Park Baptist Church, beside the Carnegie Library, circa 1900–05. The church was saved from demolition only when the province assigned it a heritage designation in recognition of its unique stained glass window above the vestibule. The building now houses Brant Community Church.
In the midst of these discouraging circumstances, the Brantford Heritage Committee initiated a push in a better direction. In a context in which most of Brantford favoured the demolition of the old buildings downtown, it opposed such action and did its best to save the architectural heritage that could still be found in downtown Brantford. The committee found a way to save Park Church from the wreckers’ ball by securing a provincial heritage designation that prevented its new owner from demolishing the building. The designation was awarded in order to preserve the unique circular stained glass window on the front of the church. With the church saved, at least for the foreseeable future, one could not help but wonder whether the former Carnegie Library, so long a sign of Brantford’s prominence but now quickly deteriorating, might be saved as well.
According to a local story, Winston Churchill bought his cigars in Brantford. Like many urban legends, this one contains some strands of truth. Churchill did go to Brantford. He visited on January 3, 1901, while on a lecture tour he had arranged before taking his seat in the British House of Commons. In the United States he met with President McKinley, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Twain. In Canada, he came to Brantford. You can still see his signature on the registry at The Brantford Club, an exclusive downtown club (for most of its history, too exclusive to allow women members).
Churchill became a serious cigar smoker during a trip to Cuba in 1895. Afterward, he smoked eight to ten cigars a day, so he must have smoked in Brantford. His iconic image as a cigar-smoker was established by a famous portrait by Yousuf Karsh in which he scowls after Karsh has taken his cigar away. In Brantford, Churchill must have smoked cigars. It is possible that he smoked a Brantford-made cigar, but he did not come to Brantford to buy cigars; he imported them from Cuba. The Brantford legend ties together a local visit, a popular image of Churchill that made him the world’s most famous cigar smoker, and one forgotten facet of the city’s manufacturing past: Brantford was once the home of a number of successful cigar manufacturers — the Alexander Fair Cigar Company, S.W. Cornell and Company, Halloran and Haskett, and Bunnell and Busch.
Other local folklore is relevant to the rise and fall, and the subsequent rebirth, of Brantford’s downtown. In the end, the turnaround downtown, which began with the saving of the Carnegie Building, was rooted in the idea that Brantford should have a university. This was an idea that represented a major break from the city’s past. When I went to Brantford and asked why the city did not already have a university, I was told two stories. One attributed the lack of a university to Brantford’s industrial, blue collar past, and, more particularly, to the wealthy owners of Brantford’s manufacturing interests who were said to vehemently oppose the development of a university because they did not want to deal with an educated workforce that might not do what it was told. The second pointed the finger at the provincial government, which was alleged to have rejected Brantford’s requests for post-secondary education in favour of other cities in Ontario — London, Guelph, St. Catharines, Peterborough, et cetera.
When I looked for evidence that might support these accounts, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are, like the story of Churchill buying his cigars in Brantford, the stuff of urban legend. Historically, Brantford’s focus on industry and especially manufacturing made it a city that showed little interest in universities. So as far as I can determine, it was city, not provincial attitudes that made Brantford a place without a university. The historical record suggests that the key attitude was indifference — Brantford had no university because it had, in the course of its history, shown little interest in having one. It was only when the city’s industrial base began to collapse that those who cared about the city showed some interest, but this was too late, long after the government had founded the province’s most recent universities in the 1960s.
Through most of its history, Brantford saw higher education as unnecessary or, at most, a vehicle for technical training. In a study of post-secondary trends in Brant County from 1784 to 1933, Walter Szmigielski argues that this emphasis on practical utility reflects a uniquely American influence on education in Brant County.1 One might debate the view of British and American education he assumes, but it would be difficult to deny Szmigielski’s claim that Brant County adopted a view of education that emphasized vocational opportunities. This is evident, not only in the kinds of educational institutions that operated in Brant County, but in histories of Brantford and Brant County, which show little interest in higher education. The most advanced education that merits comment in F. Douglas Reville’s classic history of Brantford, written in 1920, is industrial classes and technical training.
Historically, the institution in Brantford that most resembled a university was the “Young Ladies’ College” (officially, the Ladies’ College and Music Conservatory). Founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1874, it was established at a sumptuous three-and-a-half-acre property that was owned by the Honourable E.B. Wood before he left Brantford to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Manitoba. The college was well-known, attracting well-heeled students from across the country. It incorporated a Preparatory Department for women under fourteen, and a Collegiate Department that granted teacher and university-level certificates. It was notable also for the quality of instruction and a highly regarded music conservatory. Alexander Graham Bell attended the musical performances. The conservatory continued to operate after the college closed in 1900, and was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario in 1911, but its operations dwindled gradually and ceased in the early 1930s.
The curriculum at the Ladies’ College emphasized the classics, the fine arts, and “elevated” sensibilities: “Through the prominence given to English, the Classics and History, it aimed to cultivate a taste for the reading of a pure and elevating literature which in after years, shall continue to be a source of pleasure and profit.”2 It is not difficult to imagine a sequence of steps that could have turned the college into a university (or a college of a university), but this never came to pass. Instead, the Ladies’ College flourished as a centre of women’s learning and art and music for a quarter century, and then closed its doors. Afterward, the most advanced education available to women (and men) in Brantford was found at the local high school, the Brantford Collegiate Institute.
Brantford’s next endeavour in post-secondary education was a satellite campus of Mohawk College, which opened in 1970. It took applied career training to a higher level but still reflected the city’s focus on vocational education. The quest for a university, which represented a step in a new direction, came later. In a Brantford context, it is tempting to search for the person who came up with the bold idea that the city should have a university. But the truth is more complicated. Over the course of more than twenty years there was a whole cast of Brantfordophiles — citizens, mayors, would-be mayors, councillors, government officials, business leaders, professors, and educators — who pushed Brantford in this direction. Many others opposed their proposals, which went against the grain of history, and they themselves proposed conflicting plans that sometimes came to naught. Their differences notwithstanding, their joint efforts ultimately culminated in the moves that brought Laurier to Brantford.
Lobbying for university education began in 1975. At a time when the local economy was beginning its slide downhill and the downtown was already in a state of shambles, a group of concerned citizens established a Council on Continuing Education. The membership included prominent local figures, among them Mary Stedman, the head of the eminent Stedman family, and Mike Hancock who was destined to become the Brantford mayor.3 Stedman remembers that many outside the group were skeptical of “high falutin’” ideas about higher education. Not