North York bilingual university ‘unique’ in North America
York University’s Glendon College is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Though it opened in 1959 as the founding campus of York University, Glendon College grew to carve a unique identity among post-secondary institutions as a bilingual liberal arts school.
Bequeathed to York University as a suburban country estate at Bayview and Lawrence avenues in the 1950s, Glendon opened its doors in 1959 and was officially inaugurated in 1966 by then-prime minister Lester B. Pearson.
Under Glendon’s first principal, Escott Reid, the former diplomat was steadfast in his mission in ensuring Glendon embraced both of Canada’s official languages into its educational system, no matter what course was being taught.
“In 1966, Glendon College was given the mandate of providing students with a strong bilingual postsecondary education in the liberal arts, to prepare them to become leaders in Canada and internationally,” said Donald Ipperciel, current principal of Glendon College.
“We have now extended our mandate by infusing liberal arts thinking into professional programs such as translation and conference interpretation as well as launching biology and psychology programs, and next fall we will offer new professional programs in business and communications. We recognize that as we move into our next half-century, we are educating leaders who will help meet the world’s most urgent challenges.”
Set on the historic Wood family estate, Glendon’s staff and 2,700 students come from more than 100 countries to study and interact in a fully bilingual setting, which wasn’t always the case.
Alain Baudot, professor emeritus, who has taught humanities and French at Glendon on and off since 1966, said in the beginning the only time French was spoken in class was if the course happened to be related specifically to the language. Now, all courses in all departments use the French language.
“The staff is completely bilingual,” he said. “That’s a major change. When Glendon first opened, there was only one Quebec (French speaking student) on campus.”
Baudot, who has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Montreal, said he was recruited by Reid while in Paris, France, to teach at the new campus.
“He insisted it would be bilingual,” Baudot recalled. “This makes Glendon unique in North America.”
Baudot, who keeps in touch with numerous graduates, said he’s most proud of the alumni the campus has produced, which includes writer M.T. Kelly, winner of the Governor General’s Award in fiction in 1987, and Greg Gatenby, founder of the Festival of Authors at Harbourfront.
“The most important thing to me is what Glendon students have become,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been 50 years. It seems like yesterday. I remember when Pearson was there.”
Glendon is planning a number of anniversary celebrations this year, including the 50th anniversary reunion and gala weekend, which will be held Sept. 30 and Oct. 1; public Walk in the Valley events to discover the campus’s trails and flora in the spring and fall; and an anniversary closing reception in November that will include a Quebec-Ontario conference examining relations between the two provinces after 400 years of Francophone presence in Quebec and Ontario.
By Fannie Sunshine, published in The North York Mirror
