FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, A FORWARD-THINKING GROUP OF CITIZENS BELIEVED THAT SOUTHERN ALBERTA MERITED ITS OWN UNIVERSITY. NO ONE INVOLVED IN ITS INCEPTION COULD HAVE PREDICTED WHAT THE FUTURE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE WOULD BECOME. THEY ONLY KNEW THAT IT WOULD BE WELL WORTH THE FIGHT. U of L students attending classes on the Lethbridge Junior College campus Dr. Owen Holmes
planning for the University of Lethbridge.
small and they thought we’d stay that way.”
after his coincidental stop in town, remembers it as an exciting time.
What Holmes and the other board members soon discovered though, was that there was no provincial plan to speak of.
Planning went ahead full speed and on September 11, 1967, more than 650 students attended the first day of classes at the new University of Lethbridge. The highly debated and much-anticipated university, the culmination of years of effort by a dedicated group of individuals, Alberta’s third university, was finally a reality.
“It was fantastic to have a clean slate and be able to create our own curriculum,” says Connolly. “At an established university there’s thinking that the way to do things is the way they’ve always been done. We were writing the rules as we went along. We taught toward the needs of the students.”
“The government had no idea what they were going to do beyond giving permission to proceed,” says Holmes. “There were no official plans. I think they thought that all we’d need was a building or two on the college campus, and that would do for southern Alberta. We started
Connolly, who was hired as a calculus and statistics professor days
One of those students was a young man by the name of Richard Wutzke (BASc ’72). Wutzke
was 19 years old in 1967, and like so many young people of the time, he felt impassioned by the social unrest happening the world over. Lethbridge was an ultraconservative town – a very safe seat in the Social Credit dynasty, but its youth wanted a piece of the global revolution. Wutzke ran for Students’ Union president and won a striking 72 per cent majority on a platform of progressiveness and activism, handily defeating his opponent who took what Wutzke calls a “let’s not make too many waves” position.
3