What survived is instead, for the most part, a model of elegant simplicity. In honour of its 40th birthday the full text of our charter legislation has just been uploaded to the University Website, at: www.yorku.ca/admin/univsec/index.htm

This, then, is a synopsis of how various competing ideals (and personalities) for higher education that culminated in the 1959 passage of the York University Act were thoughtfully sifted and negotiated over the preceding four years.

The University of Toronto (U of T) initially opposed the idea of a second university in this city. Its leaders clambered aboard the organizing venture late in 1958 with an affiliation proposal, however, after its corporate donors began to suggest scaling back their contributions if two separate universities would soon be approaching them. Les(lie) Frost, Ontario's wily Premier and a longtime political crony of the U of T Board Chair, Eric Phillips, reluctantly signed on to the York idea at about the same time, but with modest support in principle only. He consented to a private member's bill (not a government bill) and the proposed affiliation with U of T, while withholding any commitment towards operating funding support until late in December of 1959. That wasvintage Les Frost. Although several other post-secondary initiatives were inching forward in response to the era's pressing social, demographic, political and economic forces, Frost as their flint-eyed arbiter (in folksy sheep's clothing) refused to let all but a few past the starting gate.

The "Y" Connection

York's original progenitors had been steadily developing the initiative in quiet earnest since 1955. They were based in an organization dedicated to, and experienced in adult education since 1873, yet independent of government and other powerful interests -- the YM-YWCA. Eight American colleges and universities were then affiliated with, or operated by the "Y". Its Canadian track record included a pioneering adult education program that was turned over to U of T in the 1920s, followed by the founding of Carleton College (later University) in Ottawa and Montreal's Sir George Williams College (later University, subsequently part of Concordia). Of the latter's 5,000 students at that time, 85 per cent were enrolled in part-time or evening studies.

The Toronto region had lagged behind in that respect. When in 1955 the Dominion Bureau of Statistics report by Dr. Ted Sheffield, a former Carleton registrar, pointed up the urgent need for a quantum advance in university facilities, this was Canada's only large metropolitan area with just one degree-granting institution. Moreover, despite the "Y" having provided U of T with a running start at adult education so long ago, its record by the 1950s was pitiful. In 1981, York Social Sciences professor and former Atkinson dean, Delmar McCormick Smyth wrote: "In the late 1950s Toronto had the smallest percentage of part-time adult students, as compared with full-time students, proceeding to university degrees of any major university centre in Ontario."

The minutes of the "University Project" or "Organizing Committee," as it was known until adopting the York name in 1958, are preserved in our university Archives along with the fonds of three of its members - Edgar Alberts, Arthur Hackett and Dr. J. Roby Kidd. Along with formal minutes, Hackett and others subtly recorded intimations of the often-conflicting visions that steadily unfolded. After two years of deliberations based at the North Toronto YMCA, the committee in 1957 sought out participation from other organizations that were interested either in part-time adult education or full-time industrial training at the post-secondary level. Some of latter members believed that an educational institution should also be a moral force in defense of the freedoms and socio-political values of western civilization, against the Cold War threat of the Soviet Union. That ideology provided the context for certain draft objectives that crept into the original bill, such as the above-quoted excerpt.

By 1958 the group's leadership leaned toward emphasizing academic ideals -- the personal growth and humanistic values of knowledge, the pursuit of truth through structured learning, application of the scientific method and allied intellectual pursuits - sometimes mocked by opponents as "the ivory tower." They felt that York should soon evolve from a modest launch as a university college into a university devoted to a fully-rounded education in the liberal arts and sciences, including a prominent role in part-time adult education.

The subtext of those themes was to carve a niche distinct from U of T and, more subtly, one based on loftier ideals. Practical corollaries would be put in place to support those ideals. The curriculum, for one, would be broadly based. Smaller groupings of students would enjoy more frequent and meaningful contact with the faculty, as in the Oxbridge and Ivy League models, ultimately to gain broader intellectual horizons and critical faculties. Those ideals survived partly intact when they were joined late in the following decade by a resuscitated occupational training thrust, emerging in the form of business and law schools competing directly with the city's older university and others around the province.

Air Marshall Curtis Gets York Off the Ground

From 1957 the Organizing Committee's chair was Air Marshall Wilfred A. Curtis, Vice-Chairman of A.V. Roe Aircraft and subsequently of Hawker Siddeley. "Wilf" Curtis (1893-1977) was a World War I flying ace who ultimately soared to the pinnacles of the RCAF in the Second World War and business in the post-war era. He quickly and with uncommon dedication became the organizing group's figurative giant, striding through that decade's insulated corridors of power to advance the York vision and see it carried through. He was our only founder to serve with the Organizing Committee, the Provisional Board of Governors (as Chairman of each in turn) and the new University itself as its first Chancellor. It can only be through accidental oversight that his name has not yet joined the pantheon of other leading pioneers after whom colleges and large buildings have been named.

On Nov. 15, 1957 Curtis and two other members persuaded the provincial Education Minister, Dr. W.J. Dunlop, to discuss with his staff and the Attorney General their suggestion of a provincial charter for the proposed, new institution. The organizers also considered the option of incorporating under the Companies Act as an interim step, as Carleton had done in its early stages, but the gathering momentum seemed to render that unnecessary. The following month they began to plan for a strategic brainstorming session to be held with top representatives from related bodies such as the other "Y" colleges, Carleton and "Sir George," as well as U of T and the Canadian Association of Adult Education. They briefly considered dubbing this session a "community consultation" but discarded that prospective literary conceit in favour of calling it a "Round Table."

At the Round Table session on Feb. 8, 1958 Carleton's Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. J.A. Gibson, observed that they had obtained their charter in 1942 via a private member's bill in the provincial Legislature. He urged the York group to seek status as a non-sectarian institution having the right to grant degrees, since the latter provision would ensure qualification for membership in the National Conference of Canadian Universities, hence at least the eligibility for seeking federal and provincial grants. A general consensus was also reached to "concentrate initially in the area of fundamental courses as opposed to applied courses -- a Liberal Arts course."

Roby Kidd brought on Board

One of the external authorities who contributed to the Round Table was the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Adult Education, Dr. J. Roby Kidd (1915-1982), a former undergrad from "Sir George" with a doctorate in Education from Columbia. To the surprise of no one acquainted, at least by reputation, with this soon-to-be distinguished Professor of Higher Education at O.I.S.E. and Canada's leader of that field, Dr. Kidd's wise counsel led to his being persuaded to become a regular member of the Organizing Committee. He brought the adult education perspective while championing with Curtis, committee secretary Alan Clarke and others the broadly-based arts and sciences model. Two years earlier Kidd's paper, "Liberal Education for Business Leadership" had been published in a book of readings entitled "Towards the Liberally Educated Executive."

During the fall of 1958 the organizers decided that the new university's academic freedom would best be served by an arm's-length autonomy from other interested organizations, including the "Y". Nevertheless they were receptive to the aforementioned offer of a temporary affiliation advanced by U of T's Board Chair and President who, along with the Premier, had turned 180 degrees on the question of whether Toronto
needed a second university. At a meeting on Dec. 8, 1958, U of T's President Bissell favoured incorporation for York initially as a university college, later to evolve into a university. By then, however, the organizers favoured immediate university status, and that view prevailed. Both parties agreed that York could assert its independence from U of T whenever it "considered the time desirable and practical." In the meantime U of T would be consulted on academic matters, including the appointments of an academic head and faculty.

With Frost agreeing later that month to pave the way on the fast track for a Private Member's bill, the committee appointed two members, Stanley Deeks and Arthur Hackett, as a subcommittee for drafting its proposed wording. The matter seems to have been substantially delegated to them since there were four other subcommittees then occupying this small coterie of volunteers: curricula, property, facilities and general financing. They did, however, add Toronto lawyer Nick Berry as a short-term legal advisor to assist them with the wording and processing. (Frost's support at that stage was modest to the point of trifling. The Ontario Legislature later invoiced York's Provisional Board for $251.40 as a processing fee - an amount that they could not yet afford to pay. Berry on the other hand, a partner of the McMillan Binch law firm, evidently contributed his services pro bono.)

The bill was a relatively compact 29 sections on 61/2 pages (compared, for example, to the U. of T Act's 129 sections on 50 pages), so it is feasible as well as interesting to consider some of the issues that did or did not arise as it worked its way through the various stages of consideration.

The Founders

Section 2 named the eight members of the Organizing Committee, whose services were continued as the Provisional Board of Governors (BoG) members via s.7. When the first regular BoG was selected by Frost and his Cabinet the following December, only Curtis as our founding Chancellor was asked to continue. Murray Ross put his finger on the situation at the December press conference announcing his presidential appointment and the new Board appointees; viz., that some heavy duty financial arm-twisting was going to be needed: "The major problem involved in starting a second university..." and the "primary condition for success" was "whether a Chairman and a Board of Governors could be found who could mobilize the resources necessary to build a first-rate institution of higher learning."

Indeed, York's board clearly was chosen to address that concern and mirror that of its recently adopted parent university. U of T's Bissell relates in his memoirs that it was "bristling with prominent Toronto businessmen." Still following the older university's lead, whose first and only woman board member (from 1827) had just been appointed in the preceding year, 1958, there was also one woman member, listed as "Mrs. John David Eaton".

York discreetly chose to market its pedigree as an offshoot of U of T rather than the "Y," so the former Organizing Committee and Provisional BoG members (other than Curtis) quickly fell out of public notice and the official record. In the fullness of time the university came out of that closet by honouring five of them with honourary degrees, at our June, 1981 convocation: Alberts, Deeks, Hackett, Kidd and Arthur Margison. Two months later Professor Kidd, an Officer of the Order of Canada, was also named an Honorary Fellow of Founders College.

One of their surviving number, however, missed out on that thoughtful gesture. Roby Kidd, writing with sincere thanks to President Ian Macdonald, went on to express the view that the honorary graduates should also have included the YMCA and Committee Secretary, Alan Clarke, "who had a most important part in organizing the Committee, and keeping the project alive and moving forward." The oversight was duly rectified in 1992 when the university conferred upon Alan Martin Clarke the degree of LL.D. (Hon.).

The Debate over York's Objects and Purposes

The legislation subcommittee originally drafted six grandly proclaimed "objects and purposes," one of which, subsection 3(d), is quoted above. When Nick Berry wrote on Feb. 13, 1959 to his two subcommittee colleagues he pointed out that "it was very strongly suggested by the Department of Education that Section 3 be greatly simplified," which moreover "has always been my own view and I feel that we should now give this matter some more very serious thought." The other objects and purposes that had fallen onto the legislative cutting room floor were as follows: