{"id":37,"date":"2023-03-23T17:46:36","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T17:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/livesofdalv2\/chapter\/dalhousie-the-second-world-war-and-the-philosopher-king-1939-1943\/"},"modified":"2023-03-23T17:46:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T17:46:36","slug":"dalhousie-the-second-world-war-and-the-philosopher-king-1939-1943","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/digitaleditions.library.dal.ca\/livesofdalv2\/chapter\/dalhousie-the-second-world-war-and-the-philosopher-king-1939-1943\/","title":{"raw":"Dalhousie, the Second World War, and the Philosopher-King, 1939-1943","rendered":"Dalhousie, the Second World War, and the Philosopher-King, 1939-1943"},"content":{"raw":"\n

Affairs external: the coming of the war. Atlantic provinces cajoled for support for Medicine and Dentistry. Selling the Birchdale property on the North-West Arm. Dalhousie crippled by wartime demands. The 1943 R.B. Bennett gift. A new board chairman, K.C. Laurie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1938 the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations took as one of its five commissioners R.A. MacKay, Dalhousie\u2019s Eric Dennis professor of political science. His substitute at Dalhousie during 1938 and 1939 was Arthur R.M. Lower, an articulate, liberal-minded historian on leave from United College, Winnipeg. United College was a tense and riven institution; Lower found Dalhousie relaxed and pleasant. As MacKay told him, the professors at Dalhousie live \u201cin a condition of genial anarchy.\u201d What MacKay meant was that every professor, old and young, taught in ways that seemed to him best. It was the duty of the head of the department to determine what courses were to be taught, but their mode, their style, their essays, marking, examinations, were the professor\u2019s to choose and to exact. Lower found the results, stemming from half a century and more of this tradition, good. But he found Dalhousie uneasy about its president. Seven years of Carleton Stanley had divided the faculty, and there was a substantial section with whom \u201che was extremely unpopular.\u201d Others, such as G.V. Douglas and H.L. Stewart, supported him. Stewart\u2019s view was: \u201cSome say this about Stanley, some say that. But I say he is on the side of education which is more than can be said about many a university president.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that sense Stewart was right. Lower, Stewart, and President Walker of King\u2019s were on the CBC on New Year\u2019s Day of 1939, in a radio debate about Canadian foreign policy, with Walker the imperialist, Stewart the League of Nations collectivist, and Lower the Canadian nationalist. Lower and Walker certainly suited their roles. Lower said to Walker: \u201cThe difference between you and me is that when you say \u2018we\u2019 you mean Lancashire, and when I say \u2018we\u2019 I mean Canadians.\u201d That brought a telegram to Stanley from H.P. Robinson of the board of New Brunswick Telephones in Saint John. Did that represent what was being taught at Dalhousie? Stanley not only supported Lower\u2019s words, but even more his right to speak them.[footnote]See Arthur R.M. Lower, My First Seventy-five Years (Toronto 1967), chap. 16, \u201cSome impressions of Nova Scotia,\u201d pp. 214-20. There is an interesting and characteristic picture of G.V. Douglas opposite p. 163.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Munich had sharpened the debate within Canada. The shock of it, in September 1938, and even more Hitler\u2019s flagrant repudiation of it by his march into Prague on 15 March 1939, shifted a significant block of Canadian opinion away from isolationism. Canada\u2019s Department of External Affairs was still strongly isolationist, as were most French Canadians; but English Canadians and Dalhousians were coming to the grim conclusion that if a major war broke out between Britain and Germany, Canada would have to be in it in some form. On 29 March Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, gave the surprising guarantee to support Poland if she were attacked by Germany. That was Chamberlain\u2019s violent reaction, shared by many in Britain and Canada, to having been humiliated a fortnight before by the German march into Prague.<\/p>\n

The British guarantee to Poland had consequences very different from what Chamberlain intended. It stiffened the Poles, already resistant to giving back any territory that Poland had acquired in 1919 from Germany. Hitler could not believe Britain intended to honour her quixotic commitment to support Poland, but when she made that clear, Hitler acted. Early on Friday, 1 September 1939, the German tanks rolled, and the German air force bombed Polish cities. The British government reluctantly declared war two days later.[footnote]That there is an enormous literature on the subject of the Second World War goes without saying. Suffice it to mention three books, succinct and eminently readable: B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (London 1973), the quotation being from p. 12; C.P. Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict, Volume 2: 1921-1948, The Mackenzie King Era (Toronto 1981); James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada: Volume 2, Appeasement and Rearmament (Toronto 1965).[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The Halifax and Dalhousie Views of the War<\/strong>
\nUnlike the outbreak of the Great War, Canada did not at once follow Britain into the conflict. O.D. Skelton, under-secretary of state for external affairs, wrote a bitter memorandum for the prime minister on 26 August:<\/p>\n

\n
The first casualty in this war has been Canada\u2019s claim to independent control of her own destinies... we have thus far been relegated to the role of a Crown Colony. We are drifting into a war resulting... from policies and diplomatic actions initiated months ago without our knowledge or expectation... the foreign policy of Canada is in the hands of the Prime Minister of Great Britain... The British Government with bland arrogance has assumed that whatever its policy, whether it be appeasement or challenge, we could be counted on to trot behind, blindly and dumbly, to chaos.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That was not what the Halifax Herald<\/em> said. Its headline read, \u201cEmpire Stands with Britain.\u201d Two days later, on 28 August, Bob Chambers, the cartoonist the Herald<\/em> had bribed away from the Chronicle<\/em> in a 1937 cloak-and-dagger operation, put out a cartoon, \u201cThe Call Goes Forth,\u201d which showed a bugler under the Union Jack sounding a call to arms to bring Nova Scotians, rifle in hand, from the mine, desk, farm, factory, and fishing vessel. On 4 September, came the news that the Athenia<\/em> had been sunk with the loss of 112 lives by a German submarine. Canada was not at war, not yet, but the sinking of the Athenia<\/em> brought it closer.[footnote]The Skelton memorandum is in J.A. Munro, ed., Documents in Canadian External Relations, Volume 6, 1936-1939 (Ottawa 1972), pp. 1247-8; Halifax Herald, 26, 28 Aug., 4 Sept. 1939. For the story of Bob Chambers\u2019s switch from the Chronicle to the Herald, see William March, Red Line: The Chronicle-Herald and the Mail Star, 1875-1954 (Halifax 1986), p. 260.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The position of most English Canadians was between O.D. Skelton and the Halifax Herald<\/em>, perhaps closer to the latter than the former. English Canadians, and Dalhousians, in September 1939 were really of three groups: first, imperialists such as the Halifax Herald<\/em>, Britain right or wrong. Second, a large group that believed that a major war in Europe was a dreadful commentary on European politics, but with so many friends, relations, and the monarchy, in England, if bombs were falling on London, how could Canada stay out? Nevertheless, Canadians should determine the degree of their commitment to any war. Third, a group that believed that bombs or no bombs, it was not Canada\u2019s war. Geography and luck made it virtually impossible that Canada need be involved in any war. The United States had renounced the conquest of Canada; the Monroe Doctrine would protect Canada from any outside power. Senator Raoul Dandurand put the doctrine in a celebrated speech at Geneva in 1924: \u201cNous habitons une maison \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9preuve du feu... Un vaste oc\u00e9an nous s\u00e9pare de l\u2019Europe.\u201d That would have been the position, indeed, of many French Canadians and a small and well-entrenched group of English- Canadian intellectuals, of whom O.D. Skelton was one.[footnote]I have ventured to suggest the two polarities in Canadian foreign policy in \u201cThe Two Foci of an Elliptical Foreign Policy: French-Canadian Isolationism and English Canada 1935-1939,\u201d in Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fiir Kanada - Studien 1 (1981), pp. 112-28. For Senator Dandurand\u2019s speech, see Marcel Hamelin, ed., Les M\u00e9moires du S\u00e9nateur Raoul Dandurand 1861-1942 (Quebec 1967), p. 2730.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Carleton Stanley was a Canadian with the range of a Britisher, well capable of distrusting his own or any other government. He was proud of British traditions, but he was close to the Labour party and, like it, unhappy with the conduct of British foreign policy since 1933. He told one New Brunswick imperialist that it was a mistake to think that whatever the British government of the day did was right and everyone else wrong. Some Canadians certainly had doubts, and there were plenty of newspapers and MPs in England that had also. Stanley\u2019s annual report for 1938-9 seemed to sum up his own experience: \u201cHas any period in history been more difficult for any sort of assertion than the period, 1931-1939?\u201d<\/p>\n

So many things, the world over, are going by the board, so much of our political faith, so much of ethical belief, so many indeed of our first principles.<\/p>\n

But year after year the thing goes on, and we are forced to realise that civilisation is breaking up; that the great discoveries of science are being manipulated by the Devil; that individual human greed is careless of general human happiness.<\/p>\n

Stanley quoted a late Thomas Hardy sonnet, that glowed like the portent it was:<\/p>\n

\n
And that when nations set them to lay waste
\nTheir neighbours\u2019 heritage by foot and horse
\nAnd hack their pleasant plains in festering seams, ...
\nYes. We are getting to the end of dreams![footnote]The New Brunswick correspondence is cited in Dalhousie University, President\u2019s Report, 1938-1939, pp. 1-2, note 1. The Hardy poem is from \u201cWe are Getting to the End\u201d in his Winter Words, published posthumously in 1928.[\/footnote]<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the period of the \u201cphoney war,\u201d when it was phoney in the West and very real in Poland, Dalhousie\u2019s life went on much as before, though the Canadian Officers\u2019 Training Corps, which had barely survived as a committee in the mid-1930s, was more vigorous. It would become much more important, as would manpower in general by June 1940.<\/p>\n

Trying to Support Medicine and Dentistry<\/strong>
\nStanley in the meantime was fighting other battles on the home front, ones that he did not always relish. An American Medical Association visit in 1936 pointed out, tactfully as was their wont, serious deficiencies in the Medical and Dental Library. Dalhousie\u2019s collections of medical and dental books and periodicals were housed in odd ways, often inaccessible, and reading-room space was on the same casual scale. The AMA suggestions carried considerable clout; Stanley was convinced that if the Medical School lost its A rating it might just as well go out of business. The Rockefeller Foundation offered to support the visit of Eileen Cunningham, medical librarian at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, to advise Dalhousie. She came in June 1937. Stanley thus had expert advice to go on, and he spent a hard week in New York in September 1937 doing the rounds trying to collect $100,000 for a new medical library. In December Carnegie came through with $50,000 if Dalhousie could find another $50,000 to match it. The board dug into their private pockets and found only $8,500. Stanley much disliked the whole process. \u201cIt\u2019s not the president\u2019s proper job,\u201d he told one important New York alumnus in January 1938, \u201cto go about cap-in-hand like this.\u201d But in March 1938 J.C. Tory (1862-1944) offered one hundred shares of Sun Life Assurance (of which he had been a senior official). That did it.[footnote]Letter from R.M. Lester to Carleton Stanley, 16 Dec. 1937, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cCarnegie Corporation,\u201d UA-3, Box 173, Folder 1, Dalhousie University Archives; Dalhousie University, President\u2019s Report, 1938-1939, pp. 7-8.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The cornerstone of the new Medical-Dental Library was laid on 18 August 1938 amid a large and singularly happy alumni reunion celebrating the centennial of Dalhousie\u2019s first university teaching. On that occasion Dalhousie outdid itself and gave thirteen LL.D.\u2019S, including one to the oldest Dalhousie graduate, Alexander Ross ('67). At a Dalhousie dinner at the Nova Scotian Hotel the evening before, another new LL.D., Sir Walter Langdon-Brown, a Cambridge physicist, evoked the gaudeamus igitur<\/em> of student life past and present:<\/p>\n

\n
Being at a university is like falling in love; no one can ever have had such an experience before... What is it about one\u2019s university that colours the whole of the rest of life?... Is it not... the discovery of oneself in relation to the general scheme of things, which was there before us and will outlast us?<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He quoted Augustine Birrell, also a Cambridge man:<\/p>\n

\n
Which of us who is clad in the sober russet of middle life can gaze without emotion upon the old breakneck staircase in the corner of an ancient quadrangle... where were housed for a too brief season the bright-coloured, long since abandoned garments of youth, a youth apparently endless, and of hopes that knew no bounds?[footnote]Dalhousie University, President\u2019s Report, 1938-1939, pp. 4-5.[\/footnote]<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Among the thirteen LL.D.\u2019s that sunny August were the three provincial premiers of the Maritime provinces: Thane Campbell of Prince Edward Island, A.A. Dysart of New Brunswick, and Angus L. Macdonald of Nova Scotia. Campbell and Dysart had graduated from Dalhousie, Macdonald had been a Dalhousie law professor; so the gift of those honorary degrees was based on some hope for government support. On the other hand the Dalhousie Board of Governors was profoundly sceptical; very few believed that anything would come of approaches to any of the Maritime governments. They denigrated it as \u201cjust Stanley\u2019s idea.\u201d Stanley stoutly believed that all Dalhousie had to do was to say to all three governments, \u201cWell, gentlemen, if at long last, you decline to support medical training as other Canadian premiers do, we must close down.\u201d[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to Col. C.H.L. Jones, 28 Apr. 1939, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cBoard of Governors Correspondence,\u201d UA-3, Box 176, Folder 3, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The Nova Scotian government had consistently refused because of political pressure exerted by the other universities, who would insist on a quid pro quo<\/em> for every grant to Dalhousie. The first break was the $5,000 public health grant of 1935, and it was conditional on Dalhousie establishing a Department of Preventive Medicine. That could be justified on the ground of public health. But an outright grant to Dalhousie Medical School? When J.C. Tory made his gift for the Medical Library he was, in effect, saying to Stanley, \u201cYou are dead right, the governments must give you money, and Nova Scotia must take the lead.\u201d It was his way of underlining what he believed was the clear and unmistakable duty of the other Maritime governments. Moreover, the foundations were becoming less accessible. When Stanley approached Rockefeller in March 1939 for a grant of $60,000 per annum to meet current deficits, they replied promptly that they doubted if any further support along such lines was possible.[footnote]Letter from Dr. Raymond Fosdick, president, to Carleton Stanley, 28 Mar. 1939, President's Office Fonds, \u201cRockefeller Foundation 1931-1941,\u201d UA-3, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

By 1939 Dalhousie could make other arguments for funding from Maritime governments. When Dalhousie\u2019s medical and dental students were largely Americans, governments could resist. By 1938 there were more Newfoundlanders and New Brunswickers than Americans in first-year medicine, and by 1943 first-year medicine had no Americans at all. In fact that year showed something of the proportions of Atlantic provinces\u2019 population: of forty-nine first-year students, twenty were Nova Scotians, eleven New Brunswickers, nine Prince Edward Islanders, and eight Newfoundlanders. That change was effected mostly by Dean Grant\u2019s going around the Atlantic provinces, largely on his own money, and meeting prospective medical students and encouraging them to come to Dalhousie.<\/p>\n

The Carnegie Corporation had not given up its interest in Maritime education; in 1934 it commissioned H.L. Stewart of Dalhousie to make a survey and in November 1935 their representative warned that, compared with a decade before, college standards were slipping, as the number of colleges slowly increased. That view was echoed by Carleton Stanley; the Central Advisory committee on Education in the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland, a group of college presidents which reported to the Carnegie Corporation, struck a sub-committee to discuss it. At the annual meeting of the advisory committee in Moncton on 29-30 December 1936 they unanimously agreed,<\/p>\n

\n
that since none of the colleges was prepared to accept the responsibility of establishing [professional] schools that they were under a real debt to Dalhousie and that they should take advantage of any opportunity occurring to bring home to the governments their responsibility for the support of the professional schools and especially of the medical and dental colleges.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was understood that if the Nova Scotian government decided to support Dalhousie\u2019s medical and dental facilities, the other colleges would not ask for a quid pro quo<\/em>. Here was a mighty first step.[footnote]Minutes of the Moncton meeting, 29-30 Dec. 1936, President's Office Fonds, \u201cCentral Advisory Committee Minutes 1933-1937,\u201d UA-3, Box 325, Folder 6, Dalhousie University Archives. The expenses of the meeting were paid for by the Carnegie Corporation. The text on which Dalhousie set such store is on p. 15. Correspondence from Stewart\u2019s survey is in, Herbert Leslie Stewart Fonds, MS-2-45, Box 41, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

In the autumn of 1937 the Dalhousie governors finally agreed that the time had come to approach the provincial governments for support for medicine and dentistry. In 1938 a memorandum went to all the Atlantic province governments on the subject. It received a friendly enough reception; Newfoundland\u2019s Commission government said it would help if it could; Prince Edward Island said it would help too, but it could not take the lead. New Brunswick was cordial in the visits that Stanley and Dean Grant made, following up their memorandum. But none of the other governments would, or could, move without some fundamental beginning by the government of Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

Stanley\u2019s account of his and Grant\u2019s interview with Angus L. Macdonald on 21 March 1939 is of some interest. The premier began by making objections; notwithstanding the Moncton resolution, the other colleges would be after him if he gave any money to Dalhousie. Stanley showed him the text to prove that was not so.<\/p>\n

\n
GRANT: You cannot deny, Mr. Premier, that the medical and dental schools are a great boon to these provinces; nor that they should be supported by these provinces as other professional schools are elsewhere.
\nANGUS L.: Well, it cannot be maintained that they enter into the picture of education. They are technical schools rather -
\nSTANLEY (interrupting): Yes, Mr. Premier, they are technical schools for medicos and dentists just as the Nova Scotia Technical College is a technical college for engineers. To that you give $150,000 annually.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Angus L. seemed to give ground a little. He was not, he said, fighting against Dalhousie; the arguments he had been using were those that other people would put up. Stanley then pointed out how Rockefeller refused to give any more money as long as the Nova Scotian community did not. Finally Angus L. said, \u201cWell, we are in debt ourselves this year but I guess we will have to do something for you. I suppose it affects Nova Scotia more than the other provinces.\u201d Stanley did not hesitate to remind him that the majority of students in both dentistry and medicine were Nova Scotians. Dalhousie had to have $60,000 a year to keep the Medical and Dental schools going; he pointed out, with examples, \u201chow we had stripped the Arts and Science School to maintain decent professional schools.\u201d Angus L. made yet another objection. Dalhousie had allowed experts to bully them, and was \u201cattempting to do things on the scale of New York City.\u201d But Stanley gave him no quarter about that, and \u201che looked as though he wished he had not said it. Then [he] grew very friendly, and drove us home.\u201d<\/p>\n

That did not mean Dalhousie had won. It had simply taken the first round. Angus L. did not believe the Maritime colleges could be so high-minded about giving Dalhousie free access to the government of Nova Scotia. He wrote each of the college presidents, asking if they had voted on the 1936 Moncton resolution, and how they felt about the question now, in March 1939. The replies Angus L. elicited not only supported Dalhousie\u2019s position; they re-emphasized its necessity. With Stanley\u2019s willing acceptance Angus L. sent an accountant to examine Dalhousie\u2019s books to see if it were true that it actually needed the $60,000 a year. Finally, in June 1939 Angus L. indicated that his cabinet had no objection to an annual grant to Dalhousie of $25,000. Stanley said that was less than two-thirds of what Nova Scotia should be paying. Angus L. replied, \u201cYou can tell Dysart or any one else that we shall assume our share.\u201d[footnote]Carleton Stanley memorandum, 21 Mar. 1939, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cProvincial Government, Nova Scotia, 1936-1945,\u201d UA-3, Box 272, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives. Stanley among his other talents could manage some shorthand, how rapidly or accurately is impossible to know. But the conversations are probably his transcription. Carleton Stanley\u2019s memorandum of 22 June 1939, cited above.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Stanley had his work cut out when he visited Dysart in Fredericton, in April. Dysart said New Brunswick could not offer any support to Dalhousie, for it had UNB to look after. Stanley did not accept that. He pointed out how the Saint John General Hospital was a Dalhousie teaching hospital and \u201cno hospital is up to scratch unless it is a teaching hospital, connected with a university, as your Saint John hospital is connected with us. It is notorious among professional men how slackness creeps into a hospital unless it has graduating internes in it who, in the very nature of things, have eyes like hawks.\u201d There was good sense in that. Many of the best doctors, said Dr. Allan Gregg of the Rockefeller Foundation, \u201cwelcome the responsibility of teaching, since it keeps them up to date and at \u2018concert pitch.\u2019\u201d Stanley also suggested useful analogies from the two schools for the blind and for the deaf in Halifax, to which all three Maritime provinces contributed. \u201cYou are a gallant warrior,\u201d said Dysart on 26 May 1939, \u201creturning to the fray with such vigor.\u201d But Dysart was not giving anything, despite arguments. The blind and the deaf were wards of the state; medical and dental students were not.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to Dysart, 5 May 1939; Dysart to Carleton Stanley, 26 May 1939, President's Office Fonds, \u201cProvincial Governments, New Brunswick 19387-1947,\u201d UA-3, Box 271, Folder 7, Dalhousie University Archives; \u201cUniversity Affiliation as it affects Public Hospitals,\u201d by Dr. Allan Gregg, c. 1937, President's Office Fonds, \u201cRockefeller Foundation,\u201d UA-3, Box 567, Folder 16, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

In April 1940, despite earlier suggestions of $25,000, Nova Scotia produced only $10,000, with a statement that Dalhousie was not to count on it for 1941 or 1942. The Dalhousie board, stung by that, decided in April 1940 not to cash that cheque, but held two meetings to determine if they would shut down the Medical and Dental schools. Dalhousie went back to the Nova Scotian government and was promised more. The board hung on, hoping that the Atlantic provinces governments would somehow, sometime, awaken to what seemed to Dalhousie as their legitimate responsibilities. Moreover, as Stanley explained to C.H. Blakeny, New Brunswick\u2019s minister of education, to make an announcement that Dalhousie was shutting down her professional schools would make it virtually impossible ever to get staff and students together again. But in July 1940 Angus L. Macdonald left for Ottawa as minister of defence for naval services, and the issue dropped.<\/p>\n

In January 1941 the government promised $20,000 and would lean on the City of Halifax to put up $5,000 for the Public Health Clinic. That was better, but it was a continuing struggle. Dalhousie still needed not $20,000, but $60,000 a year to keep the schools and the clinic going, and the board had again to go to the government in April 1942. This time it brought evidence that the Rockefeller Foundation had just given $150,000 to develop and improve medical teaching facilities in the new expansion of the Victoria General Hospital the government was undertaking. Not only that; in 1941 Dalhousie was awarded $5,000 a year to establish a Department of Psychiatry. Dr. R.O. Jones was soon winning golden opinions in both Halifax and New York. Despite that, in 1943 the government reverted to $10,000, saying that the $20,000 of 1942 was a special grant. Stanley went after the government about that, and three months later it added $10,000. But, as this turgid tale reveals, it was stiff, difficult going.[footnote]Dalhousie\u2019s position in 1940 on whether to close its medical and dental schools is neatly summarized in letter from Carleton Stanley to Blakeny, 17 Jan. 1942, President's Office Fonds, UA-3, Box 271, Folder 7, Dalhousie University Archives. See also Angus L. Macdonald to Carleton Stanley, 19 Apr. 1940, UA-3, Box 272, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives; Board of Governors Minutes, 26 Apr. 1940<\/a>, UA-1, Box 51, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives; letter from Carleton Stanley to J. McGregor Stewart, 15 Apr. 1942, President\u2019s Office Fonds, UA-3, Box 272, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives; Board of Governors Minutes, 24 Apr. 1942<\/a>, UA-1, Box 35, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives. For the Rockefeller grant, see letter from Norma Thompson, secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation to Carleton Stanley, 6 Apr. 1942, President\u2019s Office Fonds, UA-3, Box 272, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives. The $150,000 grant was to be expended by 31 Dec. 1944. For Psychiatry, see letter from Alan Gregg to Carleton Stanley, 3 Apr. 1934; Norma Thompson to Carleton Stanley, 24 June 1941; Alan Gregg to R.O. Jones, 23 Nov. 1942, President's Office Fonds, \u201cRockefeller Grant for Teaching in Psychiatry, 1933-1961,\u201d UA-3, Box 353, Folder 3, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Dalhousie had, however, received some additional support from outside the province, from Newfoundland. Dalhousie had long been a friendly home for Newfoundlanders; it had strongly supported the creation of Memorial College in 1925 and had sent J.H.L. Johnstone, professor of physics, and a colleague to St. John\u2019s in May 1925 to advise. The idea of Memorial College had not been received with much enthusiasm by Newfoundlanders; Johnstone thought a great deal had been accomplished by the Memorial group, against heavy odds of apathy and ignorance; \u201cevery sympathy and consideration should be shown them.\u201d President A.S. MacKenzie thoroughly agreed. Thus Dalhousie followed up Professor Johnstone\u2019s visit with advice about registration, curriculum; the Memorial Student Council was based upon Dalhousie\u2019s. When planning scholarships for students leaving Grade 11, Dalhousie wanted to include Newfoundland; Stanley feared that Dalhousie might be accused of raiding Memorial\u2019s students. He need not have worried; the president of Memorial replied, sensibly enough, that he was delighted for Newfoundland students to get any financial support possible.[footnote]Letter from J.H.L. Johnstone to A.S. MacKenzie, 23 May 1925, from St. John\u2019s; A.S. MacKenzie to Vincent Burke, 27 June 1925, President's Office Fonds, \u201cJohn Hamilton Lane Johnstone,\u201d UA-3, Box 94, Folder 1, Dalhousie University Archives. Dalhousie\u2019s relations with Memorial are referred to in Malcolm Macleod, A Bridge Built Halfway: A History of Memorial University College, 1925-1950 (Montreal and Kingston 1990), pp. 118, 184, 234-5.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Stanley was the first Dalhousie president to actually go to Newfoundland. He had long wanted to broaden the Dalhousie board to include governors from Newfoundland and New Brunswick, and he was able to announce at a luncheon in St. John\u2019s in 1934 the appointment of the Honourable F.C. Alderdice of St. John\u2019s to the Dalhousie board. Alderdice was succeeded by Raymond Gushue, Newfoundlander and Dalhousie graduate (LL.B. '25), who became Dalhousie\u2019s unofficial ambassador to the Court of St. John\u2019s, and at one point a member of two boards of governors, Dalhousie\u2019s and Memorial\u2019s. In 1942 Stanley and Dean Grant, war or no war, again went to Newfoundland, a journey not without risk. Two months later, on 14 October 1942, the SS Caribou<\/em>, the passenger ferry between Sydney and Port aux Basques, was torpedoed by a German submarine, taking 137 people down with her. Grant and Stanley put Dalhousie\u2019s case before the Commission government. Between 1923 and 1938 an average of ten Newfoundlanders annually were in Dalhousie Medical and Dental schools; in 1942 it had risen to twenty-two. Could the government endow a Newfoundland chair of, say, public health, or, failing that, make an annual grant? It was not all business, as Gushue reported, making amends for a too-abrupt departure from a Newfoundland party for Stanley and Grant:<\/p>\n

\n
These talk-fests have a bad effect on me, but they always take place when the Judge [William Higgins] and the Mayor [Andrew Carnell] get together. They are both as good as gold, but the combination of a goodly company and a little hospitality is too much for them. It hurts me a little to watch the Judge, splashing about unconcernedly in a whirlpool of circumlocution, and neither emerging nor submerging, or to see the Mayor who has a heart of gold, masticating with drooling relish the cud of half-digested clich\u00e9s. When I left I feared that they were just getting around to \u201cone standing up\u201d with a speech or two to finish up the evening. So - if you thought I was rude, I probably was.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The upshot was the Commission government\u2019s offer in October 1942, of $5,000 a year for five years for Dalhousie\u2019s medical and dental schools.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to Hector Mclnnes, 16 July 1934; Alderdice to Mclnnes, 7 July 1934, President's Office Fonds, \u201cBoard of Governors Correspondence,\u201d UA-3, Box 176, Folder 2, Dalhousie University Archives. Frederick Charles Alderdice (1872-1936) was premier of Newfoundland in 1928 and 1932-4. He was appointed to the new Commission government in 1934. See Peter Neary, Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World 1929-1949 (Montreal and Kingston 1988), pp. 12-19. For the 1942 trip, see Carleton Stanley to Raymond Gushue, 6 May 1942; Carleton Stanley to Ira Wild, auditor general of Newfoundland, 26 Aug. 1942; Gushue to Carleton Stanley, 27 Aug. 1942; H.A. Winter to Carleton Stanley, 30 Oct. 1942, telegram, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cNewfoundland 1932-1943,\u201d UA-3, Box 271, Folder 10, Dalhousie University Archives. Some details of the Newfoundland party for Stanley and Grant were filled in through the kindness and energy of Professor Peter Neary of University of Western Ontario and Melvin Baker of Memorial University. Andrew Carnell (1877-1951), mayor of St. John\u2019s, was John Crosbie\u2019s maternal grandfather and a rare old character. The judge is probably Justice William Higgins (1880-1943) and a good friend of Carnell\u2019s. See letter from Peter Neary to Peter B. Waite, 28 Jan. 1993, from London, Ontario, Peter B. Waite Fonds, MS-2-718, Box 3, Folder 47, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

As for the New Brunswickers, they were friendly enough when Stanley and Grant met the cabinet in March 1943, but neither the example of Nova Scotia nor Newfoundland made any difference, not even in 1946 when the minister of education was deeply appreciative \u201cof the splendid work done by the Dalhousie Medical and Dental Schools.\u201d In 1946 the demands of the New Brunswick school system, so ministers alleged, made any grant impossible. In March 1947 Prince Edward Island included $3,000 for Dalhousie in its estimates, and it may have been that that finally tipped the balance at Fredericton in Dalhousie\u2019s favour. The New Brunswick cabinet authorized $20,000 in May 1947.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to C.H. Blakeny, minister of education, 17 Jan. 1942; Carleton Stanley\u2019s report on interview with Blakeny in Ottawa, 20 Feb. 1943; memorandum to government of New Brunswick, Mar. 1943, and report of meeting with Premier McNair, 3-4 Mar. 1943, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cNew Brunswick, 1937-1947,\u201d UA-3, Box 271, Folder 7, Dalhousie University Archives. At this point there were forty-two New Brunswickers at Dalhousie in medicine and dentistry. The 1946 refusal is in letter from Blakeny to A.E. Kerr, 31 Oct. 1946, UA-3, Box 271, Folder 7, Dalhousie University Archives. For Prince Edward Island, see letter from J. Walter Jones, premier, to A.E. Kerr, 14 Feb. 1948, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cPEI 1938-1963,\u201d UA-3, Box 264, Folder 10, Dalhousie University Archives. Note the date. Letter from J.J.H. Doone to A.E. Kerr, 23 May 1947, President's Office Fonds, \u201cNew Brunswick 1947-1959,\u201d UA-3, Box 271, Folder 8, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote] But the process, over a whole decade, 1937 to 1947, had been like pulling teeth.<\/p>\n

The initiative in this struggle was Stanley\u2019s. Most of the Dalhousie board not only doubted the feasibility of getting any money out of Maritime governments; they were sceptical even of the wisdom of trying. Stanley stuck to his guns. When the first money from the government of Nova Scotia was about to come in 1940, J. McGregor Stewart (\u201cJim\u201d as everyone called him) wrote Stanley an appreciative letter. \u201cI am sure,\u201d he said, \u201cthe Board will be unanimous in their thanks to you, for the idea was yours and the patiently worked campaign was yours.\u201d[footnote]Letter from J. McGregor Stewart to Carleton Stanley, 25 Feb. 1940, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cJ. McGregor Stewart, 1934-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 274, Folder 2, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The Birchdale Affair<\/strong>
\nBut there was a problem between Stanley and Stewart waiting in the wings, that came on a year later: the Birchdale affair. Dalhousie\u2019s financial difficulties in the early 1940s were patent enough; one consequence, regarded by many in the Dalhousie community as unfortunate, not to put a stronger word on it, was the sale of the Birchdale property in September 1941. It was unusual for a university corporation to let property go once it owned it. Not for nothing did medieval monarchs fear mortmain, the dead hand; the church, once it acquired property, kept it until, presumably, the Day of Judgment. The universities in this respect were apt to be the church\u2019s modern successors. Dalhousie did indeed give up the Parade in the 1880s, after long negotiations with the city, but it clung to whatever else it had acquired. It bought Birchdale in 1920 for $160,000 as a men\u2019s residence at a time when student housing in Halifax, more than two years after the explosion, was difficult to find. Birchdale was a spacious old hotel on the Arm, with some 600 feet of water frontage, and one good deep landing place, the land running back some 550 feet. It was the only large area vacant on the Halifax side of the Arm. Birchdale was not, however, contiguous with any other part of Dalhousie, being about a quarter-mile distant from the president\u2019s house on Oxford Street and the campus on the opposite side. Students going back and forth from 1920 to 1923 did not seem to mind the distance, and they loved the Arm.[footnote]For some further background, see Peter B. Waite, Lives of Dalhousie, Volume I, pp. 424, 472.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

In September 1923, and loath to do it, Dalhousie leased Birchdale to King\u2019s until King\u2019s could put up their new stone buildings on the Dalhousie campus. Seven years as a King\u2019s residence was too much for the old hotel. In 1930, when Dalhousie got Birchdale back again, the decision was made to raze the building rather than repair it. Birchdale was subsequently written down on Dalhousie\u2019s books from $160,927 to $34,317. In October 1932, F.B. McCurdy, chairman of the Finance Committee, recommended immediate sale of the property to help reduce the burgeoning deficit. But both the Executive Committee and the full board concluded that this was no time to sell. Nevertheless, in November 1933 the Building Committee had two requests about Birchdale: one from Dean Grant asking if the board would grant permission to professors to build their houses on the property, and another from Dugald Macgillivray asking for an option to purchase all of it for an unnamed principal. It was agreed that the board did not want to lease lots to professors, but that if Macgillivray wanted an option he could have one for three months, on the understanding that the minimum price would be $40,000. The interest of J. McGregor Stewart, vice-chairman of the board, and his wife Emily, was piqued. Their property, Braemar, was at the southern end of Birchdale, and the only road access to their Arm garden was the shore road through Birchdale. If Birchdale were sold, that access was ended. Hence they wanted a strip along the south side of Birchdale that would give them access through property they owned.<\/p>\n

The Macgillivray option expired without its being taken up. Several board members questioned whether any of Birchdale should be sold, and the issue went back to the Building Committee for recommendation. Professor H.R. Theakston, Dalhousie\u2019s engineer in charge of buildings and grounds, recommended sale of the strip for $3,500 to Mrs. Stewart. But at that point Mrs. Stewart\u2019s interest seems to have lapsed; perhaps the board\u2019s resistance to sale may have suggested to her husband the virtue of postponement.<\/p>\n

There the matter rested for five years. During that time Dalhousie could not get the land exempted from city taxes, even though it was used to teach engineers surveying. The taxes averaged about $700 a year. In February 1941 J. McGregor Stewart, now the chairman, reported that Eastern Trust had received written offers to buy lots on the Birchdale property. That summer the seven acres were surveyed and divided into nine lots, each about three-quarters of an acre. Lot 9 was different from the others; it was a strip on the south side, 60 feet wide and 490 feet deep. The other eight were the conventional rectangles. In September 1941, under financial pressure, the board agreed to sell the whole of Birchdale to the Eastern Trust for $30,500, the Trust\u2019s 5 per cent commission to be deducted from the sale price. The resulting $28,700, after some other expenses were deducted, would be applied to the $43,000 5 per cent mortgage on the whole of Studley. That would produce a saving to the university of $1,425 per year, which, with the taxes saved, amounted to $2,100 annually.[footnote]For Birchdale, see letter from F.B. McCurdy to Board, 13 Oct. 1932, President's Office Fonds, \u201cBoard of Governors, Finance and Investment Committees 1912-1960,\u201d UA-3, Box 231, Folder 11, Dalhousie University Archives; Board of Governors Minutes, 10, 21 Nov. 1932; 17, 21 Nov., 14 Dec 1933; 13 Mar. 1934; 13, 26 July 1934; 7,12, 20 Mar. 1935, UA-1, Box 5, Folder 8, Dalhousie University Archives; Board of Governors Minutes 27 Feb., 22 May, 11, 18 Sept. 1941, UA-1, Box 1, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives. The Carleton Stanley Fonds has correspondence: Carleton Stanley to Stewart, 3 Dec. 1937, 4 Mar. 1938; W.L. Harper to Carleton Stanley, 18 Sept. 1941; Theakston to R.G. Beazley, 12 Mar. 1935, Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 79, Dalhousie University Archives. Susequently, when in late 1944 Birchdale became an issue between Stanley and the board, more correspondence ensued: J.C. Webster to K.C. Laurie, 19 Nov. 1944 (copy), and Stanley\u2019s comments thereon, 27 Nov. 1944, Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 79, Dalhousie University Archives. These occasioned a defence by J. McGregor Stewart to K.C. Laurie, 27 Nov. 1944 (copy). This letter turns up in the Nova Scotia Archives, MG17, Universities. It is an early xerox copy of a typed original that is not available. The Stewart letter is an accurate recitation of the facts but for one or two minor mistakes and a slight exaggeration of the money to be saved for Dalhousie by the sale of Birchdale. What is absent from the letter is any sense that there was anything wrong with the transaction, which one could attribute to the manners and morals of the time. This letter was brought to my attention by Barry Cahill, of the Nova Scotia Archives, to whom I am most grateful. His paper on J. McG. Stewart\u2019s law firm is published. See Carol Wilton, ed., Inside the Law: Canadian Law Firms in Historical Perspective (Toronto 1996), Gregory Marchildon and Barry Cahill, \u201cCorporate Entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada: The Stewart Law Firm, 1915-1955,\u201d pp. 280-319. There is a detailed survey of the Birchdale subdivision in Carleton Stanley Fonds, Box 2, Folder 81, Dalhousie University Archives, made 6 Aug. 1941. In that same file is Carleton Stanley to H.P. Duchemin, 11 Nov. 1944 (copy) and other correspondence.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

That is as cool a gloss on the transaction as can be given. There were, on the other hand, disturbing aspects to the sale: the price itself, which seemed to some too low; more important, the fact that the wife of the chairman of the board got lot 9, the 490-foot strip, with water frontage that included one of the best landing places on that side of the Arm.[footnote]According to W.L. Harper, Dalhousie\u2019s business manager, the lots went as follows: Lot 9, Mrs. Stewart; lot 2, Mrs. Mary L. Cooke; lot 7, Mrs. Mildred L. Doane; lot 8, Mrs. Emily R. Laing; lots 1, 5, and 6, F.C. Manning; lots 3 and 4, Eastern Trust.[\/footnote] Mrs. Stewart\u2019s prospective purchase was only known at the last stage when it was before the full board on 18 September 1941. While the Stewart strip might have been regarded by some as an innocent acquisition, not only did it not look right, it was not right. It was alleged that Stewart\u2019s friends bought several of the lots. President Stanley opposed the sale or the break-up of Birchdale at every stage, and later claimed to have acquired some obloquy in so doing. A more extreme view of the Birchdale sale was taken by Miss Lola Henry, Stanley\u2019s percipient secretary. Miss Henry was a staunch defender of Dalhousie\u2019s (and President Stanley\u2019s) interests; she claimed that Dalhousie\u2019s need for the money was only a pretext, that Stewart became chairman of the board in 1937 mainly because he intended to get that piece of Birchdale. And, asserted Miss Henry, he stayed until he got it; then, a year and a half later, in 1943, he resigned as chairman. Dr. Beecher Weld, the new professor of physiology, thoroughly disliked the whole business.[footnote]Interview with Lola Henry, 19 Jan. 1988, Peter B. Waite Fonds, MS-2-718, Box 3, Folder 73, Dalhousie University Archives. For Professor Beecher Weld, two interviews, with both Kathy and Beecher Weld, 12, 15 Jan. 1988, Peter B. Waite Fonds, MS-2-718, Box 3, Folder 80, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote] The transaction slowly became public knowledge. Among Dalhousians it left a bad taste; it was a conflict of interest on the part of the chairman of the board. He did not vote on the issue in September 1941, but if he wanted a piece of Birchdale that badly, he might have resigned from the board before the issue of sale came up in February 1941. Still, it is right to suggest that it was an age when conflict of interest was not looked upon as severely as now. It was a smaller world, and in downtown Halifax one might have conceded that the Stewarts were only looking after their property.<\/p>\n

Thus did Dalhousie lose its hold on six hundred choice feet of the North-West Arm. Stanley\u2019s hopes for a biological station were never realistic, for the Arm was already insufficiently clean; but his idea of a Dalhousie rowing and canoe club was a real possibility. It was from this time that Stanley and Stewart, president and chairman, began to move apart. Once when Stanley was in New York talking to Dr. F.P. Keppel of the Carnegie Foundation, perhaps in 1941, he complained that someone upon whom he had built hopes had broken in his hands. Keppel replied, \u201cYou didn\u2019t make a mistake. The man was capable of doing what you hoped, but he couldn\u2019t stand the strain of finding that you trusted him.\u201d Was it J. McG. Stewart of whom they were speaking? Stanley continued to value Stewart\u2019s strength, vigour, and financial capacity, but seeds of distrust had been sown.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to R.M. Lester, 20 Sept. 1943, on the occasion of Keppel\u2019s death, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cCarnegie Corporation 1940-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 173, Folder 2, Dalhousie University Archives. The assumption that Stanley was thinking of McGregor Stewart is only an educated guess. The Winnipeg Free Press had an editorial about Dr. Keppel on 14 Sept. 1943.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Stanley and the Board Begin to Draw Apart<\/strong>
\nStanley\u2019s disillusionment with the board seems to have begun not long after the death of Hector Mclnnes in 1937. In November 1937 Stewart fell and broke his leg; the vice-chairman, Dr. J.C. Webster, the New Brunswicker whom Stanley had been instrumental in having appointed, was seventy-four years old and lived two hundred miles distant in Shediac; the board secretary was a decent old fellow, W.E. Thompson (LL.B. '93), now virtually an invalid. Much of the work fell on Stanley\u2019s shoulders. What began to make him angry was the way the board members seemed to disappear when anything substantial had to be done. Especially was this so after the outbreak of war, when Ottawa cheerfully requisitioned whomever and whatever it wanted. On 26 April 1940 the board, meeting at Stewart\u2019s house, agreed to send a small delegation to see the Nova Scotian premier, and to have Stanley arrange an appointment for 30 April. Just before the delegation was to go downtown Stanley discovered that Stewart had gone off to Ottawa without a word. \u201cA second-hand junk shop could not prosper if handled in such a way!\u201d Stanley complained in 1940 to K.C. Laurie, newly on the board.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to W.I. Morse, 12 Nov. 1937, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cWilliam Inglis Morse 1936-1937,\u201d UA-3, Box 285, Folder 1, Dalhousie University Archives; letter from Carleton Stanley to K.C. Laurie, 30 Apr. 1940, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cK.C. Laurie, 1939-1945,\u201d UA-3, Box 335, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The financial campaign of 1939 had gone to ground in the same fashion, so it seemed to Stanley. In 1938 the board decided it would launch a substantial campaign for $4.4 million in 1939, to be called the Loyalty Campaign. Dalhousie\u2019s 1939 needs were estimated as follows:<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Cancellation of present debt<\/td>\n$ 400,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Endowment to maintain present faculties<\/td>\n2,310,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Men's residence<\/td>\n1,000,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Biology and Geology Building<\/td>\n500,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Anatomy Building<\/td>\n200,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/strong><\/td>\n$4,410,000<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As early as April 1939 the campaign was hanging fire badly, Stanley said, with almost the whole board out of town, and for weeks. A circular letter went out from John S. Roper, campaign secretary, in June 1939, written from \u201cLord John\u2019s office in the little red college,\u201d evoking memories of the happy alumni reunion of August 1938. But by August 1939 Stanley complained that those who should have been in the forefront of the campaign had gone to sleep. By the spring of 1940 several board members, including the chairman, thought the campaign should be put off until after the war. Some money was coming in; Stanley was impressed with \u201cthe generosity of school teachers and preachers on low salaries\u201d; many of Dalhousie\u2019s professors had been very generous, some subscribing as much as 10 per cent of their year\u2019s salary. But impetus was lacking. S.R. Balcom of the local drugstore chain, who was chairing the campaign, discovered the board chairman wanted it to close down; the secretary, when he discovered the same thing, resigned. Balcom went to Ottawa, later becoming the chief medical stores inspection officer in 1944. Thus did the Loyalty Campaign come slowly to a stop, not without recriminations.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to C.H.L. Jones, 28 Apr. 1939, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cBoard of Governors Correspondence,\u201d UA-3, Box 176, Folder 3, Dalhousie University Archives; letter from Carleton Stanley to Morse, 8 Aug. 1939, President's Office Fonds, \u201cWilliam Inglis Morse, 1939-1943,\u201d UA-3, Box 285, Folder 3, Dalhousie University Archives; letter from Carleton Stanley to Dr. R.W. Matheson, of Shawinigan Chemicals of Montreal, 18 Apr. 1940; S.R. Balcolm to Carleton Stanley, 20 Mar. 1940; Balcom to Stewart, 8 Oct. 1941, President's Office Fonds, \u201cCampaigns, 1939 Loyalty Fund, 1939-1949,\u201d UA-3, Box 247, Folder 8, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

By 1940 Stanley himself found academic meetings multiplied, too many of them \u201cunnecessarily and irrelevantly long.\u201d At Senate on 28 November when, as he put it, he could not get the Senate to see reason, he lost his temper and walked out, with the remark, \u201cI will not have my time wasted any further today.\u201d Stanley was worn out, so much so that by April 1941 he was in bed with pleurisy. The rest of the university struggled as best it could, enrolment falling steeply. It was 908 in 1939-40; by 1942-3 it was down to 676, a drop of 26 per cent in three years.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to K.C. Laurie, 3 Dec. 1940, President's Office Fonds, \u201cK.C. Laurie 1939-1945,\" UA-3, Box 335, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives; Senate Minutes do not record the outburst, of course, but they do mention the president\u2019s departure. The meeting continued with Dean Grant of Medicine in the chair.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

There was a developing backlog of unanswered problems, including some with King\u2019s, which was trying to break some of the 1923 terms. \u201cKing\u2019s is chilling,\u201d Stanley told McGregor Stewart in December 1940; \u201cCan it be that they want to advertise to the world that they have flouted the federation we thought we had? Is not the time approaching when the Carnegie Corporation will have to be advised of what is going on?\u201d Nor was Stanley\u2019s attitude improved by an ill-advised article by President Walker in the Halifax Chronicle<\/em> two months later, a tactless and graceless comment on what Carnegie had done for King\u2019s in 1923, giving it $600,000 on condition that it find a further $400,000. That King\u2019s managed to do by 1927. A further condition of the Carnegie grant was that the combined $1 million be applied to support instruction at both King\u2019s and Dalhousie. Dalhousie had the strong suspicion that some of that income was being used to support King\u2019s program in divinity, something specifically prohibited in the terms of agreement. In December 1941 Stanley was in New York and saw the Carnegie people. R.M. Lester was familiar with King\u2019s violation of the agreement; Keppel, the president, wished to have King\u2019s sued to enforce the terms of 1923, but Stanley claimed that he had persuaded Keppel not to sue. But King\u2019s would have to wait; neither Stanley nor Stewart had the time for it. Two years later Stanley referred to the useful Latin principle, Solvitur amhulando<\/em> - let time resolve the King\u2019s issue, as time resolved many things.[footnote]Letter from Carleton Stanley to J. McGregor Stewart, 2 Dec. 1940 (copy), President's Office Fonds, \u201cK.C. Laurie 1939-1945,\" UA-3, Box 335, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives; Halifax Chronicle, 18 Feb. 1941; Carleton Stanley to K.C. Laurie, 4 Mar. 1941, confidential, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cKing\u2019s College, 1931-1945,\u201d UA-3, Box 342, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives; Carleton Stanley to Webster, 21 Dec. 1944 (mimeographed copy), Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 77, Dalhousie Univerity Archives; Memorandum by Carleton Stanley of issues with Stewart and Laurie, n.d., Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 89, Dalhousie Univerity Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The Effects of the War on Dalhousie<\/strong>
\nThe war devastated Dalhousie, not by bombs or explosions, but by the tremendous weight of government manpower needs in a vital seaport city, and by the concomitant haemorrhage of staff, of students, of energies. Within three years C.L. Bennet, registrar and professor of English, himself a veteran of the First World War, could say, \u201cYou couldn\u2019t form even a platoon of able-bodied men at Dalhousie right now. There aren\u2019t any.\u201d[footnote]The recollection of C.L. Bennet I owe to Dr. Louis W. Collins ('44), telephone conversation, 13 Jan. 1993, Peter B. Waite Fonds, MS-2-718, Box 2, Folder 67, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

It helped that the universities now had a collective voice. The National Conference of Canadian Universities (NCCU) had its origins in 1911, but developed in the early months of the First World War, especially through the efforts of Principal Peterson of McGill, supported warmly by President MacKenzie. After the war it continued, usually meeting annually, with presidents taking turns at presiding. Stanley was president of the NCCU in 1935-6. After the Second World War began, the government found the conference increasingly useful as a liaison body with the universities of Canada. J.S. Thomson, president of the University of Saskatchewan and NCCU president at the time, praised the enlightened attitude of Ottawa, especially its acceptance of the principle that the best contribution by students to the war was to finish their courses.[footnote]For the history of the NCCU (later called the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, AUCC), see Gwendoline Pilkington, \u201cA History of the National Conference of Canadian Universities, 1911-1961,\u201d (PH.D. thesis, University of Toronto 1974); letter from A.S. MacKenzie to Peterson, 15 Dec. 1914, President's Office Fonds, \"Conference of Canadian Universities, 1915-1920,\" UA-3, Box 256, Folder 1, Dalhousie University Archives; J.S. Thomson noted in his memoirs the enlightened views taken by Ottawa; see Yesteryears at the University of Saskatchewan 1937-1949 (Saskatoon 1969), p. 37. The whole issue is well described in Stanley Brice Frost, McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning: Volume II, 1893-1971 (Kingston and Montreal 1984), pp. 219-21.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

The conference had hitherto been what its name suggested; but by July 1940 it had become the vehicle for the development of manpower policies as they affected the universities. In 1941 more minatory actions by the government made themselves felt. The Wartime Bureau of Technical Personnel was set up by order-in-council in February 1941, and it had dictatorial powers. At the June 1942 NCCU conference severe shortages of engineers and scientists were reported. Some presidents were ready to make their universities into the working instruments of government needs; in November 1942 Cyril James of McGill and R.C. Wallace of Queen\u2019s devised a scheme, the nub of which was that university teaching in law, the humanities, and the social sciences could usefully be shut down for the duration of the war. There was some talk in the Financial Post<\/em> and the Globe and Mail<\/em> during the latter part of 1942 that supported such a position. President Stanley was furious with James, \u201can extremely crude mischief maker,\u201d he told Sidney Smith of Manitoba. Stanley had another reason for his dislike; James had suggested in April 1942 that Dalhousie students finishing third year, by going to McGill for ten weeks, could get a McGill degree at the end of that summer. Stanley replied indignantly that it was a gross attempt to steal students from other universities, and he would have nothing to do with it. He stirred up Cody of Toronto. So the James proposal about abandoning arts came from a president whom others thought a maverick. Cody of Toronto, Smith of Manitoba, Larry MacKenzie of British Columbia, and several others joined Stanley in agreeing that the James-Wallace proposal was thoroughly bad.<\/p>\n

Stanley did not much like Sidney Smith, at Dalhousie or anywhere else, but that feud was patched up for the sake of the emergency. Smith was president of the NCCU that year, and wrote Stanley from Winnipeg: \u201cFrankly we wondered - to use a slang expression - whether the two men in question, who are frequently in Ottawa and who are close to governmental authorities, are \u2018selling us down the river.\u2019\u201d A special meeting of the NCCU was called for Ottawa in January 1943, the university communities very much on the qui vive<\/em>, and ready to take up arms. There the whole proposal was shot down; its only supporters were Wallace and James. Not even the government wanted it. The agreement that emerged did what Arthur MacNamara, the sensible deputy minister of labour and director of national selective service, suggested: weed out incompetent students of whatever kind. James had his fingers burnt and was bitter. But in fact the thinking of the prime minister at that point was that the expansion of the military had gone quite far enough.[footnote]The meeting of 5 July 1940 is vividly described by Stanley in a speech to the third- and fourth-year medical and dental students and other male students, 6 Nov. 1941. A four-page draft of Stanley\u2019s speech is in President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cDepartment of National Defense, 1934-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 326, Folder 6, Dalhousie University Archives. For the Wartime Bureau of Technical Personnel, see C.P. Stacey, Arms, Men and Governments: The War Policies of Canada, 1939-1943 (Ottawa 1970), p. 405. The whole James-Wallace episode is elegantly described in Frederick W. Gibson, Queen\u2019s University, Volume 1, 1917-1961: To Serve and Yet Be Free (Kingston and Montreal 1983), pp. 201-7. For Stanley\u2019s reactions, see Carleton Stanley to Sidney Smith, 14 Nov. 1942, personal and confidential; Smith to Carleton Stanley, 20 Nov. 1942, personal and confidential, from Winnipeg; Carleton Stanley to Cyril James, 30 Apr. 1942, telegram; Carleton Stanley to H.J. Cody, 30 Apr. 1942, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \"Conference of Canadian Universities, 1939-1942,\" UA-3, Box 256, Folder 4, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

In 1942 Dr. Lothar Richter, the director of Dalhousie\u2019s Institute of Public Affairs, claimed Dalhousie was the greatest war casualty of any of the Canadian universities. He was not far off that himself; he and his family had to lie low because anti-German prejudice was rife in Halifax. Stanley was angry at the bigoted and unthinking attitudes of Nova Scotians against the Richters, who had after all fled Germany because of Hitler.<\/p>\n

And the war brought into prominence sometimes officious and unintelligent people in wrong places. A young Dalhousie law professor, Allan Findlay, got into trouble in 1939 for sending a letter to Denmark that had a crude sketch of Halifax harbour in it, to show his Danish fianc\u00e9e the geography. Dark rumours circulated in Ottawa about Findlay\u2019s revelations such as aiding German bombing runs over strategic points in Halifax harbour; Scotland Yard in London allegedly affirmed that the address in Denmark housed a Nazi spy centre. Censors never could be brought to realize that the Germans had whole charts of Halifax harbour and its approaches. Findlay mailed the letter on 29 October 1939; on 2 December he was charged under the Defence of Canada Act with having sent a treasonable letter. J. McG. Stewart, chairman of the board, thought Findlay should be fired. Stanley resisted. Stanley had friends in high places, not least the governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, who saw the letter at External Affairs and told Stanley the young man was innocent. So it virtually proved to be; in the trial before Magistrate Inglis on 28 December, Inglis said that although Findlay was technically guilty, a romantic impulse did not constitute treason. Inglis found him guilty as charged; the fine was $1 plus costs. They were $6![footnote]Letter from Lothar Richter to Carleton Stanley, 3 Feb. 1942, President's Office Fonds, \u201cFederal Government Assistance, 1941-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 283, Folder 2, Dalhousie University Archives. For Findlay, see Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 84 for a short pencil description for the board meeting of 28 Nov. 1944. John Willis mentions Findlay in A History of the Dalhousie Law School (Toronto 1979), p. 126. There is a vivid account of the Ottawa version of this affair in F.W. Gibson and Barbara Robertson, Ottawa at War: The Grant Dexter Memoranda, 1939-1943 (Winnipeg 1994), based on Dexter\u2019s talks with John MacNeill, the law officer of the crown who advised the mounted police and the censors. MacNeill was opposed to prosecution but in 1940 believed that he was wrong. Dexter was Ottawa correspondent for the Winnipeg Free Press. The Halifax trial is in Chronicle-Herald, 29 Dec. 1939, the reference being given to me by Barry Cahill of the Nova Scotia Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Dalhousie found itself being steadily crimped and crippled by government demands, especially for the loan of staff for technical projects. J.H.L. Johnstone and George Henderson in the Department of Physics were seconded to the National Research Council in 1940 on part-time leave for naval research, as soon as magnetic mines made their appearance. The huge cables that were wound around corvettes just inside the bulwarks resulted partly from the work of Johnstone and Henderson on the principle of degaussing. As of 31 August 1942 both Dalhousie physicists were gone for the duration of the war. Four senior members of Senate and two members of Arts and Science, Vincent Macdonald, dean of law, and some thirteen members of the Medical Faculty, are recorded in the 1944-5 calendar as on leave for the duration.<\/p>\n

In December 1940 the Red Cross cheerfully announced that in the event of any real emergency in Halifax the first building they would requisition would be Shirreff Hall. The board even accepted that. Whole sections of the Dalhousie campus were sequestered. The corner of Coburg and Oxford streets became the site by 1943 of a barracks for the Women\u2019s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS). In September 1941, at government request, King\u2019s leased its whole building to the navy. It informed Dalhousie only when it was a fait accompli<\/em> and it did not bother informing the Carnegie Corporation at all. Both Lester and Keppel of the corporation told Stanley in December 1941 that, legally and morally, they should at least have been consulted. King\u2019s students went to Pine Hill. The navy arranged to build a mess hall for its officers in training at HMCS King\u2019s<\/em> on the foundation of the old Dalhousie gym, opposite the Physics Building. The new 1932 gym was used heavily by navy, airforce and army personnel; by 1944 HMCS King\u2019s<\/em> was taking twenty-four hours a week of the Dalhousie gym. The Canadian Women\u2019s Army Corps wanted accommodation; they took over Shirreff Hall for the summer of 1942, and to Dalhousie\u2019s surprise left it cleaner than it had ever been seen before. Eventually the government would develop a site for a CWAC barracks just off Dalhousie land on Morris Street.[footnote]Board of Governors Minutes, 10 Dec. 1940<\/a>, UA-1, Box 51, Folder 4; 16 June 1942; 18 Sept. 1941, UA-1, Box 35, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives; letter from Carleton Stanley to Webster, 21 Dec. 1944, mimeographed copy, Carleton Stanley Fonds, MS-2-163, Box 2, Folder 77, Dalhousie University Archives.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

Dalhousie\u2019s financial loss from the war was considerable. By the autumn of 1942 attendance was down 25.5 per cent from that in 1939. Stanley claimed that Dalhousie\u2019s loss of students, male students especially, was much the highest in Canada. Average yearly loss from the shrinkage of student fees alone was $50,000. Dalhousie\u2019s Medical and Dental facilities were being used by the armed services during the early stages of the war; the Public Health Clinic had to cope with VD in the navy and on the merchant ships. Aside from the loss of student fees, Dalhousie calculated in 1943 that it had spent some $124,000 in staff time and overhead, and thought that some compensation from Ottawa was both appropriate and essential:<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
A - Degaussing ships (Physics)<\/td>\n$42,250<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
B - Precision instrument course (Physics)<\/td>\n12,750<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
C - National Research Council projects (Chemistry)<\/td>\n700<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
D - Medical Research, NRC, National Defence, Department of Pensions, Royal Canadian Navy<\/td>\n3,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
E - Medical; Diphtheria immunizations<\/td>\n46,316<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
F - VD treatment for merchant seamen<\/td>\n2,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
G - Work for armed services by Dalhousie's Pathology Department<\/td>\n10,310<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
H - Rent for university buildings<\/td>\n6,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/strong><\/td>\n$124,326<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This went to C.J. Mackenzie of the National Research Council on 13 March 1943. A similar request had gone forward in 1942, supported by C.D. Howe and Angus L. Macdonald. J.L. Ilsley, the minister of finance, Nova Scotian though he was (BA Acadia, 1913, LL.B. Dalhousie, 1918), was obdurate to both requests. Not even the cost of drugs spent on VD and diphtheria was allowed. Only one minor claim was accepted. When Angus L. Macdonald, minister of naval defence, wrote to Dalhousie on 8 March 1943 asking for permission to build a drill shed, 160 feet by 86 feet, on the campus, Stanley noted an earlier 1942 request of the navy for something similar. The board therefore decided that no further negotiations with any government department for facilities would take place until some settlement had been reached about Dalhousie facilities already granted. In 1944 Stanley told R.B. Hanson, the leader of the opposition in Ottawa, that \u201cthe letters we received from the Finance Minister about these matters have to be seen to be believed.\u201d[footnote]Stanley\u2019s estimate of November 1941 juxtaposed Dalhousie with Queen\u2019s, nearest to Dalhousie in diminution of students, Dalhousie with 25 per cent and Queen\u2019s with 15 per cent. Stanley somewhat exaggerated the 1941 loss. See Stanley\u2019s speech of 6 Nov. 1941, President\u2019s Office Fonds, \u201cDepartment of National Defense, 1934-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 326, Folder 6, Dalhousie University Archives. Letter from C.D. Howe to Carleton Stanley, 17 Mar. 1942; Carleton Stanley to C.D. Howe, 30 Mar. 1942; Gordon B. Isnor (MP for Halifax) to Carleton Stanley, 26 May 1943, personal; Carleton Stanley to Angus L. Macdonald, 5 May 1943; Carleton Stanley to R.B. Hanson, 10 July 1944, President's Office Fonds, \u201cFederal Government Assistance, 1941-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 283, Folder 2, Dalhousie University Archives. The Board of Governors stand can be seen in the minutes for 27 Oct. 1942 and 27 Apr. 1943, UA-1, Box 35, Folder 5, Dalhousie University Archives. There were two major submissions of the board to Ottawa for compensation, also in President's Office Fonds, \u201cFederal Government Assistance, 1941-1944,\u201d UA-3, Box 283, Folder 2, one of 23 Feb. 1942, and the one quoted here, submitted through Carleton Stanley to C.J. Mackenzie, president of the National Research Council, 13 Mar. 1943. Unfortunately I have not found the letters from Ilsley that so offended Stanley.[\/footnote]<\/p>\n

By 1943, however, Dalhousie\u2019s pressing financial difficulties, while still real, were helped by new and considerable gleams of hope. Fortuitously money began to appear. Alex Ross, Dalhousie\u2019s oldest graduate, whom Dugald Macgillivray had once whiskeyed and nourished, gave via his estate $102,500 for libraries; the George S. Campbell estate gave $108,000 to found a chair in biology; most important of all, in April 1943 there came a personal visit from R.B. Bennett\u2019s secretary, Alice Millar, and R.B.\u2019s brother, Captain Ronald Bennett. They presented Stanley with a missive from R.B. Bennett. \u201cYour letter,\u201d wrote Miss Millar to her employer in England, \u201cshook him to his roots for he had no warning.\u201d It was a gift of $725,000 with the promise of another $250,000 to come. Bennett, then living at his country estate at Mickleham in Surrey, decided at the age of seventy-three to distribute some of his Canadian assets, not being able to get any money out of England. Stanley had once told Bennett of Harvard President Conant\u2019s remark that the value of a university lay not in its buildings but its professors. Bennett listened. Thus the $725,000, with $25,000 that Bennett had earlier given to begin endowment of a Dean Weldon chair of law, would be established to endow at least four professorships, any balance to go to Dalhousie\u2019s endowment:<\/p>\n