In 1960 Alice Turner left an established position as an investment counsellor at Wood Gundy to join the faculty of the burgeoning York University. At the urging of Peter Scott of Wood Gundy, first chair of York's Board of Governors, she embarked on a new life and one she dearly loved. For the first year, 1960/61, she was the only woman among a small group of men, some young scholars, some established, and from the beginning she was very much a part of all the planning. She combined the positions of mathematician, hostess and, often, den-mother to the first-year group of 70 students who had enroled as York's first class. When I, a prospective English Department member, was asked to attend afternoon tea in Falconer Hall on the University of Toronto campus, Alice was pouring tea, and from that day on, she became a generous academic sponsor and treasured friend. From the fall of 1961, when we were both faculty members at the newly-opened Glendon campus, she was a close colleague, supportive, confiding and, most important in those early days, blessed with an endless ability to laugh.

    We went through the first days of the Glendon adventure together, and we had many, in fact daily, sessions comparing notes and sharing amused, often bemused, head-shakings about the early sky-high pretensions of York-to-be. We were determined realists in the face of the endless planning sessions which went on everywhere from washrooms to classrooms to committee rooms and which often seemed, and were, beyond the possible to the weird. We moved out to the Downsview campus at about the same time, and continued our friendship and association for the many years until Alice's retirement. She loved students and she loved teaching mathematics, including experimenting with new concepts and courses that York instigated in its early years. The novel "Modes of Reasoning" course was a very large one -- hundreds of students can testify to her outstanding teaching skills. She was one of the first Fellows of Founders College and she treasured that connection too.

    She was notably unaggressive as a feminist, though she had been for most of her working life one of a very few professional women in the male world of high finance. A graduate of McGill with a PhD from the University of Toronto, she saved her negotiating skills for really important issues. When her strong sense of justice was
engaged, she proved to be a formidable
activist. The women of York today owe her a great deal in two crucial areas. According to the early deliberations of York's actuaries, women were expected to work some years longer than men, and to receive
sizably smaller pensions. Alice went after equity in that field and achieved it. When one of our early faculty members died young of cancer and his wife and young family were left with no security, Alice worked quickly and again, successfully, to establish spousal benefits in case of death or medical disability.

    For many years the University Women's Club was a particular interest and avocation. The handsome house on St. George St. benefited greatly from her enthusiastic support and her financial expertise. She was on its executive through years of expansion and was particularly active at the time of its 75th anniversary in 1978. Her independence was very very important to her -- a major component of her chosen lifestyle was her car: she loved her Buick, and she loved driving. When she gave up driving she also gave up attending York functions, a great pity for she was missed, but she found it difficult to accept transportation from friends or colleagues. Her privacy was precious to her: several times she quoted to me words she credited to her father, a Presbyterian minister: "A woman's name should be in the papers only three times -- at her birth, her marriage and her death."

    York honoured her with an LLD degree and her friends will always honour her memory. Though many of her contemporaries have gone, "Allie" as they called her, will be remembered as a loyal and generous friend, a comrade for all seasons, and a great teacher.

    Clara Thomas is professor emeritus in English and a Canadian studies research fellow at York. She and Alice Turner were the first two women faculty members at York.