“It made me think of the Great Gatsby.”
That, in a nutshell, is how Dale Taylor, BA’63, describes the May 30 garden party at Glendon Manor honouring the 50th anniversary of the first graduates of Glendon College. More than 30 alumni, who studied on York’s original campus between 1960 and 1965, returned to campus to mark the milestone.
Taylor was one of the key organizers of the event, which included a display from the University’s archives and founding year highlights from Pro Tem, York University’s oldest student-run newspaper founded in 1962.
“We had great camaraderie in our time at York,” recalls Taylor. “We had a lot of fun. There was a student council, we started Pro Tem and we had a number of programs that drew top thinkers like David Riesman [author of the landmark 1950 sociologyl study The Lonely Crowd] and Tuzo Wilson [Canadian geophysicist recognized for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics].”
The founding year graduates have remained closely-connected over the years, thanks in large part to Taylor. The retired public servant was recognized for his efforts as Volunteer of the Year by Glendon’s advancement & alumni director, Marie-Thérèse Chaput.
“It helps that we had a great experience at Glendon,” Taylor explains modestly, adding, “It’s very much the same campus today as it was then. A lot of the idealism that I remember from the early ‘60s, I think it’s still there.”
That connection is the basis for a class fundraising campaign. The founding year alumni plan to name one or more seats within the new campus amphitheatre, part of the Centre of Excellence for French-Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education unveiled at Glendon last year.
“It feels in some ways like we never left,” says Taylor. “Glendon is still the small residential college we remember. It deserves our support.”
Christine Ward
Glendon Alumni at the Glendon Homecoming 2013
Glendon warmly welcomed home over one hundred alumni to the Glendon Homecoming 2013 – Alumni Family Day. The festivities began with a BBQ in the Skyroom within the newly opened Centre of Excellence, where guests heard from Principal McRoberts who shared the latest news from Glendon, and a presentation of a selection of archives of digitized Pro Tem and Alumni in Print by Glendon’s renowned librarian, Julia Drexler BA ’71. Then guests heard from three distinguished speakers: Gordon K. McIvor BA ’76 & PhD who spoke to Francophiles of the World; Andrew Clifford BA ’91 & PhD who presented on Intepreting and Mobile Technology; and from Mary Terry BA ’80 and his award winning and fascinating film, The Polar Explorer.
