UBC students marched through Vancouver to shame the government into building their campus
In 1922 more than 1,200 University of British Columbia students were crammed into makeshift quarters at Fairview, their promised campus unbuilt. So they marched through Vancouver, gathered 56,000 signatures and carried them to the legislature. The Great Trek worked, and lectures began at Point Grey three years later.
The idea of a provincial university was first proposed in 1877 by John Jessop, six years after British Columbia joined Canada, but arguments over whether to build on Vancouver Island or the mainland stalled it. A 1908 act finally created the university without naming a site. In the meantime McGill ran a private college in the province, and in 1910 Point Grey was chosen. War and a weak economy halted construction, so when UBC opened on September 30, 1915, it absorbed the McGill college and borrowed its buildings. It awarded its first degrees on May 4, 1916.
Early years were lean. The First World War drew away 697 male members of the university, and by 1920 there were only three faculties: arts, applied science and agriculture. After the Great Trek, the Point Grey campus opened on September 22, 1925, with mostly temporary buildings, no dormitories and no social centre. The Depression brought salary cuts of up to 23 percent in 1932 and 1933. In 1935 a storm washout carved a ravine that at times advanced 10 feet an hour, swallowing two bridges and closing the university for four and a half days.
Veterans transformed the place. Enrolment tripled from 2,974 to 9,374 in three years, and fifteen surplus military camps were taken apart and moved to campus as classrooms and housing. Students raised most of the money for the War Memorial Gym, and the first residence opened in 1959. The Museum of Anthropology, designed by Arthur Erickson, opened in 1976.
UBC now hosts TRIUMF, the national particle physics laboratory with the world's largest cyclotron. Its alumni include prime ministers John Turner, Kim Campbell and Justin Trudeau.
Source: University of British Columbia
