A few years ago, a friend and fellow Canadian historian found at an old-paper show in Toronto a Queen’s student handbook from 1910-11. Knowing my connection to Queen’s, he kindly gave it to me. Measuring 3” x 5” and designed to fit in your pocket, the handsome little book is bound in oxblood leather with ornamental endpapers in a gold floral motif. In matching gold lettering, the title on the cover reads “Queen’s YMCA.”
We do not know who owned the handbook. He (all indications suggest a male undergrad) did not write his name in it, but he did make notes on its pages. From the “time-table of lectures” he filled out, we learn that he fancied himself a history buff; he had history classes at 3pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. He also took French, philosophy, and math. He may have been considering a career in law, as he noted on a blank page, “see about course leading to L.L.B. or L.L.D.” He enjoyed sports and recorded the scores of games played in the fall of 1910 between Queen’s and other teams in the Canadian Intercollegiate Rugby Football Union. He also noted something of his physical appearance: “April 11, 1911. Height = 5’8½”. Weight = 146.5 lbs. Both taken stripped.”
Surely I’m not the only one to wonder how and where our handbook owner had his height and weight measured while stripped naked. There are several possibilities. Maybe there were scales in the locker room of the new gymnasium opened on campus in 1907. Perhaps it was part of the medical examination all first-year students were required to undergo, although April, the end of the academic year, seems late. Or maybe it was done at the “City Y,” so named to distinguish it from the “College Y.”
The central YMCA in Kingston, an impressive Romanesque structure
built in 1892, stood on the northwest corner of Princess and Barrie Streets, and remained in use until the 1950s. For many years a male-only space, the Y featured nude swimming for men in its pools. In the context of early twentieth-century concerns over the supposed physical degeneration of men turned soft by the effeminizing influences of modern urban life, new members had to line up naked for inspection by YMCA physical directors steeped in the ethos of muscular Christianity.
It’s not clear whether our handbook owner belonged to the Y, although given its popularity among college men in North America during this period it’s altogether possible. That said, you didn’t have to be a Y member to receive a handbook; they were presented free to all first-year students. According to a report from the “Handbook Committee,” included in the 1909 minutes of the YMCA, found in the Queen’s Archives, “1300 of these books were printed.” Our student would have learned from ads in the handbook that the corner of Princess and Barrie was the student hub, the location of essential services such as Hoag’s Drug Store, “opposite the YMCA,” and Hong Lee Laundry, one of several Chinese laundries and restaurants in Kingston that catered to students (the latter, incidentally, the subject of research by students in my Canadian social history seminar this past fall). Perusing the pages of his handbook, our student would have also found “useful hints,” which, if followed, “may save new students from awkward predicaments and perhaps unpleasant experiences.” These pointers included, “Bring your modesty with you. You may need it.”
The handbook broke down its overview of college life into four categories: “physical, intellectual, social, and moral.” “The immediate purpose for which we come to college is to develop our intellectual power,” the handbook reasonably asserted, “and therefore intellectual development should hold the first place in our consideration.” The handbook offered other good advice. For example, students were reminded that “Professors desire regular attendance on all lectures and faithful preparation of class-work. But if you do not wish to do that, they will not force you. Students at Queen’s are supposed to be no longer children but men and women who sufficiently recognize the value of those years in college to use their best efforts to succeed. Justify your professors’ confidence in you.
Under the “moral,” students were warned, “Your college days constitute probably the most important formative period of your life … Do not be so short-sighted as to think that you can form dissipated habits and low associations during your college course and immediately upon leaving shake them off and live a pure, clean life.” Indeed, a current of anxiety runs through the handbook that students could be derailed from their primary purpose – “the upholding of a high standard of Christian character” – by the “temptations” and “unusual susceptibilities” of college life. Should a student feel overwhelmed by the “strangeness of all,” the handbook recommended attending one of the YMCA’s weekly meetings (Thursdays at 4pm in the YMCA Room of the Old Arts Building).
Building Christian character was, of course, central to the Y’s mission. A “basis of membership” adopted in the 1908 minutes read: “Any student may become a member of the Queen’s YMCA by signing the following statement: ‘It is my purpose as a University man receiving Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour to lead a consistent Christian life as I understand it to be set forth in the Bible.’” Queen’s students not only upheld Christian character; it was something to be made available for export. The “Missionary Association” met every Saturday at 11am in the Theological Building to discuss how to pursue what the handbook baldly termed “aggressive Christian work” in the “newer parts of Ontario and the West” and in the “Foreign field,” including ongoing support for “two boys in a school in Turkey and a native preacher in Formosa.”
In addition to the missionary zeal of the Queen’s YMCA, the handbook also captured the prevailing divisions of gender on campus. The handbook encapsulated a particular Queen’s model of middle-class masculinity. As the edition for 1924-25 put it, “Queen’s men: Don’t advertise yourself by your comments, by your dress, or by your actions … You are at the beginning of a man’s life. Queen’s will initiate you in a man’s fashion. Remember, Queen’s men are dour men – they are quarried in the ‘Limestone City.’” Despite the advice to male students not to advertise themselves by their dress, the handbook was chock full of advertisements for men’s fashion from local merchants. We learn that the “headquarters” for “high-class underwear for men” was Steacy’s, a store where “we invite inspection.” “Classy Hats for College Fellows” could be found at 126 Princess Street, where “’Tis said with good reason / the girls all adore / Queen’s boys who are hatted / at George Mills & Co.’s store.”
The handbook did not ignore “the girls.” Prepared with the assistance of the YWCA, the handbook included a description of the Levana Society, in which every “girl student at Queen’s” was a member. This entitled her to “free use of the Levana Room, its piano and its cozy corners, its magazines and its tea-cups.” The Levana Society’s programming would aid “freshettes” in the “cultivation of the gentle art of conversation.” Of course, the necessity of a separate society for women stemmed from the fact that the Arts Society remained an exclusively male organization until the late 1960s, despite the fact women had been going to Queen’s for nearly a century. (In its historical timeline, the handbook indicated that 1869/70 represented the year the “first lady students attend.”)
Near the end of the handbook is a list of professors’ addresses. If you’re wondering why professors’ home addresses were listed in a student handbook, you might need them, for “Many of our professors and their wives mete out unstinted hospitality in inviting students to evening at-homes in their parlors.” Whether history undergrads enjoyed such “at-homes” is not clear. The only history prof listed was J.L. Morison of 218 Johnson Street. The Kingston city directory for 1910 lists 218 Johnson as the residence of a Miss Jeannette McMillan, suggesting Morison, first hired in 1907, rented rooms rather than owned a home in Kingston. It is said that Morison did not find Kingston all that congenial.
We can conclude with one last thing our history-loving student wrote in his handbook. It’s a piece of doggerel. It captures what was still the old-boys atmosphere of the University but also contains, I’m sure you’ll agree, a lasting truth about your Queen’s history professors:
Here’s to Arts ’13 boys,
here’s to our college days.
Bring out the good old songs boys,
sing out the good old days.
Here’s to the good old profs. boys,
patient and kind always.
Here’s to Arts ’13 boys,
Here’s to our college days.
Steven Maynard teaches Canadian history and the history of sexuality in our Department. He plans to donate the handbook to the Queen’s University Archives, which at present is missing a 1910-11 edition in its run of student handbooks.