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The plot thickens... Ken McLaughlin's new book tells the engaging story of the founding of the University of Waterloo Religious tension, political intrigue, academic mistrust, financial uncertainty--these are the words University of Waterloo President James Downey uses to describe Ken McLaughlin's just-published book about the founding of the University of Waterloo. "Forty years on, given the success the University of Waterloo has achieved, it may appear that its founding was a simple and natural experiment in work-study education," Downey writes in his introduction to Waterloo: The Unconventional Founding of an Unconventional University. "It was anything but." In his postscript to the book, McLaughlin, a professor of history and former vice-president and academic dean at St. Jerome's College, writes, "When I was first approached and asked to consider undertaking a series of oral history interviews about the founding of the University of Waterloo, little did I realize the adventure on which I was embarking. The idea was both timely and challenging and the project seemed possible. Enough time had passed since the intense emotional division over the separation of Waterloo College (now Wilfrid Laurier University) and its offspring, the Waterloo College Associate Faculties (now the University of Waterloo), that one could hope to achieve a degree of objectivity from the pain and tensions of those difficult years. "As I was trying to explain this new university's history, my daughter Janet, then age eleven, innocently asked, 'Does every city have two universities?' Her question was not without merit. Coming of age in Waterloo it was entirely reasonable for her to assume that every city would have two universities. (If one includes St. Jerome's College, which in 1959 was incorporated as a separate university along with UW, for a moment in time Waterloo had three universities.) Clearly this was a story worth telling." What's remarkable about that story, says McLaughlin, who wrote the book while on sabbatical leave, "is the degree to which the values and aspirations of post-war Canada shaped this new university and its students.... The one idea that stands out is the commitment of then-president Gerald Hagey, the board of governors, the early faculty members, and the students who chose to attend the newly founded Associate Faculties and later the University of Waterloo to create a curriculum and a university education that would be relevant to the lives of Canadians in a rapidly changing world. "Their credo was to establish a university that combined the best in science, technology, and the humanities, setting a course that looked to the future rather than one based on the past precedents of other universities in Canada or abroad." McLaughlin himself was one of those early students. "I first came upon the UW campus as a young high school student," writes McLaughlin in his postscript. "There were two buildings then: Chemistry and Chemical Engineering was one, and Physics and Mathematics the other. My first year as a student in 1961 was spent not in Waterloo, but at the Kingsdale Campus of St. Jerome's College in Kitchener." Not surprisingly, an entire chapter is devoted to St. Jerome's central role in the founding of the University of Waterloo. "By my second year, St. Jerome's had moved its arts program to the UW campus, and the Arts Building (now Modern Languages), with its leaking diamond shaped skylights ever-filled with murky water and the overpowering odour of silicone sealant, the new building and the new campus were almost ready for us. "When I graduated with an Honours Degree in history in 1965 the university library was still shelved on part of the top floor of the Physics and Mathematics building; the library had two microfilm readers, but essays were still reproduced on Gestetner machines rather than by Xerox photocopiers. UW, however, had acquired its first computer. The future was at hand. "What I remember most is that Waterloo was an intensely exciting university, but not without its flaws. That sense of excitement and fascination with the university has remained with me ever since." And though his enthusiasm comes through clearly in his book, it doesn't obscure the story he tells. "Reading Ken McLaughlin is like looking through a clean glass at a clear landscape," writes Downey. "He does nothing to obstruct the view. He simply tells the story with clarity and precision; he lets the people and events he describes speak for themselves." Waterloo: The Unconventional Founding of an Unconventional University can be ordered through the University of Waterloo Bookstore at (519) 888-4567, ext. 2902. University of St. Jerome's College Volume 15 • Number 2 Fall/Winter 1997 Photo: Ron Hewson