Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

Page 30 text:

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING THEN AND NOW what was formerly a Protestant High School. The Tucker School at 68 Drummond Street became Loyola, and for the next eighteen years the English speaking Catholics of the com- munity were educated in this second home. (See Page 15, bottom.) From the beginning the spiritual and the material were wedded in a relationship that has, with time, proved the soundness of the founders' vision. The College was formally incorporated by an act of the Provincial Parliament in 1899 and in the same year the privileges granted by the Apostolic Constitution “‘Jamdudum’’ were extended to Loyola. For a half a century the college has been dedicated to the task of making known truth, and of forming men prepared to live by its principles. The thousands of students who have passed through Loyola's doors and learned the meaning of Christian living, have been abetted by the motivating force of religion. Religion has justly been an integral part of the Loyola curriculum. Her students have been taught the correct order of man in his relationship with God, self, his fellows and the material universe. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, the oldest society on the Campus, held its first reception of members on December the 8th, 1900. This ever active organization has prospered with the years. Fostering devotion and enduring love for the Blessed Virgin, its breadth can be measured in its works of charity. The poor of the city have been succoured through its humble efforts, and the blind, the sick and the unfortunate have been aided by the students' efforts. The substantial contributions for the propagation of the Faith are exemplified in the Darjeeling Mission and are a testimony of the students' role in the spiritual growth of the College. Nor is this growth confined to the activity of one society. The St. John Berchmans Society has for fifty-four years trained students for efficient and reverent service at the altar, under the patronage of the young Belgian saint. The fostering of spiritual vocations has led many of Loyola's former students to enter the priesthood to integrate their lives in service to God and their fellow men. The ever increasing enrollment led to the enlargement of the Drummond Street building; but continuing expansion led to the construction of the first buildings on the present site of the college. The Junior Building and the Refector y were commenced in 1913 and were under construction when the First Great War shook the nation. This war was the first cloud on the international horizon to mar the bright and confident dreams envisioned by men in 1900. Thirty six of Loyola's sons were to fall in action in the defense of justice and right. The Junior Building and the Refectory were completed in 1916 and the students and faculty began their endeavours at the present location. The splendid valour of Loyola's war dead was perpetuated in the formation of the Loyola Contingent of the C.O.T.C. in March 1919. Through the years of peace the C.O.T.C. were to guard this heritage jealously and when in 1939 at the outbreak of hostilities Loyolians again went forth to serve the nation that justice and peace might prevail, further honour was added to the role of sacrifice. Fifty-seven Loyola men were killed in action during the late war and it is estimated that fifteen hundred of her former students served in the nation's forces.

Page 29 text:

oyola at the Half- 1990 is characterized by a spirit of гейес- tion. There is a pause, a summation of the events that have preceded in the first half of the 20th century. Loyola in the fifty-fourth year of her history also pauses and reflects on the past. It is a past of magnificent achievement, a past that mirrors the growth of an English course in a French College to a modern educational institution on the threshold of university status. Our present day historians remark that the dawn of the 20th century was characterized by a spirit of confidence, that men in 1900 looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity. Certainly Loyola's founders must have been imbued with the spirit of the time. Yet this same spirit of progress, as Loyola’s past has shown, was tempered with spirituality. The founders and their successors built carefully around the strong central core of Catholicity. It is this combination of the spiritual and the material, that have marked Loyola's growth during the past fifty years. Loyola today exceeds its original humble beginnings. The College at the turn of the century, with but four years of existence behind her, had already overcome a disaster in the form of a fire to which.an institution of lesser faith would have succumbed. Its first location in the former Sacred Heart Convent at the south-east corner of Bleury and St. Catherine streets was destroyed in 1898. The present site of the College was purchased the follow- ing year but Loyola was to have an interim home in

Page 31 text:

Properly speaking our physical progress сап be measured in terms of the buildings that now stand on Loyola's campus. In 1921 the present Administration Building was but three stories high; it was completed with an additional two stories and the Tower in 1927. His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Hon. Narcisse Perodeau, officiated at the opening of the Stadium on January 12th, 1924. The construction of both these buildings are indicative of academic and athletic progress in Loyola's history. In 1922 Loyola entered the Inter-University Debating League. In the first four years of competition Loyola ranked as a finalist, winning the Beatty Trophy, emblematic of League championship, for the first time in 1926. It is to the credit of her students and faculty that in twenty-eight years of League competition her Debaters have been finalists eighteen times, and have won the Beatty Trophy in nine of these encounters. Sportsmanship has always been characteristic of Loyola students. Athletics have always played a major role in student acti- vities, and the successes of the College teams in football have spread Loyola's renown. The first major accomplishment was the winning of the Dominion Junior Intercollegiate Football championship in 1922. To accommodate the ever increasing attendance at Loyola football games the grandstand was built in 1926. Within two years the College had added another laurel to her athletic prowess. The 1928 team won the Dominion Intercollegiate Intermediate Football Championship. It is this football tradition that inspired the post-war teams of '46 and '47 to win the Intermediate title for Loyola. Now in 1950 Loyola embarks on a new football venture. For the first time in her history, the College's team will play an entire season of American rule football. The Warriors will venture far from the campus to carry on the will to win and the spirit of sportsmanship that has characterized her athletes in the past. May their endeavours be worthy of the Loyola tradition. The diversity of the students' interest in sport has been exemplified in the many teams past and present that have been active on the campus. Hockey, lacrosse, skiing, snowshoeing, basketball, boxing—all have produced a thletes that have contributed to Loyola's renown in the field of sport.