account of the birth of Laurier Brantford has, inevitably, been informed by my experiences in the role of dean, and then principal, of the campus. These roles put me in the middle of most of the decisions, conflicts, and events that affected the evolution of the campus. In both the city and the university I was a participant in key meetings that were sometimes characterized by tensions, arguments, and competing visions of the campus and the city. I have not tried to write a tell-all book, but have tried to present the history of Laurier in Brantford in a way that does not gloss deep divisions, obstacles, and debates sometimes evident behind the scenes. Developments were shaped and fostered by the clash of opposing views, conflicting political interests, and by forceful personalities, my own included. In hindsight, it seems obvious that the development of the campus and the redevelopment of the downtown was the right thing to do, but things were anything but clear or obvious when the key decisions were made, debated, and, in many quarters, resisted.
In presenting some of the key issues that characterized the development of the campus and the redevelopment of downtown, I have tried to present opposing points of view as sympathetically as I can. Inevitably, some may see particular events differently than I do. While I welcome any discussion this may engender, I believe it is more important to say that almost everyone involved in the evolution of Laurier in Brantford agrees that it has been transformative. Like the phoenix that rises from the ashes, the downtown is rising once again. The city has managed this rebirth by becoming a stirring example of how political will, perseverance, and post-secondary education can foster urban renewal and hope in a downtown that was, only a decade ago, a place of desolation and dismay.
The logo for Laurier’s Brantford campus. The Latin motto under the Laurier coat of arms is Veritas omnia vinci — “Truth Conquers All.”
The year 2000 marked the beginning of a new millennium. As the world waited for the Y2K problem to wreak havoc on the world’s computers, others greeted the transition as the dawn of a new age. In Brantford, the end of the old millennium coincided with the arrival of a new university campus. I arrived the following year. The university’s chief academic officer, Rowland Smith, had asked me to apply for the dean’s position at the new campus. When I was interviewed and offered the post, my friends advised me not to go. A close colleague in Philosophy told me he was happy that the university had offered me “my own ship.” Then he laughed and added, “Too bad that it’s a sinking ship.”
I quickly learned that pessimistic views of Brantford were a major obstacle to the success of our new campus. It was troubling to find such pessimism prevalent on the university’s established campus in Waterloo, but much more troubling to find that it was an indelible part of Brantford’s view of itself. Shortly after I moved to Brantford, Holly Cox, the campus’s indefatigable recruitment officer, and I hosted a focus group that discussed Laurier Brantford with local high-school students. In a context in which we needed to attract applicants to sustain ourselves, we wanted to understand why local high-school students showed so little interest in a campus located close to home — so close that it could, at the very least, save their families thousands of dollars in annual expenses.
In the course of our discussion, the local students related a series of profoundly negative misconceptions. Laurier Brantford did not, we were told, award university degrees; it did not have “real” professors; it was not “really” Wilfrid Laurier University; it was not a “real university” at all. We arrived at the nub of the matter when one of the braver students took a deep breath, screwed up her face as though she had inhaled a bad smell, and blurted out, “Your campus is in Brantford, so we figured it can’t be any good.” Her fellow students nodded their heads in agreement.
The student’s reasoning was an enthymeme — an inference based on an implicit proposition. The proposition was the general principle that whatever is in Brantford can’t be any good. In the focus group it precipitated a discussion, not of Laurier’s new campus and its challenges in attracting high-school students, but of Brantford itself — the students resolutely condemning the city in which they lived. It was strange to find myself, the interested newcomer, more enamoured of Brantford than its own inhabitants. Long-time residents I met in the course of my next few months were less surprised, telling me that Brantford had sunk so low that only outsiders seemed to appreciate what it could be.
The attitudes of the high-school students reflected a deep-seated pessimism that has been and is possibly the central theme in Brantford’s recent history. As prevalent as it was, it was strangely out of step with Brantford’s history, which has enjoyed more than its fair share of significant individuals and accomplishments. Even a cursory list is impressive. Among others, it must include Joseph “Thayendanegea” Brant, whose role in the American Revolution ultimately gave rise to Brantford; Charles Duncombe, one of the leaders of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, who established Brantford’s public library; Emily Howard Stowe, the first woman to practise medicine in Canada; Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone in Brantford1; the celebrated poet Pauline “Tekahionwake” Johnson; Sara Jeannette Duncan, and Thomas B. Costain, two world-renowned authors;2 James Hillier, the co-inventor of the electron microscope; Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven, one of Canada’s most important painters; and Wayne Gretzky, widely known as the world’s greatest hockey player.3
For most of its history, Brantford has enjoyed a proud prosperity. If it was anything, it was self-satisfied and sure of itself (sometimes too sure). Before there was Brantford, the first inhabitants of the region arrived some 11,000 years ago. They were ancestors of the maize-growing villagers who flourished along the flood plains of the Grand River as early as 500 A.D. Their descendants occupied the valley in the first half of the seventeenth century, when the French named them The Neutrals — because they remained neutral in the bloody war between the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois or the Five or Six Nations) and the Huron.
James Hillier, the university’s first honorary degree recipient in Brantford, speaking at the Brantford campus’s first convocation, May 29, 2002.
Despite, or arguably because of, their neutrality, the Neutrals were conquered and assimilated by the Haudenosaunee, who trace their history to “the Great Peacemaker,” Deganawida, who founded the Confederacy of Five Nations sometime in the sixteenth century. This was an alliance among the Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Mohawk nations that brought their warring to an end. The peace he established produced a powerful confederacy which, ironically, became a fearsome military alliance. In 1715, the Five Nations became Six when the Tuscarora were admitted to the union.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, shortly before the events that gave rise to Brantford, the Grand River Valley was the hunting ground of the Mississauga. In Brantford’s very early years, the hill on which the settlement’s first cabin was built (the downtown hill occupied by the Brantford Armouries) was still called Mississauga Hill, a name that recognized it as the Mississauga’s favourite camping grounds.4 But Brantford was not an offspring of the Mississauga but of the Confederacy of Six Nations. To the extent that the city can claim to have a founding father, it is Joseph Thayendanegea Brant.
In a globalizing era that has created “hybrid identities” straddling divergent cultures, Brant is a fascinating figure who was, at one and the same time, a feared Mohawk leader and warrior and a British captain and then colonel. In the latter role, he was completely at home in upper-crust British culture and society. His English leanings were nourished early by his sister, Molly Brant, who was the common-law wife of General Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent for Indian Affairs in North America. Johnson arranged Brant’s admission to Eleazar Wheelock’s School for Indians in Lebanon, Connecticut, an institution that became Dartmouth College. Brant attended and studied English, Greek, Latin, mathematics, and religion.
After