At 50, Lakehead University “Is Ready for the World”

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In 1965, the year Lakehead College officially became Lakehead University, then-Principal Harold S. Braun wrote a letter for the yearbook in which he tapped the school’s Latin motto: Ad augusta per angusta – achievement through effort.

“Only by going through difficulties may you reach the highest things,” he wrote. “Whether or not we achieve the higher things in life will depend largely upon the soundness of our system of education.”

Harold was addressing the university’s students, yes, but also a community in the throes of globalization – the St. Lawrence Seaway that brings oceangoing vessels to Thunder Bay opened in 1959, the Trans-Canada Highway opened in 1962, and ubiquitous automation and the Information Age loomed.

“It will not only affect the way people work, but it will bring with it a new philosophy,” Harold predicted, “a philosophy adjusted to a life of less work and more leisure to enjoy the arts and graces that a wholesome life can provide.”

The school was founded in 1946 as Lakehead Technical Institute to teach mining and forestry, but as the Lakehead cities of Port Arthur and Fort William moved beyond the booms and busts of a natural-resource economy, so too did the institution.

“That the students should move into more academic courses was perhaps a perfectly natural development,” says Peter Raffo, a professor of history at Lakehead University whose first stint at the university was 1967 to 1978.

The university’s mission has always revolved around bringing higher education north and serving its communities, which has meant moving from a two-year technical school into a full-fledged university that in recent years added northern-focused medical and law schools to its broad slate of degree programs.

Lakehead has undergone a number of education makeovers, starting in 1957 when the technical institute was rechristened Lakehead College of Arts, Science and Technology.

Then, says Peter, “there was a major move in the late ’50s and early ’60s, a lot of pressure to establish a university. Students who wanted to go to university in this region ultimately would have to go down south … to one of the established universities in southern Ontario, and that was a hardship for many. When a university finally came, there was a kind of unmet need that was waiting to be served.”

By 1971, a year after Fort William and Port Arthur merged into Thunder Bay, Lakehead had 3,000 students, up from 466 in 1965. Today’s enrollment tops 8,000. The regional economic impact of the university was estimated at more than $300 million last year.

The technology programs – mining and forestry, in particular – carried the university in its early years, drawing local students and others from further afield. As the boom days of those industries passed, Lakehead introduced other academic programs, today counted by the dozen, and remade itself.

A degree program in nursing debuted in 1966, and the university bolstered its education programs when it absorbed the Lakehead Teachers College in 1969 and launched the Native Teacher Education Program (NTEP) in 1974, the first of its kind in Ontario.

Aboriginal programming has become a specialty and growth area for the university. Thunder Bay’s overall population declined in the ’90s, while the Aboriginal population (significantly younger than the rest of the city’s population) grew. Lakehead developed programs like the college-prep Native Access Program for these underserved learners, who had the potential to become a highly skilled young workforce. Today, 11 percent of Lakehead’s students identify as Aboriginal, one of the highest percentages in a Canadian university.

Lakehead opened its law school, Ontario’s first new law school in more than 40 years, in 2013 with a particular emphasis on Aboriginal law and northern needs.

“The law school in its own right helped to establish the prominence of the university and the width of the university’s programs,” says Peter.

Mining in the region – revitalized recently by the discovery of gold, nickel, chromite and graphite – is deeply entwined with Aboriginal law and interests, placing a university with miners’ roots and Aboriginal expertise at a unique crossroads.

“Since the boom in the economies of developing nations (e.g. China, India, Brazil, etc.), the demand for minerals has increased along with investments in the mining sector,” according to a 2012 regional report Lakehead helped to produce.

“Lakehead has played a leading role in northern Ontario mining since before we were even a university,” says Lakehead President Brian Stevenson. “We are committed to furthering the economic prosperity of all our northern communities.”

Under Brian’s watch, the university launched its Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Mining and Exploration in 2013. Its first Ph.D. project studied First Nation communities’ well-being amidst mining development. “CESME will be a game changer in northern Ontario by bringing together researchers, industry and community partners to address the challenges of resource development,” says Pete Hollings, director of the centre.

Game changing, too, was the opening of the university’s Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which graduated its first class in 2009. Then-President Fred Gilbert called it “a milestone in the history of this institution” and a step “toward the larger goal of improving the health of the people in northern Ontario.”

Like the law program – whose credo is “In the North, for the North” – the medical school works closely with local communities and tries to keep its graduates in the region, where rural clinics are short of physicians. It’s one of the more recent ways the university has changed its perception locally.

Early on, Peter says, “I felt that the community saw (Lakehead) as maybe an elite institution, rather outside their normal experience. But maybe over the last 20 years or so, the university has really made an effort to develop its identity in the region.”

A tree, after all, can’t grow tall without deep roots, and the university has often tapped them to identify needed programs.

In the 21st century, research has become a larger part of the university’s identity. Lakehead’s research funding has skyrocketed over the last dozen years, from $5.8 million in 2001 to a whopping $22.7 million in 2013.

Partnerships with the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and its research institute, which employ more than 2,500 people, has made Lakehead the top undergraduate research university in Ontario, according to Research Infosource.

As Thunder Bay transformed into a healthcare and research hub, former social sciences dean Thomas Dunk identified the city’s need for skilled workers, both local and from elsewhere, in a 2007 edition of the publication Our Diverse Cities.

“If Thunder Bay is going to make the transition from a working-class community based on transportation and pulp and paper production to a knowledge economy, it needs to attract people with the appropriate skills” – skills that Lakehead can teach.

Asked to reflect on Lakehead’s impact on the city, Mayor Keith Hobbs says, “Not only has Lakehead University established itself as a first-rate learning institution, but it has been a huge economic driver for the city of Thunder Bay in particular, infusing billions of dollars over the past 50 years into our economy. The calibre of graduates has been nothing short of amazing.”

The students are also an increasingly cosmopolitan bunch – 58 percent come from outside the region, many from larger cities. These coveted future young professionals are building a foundation for the future, and the university president has made expanded international recruitment one of the university’s priorities as it looks ahead to its next 50 years, too.

“I think Lakehead,” says Brian, “is ready for the world.”

A Lakehead Timeline

1946: Lakehead Technical Institute is founded in June, offering two-year diploma programs in mining and forestry along with first-year university courses.

1957: The technical institute becomes the Lakehead College of Arts, Science and Technology when it adds second-year university courses. It grows into Lakehead University in 1965.

1965: During the school’s annual Winter Carnival in January, 23 Lakehead students bike 190 miles to Duluth in 11 hours, 2 minutes and 23.6 seconds, taking turns on the bicycle. Later in the month, University of Minnesota Duluth fraternity brothers fall short in an attempt to best the Lakehead time.

1965: On May 6, Lakehead University graduates its first class, 76 students strong.

1969: Lakehead University absorbs the Lakehead Teachers College.

1970: The neighboring cities of Port Arthur and Fort William combine to become Thunder Bay, ending (for the most part) the amalgamation debate that began when the communities each gained city status in 1907.

1974: Lakehead starts a Native Teacher Education program.

1992: Musician Neil Young receives an honorary doctorate from Lakehead. As a teenager in 1965, Neil frequently performed in Fort William with his band The Squires and first met Stephen Stills that spring at the Fourth Dimension coffeehouse.

1998: The school’s Paleo-DNA Lab, which analyzes ancient samples from around the world, receives $1.23 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. It was founded by a Lakehead anthropology professor in 1996.

2001: Lakehead hockey returns. The program had disbanded in 1985.

2005: Paul Shaffer, a Thunder Bay native who received an honorary Lakehead degree in 1988, headlines the entertainment at the university’s 40th anniversary bash. He was David Letterman’s bandleader and sidekick for 33 years on late-night television.

2009: The university’s Northern Ontario School of Medicine graduates its first class. The school opened in 2005 in partnership with Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, which hosts the east campus.

2013: Lakehead launches its law school.