with 1,400 signatures. The delegation reminded Ross that “the next election might turn on the treatment accorded to the University and its alumni.” A little more than six months later, in the midst of an election campaign, the government announced that it would pay for the new physics building at a cost of $180,000. Perhaps the government thought this grant would help their chances of re-election. But fresh political winds were blowing.

In January 1905, after more than 30 years of Liberal rule in Ontario, the Conservatives, winning 69 seats to the Liberals’ 29, formed the new government. Whitney, now the premier of Ontario, carried through with his pledge to help the university financially and increase its ndependence. Clearly the new association of alumni had proved its worth in its first five years.

University Professor Emeritus of Law Martin Friedland is author of The University of Toronto: A History (U of T Press) published in the spring of 2002, the 175th anniversary of the founding of the University of Toronto. The article above is taken from his work-in-progress.

To both questions, the unequivocal answer is yes. Over the last decade we have devoted much of our energy and our resources to building our intellectual capital. Through rigorous academic planning we have identified our strengths and priorities. We have created a $1.2-billion endowment – the largest endowment of any Canadian university – and the great majority of it is dedicated to student financial support and research chairs, both of which will ensure that we attract and retain the finest minds from throughout Canada and the world. Now the time has come for us to augment those efforts by enhancing the physical setting, the infrastructure, in which these great minds will live and work.

At U of T learning is a contact sport, where the collision of ideas is a daily consequence of face-to-face interaction, debate and collaboration. Quite intentionally, we have designed spaces on our three campuses to facilitate contact that is far from virtual and stridently interdisciplinary – experiential learning that gives rise to innovation and synergies that are as enriching as they are unpredictable. The new student centre at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, the evolving Academic Resource Centre at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, the soon-to-open Munk Centre for International Studies – these are the new brick and mortar foundations of transformative personal and educational experiences. Similarly we are committed to building at least 2,500 new residence spaces to meet our commitment that every entering student who wants one will be guaranteed a bed on campus.

We are also planning major new teaching and research facilities: the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, the centre for cellular and biomedical research, a new building for the Faculty of Pharmacy and the proposed centre for communications and information technology on the Mississauga campus. Each of these projects recently received major – and very welcome – capital grants from the province. Combined with federal, municipal and outstanding private support, the grants will allow us to proceed with our plans and dramatically strengthen our capacity for teaching and research.

At the same time we are working to enhance the overall cohesion and aesthetics of the university with the Open Space Plan for the St. George campus. Here our attention is focussed on the space that connects our individual buildings and creating a campus as a whole. With this plan we will achieve the full promise of our extraordinary physical endowment, an irreplaceable and invaluable gift of place and presence in the heart of one of the world’s most exciting and diverse cities.

The experiences afforded by our university can’t be replicated on computer or over the Internet, but they can be enhanced by information technology. From the library to the classroom to the laboratory, we deploy technology to enrich and extend virtually all that we do. The research university is not for everyone, and there is no doubt a place for the virtual university. But it is not our place. It’s not what we are nor what we should be. Rather we must continue to enhance one of our central strengths – our sense of place – and create a community committed to the daily confluence of people and ideas. In a world of constant change, that is one part of the University of Toronto that should never change.