The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Photo: Ron Hewson Doug Letson, President of St. Jerome's College, conceived of and has promoted the idea of the Catholic University of Canada as a collaborative academic undertaking. Letson is the second St. Jerome's president to take an active role in encouraging co-operation among Catholic postsecondary institutions across Canada. Father Norm Choate, Letson's predecessor, served as founding chair of Canadian Catholic Colleges and Universities. Message from the President Have you ever wondered how many Catholic colleges and universities there are in Canada? Have you ever wondered how many faculty are employed by these institutions? And have you ever wondered what would be possible by way of national identity, academic innovation, or service to church and society if one could combine Canada's various post-secondary Roman Catholic institutions, including all of their faculty, into one integrated body? It's a dream of collaboration, influence, and service which I have been mulling over for several years now, and which I have urged my counterparts across Canada to mull over as well. It's a dream whose ultimate realization would be known as the Catholic University of Canada and whose immediate prodigy is about to issue forth as http://usjc.uwaterloo.ca/cccu, the homepage for the Canadian Catholic Colleges and Universities. After some two years of discussion and negotiation, the CCCU home-page provides the first visible sign of the collaborative project. In addition to informing the browsing public of the existence of member institutions across Canada, the homepage introduces the numerous faculty who teach and engage in research at those institutions as well as outlining their various professional academic activities and service to the community. Information such as this may well be of interest to prospective students, to fellow researchers, to the media or the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in search of an expert to provide advice on a particular topic, as well as to countless others who are simply interested in things Catholic. It is also our hope that the cumulative information available on the homepage will draw academics together for purposes of joint research and that it will suggest opportunities for collaborative academic programmes and, possibly, for a collaborative Catholic University of Canada. With this in mind, the Catholic presidents from a dozen institutions across Canada met at St. Jerome's in November to plan future strategies, and in doing so established a committee to develop the first of what we hope will be a number of co-operative courses which we intend to offer on the Net. The first course is planned for the fall of 1999. As a sign of the national nature of the project, the committee consists of Dr. Gerry Kilian, President of King's College in London, Dr. John Thompson, President of St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon, and Dr. Steve Furino, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Studies at St. Jerome's who will provide both the professorial insights and computer know-how to help launch our Catholic colleges and universities into cyberspace. The prospects are exciting indeed, and the potential virtually without limit. A visit to the CCCU homepage makes it clear that the expertise is available nationally for the realization of the dream, and many of us are convinced that some such strategy is essential if we are to retain a Catholic presence at the university level. These are troubled times, times when our future may well depend on our finding new and co-operative ways of doing things. If there is to be a strong Catholic voice in the twenty-first century, we have got to lay the groundwork now. We've got big plans for the CCCU Web site. There, for example, you'll find an employment page listing academic employment opportunities at Canada's Catholic colleges and universities; in addition, if you qualify as a professor in one of our institutions, you are invited to post your qualifications on the faculty page. You will also find the beginnings of our electronic library, a catalogue of public lectures available from coast to coast, and links which will take you to the individual homepages of those Catholic colleges or universities in Canada which are online so you can browse through their academic programmes and familiarize yourself with their various outreach services. On the CCCU homepage, therefore, you will find a dream in the making and documented evidence of a vital Catholic presence at the university level. You will also find a deeply-held conviction that sometimes dreams can come true. On a personal level, it is a satisfying prospect as the countdown begins towards the end of my ten-year presidency at St. Jerome's. A visit to the CCCU homepage makes it clear that the expertise is available nationally for the realization of the dream, and many of us are convinced that some such strategy is essential if we are to retain a Catholic presence at the university level Sometimes, dreams come true Canadian Catholic Colleges & Universities