L I F E A T ma s s e y c o lle g e • 2 0 1 0 – 2 0 11
MasseyNews College receives million-dollar gift
Journalism Fellowship celebrates 50 years by Abraham Rotstein, Senior Journalism Fellow , 1981–08
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arlier this academic year, Massey College received a stunning $1-million gift from an Alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous. The donor requested that the fund serve two purposes: to add to the bursary endowment of the College and to assist, through interest gained, foreign graduate students at the University of Toronto elected as Junior Fellows of the College. In his thanks, Master John Fraser acknowledged both the generosity and keen insight of the Canadianborn donor, who had forged special friendships with foreign students while at Massey and the university, understanding very well their high tuition and transportation costs. Master Fraser added that the donor’s ultimate ambition is to make the bounty of this fund felt particularly for a few students of special merit. Nonetheless, the donor has accepted the Master’s wish to have the money more widely disbursed among foreign Junior Fellows until an equivalent sum can be raised for Canadian Three past Senior Journalism Fellows – Abraham Rotstein, students. As it stands now, this new Claude Bissell (1974–78), and Maurice Careless (1978–81) – in the fund automatically frees up more Quadrangle with a statue of Inkpik the owl, originally chosen as a bursary funds for Canadian students, so, as the Master told us, it’s a “win- symbol of the Fellowship because it is “an anxious, ungrammatical bird with a constant feeling that something astonishing has happened.” win” situation for everyone.
College loses two of its Founding Officers This past year, we lost two of our Founding Officers: Colin Friesen, Founding Bursar, and Douglas Lochhead, Founding Librarian. Obituaries for them appear on pages 36 and 39 respectively.
Colin Friesen
Douglas Lochhead
Over the hill I came into this strange place empty of danger, fear, deceit and death – only the talk of death which was not sad but ringing with unending changes, on and on. Discovering now, right here, that moment in celebration, in happiness of tears and revelation, a hanging out of the soul to dry.
From “Meditation at Wood Point” in the collection All Things Do Continue: Poems of Celebration by Douglas Lochhead (Toronto: The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 1997). Published with permission from The Estate of Douglas Lochhead. 44
Sapere Aude • Dare to know
Happiness is impossible, and even inconceivable,
M
y lunch with the two chief executives of the Southam Corporation some 30 years ago still stands out in my mind. That was when the late Gordon Fisher and the late St. Clair Balfour outlined what they had had in mind when they first started the Journalism Fellowship Program at the University of Toronto. I discerned that the program had little to do with their “bottom line” and everything to do with their genuine desire to contribute to the future of journalism in this country. I was struck by the sincerity and personal commitment of these founders, and when they asked if I would become the Senior Southam Fellow to look after it, I was pleased to accept. (My only credentials were those of a sometime editor of a small Canadian magazine). My predecessors in the program were no less than Vincent Bladen, the former Dean of Arts and Science, followed by Claude Bissell, the former President of the university, and Maurice Careless, the distinguished Canadian historian. See JOURNALISM – page 16
50 years ago… The Act to confirm an Agreement between The Massey Foundation and The Governors of the University of Toronto, and to incorporate the Master and Fellows of Massey College, had its first reading on March 14, 1961. It received Royal Assent on March 29, 1961. In the official records of the Government of Ontario, this statute is cited as “The Master and Fellows of Massey College Act, 1960–61.” Just a month before, on February 24, the appointment of Robertson Davies as the first Master had been announced. Almost a year later, in January 1962, construction of the College began.