Recollections of Waterloo College

When Flora Roy accepted a teaching position at Waterloo College in 1948, she imagined it would be a temporary posting until she finished her dissertation and returned to Toronto or another large Canadian university. Little did she know that, as head of the English department, she would stay on and find herself involved in local controversies.

This memoir recalls Roy’s early days at Waterloo College (when its standards were still supervised by the University of Western Ontario) and traces the gradual pressures to merge with the new University of Waterloo. As history shows, Waterloo College resisted what was seen then as corporate pressure and became instead an independent and much-loved institution called Waterloo Lutheran University (which later became Wilfrid Laurier University). The story of the transformation of Waterloo College into Waterloo Lutheran University is told through anecdotes and shows that, despite its size, the small campus was very connected to the larger world.

The royalties from the sale of this book will be directed towards funding scholarships.

All photographs were used with the kind permission of Wilfrid Laurier University Archives and Special Collections.

Please note that in future printings, the third last paragraph of Recollections of Waterloo College will be corrected to read as follows:

I have been circuitous about this, but I should now admit that I feel that a concession to candidates for academic employment, that indicates that they have not the time, or the endurance or may we say the ability to go further, throws a shadow over those who take advantage of it. In addition, it suggests that they are not especially fitted for the rigours of life as university faculty members.