Canada’s future Prime Minister Joe Clark had a letter-to-the-editor published in the Calgary Herald on this date in 1960. Only 21, he commented on the lack of on-campus housing available at the University of Alberta. You can read his letter below.
Joe Clark: Bill Gold's highly entertaining comments on the protest march of University of Alberta students upon the provincial Legislature, unfortunately leave the impression that the marchers were not serious in their demands. That is an incorrect impression. Students attending U. of A., and especially who come from rural areas, are, concerned about the lack of adequate residence accommodation on the Edmonton campus. At present there are more than 5,000 university students on this campus.
By 1965 that will double, and by 1975, will likely double again, to a university student population of 20,000. The only government-built residences on the Edmonton campus went up before 1915, to serve the student population of that day. Now, forty-five years later, they are not adequate. As enrolment increases, they will become less adequate.
JOE CLARK, Edmonton, Alta.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.