UBC’s current tagline is “UBC: A Place of Mind”.
When the brand was launched 2009, a UBC press release explained the process behind building the new institutional identity: http://news.ubc.ca/2009/09/03/why-ubc-is-a-place-of-mind/ .
A question I have been asking lately is, UBC might be a place of mind, but does it mind the place?
Do we see the place of this campus through the “place” that is being built around us?
When does a university begin? Does a building dedication ceremony make a campus?
Science Building Cornerstone Ceremony
September 28, 1923
http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/arphotos/id/1099/rec/7
Commemoration involves many aspects, not the least of which is questioning what is being remembered and why. The 2015-2016 academic year will be celebrated as the University of British Columbia’s Centennial, honouring the first class of UBC students, some of whom had already begun their studies on the Vancouver campus of McGill University College of BC. The provincial University Act was passed in 1908 and construction of the Point Grey campus buildings began in 1914. However, in large part due to the impact of WWI on the province and country, UBC held classes in temporary classrooms in the Fairview neighbourhood for almost a decade prior to the official opening of the campus in 1925.
So, the 2015-2016 Centennial is about students. Is this where a university’s history begins?
The absence of a photograph is as important as the presence of one. What might we imagine this Place of Mind looked like before the “clearing” of the Point Grey campus?
http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/arphotos/id/68/rec/16