Over the next several decades, Hart House productions introduced Toronto audiences to challenging fare that would launch the careers of such major stars as William Hutt and Charmion King (profiled here), who went on to help establish a national theatre in Canada.

Building on the success of Hart House, Robertson Davies helped create the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama at U of T in 1966. The University College Drama Program followed in 1975. Now graduates of those programs, such as Daniel Brooks, Kristen Thomson and Sky Gilbert (all profiled here), are emerging as architects of a new era in Canadian theatre.

Today, Toronto is North America’s third largest theatre centre – due in no small part to Hart House, often called the cradle of Canadian theatre, and U of T’s drama programs. Last year, Hart House Theatre launched an $8 million campaign to support the artistic endeavours of the next generation of theatrical talent. The campaign is helmed by some of the best of recent generations of U of T grads: Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels (BA 1966 UC) and actor Donald Sutherland (BA 1958 VIC) are co-chairs, while director Norman Jewison (BA 1949 VIC) serves as chair to the theatre’s Council of Patrons.

But don’t imagine “one of Canada’s most controversial artistic forces” – as his Web site immodestly describes him – wearing the stereotypical tweedy jacket of an academic. The flamboyant co-founder and former artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times, the world’s largest gay theatre, is wearing fire-engine-red pants topped by a bright yellow poncho. He makes a bold visual statement but shakes hands surprisingly tentatively.

Gilbert is now the artistic director and producer of The Cabaret, a company that produces his works (The Birth of Casper G. Schmidt, The Emotionalists, Schubert Lied). He claims to be seeking more of a private life these days and enjoying the relative anonymity of the classroom, although his provocative web site (home.istar.ca/~anita/) gives an entirely different picture, including one of Jane, his female drag persona. This past July, Jane was filmed on Yonge Street talking with World Youth Day pilgrims and confronting religious hypocrisy and homophobia, two of Gilbert’s favourite targets.

But one on one, Gilbert is far from confrontational; in fact, he has an odd habit of closing his eyes while he’s talking, and doesn’t often make eye contact. When asked if he had to pick one persona that fits best, Gilbert says it would be the writer’s. “I think I always knew that but I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” he says. The publication of his first novel, Guilty (Insomniac Press, 1998) – an extremely scatological but funny, fast-paced monologue by a gay guy – solidified his authorial claim.

He’s currently writing a book, tentatively called Neverland, about a key relationship in the life of Peter Pan’s creator, James Barrie, someone he feels is a “kindred spirit to my aesthetic.” In 1910, the wealthy Barrie became guardian to five brothers, and exchanged daily letters with the fourth boy, Michael, for years. In 1921, at the age of 20, Michael drowned, and the almost 2,000 letters were later destroyed. The challenge that Gilbert has set himself is to imagine the contents of those lost letters.

In the meantime, Gilbert turned 50 in December. He ignored his arthritis, threw a party and dressed in drag to celebrate. He prefers not to dwell on the aging process, declaring that “It’s not necessary to be an old person.” Hmmm. Sounds a bit like Peter Pan.

It’s not clear whether Gilbert will still be wearing the academic persona when he turns 60, but one thing is sure: “I’m always going to have that bent to read and write and learn new things,” he says. Keep your eyes and ears open for the next persona.

Seated at the kitchen table in her downtown Toronto home, Thomson laughs heartily at that first acting gig. She shared the box with “a guy named Adam Nashman,” and the two used to munch cookies and doughnuts while peering at the play and waiting to emerge. “It was crazy, but I absolutely loved it,” she says.

Thomson, now 37, has been called one of the finest new actors to hit the Canadian stage in a decade. In the past two years, she has won three Dora Mavor Moore Awards: two for I, Claudia, a solo drama she wrote and performed, about a lonely 12-year-old girl upset by her parents’ divorce.

Theatre was far from Thomson’s mind when she entered U of T in 1985, intending to earn a degree in English and politics. Then, in her second year, a tragic event shattered her world. “My best friend was killed in a car accident,” Thomson explains flatly. She wandered through the school year in a grief-stricken state. “Life is…” she begins, but the words trail off. Setting down her coffee mug, she rubs fingertips against thumbs as if trying to seize every bit of sensation from each nerve ending. “You can feel how important it is,” she finishes.

Dissatisfied, Thomson changed her major to drama and literary studies. The decision wasn’t entirely whimsical, she says, since she’d long felt drawn to acting. She recalls lying on the theatre floor during a warm-up not long afterward: “I did have a very strong feeling, almost like a presence descending – OK, this is where I belong.”

That the theatre is Thomson’s natural home is not disputed by anyone who has enjoyed her performances. Since graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal in 1993, she has played a variety of roles, including a pot-smoking flirt in Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water and a seductive beauty in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

Live theatre remains Thomson’s passion, but lately she has taken on some film work. In September, she joined Canadian director John Greyson in South Africa to film Proteus, a fictionalization of an interracial, homosexual love affair between two prisoners in the early 1700s. Thomson plays the governor’s wife in the movie, due to be released this year.

Looking ahead, Thomson would like to write another play, keep working on new Canadian plays and maybe someday take on the role of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. She may have started off inside a box, but the future holds no such boundaries for this alumna.

The 44-year-old director and writer has a lot of questions about the role of art in what he calls an “anti-intellectual world.” He’s considering a few plays he might direct next, all the while questioning his role in theatre; he’s contemplating a move into television, while questioning its impact as an artistic medium.

And these days, Brooks is even questioning himself: “I feel that I’m sort of remaking myself.” Still mulling over the Siminovitch prize, awarded to a mid-career director, playwright or designer who has made a significant contribution to Canadian theatre, he says, “It’s a major event in one’s life. I can’t just say, ‘Oh, that’s great,’ and move on. It changes the psychic landscape, how one is perceived.”

The Toronto-born Brooks admits to performing an elaborate, high-angst dance with destiny every time he chooses a project. “I spend as much time thinking about what work I might be doing as actually doing it,” he says during a chat in his sparse office at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, where he is artist-in-residence. “Some might call it neurotic, even puerile, but I worry that decisions made now will have an enormous impact on the future.”

Indeed, Brooks’ decisions sent a charge through the Toronto theatre scene in the ’90s. He has been a key creator with two of the city’s most exciting theatrical companies: the Augusta Company and da da kamera. Emphasizing a collaborative and experimental creative process, the companies produced critically acclaimed work (Here Lies Henry, The Soldier Dreams and 86; An Autopsy) and helped nurture the talents of Don McKellar and Daniel MacIvor, both prominent actors/writers/directors. Brooks emerged with an enviable reputation (Dora Mavor Moore and Chalmers awards) as a director and co-writer of complex, ideas-driven pieces that engage audiences emotionally. Yet he remained steadfastly – one might even say stubbornly – dedicated to independent theatre.

“For me, every project has to be different or it will fall inside conventional boundaries,” says Brooks, who initially enrolled in sciences at U of T, then switched to UC’s drama program. “Originality can only happen when one begins with the love of individual expression and allows it to lead to collective expression.”

It’s a time-consuming process that Brooks finds increasingly difficult to pull off in the cash-starved theatre system and the current social climate, where “everything is bottom line.” But he questions a move into TV, where there’s more money. “My theory is that social activism on TV is self-defeating because it creates the illusion of action. The viewer has already experienced the act by watching TV, so it undermines the will to engage in public life.”

Do I risk asking another question? Brooks laughs. “I’ve always struggled with the point and reason for things. That’s an ongoing struggle.”

The day after being tied up with the Queen, King welcomes me into the elegant downtown Toronto penthouse she shares with Pinsent. Dressed in a black pantsuit that contrasts with her stylish shock of short white hair, multi-hued eyeshadow and intensely red lipstick, King looks every bit the grande dame she is. Seated in front of a wall of family photos and a grand piano that she used to play, she lights a cigarette and recalls her childhood and the years at U of T that were her entry into acting.

Born in 1925, King grew up an only child in Toronto’s tony Forest Hill. She remembers wanting to act from the age of five, adding candidly, “I probably didn’t like myself very much.” At her private girls’ school, she was often cast in male roles in theatrical productions. There was no drama department during her years at U of T, but Robert Gill, an American actor from the Cleveland Playhouse, headed the Hart House productions. “He was an enormous influence in my life,” recalls King. “He taught me professional behaviour as an actress.” In 1947, she played the title role in Saint Joan at Hart House Theatre in a performance that the Globe and Mail called a “luminous portrayal.”

In a country that’s famous for ignoring its stars, King has performed constantly over the past half-century – with the exception of the 10 years following the birth of her daughter in the mid-1960s, when she stayed home. She has mastered every medium: stage (including Stratford), radio, TV and film. You’re as likely to recognize King’s voice as her face: she played the comical Mrs. Gruenwald in a CBC Radio series called Rumours & Boarders (1992-98). “My part was so funny, I could not wait to get to the studio,” she says.

On TV, King was Aunt Josephine, the crusty but kind-hearted aunt in Anne of Green Gables. Recently, she played Maria in Soulpepper Theatre’s Uncle Vanya by Chekhov. Chekhov is her favourite playwright because of the richness of his subtext, of what he leaves unsaid. “Plays are some of our best literature,” she says, always eager to credit the writers who give her the lines.

Now 77, does King imagine retiring? “No, I don’t,” she says firmly. “Being an actor is something like being at university. It opens your mind and your soul and makes you tap into yourself.” Are there any roles she hasn’t played that she wishes she had? After a brief pause, she says, “Ophelia.” It’s obvious why no director ever cast her as the frail female who loses her mind in doomed Denmark: she has too much strength in that powerful voice of hers.

Yet for all the exaltations, they still missed something – let’s call it the puckish, teasing charm of a long-awaited Canadian spring. And at age 82, Hutt still has it.

In an interview about his 50 years as a leading man at the Stratford Festival of Canada (King Lear, Prospero, Richard II) and a distinguished star in Canadian film and TV (James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Sir John A. Macdonald in The National Dream), he laces his pauses with equal doses of drama and irony. “I get recognized in the most unusual places. When I stop to get a hamburger on the side of the highway, I’ll get a note stuck on my windshield: ‘Keep up the great acting.’ That’s really wonderful – the recognition, not the hamburger.”

But perhaps Hutt’s greatest delight is that he became a star in a country that had few professional stage opportunities. Now Canada has an expansive professional theatre system: Stratford is recognized internationally, and Toronto is North America’s third-leading theatre city. “Theatre in Canada and my career seemed to progress hand in hand,” he says.

After serving five years as a medic in the Second World War, Hutt enrolled at Trinity College and soon discovered Hart House Theatre. He became part of a golden circle of emerging theatrical talent that included Ted Follows (BA 1959 UC), Eric House (BA 1950 UC), Charmion King (BA 1947 UC) and others. “We all wanted to be professional actors,” says Hutt. “I don’t know where we even got the notion.”

After graduating in 1948, Hutt went to work in summer stock for $5 a week. He joined Stratford in its inaugural season in 1953 and made a decision to stay in Canada and support the country’s theatre. “I saw this hemorrhaging of talent across the border,” he says. “If everyone left, we would never have a cultural picture in this country at all. I felt that I should stay and do what I could. And once Stratford started, what better circumstances could I find myself in? I had continuous work. I was associated with the greatest playwright in the English language and with a company that produces his plays with love, passion and a good budget.”

Hutt has also appeared on and off Broadway, in London’s West End and in theatres across Great Britain, but he has stayed true to his first commitment. “It has been wondrous to see all this expansion in the past 50 years,” he says. “Now there’s a great deal of huffing and puffing that Stratford will strangle on its own success. But no theatre will die of success.”

As for himself, Hutt says, “I may cut down what I do at Stratford. I’ll still do bits of TV and film, to keep the wolf from the door. Sometimes small roles are more rewarding. You can slip in, steal a scene and then go home.”

The telescope is called BLAST – for Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Sub-Millimetre Telescope. A NASA balloon will hoist BLAST into the stratosphere next year, an event for which Netterfield, a professor in U of T’s department of astronomy and astrophysics, has already spent a year preparing. Because the university lacks the kind of high-ceiling facility that such an instrument needs, he had to settle for the brewery, with its leaky roof, rusting support columns and complete absence of temperature control. What’s more, the building, like so many others in the now trendy “west of SkyDome” neighbourhood, is about to metamorphose into condominiums – and the developer gave Netterfield a mere two weeks’ notice. BLAST was already scheduled for shipment to a lab at the University of Pennsylvania for final preparations; now, with eviction imminent, that move will have to come sooner.

But Netterfield and graduate students Carrie MacTavish (MSc 2000) and Don Wiebe (MSc 2001) have made the best of their no-frills workspace, plugging in space heaters in the winter and electric fans in the summer. “It’s been far from ideal,” concedes Netterfield, “but it gets the job done.” Overhead, the giant pipes that once carried grain for the brewery poke out of the ceiling; a blue tarp protects the computer workstations from the elements. As the months passed, Netterfield’s unconventional laboratory grew on him. “I think it’s aesthetically rather nice,” he says, “in a weird kind of way.”

The brewery-lab may seem low-tech, but BLAST itself – a joint venture with scientists from the United States, Mexico and Britain – will be state-of-the-art. As we walk around the BLAST gondola, Netterfield explains the role of each component: the two-metre concave mirror, an array of detectors, a computer and an assortment of gyroscopes and flywheels. Soon, the whole machine will be circling the globe at an altitude four times that of Mount Everest. It will give scientists their first detailed look at the early universe in the barely explored “sub-millimetre” wavelengths – longer than waves of infrared light but shorter than microwaves or radio waves. It will be able to hold its aim to within four arc-seconds – equivalent to aiming at a dime half a kilometre away. With 288 individual detectors, BLAST “will be the biggest sub-millimetre array on any telescope to date,” Netterfield says. “I really hope it’s going to revolutionize the field.”

Netterfield and his colleagues have high hopes for BLAST, but the project is merely the latest chapter in the new and compelling story of modern cosmology, a discipline that explores how the universe we see today evolved from the primordial fireball of the big bang some 14 billion years ago. It is a mind-boggling transformation: back then, the universe was indescribably hot, dense and nearly perfectly smooth; today, it is enormous, cold and full of structure. Back then, it was a soup of subatomic particles and pure radiation; today, it contains stars and galaxies, planets and people. Astronomers and physicists at U of T are helping to piece together this epic tale – and, incredibly, they’re beginning to attach precise numbers to theories that were little more than conjecture just a couple of decades ago.

Those numbers, known as cosmological parameters, include quantities such as the age of the universe, its density, its expansion rate and its total energy content. Fitting those numbers together into a cohesive cosmological picture also requires a strong theoretical framework. That framework rests on the big bang, of course, but also on a refinement of the basic theory: developed in the early 1980s, it is known as inflation. According to inflation, the universe underwent a brief spurt of exponential growth in a minuscule fraction of a second after the initial explosion. Physicists believe that during that brief moment, tiny fluctuations in the fabric of the early universe inflated into the seeds of the first structures to develop in the cosmos. So far, inflation appears to be spot-on: it seems to predict exactly the values that astronomers are now measuring for those cosmological parameters. “We really have a very, very strong case that the basic paradigm is working,” says Richard Bond, the director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), headquartered at U of T.

And yet the cosmos continues to surprise us. Physicists have learned that the universe is awash in bizarre entities such as dark matter and dark energy – entities that inflation can accommodate but not explain. “Obviously, there’s a tremendous amount of euphoria that things are working as well as they are,” Bond says of inflation’s success. But, he observes, “instead of sitting back and resting on our laurels, we have to do a remarkable amount of new work.”

You might think that all evidence of the big bang must have long since vanished. Surprisingly, though, it’s all around us, if only we know where to look. Turn on your TV, disconnect the cable and tune in one of the in-between channels: about seven per cent of that “fuzz” is from radiation produced by the big bang. That radiation, which astronomers call the CMB, for cosmic microwave background, was discovered by accident in the mid-’60s; it appears as a “glow” that seems to radiate from every direction in the sky. Astronomers now recognize the CMB as the microwave “echo” of the big bang – a burst of radiation released when matter and energy first went their separate ways, about 400,000 years after the initial explosion.

That all-sky glow holds a treasure trove of information about the early universe, and no one is more skilled at teasing that data out of the CMB than Bond, a leading authority on the physics of the microwave background. (Bond won two prestigious awards in 2002: he received the Heineman Prize from the American Institute of Physics, and was elected to the Royal Society of London – an honour that, he jokes, is “still rarely given to scientists from the colonies.” Currently at the California Institute of Technology, he is in the midst of a busy sabbatical year that will later take him to Paris and Cambridge, where he’ll confer with some of the world’s top cosmologists.) Over the past few years, Bond and his colleagues have worked on a series of ground-based, balloon-borne and satellite-based telescopes designed to probe the microwave background in ever increasing detail – and they’ve used that data to piece together a remarkably detailed picture of the early universe.

The structure of the microwave background began to show itself in the early 1990s. At that time, the COBE satellite (Cosmic Background Explorer) mapped the largest of the faint “ripples” in the CMB, which appear as subtle differences between its “hot” and “cold” regions. A decade later, a balloon-borne telescope known as Boomerang captured more detailed views of the CMB. (The telescope circled the globe – hence its name – above Antarctica, and will fly again this winter. Netterfield leads the project’s Canadian contingent.) Using data from Boomerang, scientists were able to determine the “power spectrum” of those ripples in the CMB – essentially finding the intensity of the ripples as a function of how large a swath of sky they cover. The shape of that spectrum again seemed to match perfectly the predictions of the inflation model. (The Boomerang data also agreed with data from two U.S. experiments, known as DASI and Maxima, reported at about the same time.) Recent experiments, including the Chile-based Cosmic Background Interferometer – in which U of T scientists again played a leading role – reveal even more detailed structure in that spectrum. A Toronto team is also helping to plan a European satellite known as Planck, to be launched in 2007; Planck will map the CMB across the entire sky in minute detail.

Physicists are thrilled to have the first high-resolution images of the microwave background radiation, and they’re glad to see those cosmological parameters being pinned down. But they admit that the numbers seem to describe a peculiar, highly counterintuitive universe. For starters, only about five per cent of the energy content of the universe is in the form of “ordinary” matter – the kind that makes up stars, planets and galaxies. About 30 per cent is tied up in “dark matter” – non-luminous and detectable only through its gravitational effects. The bulk of the universe – some 65 per cent – is “dark energy,” a mysterious entity of unknown origin that fills the entire universe.

And yet, scientists are gradually learning to navigate this peculiar cosmos. Beginning this winter, astronomers will use the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) to map the distribution of dark matter in unprecedented detail. The project, known as the CFHT Legacy Survey, will reveal the subtle bending of light from distant galaxies as it passes massive objects en route to Earth. This bending – astronomers call it “gravitational lensing” – was predicted by Albert Einstein and has already been observed in numerous deep-sky images. The CFHT survey will be the first to use gravitational lensing to systematically hunt for dark matter and record its distribution.

“Our survey will be directly mapping where it is and what it is doing,” says CITA cosmologist Ue-Li Pen. Peering deeper than any previous survey of its kind, the CFHT will show where the dark matter is lurking. “Dark matter is not as dark as it used to be,” Pen jokes. Yet the actual makeup of the dark matter remains unknown. The survey will show where it is, he explains, but not what it’s composed of. The best guess, he says, is that most of it is made up of exotic, ultra-heavy particles produced in the big bang. Smaller amounts may be due to neutrinos – tiny particles whose mass is nearly, but not quite, zero – or to primordial black holes.

Dark matter may be weird, but dark energy is even stranger. It’s the name astronomers have given to the mysterious force that seems to be pushing every galaxy away from its neighbours. The case for dark energy has been building since the mid-’90s, when observations of supernovas in distant galaxies showed that those galaxies weren’t just receding, they were accelerating. The recession by itself is not surprising; the big bang gave every galaxy a “push,” which we still observe. But gravity ought to be slowing those galaxies. What could possibly be causing them to speed up? At the moment, the best explanation for the acceleration is something called the “cosmological constant” – a kind of anti-gravity force first put forward by Einstein in 1917. (He introduced it as a fudge factor in his theory of gravity, known as general relativity, adding the term to his equations to make sure they described a “static” universe. When astronomers discovered a decade later that the universe wasn’t static but was actually expanding, Einstein lamented the fudge as his “greatest blunder.” If the universe really is accelerating, however, Einstein’s cosmological constant may be resurrected.)

Scientists speculate that the cosmological constant might result from the “vacuum energy” of empty space – an energy field created as countless subatomic particles wink fleetingly in and out of existence. “I certainly find it very weird,” admits Pen. “Maybe next year we’ll have a new Isaac Newton coming along and giving order – giving a single picture in which we can understand all [of these phenomena]. Maybe there is no dark energy. Maybe it’s a mental crutch we are using to describe something much more profound. That, I think, would be a very exciting possibility,” says Pen.

Inflation has been an invaluable theory, but it is probably not the final word. Ultimately, physicists would like to see a theory that embraces Einstein’s relativity as well as quantum mechanics – the two pillars of modern physics – in one unified framework. If they’re lucky, the new theory will explain the mechanism behind inflation, as well as the nature of dark energy.

So far, the leading contender is a framework known as string theory – an outgrowth of particle physics in which matter and energy, at the deepest level, are thought to be made up of tiny, vibrating strings (or perhaps multi-dimensional membranes), billions of times smaller than an atomic nucleus. String theorists, including U of T physicists Amanda Peet and Kentaro Hori, have been working closely with cosmologists such as Bond and inflation expert Lev Kofman, also at CITA, in an effort to see what evidence for string theory can be found in observations of the early universe. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) – Bond is one of its directors – is also playing a key role. Thanks to the efforts of Bond and his colleagues, this nationwide think-tank now boasts one of the world’s top cosmology and gravity programs. The resulting cross-fertilization of ideas has been enormously beneficial to all parties, keeping the astronomers up to speed on the latest theoretical studies, and keeping the theoreticians focused on ideas that can actually be put to the test. Such collaborations “are exactly what makes a bridge between string theory – early universe theories – and cosmological observations,” notes Kofman. “We are always asking, ‘What are the signatures of early universe physics in present-day observations?’ ”

Will string theory eventually revolutionize our view of the early universe? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, cosmologists are enjoying the current golden age, in which both theory and experiment are leaping ahead at breakneck speed and much of the universe’s 14-billion-year history is beginning to make sense. That success is especially impressive when we remember that cosmology is one of the youngest of the sciences – much younger than either astronomy or physics, from which it emerged less than a century ago. “It’s quite an exciting period,” says Bond, “with remarkable experimental efforts converging with grand theorizing.”

Back at the former Molson brewery, meanwhile, Netterfield is preparing BLAST for its move to Pennsylvania. The two graduate students, MacTavish and Wiebe, are busy dismantling computer equipment and rolling up cables. On this day, they don’t seem particularly sad to be vacating the Molson building. The garage-style doors are open, and the remnants of Hurricane Isadore are battering the parking lot outside. I ask the two students how they explain to people that they go to a brewery each day when they’re supposedly working on their PhDs. “I’ve had a lot of interesting comments,” MacTavish admits. And what happens when her friends discover that she’s building a high-tech telescope rather than perfecting a new kind of beer? Then, she says, they’re even more intrigued. “Telescopes and beer,” she reflects with a grin. “Does it get any better than this? I don’t think so.”

Dan Falk’s first book, Universe on a T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything, was published this fall by Viking (Penguin) Canada.

But, of course, that’s probably not a question you’ve ever had to face. Most people in this too busy world never get around to learning ancient Greek, for the good reason that it’s very demanding, and for the less good, but still persuasive, reason that it’s not overly practical. When, from some desire to become brilliant and far too original, I enrolled in Introductory Greek – back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth – there were eight people in my class. Four of us survived to the final exam, which was so intimate it could have been held at my kitchen table.

Greek 100 was far and away my most enjoyable university course, which is not surprising since it completely took over my life. Greek is like that – it’s a language of passion and beauty and intoxicating wisdom – and when I finally accepted that I couldn’t make a living reading Thucydides on the timeless agonies of war, I also realized that something extraordinary was about to start slipping out of my world.

We mean well. We put our university texts on the bookshelf, the ones that opened our minds and gave us pleasure in the bargain, and we vow that we’re going to keep up our studies – which quickly becomes a vow to get back to our studies, which all too soon turns into boxes of books quietly disappearing into the basement and mid-life acceptance that we’re not who we thought we’d be.

Not so fast, I kept telling myself. If you can take time to flip through the TV channels on a nightly basis and complain ad nauseam that there’s nothing on, surely you can make room for a little Plato. And that is how, at 7:30 on a cool Thursday night in early November, I found myself sitting at a long table in the Classics library on St. George Street rediscovering my inner Socrates.

There were 20 of us gathered round the table in the book-lined room, far more than I’d ever encountered in an undergraduate Greek class, and the fact that we were all talking together represents one of the more admirable achievements of the University of Toronto. In official terms, this was the Greek reading group of the collaborative program in ancient and medieval philosophy. In a much more flexible, much less officious reality, this was the Greek philosophy after-hours club, a sort of academic speakeasy for that community of fanatics who want – and need – to read ancient Greek.

By the standards of the average class or seminar, this was a remarkably diverse crowd: it included a number of seriously eager Classics and philosophy graduate students, a retired professor or two, academic pilgrims from McMaster and Waterloo, a bookseller, a librarian, a wayward classicist masquerading as a journalist and a retired diplomat named Don Waterfall, who confided to me, “It’s a nicely rounded group. In the academic world, unlike the professional world, you can have respect for people of very different ages.”

I’d been told there was even a veterinarian who showed up from time to time, but on this night he was evidently off tending the sick and mangy. Still, what I saw around me was an ideal image of learning that Socrates would have approved of: young sat by old, specialist mixed with non-specialist and town blended with gown. Presiding over this symposium (a word that is much more fun-loving in the original Greek) were two extremely good-natured University of Toronto professors: Doug Hutchinson from the department of philosophy, and Classics chair Brad Inwood, who started the original version of the group in his home almost two decades ago.

“You’ve got all these high-powered professors in there,” post-doctoral fellow Monte Johnson told me with still palpable enthusiasm after we’d collectively parsed and puzzled our way through pages of Plato’s Protagoras, “and yet everything’s up for dispute – there’s no official version. Reading these texts on your own can sometimes feel like decoding a puzzle, but in this environment, you get a much better feel for Greek as a living language.”

I had experienced a strong sense of that 2,400-year-old vitality as we were working our way through the conversation that Plato recreates between Socrates and his designated victim, the pompous professional educator Protagoras. When describing Protagoras, Socrates uses the highly ambiguous word deinos – its meanings can range from “terrible” to “clever” to “wonderful.” One of the hipper professors in the crowd suggested translating it as “wicked,” pointing out helpfully, “You know, the way teenagers use the term.” There were a few instinctive snorts from the younger element in the room. “Yeah, 30-year-old teenagers,” someone said with a laugh.

Banter is an essential part of the Greek reading group, but so is a rigorous devotion to the meaning of the text – classicists aren’t big on long-winded theorizing. “It’s an exhilarating experience,” said Inwood, almost as a statement of the reading group’s principles. “You can’t get the philosophical ideas clear until the problems of the Greek get solved. It’s a huge amount of fun, but it’s fun achieved with brains, which is largely what we’re supposed to be doing.”

For the students who make up roughly half the gathering, the sense of fun is paramount. “That’s what’s so cool about it,” said Rob Butler (BA 1992 Victoria, MA 1996), who is working on a PhD in Classics. “It’s what the ancients had in mind when they talked about philosophy. Instead of one person lecturing and everyone taking notes, you’ve got a lively discussion where everyone has a voice.” When the official session broke up around 9:30 p.m., the debates about what Socrates was really up to simply adjourned to the Graduate Students’ Union pub, another thing the fun-loving Greeks would have approved of.

For the reading group members from the wider community, the opportunity to put the brain through some much-needed calisthenics is as important as the good times. “Greek is a great leveller,” said Donald Smith, manager of Atticus Books and a man renowned for bringing in an Arabic translation of Aristotle to help with some tricky passages. “But there’s a sense of power that comes from a knowledge of these things. You feel like you have a kind of leverage on the world.”

I wasn’t too sure of my power after a two-hour workout with Socrates. But as much as my Greek muscles ached, the long-lost pleasure was palpable, particularly after the second pint at the GSU pub. If this is what the Greek philosophers meant by fun, nothing was lost in the translation.

John Allemang (BA 1974 Trinity) is a writer for the Globe and Mail.

“My teacher said that Riel was some kind of madman, and she presented a version of history that was absolutely disgusting. I never have been shy and I don’t know what I said to her, but it probably wasn’t very nice,” Teillet says, laughing at her young, feisty self.

Four decades later, Teillet is still taking on anyone who denigrates Riel or denies the rights of the Métis. But these days, she does it as a prominent Aboriginal rights lawyer who has a more sophisticated approach to political disputes. While much of her practice at the Vancouver- and Toronto-based firm of Pape & Salter involves First Nations people, Teillet maintains a special interest in Métis issues. Since graduating from the Faculty of Law in 1994, she has worked tirelessly to assert the Métis people’s constitutionally entrenched Aboriginal rights, using a mix of litigation and negotiation. Last spring, she received the Law Society of Upper Canada’s first Lincoln Alexander Award – created in honour of Ontario’s former lieutenant-governor – both for her legal successes and for her contributions to the Aboriginal community as a mentor and teacher.

Teillet’s highest-profile case, which is ongoing, involves her defence of Steve and Roddy Powley, two Métis men charged with unlawfully hunting moose in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in 1993. In 2001, the Court of Appeal for Ontario not only upheld two lower court rulings confirming the Powleys’ Aboriginal harvesting rights, but made the strongest legal statement to date about Métis constitutional rights in general and the government’s role in recognizing and affirming these rights.

The Ontario government is appealing that decision, so Teillet expects to be defending the Powleys again in the Supreme Court early this year. “We could not be in a better position to go to the Supreme Court,” she says. “We won three really beautiful judgments in all the courts below.” Beyond the harvesting rights issue, she hopes to see the court set out a framework for Métis rights – which would be a great boon to her work and a great victory for her people. “We cannot resolve all the Métis issues on the first case, but we can get a good start,” she says.

Teillet grew up in St. Vital, Man., where Riel spent part of his childhood. Much of her large extended family lived nearby, and political discussion and activity were her family’s lifeblood. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t aware of, and proud of, her heritage. “I think it was just part of my breathing,” she says. “I grew up thinking that you were Catholic, Métis and Liberal. I didn’t know you had choices in these things.”

Teillet did, however, add one more piece to this tripartite identity: modern dancer. “I wanted to dance since I was about three – that’s all I wanted to do,” she says. At the end of high school, she was torn between taking a degree in dance and going to law school; she eventually opted for dance with the idea that law could come later. “I basically decided that you can be a lawyer when you’re 40 but you can’t be a dancer when you’re 40.”

She danced professionally in Toronto, eventually combining performing with writing, teaching, choreography, directing and even some visual art. As she approached 40, she started referring to her dancing as “walking with attitude,” because her body wasn’t as co-operative as it had been in her 20s.

The combination of a family legacy and an idea put on hold led Teillet to apply to U of T’s Faculty of Law. She started in 1991 after being out of school for 15 years, and she doesn’t pretend it was easy. “The first year of law school I felt as if my brain was a rusty tap – it was really hard to get it opened up and moving, and all that came out at first was rusty water,” she says. But once the clear water started flowing, she was in her element and soon shared her success by mentoring other Aboriginal law students.

After graduating, Teillet helped create the Métis Nation of Ontario, an organization that focuses on “nation building” in such areas as economic development and education. The lack of recognition of Métis rights is an endemic problem, not just with governments but with ordinary Canadians, she says. “I think most people think that the Métis died in 1885 when Riel was hanged…. Somehow a whole people died on the gallows with one man.”

Teillet believes Riel ultimately surrendered and shifted the Northwest Rebellion from the field to the courtroom to gain a legitimate forum where he could raise his deep concerns about the Métis being Canada’s forgotten people. But his execution cut off the dialogue, leaving these issues unresolved. “That’s what Riel left undone,” she says. And that’s what she hopes to finish.

Megan Easton is a freelance writer.

It was determined that there should be a plaque to commemorate the visit, and that Massey would make Philip the first honorary senior fellow. Fraser nominated two of U of T’s most distinguished scholars – Nobel Prize winner John Polanyi and Professor Emeritus Ursula Franklin – to pull the gown over the duke’s shoulders. In keeping with the changing times and the prince’s easygoing style, this visit was to be a relaxed and laid-back affair. The guest list was contained to 400.

Meanwhile, U of T journalism fellows (enjoying a year’s sabbatical from deadlines, thanks to a unique U of T study program based at the college) started an underground pool, proposing verbal gaffes Prince Philip might commit during his visit. (As is well documented, the Queen’s husband can toss off a few.) “Do you design tractors here, then?” may well have been a leading contender in the duke speak-stakes as well as a dart at founder Vincent Massey – an anglophile who used his family’s Canadian-made tractor-building fortune to create Massey College and Hart House.

All bets were on when the royal entourage arrived for the 10:45 a.m. ceremony. The sun shone – “at the duke’s bidding,” says Polanyi. Those who could not pack into the quadrangle peered from windows above. Amid the pomp of protocol and circumstance of security, the duke proceeded to delight everyone. He made it seem, as all great royals do, that this occasion, of all on the jubilee junket, was most special to him. Says Polanyi, “He focused on each person and charmed them. People may be skeptical of royalty, but [they] came out for the duke’s visit. It put our young college into the stream of history.”

Indeed, the duke seemed determined not to disappoint anyone – even the pundits. On meeting them, he commented to Fraser that their study year sounded like a holiday, then added, “I guess their victims get a holiday, too.” They were skewered and they loved it.

Then the prince was off. “It was a glorious day,” says Franklin. “Informal, brisk and pleasant for everyone.” Afterward, Fraser ruminated on the point of it all: “It’s a chance to bring people together, to focus on what your institution is about and what it is doing. If a royal visit goes well, it makes people feel better about the institution.”

This Prince Had a Ball
Alas, U of T had to work considerably harder to make its first-ever royal visitor feel good about the university. In 1860, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, embarked on his first royal tour of Canada. He arrived in Toronto on Sept. 7 to streets adorned with flags and decorations and 5,000 singing schoolchildren.

Keen to impress the 19-year-old son of the stuffy Queen Victoria (he would be crowned King Edward VII 41 years later), Trinity University and Knox College treated him to a solemn address of loyalty followed by a divine service at St. James’ Cathedral. The service was delivered by the founder of both King’s and Trinity, Bishop John Strachan, still strong-winded at 82. On a second visit, the university made the young prince endure yet another solemn address, topping it off with what was no doubt a scintillating tour of the Education Department of the province.

That night, however, university officials discovered that Victoria’s boy was eager for a new and considerably lighter era. Having already cultivated a reputation as a playboy and rake back home, the prince took the pulse of the grand ball (held to conclude his U of T visit) – and danced until four in the morning.

This Prince Got Squashed
The next royal visit to U of T suited the style of the guest perfectly: it was a surprise, even to the university. The caller was the young Prince of Wales, who would become Edward VIII, the king who shocked the world by abdicating the throne in 1936 to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson. But this call came well before all of that, when the prince was on a tour of Toronto in 1924 and found himself fancying a game of squash.

After meeting Hart House warden J.B. Bickersteth at a dinner party, David (the name that his family called him) asked if he could pop by the house for a game. The downtown papers were desperate to find out the prince’s morning agenda, but Bickersteth reserved the scoop for The Varsity student newspaper. In Ian Montagnes’ 1969 book, An Uncommon Fellowship: The Story of Hart House, Bickersteth recalls, “I said yes, but the undergraduates would have to be told because the House did not belong to me, but to them. I let our [Varsity] fellows know on the condition that they not distribute their papers until [the prince] was in the House.”

The next morning, the prince held court on the squash courts, playing several games against students – and losing almost every one. No one could guess, however, that the regal ego had taken a dusting. When told that he was about to be mobbed by U of T students on leaving Hart House, the prince, Bickersteth noted, “was delighted, came sauntering down the stairs, and was immediately engulfed by hordes of undergraduates outside the library, down the main stairs, in the hall below, down to his car.”

The warden observed that in the students’ hearts, at least, the prince was a clear winner. “He was at his very best ragging around them. They patted him on the back, and he laughed back at them and behaved simply charmingly.”

But 12 years later, Hart House members and Bickersteth gathered around a radio set to listen sadly as King Edward, who came up a loser in the court of royal opinion regarding his engagement, tossed in the towel.

This King Was Not Sloshed
In May 1939, Hart House would test the mettle of another royal, Edward VIII’s younger brother, the shy and stammering King George VI. He and Queen Elizabeth (parents of the current Queen) arrived for a luncheon in the Great Hall, met by a throng of 12,000 who crowded onto the front campus.

Enduring such a crush would surely warrant a drink, especially for the King, who regularly soothed his nerves by chain-smoking and drinking whisky and soda water, or Moselle, his wine of choice. Though willing to slip a shot or two to the royal tipplers, the university did not serve alcohol at that time, and was reluctant to test rural reaction by doing so. When a Government House official discovered that no one else would be imbibing, he declared, “Then the King can’t either.”

Nevertheless, the duteous royal couple were able to enjoy themselves. Wrote the future Queen Mum via cablegram from the royal train afterward: “The King and I wish to tell you what pleasure it gave us to visit Hart House. We do so appreciate the wonderful work that is being done there and were deeply moved by [the] marvellous reception.” Though no doubt their hearts grew fonder after chugging a tipple or two on the tracks, there’s no proof that the Queen’s missing article was actually a hic.

This Princess Was Hardly Here at All
Twelve years later, Hart House revelled in another 15 minutes of royal fame – literally. On Oct. 13, 1951, George VI’s eldest daughter, Princess Elizabeth (who would become Queen two years later) and her husband, Prince Philip, popped by the House for a visit, following this itinerary set by zealous university registrar J.C. Evans:
12:00 p.m. Enter underpass
12:04 p.m. Proceed around campus and arrive at west door of Hart House
12:06 p.m. Proceed into Hart House
12:08 p.m. Arrive at dais of Great Hall
12:14 p.m. Leave dais
12:15 p.m. Leave steps in front of east door of Hart House

Former U of T chancellor and Governor General Vincent Massey wrote in his memoirs: “I met the royal visitors at the door of Hart House, and conducted them past the junior members of the faculty in the quadrangle into the Great Hall, where senior dons provided a dazzling array of academic colour. A brief speech of welcome, a charming reply from the Princess, God Save the King – and the visit was over.”

No time for a dance, squash, lunch, a tipple or a witty retort. Clearly, Warhol was a bloody fool. Come back, Liz, we say, come back. We hardly know you.

The single most important skill to acquire in the 21st century is “intercultural competence,” according to a recent address by Dr. Juan Ramón de la Fuente, the rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. There is no better place to gain this competence than at the University of Toronto. The annual survey we undertake to monitor accessibility to the University of Toronto asks undergraduate students to describe their ethnocultural background. Fifty per cent identify themselves as visible minorities.

To remain accessible to students of various incomes, we have in place a financial-aid policy that guarantees that no student who is admitted to the University of Toronto will be unable to enter or complete his or her program due to lack of financial means. We provide $30 million in need-based student aid to undergraduate students each year and an additional $8 million in scholarships. We are exploring ways to improve student aid so that our students are not left with unmanageable debt loads upon graduation.

We also continue to engage in outreach programs to communities that are not well represented at the University of Toronto. For example, the president’s office has recently undertaken to work closely with the Pathways to Education program associated with the Regent Park Community Health Centre. Our collaboration is designed to help make the University of Toronto an accessible goal for economically disadvantaged young people living in the Regent Park area of the city, some of whom are at risk of dropping out of high school.

While the diversity of our faculty has been slower to change, we are seeing clear signs of improvement. Of our current faculty, about one in 10 is a visible minority; however, on average, one in four of our new hires over the past three years has been a visible minority, and we expect this proportion to increase over time. In preparation for a turnover of about 40 per cent of our faculty in this decade, we havebeen putting in place supports for our departments to become more innovative and broad-based in their faculty searches. We do not endorse “affirmative action” plans that involve quotas, because the excellent scholars who are visible minorities rightly want to know that they have been hired entirely on the basis of their work, as we well know they deserve to be. We believe that by drawing on the largest possible pool of candidates, by being as inclusive as possible and by proactively recruiting potential faculty members from visible minority cohorts, we will guarantee diversity and excellence.

The University of Toronto is a microcosm of the world itself. In such a multicultural environment, misunderstandings can easily arise. The many tensions that exist around the world can be reflected on campus. I am especially proud of our measured responses to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. As the world faces ever-growing dangers, I am confident that our diversity will help us continue to build a community of tolerance, understanding and respect. As an institution that aspires to be among the best public research universities in the world, we will fulfil our role as a leading university by letting diversity be our strength.