Founders

Artist Harold Town designed the Founders College banner in 1965. The serigraph on nylon (203cm x 37cm) features a "twelve-college" sunburst (York was originally supposed to have 12 colleges) with the University at the centre. Between the design's spurs are stylized figures - a reflection of the arms of the aluminum sculpture above the College's main quadrangle entrance.

Vanier

Jack Bush, one of Canada's leading abstract artists, designed Vanier's banner in 1971. Acrylic on canvas, the forms in this banner which measures 101cm x 80cm - like most of those in his later paintings - are abstract. Bush originally studied at the Ontario College of Art in the late 1920s and had a number of solo shows throughout North America including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles. He died in Toronto at the age of 68 in 1977.

McLaughlin

McLaughlin College's banner was designed in 1968/69 by then-York student Don Cole (BA'70) who also designed the interior of Mac's former coffee shop, the Argh.

Glendon

Glendon's banner was conceived and created in 1963/64 by Glendon medieval history professor John Brückmann, a heraldic specialist, who died in 1982. The dominant pattern in which the colours blue and gold are arranged on the banner is angular. The banner displays two gold diamonds on blue symbolizing "the two founding nations of the Dominion."

Brian Fisher's design for Bethune College, conceived in 1972, consists of three collages, all done with paper mounted on board, each measuring 31 cm x 31 cm.

Stong College's banner was created in 1971 by the former president of the Canadian Group of Painters, Aba Bayefsky. The work (102cm x 33 cm) is silk screen. The abstract manner of the work departs somewhat from his usual style of representational rendering. During 1944/45, Bayefsky was an official war artist. His drawings from those years often featuring concentration camps and their victims continues to have an impact on visitors to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

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Calumet

Calumet College is York's only college which does not have a banner. Instead, the college is represented by a piece of stone suspended inside a wooden ring mounted on a wooden staff. Created by sculptor Mark Adair, in its original form the construction was iron, and the rock much larger, and the whole thing weighed close to 73 lbs! This apparently proved difficult to carry. A note on the sculpture states the design had to be modified (to its present form) in 1981, because "it was a towering symbol" and because "the frequency of summer electrical storms" ­ made the standard a threat to the bearer as a lightening rod. "The Stone...is thought to be an erratic deposition brought to this site by the Wisconsin ice sheet 14,000 years ago. Because of the Stone's antiquity it is argued by many that Calumet is thereby of ancient foundation and should have precedence among similar institutions at York, none of which have more than three decades of tradition," states a biographical sheet on the work.

Greg Wilson, MassCom/pyschology major, Stong College Senior Resident and co-chair of the Stong 30th Anniversary Committee holds the Calumet Rock.

Winters College's banner (203cm x 37cm) was designed by artist Kenneth Lochead in 1968. Born in Ottawa in 1926, Lochead studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He later returned to Canada to make and teach art. Influenced by a summer workshop spent with Clement Greenberg in 1962, he turned to hard-edge colour-field painting. The Winters' banner is a serigraph print on nylon.

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Canadian artist Guido Molinari's design for Atkinson College was completed in 1973. At this time, Molinari was being heralded as "the acknowledged leader and spokesman for French Canadian artists both in Quebec and throughout the country." Molinari typically used hard-edged abstractions to produce elements of "opposition and synthesis." In this banner he used a new style he was experimenting with - replacing his vertical stripes with diagonals in the form of rectangles. The work is a serigraph on nylon (203 cm x 37 cm).

As a result of our recent sleuthing for this story, Atkinson discovered a banner of their own which no one had realized existed. In fact, the college had recently run a contest for a banner design, but hadn't adopted any of the proposals. When they learned they already had a banner (done by Molinari) they decided to have their "new" version ready for the November '99 convocation for the first time in 37 years!