Camp Columbia was a summer camp program established by students at the University of Waterloo and run under the Federation of Students (now the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, WUSA) in 1968. The program was intended to be a philanthropic, non-profit organization for underprivileged children selected from applications distributed by the local Children’s Aid Society.[1]

The first camp program was financed with $8000.00 in student and private donations and accepted approximately 100 campers.[2] Future programs were financed through the federal government’s Opportunities for Youth (OFY) grant, and donations from the Federation of Students, local businesses, university administration, faculty and through student sponsored activities at the university.[3]

The camp operated at Lake Columbia (also known as Columbia Lake), a man-made lake near Westmount Road and Columbia Street close to the University of Waterloo.[4] The camp program ran in bi-weekly periods for typically eight weeks during the months of July and August and was available to children between the ages of 8 and 12.[5] The camp intentionally offered participants a less structured environment with few rules, except those for safety. Campers travelled by bus to have meals at the Waterloo Cooperative Residents on Philip Street, enjoyed cookouts each Sunday and went for daily swims at the Grand River Conservation Authority’s Laurel Park. Campers were not able to swim in Lake Columbia as health inspectors reported it had an unhealthy bacteria count. The children also took bus trips to various attractions including the Ontario Science Centre, Elora Gorge Park, and the African Lion Safari farm at Rockwood.

The camp also provided summer jobs to university students who could work as camp counselors.[6]

After five years of operation, the camp was notified in August 1973 that they were no longer going to receive the OFY federal grant and would have to find financial support through donations from the local community. It’s unclear if the camp operated past 1973.

More than 1000 children attended Camp Columbia between 1968 and 1973.[7]

The Aryan Affairs Commission (AAC) was a student organization established by Harold D. Goldbrick at the University of Waterloo in Fall 1967. Harold D. Goldbrick was likely a pseudonym as there is no evidence of a student under this name graduating from the university. Goldbrick, who wrote for The Chevron, reportedly created the AAC to generate material for his weekly column, “As the words wag on.”[1] Goldbrick penned this column from June 9, 1967, until at least March 1, 1968. In a document provided alongside the first meeting minutes of the AAC, the club's purpose was stated as promoting Aryanic languages and fostering positive relationships between individuals of Aryan and non-Aryan descent.[2] During an interview with The Chevron on November 10, 1967, Goldbrick stated, “Well, I was thinking that maybe too much attention is being paid to minority groups – Germans, Canadians, French Canadians, Newfies, Ontarians, Conservatives, Liberals, Communists, Fascists, Homosexuals, Heterosexuals.”[3] On November 24, 1967, Goldbrick stated in his column that the AAC, “was first formed as a backlash to Afghanistan power and various other preversions of the bored of intimate relations. However, since then we have gone so far afield and attracted such wide membership interest that the name of the group is losing its meaning. It will, of course, be retained to be consistent with the other meaningless aspects of the group.”[4]

The AAC was considered a satirical club by its members and others across campus. In the handbook What’s what at uniwat 1968-69, published by the Federation of Students, the AAC is cited as the biggest in-joke on campus, an anti-organization and apathy club as well as fascist, communist, racist, anarchist, neo-Nazi, and liberal. The AAC staged various pranks, jokes, and activities on campus such as the opening and closing buildings, integrating crosswalks, capturing radio stations, burning books, and holding at least one Beer Hall Putsch, an event where members pushed beer bottles across a hallway with their head.[5] It seems that the AAC played a more active role on campus by 1968.[6] The AAC was involved in the organization of the Miles for Millions march in 1968, an annual fundraising event for charity held nationwide in Canada.[7]

The AAC received formal club recognition by the Federation of Students (now the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, WUSA) in Spring 1968. Initially, AAC's application for club recognition was denied due to a new policy requiring all clubs to submit written constitutions rather than form-based constitutions.[8] There is some evidence to suggest that the ACC was also not granted club recognition due to concerns of potential discriminatory practices. However, these concerns were apparently dispelled and after resubmitting their constitution, the AAC was granted club recognition by the Federation of Students.[9]

The operations of the AAC were overseen by an executive board until the group started convening in a washroom, at which point the board was restructured and rebranded as the 'privy council'. This council consisted of a select group of individuals who wore top hats with a red ribbon.[10]

The organizational structure of the privy council parodied that of the university and Federation of Students. The council included the president, vice president in charge of vice, the comptroller, the registrar, the chairman of the board of propaganda, the chairman of the board of student activities, and the chief jock of the board of athletics, among other roles. Further information outlining the responsibilities of some of these positions can be found in What’s what at uniwat 1968-69, published by the Federation of Students.[11]

Membership was open to all. The official marching-song of the AAC was “Lapland.”[12]

The AAC was listed in the Federation of Students handbook until at least 1972.[13] It is uncertain if the club remained active after that time.

While the AAC may have been intended as a satirical club, the organization’s name and use of the term ‘Aryan’ carries racist connotations. The group’s name has been maintained in keeping with Special Collections & Archives’ approach to language in archival descriptions, which prioritizes speaking openly about and clearly identifying problematic, harmful, and otherwise offensive records in the department’s holdings. This approach, while potentially upsetting, allows for the critical assessment and questioning of historical material by contemporary researchers.

Watfor is a character and cartoon strip created for The Chevron by Don Kerr in 1966. The character appeared in The Chevron until approximately April 1968.

Watfor was inspired by the Fortran computer program called WATFOR which was developed by a group of University of Waterloo undergraduates in 1965. Watfor lived in the campus pond in front of the Health Services Building. It is unclear exactly what type of character Watfor is. The character refers to itself as a tad, fish, troll, and pond denizen. It may be part computer, part fish. In the comic strips, Watfor commented on campus happenings. The character was also printed on some ephemeral items such as ribbons distributed to the Orientation Committee on campus in the late 1960s.

Don Kerr was a graduate student at the University of Waterloo in the department of design when he created Watfor. He had recently graduated from the University of Manitoba as an architect and came to Waterloo to further his studies, specifically around experimental colours and architectural illumination.

Cartooning was a hobby for Don Kerr. He created the FDU cartoon strip which ran in the University of Manitoba's newspaper, the Manitoban, as well as the Winnipeg Tribune. He also created Lapinette, a cartoon ad for the Bank of Montreal that ran in the majority of campus newspapers across Canada.

Don Kerr married Mary Robinson, a fellow graduate student in design, in the Conrad Grebel chapel on May 20, 1967. The wedding was featured in an article in The Chevron titled, "This doesn't very often happen: Watfor sees his father married." The article includes a photograph of Don Kerr and Mary Robinson at the wedding ceremony.

James (Jim) Keron is an alumnus of the University of Waterloo. Keron graduated with a Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) in 1970 and a Bachelor of Arts (BA), Anthropology in 1986. Keron also received a Master of Arts (MA), Archeology in 2003 and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Bioarcheology in 2015 from Western University.

During his time as a student at the University of Waterloo, Keron was actively involved in various clubs and committees, including the Folk Music Club and the Federation of Students (now known as the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, WUSA).

Keron served on the Orientation Committee in 1967, where he played a key role in coordinating events and activities for incoming students. He also served on the Homecoming Committee in 1967 and helped organize the celebration.

In 1968, Keron took on the role of Chairman for Summer Weekend 68, a multi-day event featuring activities and musical performances for the university community, which was organized by the Federation of Students. Additionally, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Student Activities during Fall 1968.

In 1969, Keron served as Chairman of the Orientation Committee and worked as the Treasurer of the Federation of Students between 1969 and 1970.

As a student, Keron also worked with the concert technology group providing sound and lighting for concerts on campus and for performances held at Wilfrid Laurier University, McMaster University, and other venues.

Joseph Gerald “Gerry” Hagey (September 28, 1904-October 26, 1988) was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario by Menno Hagey and Esther Cornell. Hagey’s great-grandfather was Mennonite Bishop Joseph B. Hagey, an early settler to the Waterloo area from Pennsylvania. Hagey attended Waterloo College (later Wilfred Laurier University) completing his high school and University education there. After graduating he took a position as a sales clerk with B.F. Goodrich in Kitchener. After working for B.F. Goodrich for many years, he eventually rose to the position of National Advertising Director by the 1950’s. Throughout this time he was still actively involved with the affairs of Waterloo College, then a small church college affiliated with the University of Western Ontario. After sitting on the board, he was asked to be the president of Waterloo College in 1953.

During his time at B.F. Goodrich, he had become interested in the idea of students working in their respective industries while studying believing that it would provide experience and revenue for the students, revenue for the college, and assistance for the company. Although a controversial idea, in four years Hagey and his supporters had established a co-operative school of engineering. In the summer of 1957 the Waterloo College Associated Faculties opened, with Hagey as the president. In 1959 Hagey decided to resign his position with Waterloo College and devote his time to the Associate Faculties, which separated from Waterloo College and incorporated as the University of Waterloo. Hagey spent the next ten years developing Waterloo from a two portable school with 75 students to a multimillion dollar university with over 9,000 enrollments.

In 1969 Hagey retired from the University of Waterloo due to a battle with cancer that resulted in the removal of his larynx. In his later years he re-taught himself to speak after his surgery, and was awarded numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Order of Canada in 1986. Hagey died of pneumonia on October 26, 1988.

The University of Waterloo Tiddlywinks Club was formed in the Student Village at the University of Waterloo in October 1965.[1]

Charles McLeod, a graduate student in mathematics, was one of the founders of the group and applied for a grant from the Federation of Students (now the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, WUSA) to start the club. Initially, the Federation of Students did not take this grant request seriously and laughed at the proposal. However, McLeod was able to convince the committee of the merits of tiddlywinks and was given the grant.[2]

The club had approximately 80 members in 1966. All members were issued membership cards that showed an affiliation to the English Tiddlywink Association and the International Federation of Tiddlywink Association.[3]

The club imported equipment from England however the items were held by Canadian custom officials who suspected the parcel labeled “tiddlywinks” contained something sinister. The parcel was eventually released when a university official explained the game of tiddlywinks.[4]

On February 12, 1966, the University of Waterloo won the Canadian championship in a 16-game playoff with Waterloo Lutheran University (now Wilfrid Laurier University), the only other team in Canada. The final score was 80 to 26 with the University of Waterloo winning 14 of the games.[5]

The University of Waterloo team travelled to Harvard University to compete in the North American Tiddlywink Championship on February 25, 1966, and won. The team had ambitions to then travel to England and compete in the World Championships at either Oxford or Cambridge University.[6] The prize was a trophy donated by Prince Philip known as “Silver Wink.”[7]

In October 1966, the University of Waterloo team staged a marathon to set the world record of 56 hours of continuous tiddlywinks at Waterloo Square.[8] This event was held to draw attention to the team’s need to raise $4,400 for ten members to travel to England and complete in the World Championships in February 1967.[9] The team successfully set the new record by beating the previous record of 55 hours of continuous play by the Lanchester College of Technology (now Coventry University).[10] However, the club was likely unable to raise enough money to attend the World Championships as there does not appear to be any mention of this event in local or campus newspapers.

On October 28, 1967, the University of Waterloo hosted the North American Tiddlywinks Championship, the first time this event was held in Canada. Five teams challenged the defending University of Waterloo Tiddlywinks Club.[11] The University of Waterloo lost to Cornell University in the final round by a score of 61 to 51.[12] Despite this loss, the team was still eligible to compete in the World Championships at Oxford University in Spring 1968 if they could raise the money to go. Lord Thomson and Coca Cola declined to sponsor the team. It was suggested that the Athletic department help finance the team through the $22 athletic fee charged to students, since this was the only team at the university with world championship caliber at the time.[13] The club was likely unable to raise enough money to attend the World Championships as there does not appear to be any mention of this event in local or campus newspapers.

Although the University of Waterloo Tiddlywinks Club continued to host campus tournaments in 1968, it appears the club's popularity declined.[14] It's unclear if the club was active beyond 1968.

Known members of the club include: Jon Ingram, Charles McLeod, John Kohler, , Mark Taylor, Henry Sheilds, Helmut Roth, Andy Tomaino, Marie Kennedy, Ihor Gawdan, Paul Gardner, Barry Gillespie, Ronald Rumm, Ross Bell, Paul Freeman, Bill Webb, and Rosie Wain.[15]

Founded in 1971, the Glow Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity is longest running queer and trans student organization in Canada.

Run entirely by dedicated student volunteers, Glow promotes a healthy attitude towards all sexual orientations and gender identities at the University of Waterloo by providing a wide variety of peer support, social events, advocacy work, and resources.

For a brief period the organization produced, GLOW News, a newsletter which acted as an educational resource on homosexuality as well as a support and social group for the gay community. Edited by GLOW membership the newsletter consisted of ten issues released between December 1982 and September 1983. Copies of GLOW News are held by Special Collections & Archives [call number UWA 0120]. GLOW News is available on the Waterloo Digital Library.

The Glow Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity was previously known as Gay Liberation of Waterloo (GLOW), Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo and the Glow Queer and Questioning Community Centre.

The Student Wives Club was a club for the spouses of students at the University of Waterloo.

The club was established in 1962 by Mickey Hackney, Agnes Olive, and Colleen Grierson, who shared an interest in connecting with other wives in the campus community. Numerous students and spouses encountered a considerable financial challenge when attending university, as households often relied on a single income. As a result, students and their spouses frequently found that they could not participate in social activities like dining out or attending the theatre. The club primarily arranged social events for spouses to connect and share their experiences that aligned with their availability and budget.

Initially, the club was primarily composed of the wives of engineering students however, members hoped to recruit more wives in the arts and sciences as well as post-graduate students. Members handed out pamphlets at registration day and placed advertisements in the student handbooks.

Examples of social events held by the club include makeup demonstrations, wiener roasts, card parties as well as tutorials in millinery design and how to make inexpensive Christmas decorations.[1] Occasionally, the club invited guest speakers to talk to members about various topics such as when Dixie Guldner, family counsellor at the university, was invited to discuss sexuality in the home in 1973.[2]

In 1964, Pat Belyea was the Club President. Members were charged $1.00 in annual dues.[3] Some members of the club created a cookbook which is now held by Special Collections & Archives.

Following the fire at the School of Optometry (located in the old Waterloo post office) in 1969, the club donated $200.00 worth of children’s furniture and toys to the new waiting room for the school.[4]

The Student Wives Club was hosting events until at least 1973.[5] It is uncertain if the club remained active after that time.

The Canadian Obesity Network Student and New Professional University of Waterloo chapter began in 2013. From their constitution, the mission statement of the organization is to "1. To provide students and new professionals the forum to build, maintain, and refine networking and professional development skills that are integral in pursuing a career related to obesity in academic, community, and/or industry settings, as well as advance awareness of CON."

The origins of Imprint, University of Waterloo’s student newspaper, are rooted in Waterloo’s start as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, a semi-autonomous and non-denominational entity affiliated with Waterloo College (present-day Wilfrid Laurier University). Waterloo College’s two student newspapers, College Cord and Newsweekly were merged in 1958 to form The Cord Weekly, now called The Cord, which remains Laurier's student newspaper.

Engineering students at the Waterloo College Associate Faculties started their own newsletter in early 1959 shortly after the formation of the Engineering Society. The newsletter was dubbed Enginews and was originally published as a mimeographed sheet of foolscap. By late 1959, Enginews joined The Cord Weekly and appeared as a special section with its own masthead within the newspaper. The collaboration between The Cord Weekly and Enginews ended in the spring of 1960.

Enginews continued to publish issues in the spring and summer of 1960 until a new, initially nameless, newspaper was released in the fall of that year. This new newspaper was named The Coryphaeus, the Greek word for leader, in the second issue. Early issues of The Coryphaeus looked like The Cord Weekly, and Enginews continued to appear as a separate section with its own masthead in the paper. However, this special section slowly disappeared as the paper focused more on engineering.

The dominance of engineering news in The Coryphaeus disappointed many arts students who slowly organized and took over the newspaper. The Coryphaeus was renamed The Chevron in 1966, and as times changed, began to take a more radical editorial slant as the activist student movement of the 1960s got underway. Focus shifted away from engineering coverage to reporting on issues of the day such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement.

Believing they were no longer represented by The Chevron, a group of engineering students relaunched Enginews with a crude and irreverent style in July 1967. Publication of the new Enginews stopped in 1985 after the Iron Warrior, a paper with a more professional, serious-minded profile launched in 1980, proved to have more appeal with students. The Chevron*’s continued promotion of what was viewed as a radical left-wing agenda continued into the 1970s and resulted in a lack of confidence from the Waterloo’s student body. In November of 1978, after an extended dispute with the Federation of Students executive, now the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, the newspaper’s budget was frozen and The Chevron was overwhelmingly rejected by students in a referendum, leading to its removed as Waterloo's official student newspaper.

In the spring of 1978, the University of Waterloo Journalism Club, made up of former Chevron staffers and other Waterloo students, started its own weekly publication called Imprint. Initially funded solely by advertising, the paper won the support of students in a referendum held in March 1979 and the Imprint was named Waterloo's official student newspaper. Publication of the award-winning newspaper continues today with a large circulation in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and a six-figure operating budget.

Dr. Ken Ledbetter ([1932?]-1993) was a professor of English at the University of Waterloo and a writer. He joined the English department in 1966 and served as deputy dean of arts from 1968-1969, associate dean (special programs) from 1975-1981, and acting director of the correspondence program from 1980-1981. He received a Distinguised Teacher Award in 1983. He also founded several programs in the Faculty of Arts, including the English language proficiency program. Ledbetter was also a writer of short stories and novels, and his biggest success was Too Many Blackbirds (1984).

Ira George Needles was an industrial executive and university administrator who served as chancellor at the University of Waterloo from 1966 to 1975. Needles was born September 1, 1893 in Mount Vernon, Linn, Iowa to Elson Reed Needles and Anna Edna Hunter. He and his wife Marian had three children, Lauranna Jones, William and Myron (Bud). After school, Needles began working at B. F. Goodrich (now known as Goodrich Corporation) in 1916 in Akron, Ohio. He moved to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in 1925 after Goodrich purchased the Ames-Holden Rubber Company, and worked at its office as an assistant sales manager, and was eventually promoted to several positions including general manager of the tire division (1930), vice-president of sales, and chairman of the board (1958). After 26 years, he eventually rose to the position of president of B.F. Goodrich Canada, in 1951. He resigned from B.F. Goodrich in 1960.

In the summer of 1956, Needles gave a speech at the Rotary Club of Kitchener-Waterloo entitled WANTED: 150,000 Engineers – The Waterloo Plan. In this presentation, Needles offered a different approach to education that would include both studies in the classroom and training in industry that would eventually become the basis of the cooperative education program at the University of Waterloo. Waterloo College (now Wilfrid Laurier University) planned to open a science faculty that would become known as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties in 1957. Needles—along with his B.F. Goodrich colleague, then-president of Waterloo College, and first president of the University of Waterloo, Gerald Hagey—founded the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, which later became the University of Waterloo, with Needles' vision of a cooperative education program that involved industry. After founding the university, Needles served as chairman of its board of governors from 1956 to 1966 and then became chancellor from 1966 to 1975.

Ira Needles died on January 6, 1986.

During World War II, Needles served as a technical advisor for the Government of Canada to help ration rubber, which was a strategic material during the war. After the war, he founded the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where his son, William, became an actor.