The History of UTSC Project
Menu
The Spaces & Places guided walking tour explores the history of locations on and around the UTSC campus by sharing the personal recollections of members of our campus community — reflecting a variety of perspectives, positions, and points in time.
UTSC was not originally imagined as a campus with a significant residential component. Instead, it was thought that the campus would cater primarily to the local community, and so the entire student body would commute to and from school. However, the students of Scarborough College made clear that this would not work for them, and staged a number of protests, including a sleep-in, to make clear the need for residences on campus. After several delays, townhouse-style residences were finally completed and made available to students in the Fall of 1973. As the student body expanded, so did the need for residences, and so subsequent years saw more residence buildings crop up, including traditional dormitory-style rooms and apartment-style suites, catering to different student preferences and needs. Today, the residence community is vibrant and diverse, managed by the Office of Student Experience and Wellbeing, which aims to foster strong connections on campus through various residence-oriented social events and activities.
David Onley, UTSC alum and former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, here recalls one of his first initiatives as a student leader: lobbying with his peers for student residences on campus in the 1980s, much to administrative chagrin.
Credits: Conceived and produced by Nancy Lee. All images courtesy of Shant Bedakian, UTSC Photographic Services Collection, UTSC Archive Legacy Collection, UTSC Department of Political Science, and the Political Science Students’ Association.
A common perception of UTSC is that it’s a commuter campus. But the UofT administration took this perception to a whole new level in their original planning of the campus by ommitting residences from the campus plan all together. Residences were instead built after a sustained student campaign — check out our blog to learn more.
Credits: Doug Murray, The Varsity, Oct. 9, 1968.
Mike Plumton, who worked as the Training and Program Coordinator for the Residence Life Program at UTSC, discusses his time working and living on campus in the 2010s, where, as a young adult, he, like many students, experienced many things for the first time.
Credits: Conceived and produced by Amena Ahmed. All images courtesy of Happy Factory, The Varsity, UTSC Student Housing and Residence Life, Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, and UTSC Student Life Program.
While some find the pastoral quaintness of the campus calming, others find it rather eerie — with some students in the 1970s even claiming that student residences are haunted! Some blame this on plain old student shenanigans, but perhaps there’s something more sinister going on…
Credits: “Around the College” and “Spooks”. Balcony Square. October 24, 1979. Accessed via Memory Collection, UTSC Library Digital Collections.
