by Chris Redmond It was more a family reunion than a lecture, really, as Dr. Ken McLaughlin took to the Theatre of the Arts stage last Tuesday to talk about UW's early history, under the title "Dreaming in Technicolor". He even showed snapshots, including one of an oh-so- young Doug Wright wearing a top hat for some formal party, in the days when he was dean of engineering and the university was an island of hope in a sea of snow and farmland. Wright was in the front row of the theatre to see the slides and hear McLaughlin's talk, this year's presentation in the Faculty of Arts Lecture series. And all around him, in the half-filled theatre, were other old-timers -- from Kish Hahn of the systems design engineering department, who took at least one of the photos three decades ago, to Dr. Keith Thomas and Dr. Bill Dyck, pioneers of the faculty of arts. McLaughlin himself, now dean of St. Jerome's College, is no newcomer either. He's been on campus -- first as a student, latterly as a history professor -- longer than anyone else still teaching in the faculty of arts, the audience was told when the speaker was introduced. That translates into his arrival in 1961, when "the arts building" (now Modern Languages) was new on campus and the controversies he spent Tuesday evening talking about were current events, not history. Now they're the material for his next book, the authorized history of the University of Waterloo, which is well started but far from finished. McLaughlin paid tribute to Wright, who talked him into accepting the burden of being "university historian", as well as to university archives supervisor Jane Britton and a host of colleagues, graduate students and other helpers. Much of the material in last week's lecture was taken from previously "closed" files in the archives at UW, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Western Ontario, he said. "This is really rather dramatically new material," he said as told his tale. "The story has all the elements of mystery and intrigue -- but no apparent sex or violence -- including secret meetings at abandoned railway stations!" McLaughlin's lecture last week concentrated on one short period in UW's early history, the year 1958. The tradition at UW is that 1960 was the year of politics and bitterness, as Waterloo College declined to federate with the new university and went its own way, eventually to become Wilfrid Laurier University. But the controversies of 1958 were just as savage, McLaughlin made clear -- and in some ways laid the foundation for what was to happen two years later. The central figure of his story is J. G. Hagey, not yet "Dr." Hagey but plain Gerry, a Kitchener businessman who joined the board of governors of his alma mater, Waterloo College, in the early 1950's, and was already "dreaming in technicolor", as a colleague would describe it decades later. Hagey's dreams brought expansion to the little college, creation of "associate faculties" to teach science and technology, development of the associate faculties into a complete university, separation of the university from the parent college, and the building of what's now the main UW campus on rolling farmland. "It all seems very simple if you put it on a diagram," McLaughlin told his audience last week. "It would become one of the most poignant, convoluted, and emotion-laden issues that could ever come to a community." He made clear that the story begins with the community, and with two community-based colleges: St. Jerome's College, created by Waterloo County's Roman Catholics in 1864, and Waterloo College, founded by Lutherans in 1911. Both had active involvement from local business and professional leaders, he recalled, and both were interested in expansion in the years after World War II. Among McLaughlin's revelations: something new about the plans of St. Jerome's at that period. The Kitchener-based college had explored its chances of affiliating with the University of Toronto, he said, and even with Hamilton's McMaster University, which was just shedding its Baptist identity. In the end St. Jerome's affiliated instead with the University of Ottawa. From his research, McLaughlin said, it's clear that Ottawa had ambitions of being "the national Catholic university" with campuses across Canada, and one such unit would be St. Jerome's. In 1953, the Roman Catholic college moved to its new campus at "Kingsdale", in the east end of Kitchener; there were plans to expand its traditional arts teaching into science and business fields. And at Waterloo College, where Hagey became president in the same year, similar expansion was in the air. Waterloo College, affiliated with the University of Western Ontario, had toyed with moving to a larger site in Kitchener, but under Hagey's guidance decided to stay on Albert Street in Waterloo. That was the place for the growth he had in mind. Said McLaughlin: "There were allegations of deceit, distrust, and even that terrible phrase, 'academic adventurism'." The adventurer was Hagey, who moved fast when he knew what he wanted to do. What he wanted to do was start teaching science and technology -- both because post-war Canada needed people trained in those fields, and because creation of a science school without church ties could bring desperately-needed government funds to Waterloo College. The steps he took are familiar history: meetings of local leaders during 1955 to create the Waterloo College Associate Faculties and decide what to teach. The answer was soon reached: engineering, with a practical bent. McLaughlin had a new part of the story to tell last week. In the spring of 1956, while the paperwork to create the Associate Faculties was still being done, Hagey was already meeting with government leaders to talk about money -- and about the possibility of getting degree-granting powers for Waterloo College or for its new offshoot, independent of any control from the University of Western Ontario. That didn't sit well with Western's president, Dr. Edward Hall. As McLaughlin tells the story, Hall entered into a frustrating correspondence with Hagey, always a step or two behind the Waterloo president's energetic plans, and was soon telling his colleagues at Western that Hagey was hurting Western's reputation. "Gerry Hagey would become the object of a personal vendetta by Edward Hall to have Hagey removed as president," McLaughlin said, calling his steps "ruthless" -- even though a few years later, when UW was an accomplished fact, he would be writing to him again cordially as "Dear Gerry". Said McLaughlin: "Waterloo was moving so incredibly fast that it rather shocked and frightened Western." Other problems soon arose: the practically-oriented curriculum Hagey had in mind for his engineering school looked academically dubious to the scientists at Western, and it was attracting so many potential students that the people behind Western's own newly-created engineering faculty felt frightened. When direct talk had no effect on Hagey, Hall and his colleagues went behind his back to put pressure on the Lutheran dignitaries who controlled Waterloo College. "Secret meetings in the Walper Hotel" in downtown Kitchener -- and presumably the railway station incident, which McLaughlin didn't describe in his talk -- accompanied a power struggle over the future of the college. It's him or us, Hall was telling the Lutherans: get rid of Hagey, or expect to be abandoned by Western with its prestige and its academic credibility. "The deck seemed to be pretty well stacked against Hagey." Then on May 20, 1958, Hagey made what McLaughlin calls "a peremptory strike": he decided to jettison Western before it could jettison him, and asked his board of governors to "reconsider" the affiliation with Western. In effect, he'd be creating a new university. But, McLaughlin revealed last week, it may have been Hall, Hagey's adversary, who unwittingly gave the new institution its name. In one of his letters he suggested that the Associate Faculties get their own degree-granting powers, and that Hagey "should take the initiative in establishing a University of Waterloo". His expectation, of course, was that a new university without Western's backing would fall flat. It didn't fall flat. It was already offering courses -- the first engineering classes began in July 1957 -- and collecting grants from the provincial government, soon amounting to as much as Western itself was getting. The involvement of prominent provincial figures helped. Cabinet minister Dana Porter agreed to be the first chancellor of UW, and when construction started on the new campus, UW's planners and architects were so economical that premier Leslie Frost would ask other universities why they couldn't do as well for so little. Running out of time on Tuesday night, McLaughlin didn't take his story much past 1958, when the new university, still nameless, had bought its 200-acre campus. At that time, he revealed, Hagey was still hoping to keep a connection with Waterloo College, and would have built the science and engineering buildings close to the college's ivied Williston Hall on Albert Street. If that vision had come true, the present campus would cover the Seagram Drive area south of University Avenue rather than lying further west. Early drawings show clearly that the "chemistry and chemical engineering" building, now Engineering 1, was intended for a site on Lester Street, McLaughlin told his audience. Hagey had other technicolor dreams as well: "nuclear reactors, wind tunnels, faculties of medicine . . .". His hope was for Waterloo College to become a federated college of the new university. So confident was he that the plans also suggest a Lutheran chapel at the highest point of the new campus -- roughly at the hill beside the present Dana Porter Library. But conflict within the Lutheran governing bodies, started because of the difficulties with Western, made it inevitable that there would be a rupture between UW and Waterloo College. That came in 1960, when the college's board voted in favour of federation, but was overruled by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Canada. One of the many ironies of the story -- a tale full of ironies, McLaughlin told his audience -- was that Hagey's own "beloved college" pulled out of his new university, but St. Jerome's College did agree to federate. St. Jerome's moved from Kingsdale to the new campus in 1960. Ground was broken on the same day for its buildings and for a new Anglican college, to be called Renison. But that, McLaughlin made clear, is another story -- another chapter in the history he's still writing. * Excerpts from other chapters of McLaughlin's work in progress will be published in the Gazette shortly.