by Anna Nicolle
The next time you're on campus, climb the steps to the fourth floor of the University Centre, lean a shoulder against the concrete wall and close your eyes tight.
If you can, ignore the bustle and clatter of students and the buzz of construction. You might just catch a faint echo of the past -- the clinking glasses, the low hum of polite conversation, and the lively sound of laughter and scholarly debate.
This is the spot where the Carleton University Faculty Club once existed. Many of its members say when the club closed its doors last April, it marked the end of an era. And, many will tell you that in its heyday, the Faculty Club was the place to be on campus. Their memories are about friendships made and good times had in a private club that played a part in making a small college into a world-class institution.
The early years
When the Faculty Club was founded in 1947, you could fit the entire full-time Carleton College faculty around a large dinner table and still have plenty of leg room. Twelve people made up the faculty and administration.
David Farr (2nd on right) with colleagues at the Faculty Club, circa 1970s.
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In fact, faculty meetings were often held around a dining room table in a private home in those early years, says David Farr, a retired history professor.
Like most of the faculty who came from far and wide to teach at the new Carleton College, Farr didn't know a soul in Ottawa. He says he and his wife Joan found it hard to make friends in a city where the public service was the biggest employer, and the chief form of entertainment was socializing with people you knew from work.
"It was isolating because we moved here and didn't know anyone. We had to make our own fun," he says.
It was mainly in this spirit of fun that Carleton's Faculty Club was founded.
According to the club's charter, it was formed "to encourage social, cultural and intellectual exchange between the members of the staff of the university and its guests, and to provide opportunities for cooperation in advancing the interests and welfare of the university." Annual membership was $3.50. The Faculty Club met once a month in a member's home. The club wouldn't get a permanent home on campus for almost 20 years.
"We didn't have a regular meeting place, but it was a very happy, collegial group," says Farr.
In the first few years, events such as lecture series, chamber music concerts, spelling bees and dinner dances crowded the social calendars of faculty and administration. The annual children's Christmas party was always a big event. Farr says most of the faculty had small children and, because they often socialized in each other's homes, the families knew each other well. The highlight of the year -- until the annual event ended in 1966 -- was when Santa Claus made an appearance at the Christmas party to hand out presents to the children.
"I remember being sent down to Woolworths on Sparks Street and convincing the manager to let me in the store before it opened so I could pick out toys for the children. I think my wife had a big part in organizing that," Farr laughs.
In fact, the faculty wives were very much involved in planning most social activities and events such as the speaker's series and book sales. Joan Farr says her main job as a member of the Faculty Club was to help organize a women's tea to welcome new faculty members' wives into the fold.
"We telephoned all the wives, and whoever had a silver tea service brought it along," she recalls.
The Faculty Club quickly became a way for everyone to get involved in the growth of the college, says Farr. She recalls getting together with other wives to hand sew the faculty colours on the convocation hoods for the first graduating class in 1946.
"We felt like we were a part of something important and we wanted to help it succeed," she says.
By the time Carleton College moved to the Rideau campus in 1959, the Faculty Club was a well-established part of campus life.
"It wasn't a very formal group, but we have so many happy memories. We made friends that lasted a lifetime," she says.
The club gets a home
The Faculty Club opened its first dining room on campus in 1965. By then, Carleton had grown from a small college to a medium-sized university. Most faculty members were well established in Ottawa, and their families were grown, so there was a natural shift in the raison d'etre of the club.
"It was a different type of activity from the late '60s onward. I ate lunch with my colleagues but our families didn't socialize there," says Blair Neatby, a retired history professor and co-author of a soon-to-be-published book on Carleton's history. "It was more of a professional club by that time."
He says it became a comfortable routine to meet other members of the history department at the "history table" every day at noon. He recalls it as a time to discuss contemporary politics, catch up on his colleagues' research and mull over academic problems.
The dining room was located in what is now the serving area of the cafeteria on the north-east corner of the second floor of the University Centre. The space was used by the Canadian Officer Training Corps. as a lounge, and, when they moved their bar to the Steacie Building, the Faculty Club moved into the space.
The club served hot lunch and dinner. The Faculty Club executive had to purchase a special liquor licence and completely restock the bar for every dance and party. By 1967, the club had a regular liquor license for Friday afternoons and evenings.
"Drinking on campus was very difficult in those early years," Neatby says. "Universities in those days were dry and, after all, young student's couldn't be exposed to pernicious alcohol and this type of thing. There were some administrators who thought it would be very dangerous to have faculty drinking because they might get drunk."
Don McEown, a former university secretary and co-author of a book on the history of Carleton, thinks that they might have had a point.
"In the early '70s, Friday afternoon sometimes got a little rowdy and Friday night it could get pretty rugged," he laughs.
The Faculty Club moved temporarily to Residence Commons in 1969 during renovations to the University Centre. In 1970, it found a permanent home on the fourth floor of the University Centre. The club could seat 220 patrons. Renovations done in the late '70s added a separate seating area around the bar, and a patio. Neatby estimates that at its peak of popularity, in the early '70s, the Faculty Club had 400 paid members. Christmas parties and dinner dances were still popular well into the '80s and lectures organized by the club were always well attended.
McEown says the club continued to serve an important function for the university. It was one of the rare places on campus where people from different faculties and the administration could meet and discuss things in an informal way. It was a very effective way to get things done."
McEown says it was also an opportunity for informal mentoring to take place between younger faculty and the more experienced, older faculty members.
"This was a chance for the younger faculty to find out how things worked in the university."
Neatby agrees. He recalls one lunch-time conversation with then-university-president A.D. Dunton. Neatby says he happened to mention to Dunton that a sought-after history professor was leaving another university and was looking for a job. He says Dunton asked him to bring the potential recruit to campus as soon as possible and offer him a job.
"Dunton used to come to lunch at the Faculty Club. He would sit down at an empty spot at a table and get involved in the discussion. He knew who everybody was, he knew what you were interested in and he got people talking," he says.
It also wasn't unusual to see eminent scientists, prominent politicians, diplomats and other public figures dining as guests at the Faculty Club. People such as Sir Peter Ustinov, former Prime Minister Joe Clark and Madame Justice Bertha Wilson were all guests.
The Faculty Club used to draw many lunch-time regulars from the English department, including Albert Trueman, George Johnston, Charles Haines, and famous Canadian author Mordecai Richler, who taught English courses part-time at Carleton in the 1970s.
Former Carleton president Jim Downey recalls those lunches at the Faculty Club with fondness.
"Our conversations ranged across the expanse of human effort and folly, with Canadian politics and literature providing the best examples of both," he says. "Here, Mordecai was at his most sociable."
Richler, who died last fall, mentions the lunches poignantly in his last letter to Downey on October 31, 2000.
"I remember our Faculty Club lunches with a good deal of pleasure. Now Trueman, Rob, and Charles are no longer among the quick. Hang in there, Jim. Me, I'm going to be 70 in Jan., coming into overtime in 2001," he wrote.
Some of the Faculty Club's most honoured guests were students. Those fortunate enough to survive the ordeal of their doctoral thesis oral would often be rewarded with lunch at the club.
Don Wiles, history professor and member of the Faculty Club executive in the '60s, says he valued the club because it gave him the chance to get to know academics from different departments.
"I would eat lunch there four or five times a week," he says. "On any given day, I could be discussing topics such as philosophy, history or linguistics with a musicologist, a classical scholar, an engineer, a geologist and a mathematician. It really gave me intellectual breadth and I think this is what university is all about."
The end of an era
While the Faculty Club still retains its charter and technically still exists, the dining club and bar closed last April because of dwindling membership and revenues.
Wiles thinks the demise of the club has to do with the changing pace of life at the university.
"Most young faculty members are busy establishing their careers. They spend their lunch hours eating at their desks and they have young families to go home to at night," he says.
McEown thinks it might be an issue of different lifestyle that took revenue away from the club.
"I think it's a manifestation of what you see happening to many private clubs in the world that are closing down. Part of it is due to the fact that the money that kept clubs going came from their bars. Bars don't make much money at lunch these days," he says.
But Wiles says the Faculty Club still has a viable purpose on campus. He conducted an informal e-mail survey less than a year ago, which indicated the club was used, on average, 2,000 times per year for lunches, to entertain guest speakers and as a place to conduct business.
A new beginning
A privately-run cafeteria is now being built on the the former site of the Faculty Club in the University Centre. The new restaurant will have a licensed bar, reserved seating and will be available to rent for special events. It also features a Tim Hortons counter, now open from early morning to serve coffee and pastries.
"Our department has been working with Chartwells, a food services contractor, on a proposal to renovate the physical space, to make a bright, upscale cafeteria that's open to the public," says David Sterritt, director of Housing and Food Services.
Sterritt can't say yet when the restaurant will open because the university is still negotiating some of the design and budget requirements.
Until the new facility is open, a temporary lunch-time dining room in Residence Commons should serve some of the same functions. Faculty and staff who wish to eat lunch and entertain guests on campus can use the licensed, buffet-style dining room located in what was formerly a student bar called The Bree's Inn.
Stuart Adam, vice-president (academic), agrees a place for faculty and staff to meet and socialize is extremely important for Carleton. "It was a very important place for me, in my career, to get to know people and get established," he says. "Hopefully with this dining facility, we can get back to that," Adam says.
Don McEown hopes so too.
"We regret its demise," he says. "It was really about the enthusiasm that came from the interesting conversations and the friendships that were formed over lunch at the club. That was special."
Anna Nicolle, MJ/01, is an Ottawa writer
