Mary Stedman has been a major supporter of the development of post-secondary education in Brantford. She, her family, and the Stedman Foundation have been generous supporters of Laurier Brantford.
Mike Hancock, in the mayor’s office, sits with three student politicians who played a prominent role in the Students’ Union in Brantford: Zachary Mealia, Amanda Flanagan, and Melissa Burke. Mayor Hancock and Mayor Friel were strong supporters of post-secondary initiatives downtown.
The concerns about the future that had motivated the work of the Council on Continuing Education were magnified as Brantford suffered through the collapse of White Farm and Massey Ferguson. As the economy and the downtown spiralled downward, a number of prominent figures promoted higher education as a solution to Brantford’s problems. 5 The most significant initiative was orchestrated by Robert “Bob” Nixon when he served as provincial treasurer. He and his father, Harry Nixon, were a Brant County political dynasty, having represented the region in the provincial government for seventy-two consecutive years. His daughter, Jane Stewart, was part of the dynasty, representing Brant in the federal government. At the apex of her career, she served as a minister in the federal cabinet and was touted as a candidate for prime minister before she was mired in a scandal about the operation of Human Resources Development Canada, an agency in her portfolio. Popular sentiment in Brantford saw her as the victim of a backfired attempt to clean up issues that others had ignored.
The Nixon family had deep roots in Brant County. Their farm, located outside St. George, raised Holstein cattle, a milking breed that played a key role in the development of agriculture in the region. It was St. George and then Brantford that served as the home of the Holstein Association of Canada, which oversaw the propagation of the breed. When Bob Nixon retired, he moved into a small heritage home on the family farm, where he took up painting, producing canvases that won him some acclaim. After his daughter gave up her political career in federal politics, she lived in a different house on the farm, and began commuting to New York City, where she works for an international labour organization associated with the United Nations.
During a long career as an elected politician, Nixon established himself as an influential member of the Liberal Party of Ontario, but found it difficult to interest the provincial government in Brant County. He sighed and rolled his eyes when he told me so. In 1985, after he was re-elected and became the treasurer in a Liberal government, he was determined to do something for Brantford, which was in a state of financial turmoil. In 1987–88 he sent one of his treasury managers, David Trick, to a series of meetings with a local committee interested in bringing a university to Brantford.6 Mohawk College and McMaster University were included in the discussions. Trick was struck by all the empty buildings downtown and suggested that they house the new post-secondary endeavour.
The stage seemed set for a university initiative in downtown Brantford. An influential cabinet minister backed the idea, the local committee was eager to support it, and the downtown was discussed as a possible location. But the possibility was never realized and the trajectory of the discussions moved in a different direction under the influence of Mohawk and McMaster. McMaster was not interested in an independent university in Brantford or a satellite campus. Mohawk viewed the situation as an opportunity to expand but argued that a downtown campus would, like George Brown in Toronto, be landlocked and unable to expand. Others accepted the argument that it would be too expensive to renovate vacant older buildings. Like most of Brantford, the committee had given up on the downtown.
The end result was a proposal that did not recommend a university campus, but a new campus of Mohawk College. As a concession to the idea of a university, Mohawk agreed that it would make arrangements with already existing universities, allowing them to offer programming in Brantford. When the idea of a Brantford university resurfaced a decade later, Caroline Freibauer recounted the discussions:
Back in the 1980s … Mohawk had its satellite campus downtown in the Beckett Building on Colborne Street where adult upgrading and retraining classes were held in six classrooms and a conference room. Other job readiness and retraining courses for women were offered at the YM-YWCA. The Brant-Elgin campus, then called Braneida, was gaining a reputation for industrial training. Nursing programs were run out of the Brantford General Hospital. The next logical step was to unite all these campuses.
Thus a campaign began — the first of several — to bring a full-fledged post-secondary school into Brant, a community with half as many university graduates as the provincial average. In 1987, a $24-million facility was proposed.… By 1988 the price tag for the dream campus had grown to $35 million. At that time, Mohawk’s president Keith McIntyre began negotiating with universities to offer degree completion programs in Brantford.… In 1989, the effort switched to an expansion of the existing campus and the price tag went up again, to $38.9 million.7
In the end, the effect of the Nixon initiative was limited. The provincial government rejected the plan for a new Mohawk campus, which it deemed too ambitious and expensive. As a kind of consolation prize, it provided a grant (of $6.2 million) to expand the college’s operations on its Brantford campus, which was located in a warehouse district away from the downtown.
A number of prominent Brantford figures continued to push for a university. John Starkey was a colourful city councillor in love with Brantford history. He had gained a reputation for speaking his mind, not hesitating to criticize his fellow councillors, the mayor, or the city government. One avid reader of the commentaries Starkey had written for The Expositor told me that he had used Starkey as his “crap detector,” counting on him to illuminate civic issues by playing devil’s advocate.
Starkey was deeply committed to all things Brantfordian and believed in radical reform. In 1994, he ran for mayor on a platform that included a commitment to a university. In his speeches he argued that the money spent on attempts to reinvigorate Brantford’s economy had been wasted, and that tax dollars should be put to a different end: “Brantford needs a university.”8 This position was emphasized in his campaign:
As a community, we should make a commitment to begin raising funds and accumulating assets to enable Brantford to eventually attract or establish a local university. This will make our city more competitive as an attractive place to live, locate, and invest, and provide the option of a higher education to those who cannot afford to go away to school. The importance of leadership is essential to the success of such a crucial project, and so from the Mayor’s 1995 income, I pledge the first $40,000 to establish the “University for Brantford Foundation.”9
Others began thinking of post-secondary education as a solution to the downtown’s problems. One of the problems was the empty downtown mall, a nondescript brick fortress that sprawled over more than two downtown blocks, protecting its interior space from the deteriorating downtown beyond its walls. One city manager I talked to complained that the mall was not “porous” enough to create an integrated downtown. “It functions,” he said, “like a constipated brick in the middle of downtown.” The mall’s fortress-like walls might not matter if it had successfully created a vibrant retail market, but it quickly failed. By the 1990s, it was eminently usable downtown space bereft of stores and customers. In an effort to promote downtown revitalization, a group associated with Mohawk College proposed that the college