Canisius College - Azuwur Yearbook (Buffalo, NY)

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1 870-1976 An Abbreviated History of Canisius College by Charles A. Brady On September 5, 1870, Canisius College opened its doors for the first time in a small, tW0-Story brick structure, a former bookstore, situated at 434 Ellicott Street. Except for a preliminary paid announcement, the event went unnoticed in the Buffalo press which was busy listening to the clangor of such more distant happenings as Sedan's falling before the Prus- sian armies and the capture of Napoleon lll. Because of the city's large German and smaller, though still sizable, Alsatian population, there was intense interest in the progress of this first German Blitzkrieg against France. The generic interest was at its highest pitch, most probably, within the small faculty of the fledgling college. Bismarck's greatest triumph was at hand, and, oddly enough, the presence of these European founders of Canisius-German Dutch, and German-speaking Swiss Fathers-was in great part a reflex of the anti-clerical forces which had converged in the Bismarkian Kulturkampf and which were destined to gain even more momentum after the victory of 1870. As a matter of fact, a certain number of northern European Jesuits had been resident in Western New York as early as 1848, the occa- sion of their coming to the Buffalo area a schism within the Buffalo Catholic diocese re- sulting from a jurisdictional clash between the Buffalo ordinary, Bishop John Timon and the trustees of St. Louis' Church, the mother church of the Buffalo diocese. They had been sent there originally, at Timon's request, by the French Provincial of the New York-Canada Nlission, the Jesuit administrative entity serving as their host in the New World. At the Buffalo bishop's instigation, after he had placed St. Louis under formal interdict, they built St. Nlichael's, the Jesuit church on Washington Street between Tupper and Chippewa which, rebuilt very much according to the original plan after the disastrous fire of May 23, 1962, remains to this day one of the city's best loved landmarks. Once the schism had been healed, Timon, as energetic as he was politic, moved to a second objective he hoped to achieve through Jesuit instrumentality. He wanted Catholic higher education, on both seminary and lay levels, for Buffalo and its environs. Jesuit college educa- tion, which derived directly from the University of Paris even as did Oxford and Cambridge and, in America, Harvard and Yale, had an admirable reputation. So Timon brought his considerable powers of diplomatic suasion to bear on the French-born first superior of St. lVlichael's, Father Joseph Durthaller, who had once taught Gustave Dore' the celebrated illustrator of Cer- vantes, Dante and Swift. As a sensitive human- ist, Durthaller was well-disposed toward the project. ln fact, if circumstances had been just a little different, Durthaller might well have been the first president of a Buffalo-based Jesuit college founded under French auspices rather than German. Even as things turned out, he may be regarded as the spiritual founder of the

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logies all over the world.The best known ofhis longer critiques are studies of Cooper, Nlarquand, Sigrid Undset, the Volsungasaga, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis. One of the three letters which Lewis wrote to Dr. Brady has been printed in the 1967 collection, Letters of C.S. Lewis. Dr. Brady's record of creative achievement is as long and as formidable as that of his academic and critical careers. He has had four novels published: Viking Summer, This Land Fulfilled, Crown of Grass and Stage of Fools, a biography of St. Thomas lVlore, which went into multiple editions, including a paperback issue, and outsold any Dutton book on the 1953 publishing list. The titles of his books for children are Cat Royal, The Elephant Who Wanted To Pray, The Church Mouse of St. Nicholas and St. Thomas More of London Town. For older children there is Sword of Clontarf and The King's Thane. A Catholic Reader is a per- sonalized anthology and Wings Over Patmos is a book of poetry. Several of his short stories and poems have been anthologized, some for the blind. One short story which he wrote while still an undergraduate at the College, The Foot That Went Too Far, inspired the appear- ance ofthe fabled Griffin on our campus. iSee page 34.l Yet despite all the foregoing, Dr. Brady's eminence has es- caped the notice of many students. This is due to his precarious state of health which has often kept him away from the campus in recent years. Dr. Brady has been in declining health since the late 1950's and has only managed to carry on his college lecturing under strictly controlled conditions. Early this semester, his health took another turn and he was hospitalized. Precisely one week after his release from intensive care, Dr. Brady was back teaching, in his own living room, a final course before his retire- This tribute cannot begin to tell it all. Dr. Brady was named an Outstanding Citizen of the Year by The Buffalo Evening News in 1970. During his high school and college days, he was one of the premier tennis talents in the Buffalo area. He chaired the English Department at Canisius for nearly 25 years. He has taught in several other departments as well, including languages and his- iry. As he used to tell his classes, if literature was his business, history was his passion. That fact is manifest in his numerous works of historical fiction. No, we cannot tell it all here. Still, while all of this establishes Dr. Brady's eminence, we must express his specialness as well. Last fall, the AZUWUB received a letter from Dr. Brady's colleagues suggesting that we consider dedicating the 1976 year- book to him because: His imprint is lastingly upon the best elements in Canisius and in the Buffalo community. The letter mentioned Dr. Brady's career as a teacher, novelist, poet, scholar, and critic. The missive ended: All of this leaves out the most important fact about him which is that his is one of the richest human spirits of our place and time-he is truly great-hearted. We suggest that your choosing him would dignify us all. And we suggest, further, that our choosing him does dignify us all. -E.B. ment. CHARLES A. BRADY A. B. lt is not easy to be critical with a critic and even more difficult to give a thorough, literal treatment of a literary man. But this is our pre- dicament, for it is a well known and acknowl- edged fact that Charlie is a litterateur and critic of note, far beyond the confines of our own little circle. Though perhaps head and shoulders above any graduate of Canisius in the literary field, his dis- tinctions are not therein limited. As a student of the languages, he has been outstanding. French seems to be his favorite study. Debating, fraternal affiliations and dramatics have come under his extensive activities. Well might we enter on a discussion of how he approaches the personifica- tion of Newman's gentleman, if we didn't think we were intruding on a gentleman's mod- esty. We expect great things of Charlie. Coffin Clubg Sodality, 1, 2, 3, 45 Quarterly, l, 2, 3, 45 Editor-in-Chief, 45 Azuwur, 3, 4, Associate Editor, 41 Academia, l, 2, 3, 4g Intercollegiate Debating Team, 43 Dramatic Club, l, 2, 3g Class Medal, l, 2, 3g Tennis Team, 2, 3, 4. even as the symbo, Dr. Brady unleashed on The prophecy of great things in the 1933 AZUWUR proved to be right on target. Canisius during his undergraduate days-the Golden Griffin-appeared to tender his personal congratulations. 27

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new school which would bear the name of a famous post-Reformation Dutch Jesuit, St. Peter Canisius, whose name also survives in several European Jesuit institutions of higher learning. So-as had been true of Harvard, too, in its beginnings-there was a religious intention be- hind Canisius' foundation, one summed up in the Jesuit motto: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. To the greater glory of God. Hn Christi Gloriam had appeared on Harvard's seal in 1650.l The new college was part of a Buffalo-sited Mission to the Catholic German-Americans of the Unit- ed States, and one that, initially, had been accepted with reluctance. To tell the truth, the whole prospect of a Mission itself had daunted these expatriate German Fathers at first. When they balked at the magnitude of the enterprise unfolding before them, Durthaller prodded the then Father General, Peter John Beckx, S.J., into ordering them to accept the assignment. On July 4, 1869, Father Peter Spicher arrived in Buffalo to take possession of the newly cre- ated Missio Germanica Americae Septentriona- lis, i.e., the North American Mission of the German Province. Within two years the Mis- sion's jurisdiction extended over a positively imperial range of territory: the American shores of the Great Lakes excluding the dioceses of Chicago and Milwaukee, but including those of Buffalo, Flochester, Erie, Cleveland, Marquette, Detroit, St. Paul, La Crosse, and Green Bay. Soon after, a vast expanse of Indian mission land-a parallel with Dartmouth's original Indi- an mission springs to mind-was added: first among the Arapaho of the Wyoming Territory: then, more enduringly, among the BrUle and Ogallala Sioux of South Dakota. ln the end, it was the College which turned out to be the sole surviving creation of the German Mission's far-flung empire. Their uni- cum collegium Germanicum in Civitatibus Foederatis they fondly called it-the single German college in the United States. Before the end of Canisius' first year, the student body had swelled from an entering twenty-five to thirty-four. Except for one manifestly Gallic name, one Irish, and two Welsh, the other thir- ty names were clearly either German or Alsa- tian, a circumstance which made the founding year a nightmare for the College's first Dean of Men-he was called Prefect of Discipline in those days. On the street and in the classroom German boy warred against Alsatian all during the Prussian siege of Paris, and after, too. On a comparative scale, Canisius' student unrest was actually greater in 1870 than in 1970. Until 1912's dedication of Old Main, the building which, in its present extended form, still remains the focal point of the present Main Street campus, Canisius College and Canisius High School had been a single continuum, both spatially and academically, within the old Wash- ington Street campus. President Theodore Van Flossum, S.J., 1883-1888, whose term of office had witnessed the first baccalaureate degrees, also presided over the College's first Master's degree in 1887. A second was granted in 1890: and, after that, from time to time. It was not until the 1930's, however, that this particular post-baccalaureate degree began to play a systematic part in aca- demic planning. If the contrast between the early period's rigorous qualifications for the B.A. and the M.A.'s much looser requirements affronts the contemporary sense of fitness, it is important to remember that this was the nine- teenth century when an Oxford Master's hood depended upon a prescribed number of dinners in hall and a specified tally of tankards of beer: and when, as the saying went, all a Harvard man needed to secure his Master's credential was to pay five dollars and keep out of jail. Although not notably successful as an ad- ministrator, Van Ftossum made two other im- prints on the evolving institution, both of these growing out of a Newmanesque theory of edu- cation with an almost exclusive accent on the liberal arts. He established Philosophy as a com- pulsory part of the classical curriculum: and he downgraded the complementary commercial curriculum which had been an original compo- nent of the school in its foundations. This rela- tive disparagement of the commercial side con- tinued during the term in office of Van Rossum's successor, Ulric Heinzle, S.J., 1888-1891. After the academic year of 1893-1894, the third year in office of President John I. Zahm, S.J., 1891-1896, the commercial curriculum was abandoned, not to be revived until 1926 when an accounting major was of- fered for the first time, an innovation coincid- ing with America's burgeoning business ethos after World War I. However explicable as a short-run policy, in the long run the jettisoning of the commercial course proved an unfortunate move, economi- cally speaking. The restoration in 1926 was a long step forward in a journey that, quickening its pace in the 1930's and accelerating still further during the 195O's, reached its current culmination in the inauguration, in February, 1969, of a Master in Business Administration program. It must be understood, of course, that until 1926, the Canisius involvement in business courses had been basically on the high school side of the college-cum-preparatory school con- tinuum. All told, during the thirty-seven years of German control, there were eleven presidents counting Swiss-born, Dutch-educated Augustine A. Miller, S.J., 1905-1912, who bridged the last German and first American administrations. Of these eleven presidents, the first six were Ger- man-born, the eighth English-born, the eleventh a German-speaking Swiss, and the three Ameri- can-born were all of German extraction. Henry Behrens, S.J., 1872-1876, stands out among them for both color and strength of personali- ty. Born six months after Waterloo, Behrens had enjoyed a European career, military as well as pedagogical, that calls for a sagaman to do it justice. The fourth president, Swabian Martin Port, S.J., 1877-1883, had been a classmate of Lord Acton's: the eighth, Englishman James A. Rockliff, S.J., 1897-1898, a classmate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's. Though his term as pres- ident was a short one, Rockliff continued to exert an effect on the College's destinies after he became head of the Buffalo Mission. The European provenance of these Founding Fathers was at once a strength and a weakness. While their erudition and culture were formida- ble, the language barrier, as Rockliff often pointed out in letters to the Father General, proved a serious one. Moreover, American youth, in this day of Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Story af a Bad Boy and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, did not exactly take kindly to German concepts of discipline as enforced by a seeming- ly limitless pool of Franco-Prussion War veter- ans who kept turning up to fill the post of Prefect of Discipline. Nor did they think either drill or calisthenics acceptable substitutes for the team games that, increasingly, were played in the Yard, as it came to be called, of the red-brick structure at 651 Washington Street which, built during 1871-1872, housed Canisius College until 1912 and Canisius High School until 1948. Gradually the paramilitary mystique that, for one brief interlude, had even extended to uniforms and kelpis gave way to the nascent athletic mystique that had begun to sweep American campuses during the eighties and nineties. Each Thursday-Thursday was the day appointed for communal recreation on the part of the students and boarders alike-the entire student body marched down Main Street to the then semi-rural demesne known as the Villa, at the corner of Jefferson Avenue, which was maintained, among other things, as a kitchen farm for the downtown college. Aside from its triple utilities as provisioner, retiring ground for Jesuit personnel, and grassy playing field, the Villa, bought by Behrens in 1873, at a price his immediate successor, President John B. Less- man, S.J., 1876-1877, considered exorbitant, proved a fateful purchase fraught with enor- mous consequences for Canisius' future. Out of it came the eventual site of the main part of the College today and a geographical determination of the modes any physical expansion was henceforth destined to take. Except for the contiguous areas now occupied by the Physical Education complex, the Delavan Health Science and Computer Center, several departmental of- fices on immediately adjoining streets, Alumni Hall, and two supplementary residence halls on Main Street, where the College structures prop- er now stand, enclosing an inner quadrangle, was once the Villa. Buffalo sports-lovers, whose