People
That’s Another Story
University residents for 68 years, John and Florence Eccles are moving on
BY MARY DICKIESON
The house that John built sits on the northeast corner of Gordon Street and Stone Road. Half hidden by trees and shrubs, the little white house is owned by the University, but it has been home to John and Florence Eccles since they built it in 1946.
The longest U of G residents by far, John, 93, and Florence, 90, recently moved into a seniors’ home, taking all the memories they’ve accumulated in 68 years of living, working and raising a family on campus.
How the couple went from being homeowners to tenants of the University is a great story from campus history and one of the hundreds of stories John has documented over the years in his ever-handy notebook, in his 2006 self-published memoir and in a 1983 history of University residences called The Boarding House.
John worked on campus for 36 years, retiring in 1982 as assistant director of residences, but his campus experience began in 1936 when he enrolled at the Ontario Agricultural College. Money was in short supply during the Depression, so he supplemented his funds by picking weed seeds out of grain samples for the crops department for 20 cents an hour and printing (by hand) labels for the entomology department. John says he later got summer jobs on campus because he agreed to pitch for a college softball team called the Haymakers. But that’s another story.
It was the summer job that led him to love the campus and brought him back later as a full-time employee — after graduating, working as a high school teacher and coach in Niagara Falls and serving in the Navy during the Second World War. Those are also great stories, but they’re not part of this one.
Hired in 1946 as dean of men at OAC, John took up an offer from the premier’s office (OAC was then operated by the Ontario government) that allowed faculty and staff veterans to build houses on campus with a 99-year lease on the land. Seven couples accepted the offer, and the men worked together after hours to install the foundations for seven prefabricated houses in what was planned as a 27-house subdivision called College Crescent. Work began May 24, and they moved in by Christmas.
Among them, the couples had 17 children who grew up on College Crescent. John and Florence have many stories about neighbourhood parties and the antics of their own three daughters, who used the OAC campus and barns as their playground.
By 1950, the long-serving Liberal government had elected a new premier and, to make a long story short, wanted to buy the houses to negate the somewhat-suspect 99-year leases. John and Florence received $8,200 for their house and immediately began renting it from the college for about $35 a month.
The other families on College Crescent eventually moved out, but the Eccles girls — Bonnie, Beverley and Brenda — did not want to leave. Neither did Florence, who loved their home and quarter-acre garden. It was also a convenient location for John, who held several different positions on campus before joining Residences.
John has a story about almost everyone he met walking between home and work each day. That’s how he scuttled a student prank that involved a manure spreader headed for Johnston Green one night. He was taken in, however, by another student who offered to provide two chickens for Sunday dinner if Florence would cook them. “We had a lovely chicken dinner,” she recalls, and they didn’t know until years later that the birds had been pilfered from the college poultry barns.
She cooked for many students over the years, especially the international graduate students and faculty who moved in and out of the other houses in their subdivision. She and John made friends with many of these families and later visited some of them on vacation travels to Norway, New Zealand, Antigua and other places.
When John first came to work at OAC, he knew almost every student by name and coached many of them in sports ranging from basketball and cross-country to golf and curling. He coached for 30 years and was inducted into the Gryphon Hall of Fame as a builder in 1990.
While John was employed on campus, he attended or helped organize almost every function held at OAC, whether the event was for students, alumni or visitors. There was the time he had to enlist the services of a local butcher and the campus dietitian to provide dinner for 100 people who arrived for an unscheduled alumni reunion. He also remembers the day that 10,000 members of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario descended on campus, and the administration discovered how woefully inadequate the women’s bathroom facilities were. But that’s another story.
So, too, is the experience of driving college guest A.Y. Jackson into the Guelph countryside so the famed Group of Seven artist could paint for the afternoon. And who wouldn’t want to know what John learned when he drove OAC graduate and Harvard economist John K. Galbraith from the Toronto airport to campus to receive the new University of Guelph’s first honorary degree in 1968?
John Eccles has many stories about the growth of the campus in the 1950s and the transfer to university status in 1964. Among the most significant changes, he says, was the addition of co-ed residences to accommodate the larger numbers of female students. The 1960s also brought a significant change in the relationship between the campus and the greater Guelph community, he adds. OAC, the Ontario Veterinary College and Macdonald Institute formed their own rural community, says John, and there was little interaction with the city until university status brought many more students and faculty and dozens of building projects.
Besides his work on campus, John was a volunteer with the OAC Alumni Association. He helped develop a database of alumni addresses to keep graduates interested in coming back to Guelph, even if it was only to try to beat his score at the annual alumni golf tournament.
He’s full of stories about construction on campus and was involved in planning for most of the residences. Did you know that Lambton Hall was one of the first university residences in Ontario to have a telephone in every room? Or that Mills Hall didn’t replace all of its 1920 furnishings until the 1960s? The old furnishings were sold at auction. Now there’s a story for another time.
When South Residences were built in 1968, planned recreation areas were eliminated to keep construction costs down, says John, so he was thrilled when meeting rooms were added in 1990 and the new facility was named the John Eccles Centre in his honour. On their 63rd wedding anniversary in 2004, he and Florence planted a chestnut oak tree outside the centre. He also established the John Eccles Endowment Fund to support student activities in South Residences.
Anniversaries, birthdays and the girls’ wedding receptions have all been celebrated on campus. After all, this is home to the entire Eccles family.
“I have deep, deep roots in this property,” said Beverley on a recent morning when she was packing up dishes, photos and family heirlooms in the little white house at 660 Gordon St. “We experienced a great life here. It was like living in a small community with aspects of farm life surrounded by academia.”
When Gordon Street was no longer a gravel road and growth was rampant on campus, John secured permission from then president Donald Forster to continue renting the little white house until such time as the University needed the land. The undeveloped part of the College Crescent subdivision became a parking lot, but he and Florence still enjoyed the view.
And, yes, they say the University has been a good landlord, although the house is relatively unchanged — with the exception of new siding and roofing — since one of John’s students showed up with a bag of cement to help finish the patio. But that’s another story.
The couple has moved south to the Royal on Gordon. John took along a book of 100 stories that he’s written and is willing to share with other residents of their new home. Some are stories about the University campus. Others are about his boyhood on a farm in Galt, his life with Florence, his career and the people he’s met. Still others are retirement stories collected while playing golf at the Cutten Club or attending the Guelph Men’s Club every Tuesday morning. No doubt the campus goodbye party hosted at Alumni House May 25 for the Eccles family is now carefully documented in John’s ever-ready notebook. And, yes, that’s another story, too.