Soldiers’ Tower, University of Toronto, 1987

The Soldiers’ Tower at the University of Toronto was built after the First World War to honour alumni, students, faculty and staff who had served and died in the war. Work on the tower began in 1919, the year adjoining Hart House was completed. Aside from its commemorative function, the tower was seen as a link between the foundational University College, established in 1853 as a secular institution, and the bright future represented by Hart House.

Hart House, 1925 (University of Toronto Archives)

Hart House was funded by the wealthy Massey family. Vincent Massey was a University College alumnus who would become university chancellor and eighteenth Governor General of Canada. Hart House was named after Massey’s grandfather, Hart Massey.

Incidentally, my Canadian high school, New Westminster Secondary School, opened in 1949 as Vincent Massey Junior High.

Just before I started there, around 1967, it amalgamated with the Pearson wing, named after former prime minister Lester Pearson, as NWSS.

The two campuses were joined by a long and perilous elevated passage lined with steel lockers, “policed” by “Hyacks” football team bullies (woe betide the poor “hairpack”), some of whom took their enthusiasm for law enforcement to the RCMP.

The featured image is from the same 12-exposure roll of film as the recent Stewart Building photo, the last roll shot with my Mamiyaflex medium format camera before  it was stolen from the flop house I was living in, on Clinton Street.

Of all the architectural attractions of Hart House and University College, I was drawn to this detail. The door seemed to hold some secret promise, or even danger. When I was editing the image for the web last month, my wife Amanda commented, “It’s like a door into the unknown.”