On this day in 1973, the University of Alberta was considering its future space needs and the future of North Garneau.
When the University of Alberta was founded in 1908, it consisted of 45 students on the third floor of Queen Alexandra School. There was a spirited debate on whether its permanent home should be in Edmonton or Calgary. In the end, the province picked on neither, selecting instead the city of Strathcona. Four years later, the university would become an Edmonton institution when the two cities merged.
Political manoeuvring was an issue even before the university built its first building. The province's education minister resigned during early construction. His replacement was less willing to open the public purse for the project, so construction paused. The U of A convinced the government to pay for a student residence that contained temporary classrooms.
Athabasca Hall was constructed in 1911 and practically housed the entire university — dorms, laboratories, and a library included. University leaders were so worried about funding they decided to spare the expense of making the building fireproof. Instead, they opted to make it out of "wood of the type known as slow-burning," says an alumni story on the building's history.
The Faculty of Medicine was founded in 1913, just in time to help coordinate the flood of physicians and nurses from Alberta who went overseas in the First World War. At one point, half of the province's physicians were part of the war effort, most of them mobilized through the U of A.
The 1920s saw more growth with the addition of the Faculty of Education. But expansion stalled for the next couple of decades, due to the Great Depression and the Second World War. The post-war years meant rapid growth, a result of a growing population and a greater emphasis on higher education. In 1960, the U of A expanded with a new campus in southern Alberta, which would become the University of Calgary a few years later.
As more faculties were added, the need for space increased. The 1973 task force on physical planning was just one of many mechanisms the U of A used to plan for its future needs. (The head of that task force, William Thorsell, went on to work at the Edmonton Journal before spending a decade as the editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail. His decision to live an openly gay life during that time is credited with helping shift public opinion on homosexuality in Canada.)
Government austerity and cutbacks saw a slowdown of construction of the U of A campus during the 1990s and early part of this century. Recent years have seen several new buildings going up in recent years. However, the university says its current plans focus more on renovating and refurbishing existing buildings. That comes with its own issues and concerns, as shown by the recent controversies over plans to demolish buildings like the Mactaggart Mansion or relocate the century-old Ring Houses.
This is based on a clipping found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.