Features
Learning in a War Zone
Second World War turned much of campus into wireless, officer, air training school
BY HERB SHOVELLER
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Johnston Green was included in the section of grounds taken over by the Royal Canadian Air force in 1940; 7,300 feet of fence topped with three strands of barbed wire separated future military cooks and wireless operators from the rest of the campus. |
If you're sitting in a class in War Memorial Hall, living in Mills Hall or lounging on Johnston Green, consider this: if you were in those places 65 years ago, you'd have been in a war zone.
That's because during the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Air Force took over most of campus for its No. 4 Wireless School. Students expelled from their residences in favour of wireless trainees from all over the Commonwealth had to find accommodations elsewhere.
Even outside the fenced-off compound, there was significant military activity on campus because students were expected to join one of the arms of the Forces and train, along with going to school. In 1939, Ontario Agricultural College president George Christie told the students the best way they could serve the country was by staying at school, but he encouraged them to enlist. In the end, more than 1,000 students, staff and alumni signed up.
“The most important thing in the day was classes, then we would follow up with COTC (Canadian Officer Training Course) or football practice,” recalls Doug Hoffman, who attended OAC during the war. “If football was scheduled first, you still had to do the COTC. We were required to go fairly often, five days a week for two hours.”
In 1941, the University Air Training Corps had been set up on campus, and before that, in 1940, the Air Force had set up a cookery school. But when Wireless No. 4 arrived in June 1941, a massive transformation took place as the Air Force took over most of campus and its buildings. There was limited overlap between those inside the fence and those outside. Johnston Hall became the Air Force's administration building.
“It meant all the students were forced out and had to find a room somewhere downtown,” Hoffman recalls.
Although active in training with the Forces during the war, the students were outsiders on their own campus until early 1945 when the Air Force gradually dismantled the Wireless School.
Wally Knapp arrived at OAC in the fall of 1944 and witnessed the school's departure.
“There was no real connection between the students and the wireless people,” says Knapp, who watched the campus gradually get back to normal during his first year. In his first term, students still had to live off campus, but after Christmas and during second term, they began filtering back into residence.
At the outset, there was plenty of resistance in Guelph to plans to establish the Wireless School. Rumours were rampant that the entire campus, including OAC, the Ontario Veterinary College and Macdonald Institute, would be shut down. In the end, Macdonald was shut for the duration.
There were some in the Air Force who expected they'd get a rough ride when they arrived because Guelph was considered an army town, a “gunner's town,” says retired OAC professor Sam Lougheed, who has written an essay about the Wireless School. But those concerns were baseless, he says.
“Originally, the people in Guelph didn't want to have the Wireless School here and were very irritated by the plans, then, funny, when they closed it down, the people in Guelph wanted to keep it.”