100 reasons to celebrate

The University of Alberta is preparing to celebrate its 100th birthday with a year-long party that reaches around the world, involving everyone from Alberta's rural communities to alumni living abroad to Canada's prime ministers.

The party starts in January with International Week kicking off a year-long series of signature events that includes a Prime Ministers' Conversation Series, featuring all of Canada's living prime ministers, a full-blown homecoming and the introduction of a new festival – the Festival of Ideas.

"It's going to be spectacular," U of A President Indira Samarasekera said of the upcoming year of celebrations.

The centenary events were announced Oct. 5. In an interview prior to the announcement, Samarasekera said it's important that the milestone be observed and that the U of A seize the opportunity to share its history and achievements.

"This university was founded with great aspirations," she said. "It was not about establishing a mediocre, small-town university. Tory really dreamed of building one of the world's great universities right here on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River."

Henry Marshall Tory's ambitions for the university, she said, are reflected in the fact that he recruited its first four professors from Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley and McGill. "That was a clear indication that he was going after best in the world at a time when this university didn't even exist," Samarasekera said.

Tory also wanted to ensure the university would be home to every citizen of Alberta and the world.

"There were both men and women in the first class and that is illustrative of grand ambitions," Samarasekera said. "As early as 1929 students came here from abroad."

"He created a university whose mission was to uplift the whole people – he used those very words. Not to be in the business of generating and discovering knowledge just for scholars. The notion of citizenship and public interest was part of the earliest days of this university."

And as the university prepares to celebrate its first century, it has "a responsibility to continue that vision."

Board of Governors Chair Brian Heidecker says the U of A maintains the pioneering values that propelled Tory in his quest to build a great university – in a frontier town.

"The people who came to Alberta and founded this university were absolutely pioneers," he said. "This was a brand new province in the middle of nowhere. They needed to build a resource-based economy, since that was what the land was blessed with, so a lot of time was spent with engineering and science, and there was a lot of infrastructure construction. But even then, the early leaders always had an eye out to the arts and humanities, to the cultural infrastructure. As the economy has grown and matured, we as a province and a university have looked for the new opportunities and challenges."

Today, the U of A continues to serve society – in different ways.

"You can only sell a barrel of oil once, but knowledge is the constant renewable," he said. "We’ll take oil revenue and through the knowledge energy of our researchers, professors and students, we'll convert it into knowledge and innovations for the benefit of all."

Ros Sydie, a U of A professor emeritus serving as executive director of the U of A's Centenary Planning Committee, is looking forward to a banner year.

Sydie has been associated with the U of A since she came here to complete her graduate degree in sociology in 1963. She taught on campus from 1969 until her retirement a year ago and is fiercely proud of the U of A.

“I have always maintained that we are a hidden treasure, that people have never quite grasped how very significant the achievements have been at this place, going back from the very beginnings," she said. "Unfortunately we don’t boast a lot and as far as I am concerned, this year we can boast – this is our year."

For more information on the Centenary, visit www.100years.ualberta.ca