Picture Perfect: Seeing and Unseeing UTSC on Film

What makes a given location perfect for filming? It’s a big question. Location is, after all, arguably one of the most important aspects of film production, as filmmakers have to consider how to best translate the narrative charge of a story into a physical space. Location, in this sense, functions not only as a passive […]

Fighting Colonialism Everyday

Image of Diane Hill

Fighting Colonialism Everyday Diane Hill talks about the barriers she faced as a First Nations student while attending UTSC. Diane reflects on how the history of Indigenous peoples and their education has shaped her peers and her own experiences with education. To listen to Diane’s Oral History click here: https://ark.digital.utsc.utoronto.ca/ark:/61220/utsc10788 https://youtu.be/xCQ8CD9_M5w

Oral History with Shirley Criscione

portrait of Shirley Criscione

Shirley Criscione shares her student experiences as one of the first graduates of Scarborough College in 1968. Shirley highlights how the campus culture was during those years, particularly the impact of having such a small student body (less than 200 students). The campus community was tight knit, where “everybody knew everybody.” Shirley also recalls how […]

The Incoming Class of 1968… 

students on the steps of the old biology building on St. Geoge Campus

Every August since 1998, Beloit College has produced “The Mindset List,” a description of the social and cultural context shaping the lives of the fall incoming first year university classes in the United States. Excerpts from the list published in 2015 for the incoming class of 2019 (named for the year you graduate): students were most likely […]

“Such a Beautiful Spot”: The Scarborough College Gardening Club

As the warm April sun begins to greet us, many of us are itching to sink our hands in soil and cultivate some earthly beauty. In the early decades of UTSC, students, faculty and staff were eager to do just that – and signed up for the Garden Club hosted on campus in the valley. […]

Marooned?: The Issue of Identity

In October 1964, after the formal opening ceremonies for Scarborough College, Varsity news reporter Margaret Sisson confidently reflected, “Scarborough College…will be able to provide students with a source of identity within the University structure” (Sisson 1964). While the first classes of Scarborough College certainly actively negotiated (and fiercely contested) their “Scarborough Identity” (Marooned Feb. 1967), building a collective student identity and community miles away from the historic Queen’s […]