Renewal Group notwithstanding, Mohawk College pulled the rug out from under the Mohawk/Y proposal when it decided that it would need an additional six months to study the plan, and would begin its study only after the municipal, provincial, and federal governments had committed their share of the proposed funding. Mohawk’s vice-president, Cal Haddad, commented, “We still haven’t had the time to do a definitive study on whether it will help Mohawk College and its students.… We’re willing to listen to any concrete proposals. But we have no money, not even for a moving truck.”4
As the Mohawk/Y initiative died, the proposed date for the opening of the University College of the Grand Valley came and went. The provincial government was clearly interested in making room for private universities, but put off any policy decisions in the wake of political pressure from existing universities. The three City College professors were pulled in other directions, by other demands and interests. Morrell secured an appointment at an existing university.
At Laurier, the idea of a satellite campus in downtown Brantford was not enthusiastically endorsed by the university community. Outside of Professor Copp, a determined President Rosehart, and a small circle of administrators the president brought on board, the prevailing mood was one of indifference and skepticism. Waterloo was preoccupied with Waterloo. Those who talked about the Brantford developments, and few did, asked why anyone would want to go to Brantford. Even among the senior administrators, some were skeptical, questioning the suitability of a campus in the Icomm Building. Further obstacles arose in February when Brantford City Council decided that it would consider a proposal to turn the Icomm Building into a charity casino.
With all three post-secondary proposals confronting obstacles, the plan to bring a college or a university downtown seemed poised to become the latest in a string of failed attempts to stop the slide of Brantford’s city centre.
A key component of the Brantford attempt to establish a downtown university was the community support for the idea provided by the University Committee. When Laurier’s interest in the downtown was made public, the committee was faced with a decision — should it back the new initiative or maintain its commitment to a private university? Not everyone welcomed the Laurier possibility. In a patriotic spirit that was in keeping with Brantford’s historic sense of self, some argued that a university based in Brantford was preferable to a satellite campus of a university based in Waterloo.
In the subsequent discussion and debate, key members of the committee argued that its proposal for a private university should be maintained but broadened in scope to incorporate a range of possibilities that included a satellite campus of Laurier, or some other university.
One of the key voices to emerge in the discussion was that of Colleen Miller. She lived in Paris, Ontario, and operated a human resources firm that aimed to help its clients transform their careers and working lives. Miller was equally dedicated to the attempt to transform Brantford. Among other things, she broke through the gender barriers at the city’s established gentlemen’s club, The Brantford Club, to become the first woman member. Speaking for the University Committee, she took the lead welcoming Laurier’s interest in Brantford: “The exciting thing is that there are big universities out there hearing about this community, and now we have the option of looking at two possible paths.”1
Despite the growing local support, the plan to bring Laurier to Brantford faltered as the proposal to turn the Icomm building into a casino gathered steam. At a meeting in February, city council voted to give a professional casino company, RPC Anchor Gaming, an option to purchase the Icomm. When President Rosehart heard of the initiative, he hesitated but was not ready to give up on the idea of a satellite campus. The university was “still interested” he told The Expositor in early March. “We’ve emotionally put the Icomm building behind us. I admit it was Icomm and the work of the university committee that got our interest. But even with the building gone, it’s not like we’re going to give up. We’ve just switched to Plan B.”2
On March 4, the University Committee and the Grand Valley Education Society came out in support of “the golden opportunity” at Laurier, which it decided to pursue as part of a two-pronged push to attract a private or a public university downtown. At a meeting that discussed the Laurier option, “The 44-member Community University group quickly pledged to help Rosehart in any way possible. Members have been scouting out possible locations for the campus, among them the former library, the Bell Building and the third floor of the federal building. ‘We’d love to see [Laurier] come here,’ Doug Brown said. ‘The trick is not to lose the momentum [for a private university] if it chooses not to come here. We are committed to a university in Brantford no matter what.’”3
LEFT: Colleen Miller, who has served as president and director of the Grand Valley Educational Society, has been one of the key community supporters of a Laurier campus in Brantford. RIGHT: Kate Carter was one of the campus’s first professors and later served as associate dean and dean. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Alberta and then taught at Duke. As a girl growing up in Paris, Ontario, she never imagined that it would be possible to teach at a university in Brant County.
A week later, seven months after the University College of the Grand Valley had been scheduled to welcome its first class, the University Committee released a one-hundred-page Revised Business Plan for a private university now called “Brant University.” The proposal was an expanded version of the City College plan. The mission statement and curriculum remained the same; similar partnerships were proposed (the library partnership was now backed with a detailed prospectus compiled by Anne Church, a professional consultant hired by the library); and similar buildings were suggested as a home for the university (among them, the Icomm — which was already optioned to the casino company and no longer available — the Carnegie Library, and the old Boys’ and Girls’ Club). The plan was well-intentioned, but some of its details show that it was thrown together in haste, in an attempt to respond to all the developments in the drive for a university. Some aspects of the plan were simply impossible — further revisions were to be made by January/February 1998, one month before the plan was released, and two million dollars in fundraising would have had to be organized and initiated as soon as the plan was released. The details of the plan included an ambitious timetable for the development of Ontario’s first private university: a detailed curriculum and governance structures by June, an application for a provincial charter in one year, the appointment of a president by June 1999, the hiring of full-time professors by March 2000, and an opening in September 2000 or, if necessary, September 2001.
Like the plan for a University College of the Grand Valley, the Brant University Plan did not provide a convincing business plan for the building and operation of a university. But this did not prevent it from underscoring, yet again, the reasons to bring a university to Brantford. By now, anyone who followed local news and events knew and understood some of the sixteen reasons given for establishing a university downtown. These included Brant County’s low participation rate in post-secondary education, the access to university education it would provide for local families, and the role that a university and its graduates could play in the economic and cultural development of the region. The economic benefits were calculated at twenty-four million dollars a year. In a city that had not recovered from the collapse of its industrial economy, with a downtown still mired in urban decay, these were compelling reasons to support a Brant University.
Like the proposal to establish University College of the Grand Valley, the Brant University Plan was innovative. There was much that could be said for it but there was no way to change the fact that a private university in Brantford would have been an anomaly that would face many challenges. It was not easy to see how any university could
