PIECE OF CAKE
Photos courtesy of York Archives Story by John Court

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It's 10 years after the war -- strip malls are king, chrome rules, and the demographic tsunami known as the Baby Boom has begun. A watershed demographic report by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics is sending universities and government into future shock. Their prediction? That universities will need to double their overall enrolments in the next 10 years and quadruple them by 1975. It's a statistic that will sow the seeds of York's existence. In 1955 several other factors also influenced the demand for new universities -- a strong economy, a general increase in public expectations that postsecondary education should be more accessible, and the need for more professionals in the work force.

THE MYTH about York's founding is that it sprang from the U of T's expansion surge as a response to social pressures. But then-Ontario Premier Leslie Frost and the U of T were initially opposed to the idea of a second university in the Toronto area. Frost wanted to restrain funding as much as possible for university expansion. He saw that two moderately large universities would be more costly than a "mega" version. For its part, the U of T believed it could deal with the new enrolment pressures without sacrificing academic quality, and didn't want to compete for limited funding. But it was two years before either Frost or the U of T began supporting the idea of York. York's origins actually resided with the YMCA, an organization whose expertise lay in lifelong learning for adults. The Y's track record already encompassed a Toronto adult education program and the founding of both Carleton College (later Carleton University) in Ottawa and Sir George Williams College (later Concordia University) in Montreal. Established in 1955, the job of the Y's planning committee was to look into the feasibilty of a second university -- one with a strong adult education component. By 1957, with a decision to add representation from other organizations interested in adult or industrial education (such as the Association of Professional Engineers), the group was enlarged to become the "Special Committee on the University Project." Retired Air Marshall Wilfred Curtis (who later became York's first Chancellor) was appointed Chair. The committee built a case for a second university and attracted a great deal of media attention. About this time the York name was attached to the embryo project (the name was likely chosen because York then lay in York County). The York name replaced an earlier provisional choice -- Kellock College or University -- in honour of Mr. Justice Kellock, North Toronto YMCA's founding President. But despite the considerable effectiveness of the organizing committees, York University wouldn't have got off the ground without the discreet manoeuvring of Frost (after whom Glendon's Frost Library is named). One of those moves was his eventual consent to place a private member's bill on the provincial legislature's order paper to establish York University. By 1958 the organizing committee had selected the York University name, and recommended a liberal arts emphasis without a law or business school -- at least at the outset. York's first president, Murray Ross, recalled the impact of events like Sputnik to arouse an apathetic public to the idea of higher education's importance. In a presidential report published in 1965 Ross wrote that Sputnik made people realize that investment in, and dedication to, educational development brought with it scientific and economic advances. In 1956 the University of Toronto established an internal planning task force (known as the Plateau Committee) that set growth limits at 23,400 students by 1969, up from 12,000. At the time, Toronto was still the only Canadian metropolitan centre with just one degree-granting institution.