Ryerson Alumni - 2018 Summer - 14

FEATURES

the busiest intersection in
Toronto is still asleep, and the Ryerson campus is mostly empty. Walk along Gould Street
and you might see a couple of residents from
Pitman Hall looking for a bagel, or some
early-bird students trying to get a head start
on the Library printers.
When Balzac's opens at 7, there's one person waiting to get a coffee. By 7:10 there are two, by 7:20 there are five, and by 8 the café
is almost full. By then, the daily mix of business people, tourists,
street preachers, and colourful characters have congregated around
Yonge and Dundas. Ryerson wakes when Toronto wakes. Over the
next few pages, spend a day on campus-find out what's happening, and how it became possible. Few universities in Canada are as
densely and seamlessly woven into a downtown core as Ryerson.
As Toronto has grown and evolved, so has the university.

A TRIP
THROUGH
TIME

↓
I N 1852 , when the Normal School opened to train Ontario teach-

ers, downtown Toronto was still mostly rural. In 1948, when the
vacated buildings were re-opened as the Ryerson Institute of
Technology, not much had changed. One of Ryerson's first student
societies was an equestrian club, which required only a quick trip
to Sunnybrook for practice. "In those days, you didn't have to go
very far to get to the country," says Ronald Stagg, Ryerson History
professor.
Ryerson's mascot was always a ram, but back then it was a real
animal. "They had, I think, four live rams," says Stagg. "It was
quite a thing, because other schools liked to steal the ram. There
was quite a competition: they would take it and decorate it. But it
became... not acceptable." Today, our foam-and-felt friend Eggy
handles mascot duties; the skulls of those original rams are filed
away in Ryerson's Archives & Special Collections.
Emerging after the Second World War and with many veterans
amongst its students, Ryerson offered a practical education in the
new industries that had appeared during the war, from aircraft and
automotive manufacture to electronics repair. The school was the
brainchild of Howard Kerr, the first principal, who dreamed of an
"MIT of the north" but whose idea was resented by more established universities.
Kerr was sensitive enough to this skepticism to introduce a dress
code in 1954 (shirt, tie and jacket for men; dress and blouse for
women). "He was very worried that Ryerson would not be wellreceived, so he wanted to show that these were really the kind of

Ryerson University Magazine / Summer 2018

1850
A parcel of
semi-rural
land known as
St. James Square
is purchased by
Egerton Ryerson
for the site
of the Normal
School, the
first school
for teachers
in Canada
1941
The Normal
School building
is used as
a training
facility for the
Royal Canadian
Air Force during
the Second
World War

students you would want to hire for your
business," says Stagg. As a principal, Kerr
was regarded with a mix of respect, fear
and appreciation. "Probably more of the
'respect' and 'fear' than the 'appreciation,'"
says Stagg. "He was very good at supporting
students ... on the other hand, he would not
tolerate any hijinks of any kind."
The dress code would be phased out,
and much more would change over the
next 70 years. Courses devoted to jewelry repair, barbering and cooking disappeared; Ryerson would become a polytechnical institute, then a university granting
degrees. One thing that hasn't changed
is Kerr's vision of a school that would be
adaptable to the times.
T H E A D A P TA B I L I T Y is crucial to the

Ryerson School of Journalism. Founded
in 1950, Ryerson's journalism program is
one of the school's oldest, and one of the
most respected in the country. But in a
constantly changing industry, it can never
become static. Professor Asmaa Malik, who
teaches digital skills to graduate students
says, "The tools themselves are not really
worth anything unless you're doing something with them."
The next generation of journalists will
have to tell the stories that the media has
traditionally neglected. 2015's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission report asked
journalism schools to educate students on
Indigenous culture and history. Malik's
digital journalism class partnered with
Journalists for Human Rights to create a
response: Indigenous Land, Urban Stories, a
multimedia project that profiled Indigenous
artists, artisans, educators, parents, chefs
and activists in Canadian cities.
"It was challenging," says Malik. "The
students had a lot of hesitation. I think there
was a lot of concern about telling Indigenous
stories when you're not Indigenous. 'Will I
understand? Will I unintentionally offend?
How will I find sources?' It was a great project in the end, but there was some anxiety."
Modern journalism means a nuanced
understanding of the role of the media
itself. 2017 grad Kyle Edwards is now a
staff reporter at Maclean's, where he regularly reports on Indigenous affairs. He
is Anishinaabe from Lake Manitoba First
Nation. "I knew there were very important
issues that weren't being covered well," says
Edwards. "Even growing up, I remembered
hearing about all these negative things in

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