Thursday 4 October 2012

First University of Calgary would have turned 100 today

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University of Calgary Archives 85.025_01.30_2
The entire Faculty of Arts of the original University of Calgary poses in front of the Carnegie Library (now the Memorial Park Branch of the Calgary Public Library) on the first day of university's operation, October 4, 1912.

The provincial government chartered the institution as Calgary College, but to protect the University of Alberta, it withheld degree-conferring power. The proposed campus in what eventually became the neighbourhood of Strathcona Park was supposed to “make Oxford and Cambridge sit up and take notice.” But it was never built, and classes remained in the library until the college closed in 1915. Many of the male students enlisted in the First World War.

Faculty, from left to right in the front row, included: Dr. Frank H. McDougall; Mack Eastman; Dean Edward E. Braithwaite; Dr. F.C. Ward; and librarian Alexander Calhoun. One notable student, standing second from the left in the back row, is Eric L. Harvie, a lawyer who became one of Calgary’s greatest philanthropists. Some of the students pictured here later enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and were killed in the First World War.

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