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 […]

Six Feet Under the Stars at UTSC

“… let us accept Scarab, ugly and venomous though it certainly seemed when we first visited it last July, looking forward to the novelty, beauty and peace of our proper home in Scarborough where, ‘exempt from public haunt’, we shall indeed find ‘Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good […]

“Highland Creek? Wasn’t Anything There”: The McLean Estate and UTSC in the 1960s

Do you recognize the landscape presented in the aerial photograph presented above? No? Take a closer look. Give up? This is an aerial landscape shot of Highland Creek community and campus land prior to Scarborough College’s construction in 1964 (photograph courtesy of the Scarborough Historical Society and Archives). With a current student population of nearly 13,000 and seemingly endless new building projects, it might be difficult to imagine a time in which our campus and […]

“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. […]