Features
Chemistry Corner Opens in Complex
New display tells history of chemistry program at Guelph
BY ANDREW VOWLES
He got two out of three. Martin Bosch, a three-time Guelph chemistry graduate and amateur history buff, had hoped to salvage a trio of items for a Department of Chemistry commemorative display opened late last month in the science complex.
One piece was the opening-day plaque from the former Chemistry and Microbiology Building, which opened in 1965. The other was actually a pair of items: the silver-coloured "C" and "M" each standing shin-high that hung above the front doors of that building until it was razed in 2003 to make way for the new complex.
Those pieces are now central to a new departmental history display, installed this fall in a second-floor corridor outside the chair's office. "I got two out of three," says Bosch.
The third item? Thanks to a date mix-up with the demolition contractor, he missed grabbing the C&M cornerstone. But his subsequent research snagged another item for the "chemistry corner."
During several hours' worth of sleuthing in the U of G Library archives, he spotted an architect's model of the MacNaughton Building and, branching from it, a slightly truncated C&M Building atop a filing cabinet.
Erected in 1969 for chemistry, physics and mathematics, MacNaughton still houses most chemistry faculty offices and research labs. That architect's model is now part of the new display. So are several photos and interpretive panels from Bosch's archival research that tell the story of a department rooted in OAC.
Did you know that chemistry was one of the original six departments when the Ontario School of Agriculture opened in 1874? Or that chemistry claimed the first purpose-built departmental building on campus, opened in 1887 (the same year a chemistry degree was first offered)?
The only known interior shot of a lab in that building, taken in 1893, shows students wearing lab coats and even the odd beanie. Located directly south of Johnston Hall, the building burned down in 1896 and was rebuilt in the same year.
Hoping to prevent a repeat blaze, the administration installed a reservoir in front of the new two-storey building with its pedimented front. One photo in the new display shows the rectangular pond called the "Rose Bowl" surrounded by wrought-iron fencing. The pond was never called into firefighting service and was removed in 1956.
Along with neighbouring buildings, the chemistry building came down in 1965 to make way for the MacKinnon Building.
One display photo shows the single eight- by 14-foot chemistry lab in the old Johnston Hall. Students enlarged that space to accommodate up to 50 people.
Bosch says he wasn't particularly attuned to campus history when he began his undergraduate studies here in 1966 (he completed a master's degree in 1971 and a PhD in 2004 while running the Guelph Soap Co. Inc.). Today he hopes the display will "give students a feeling of being part of that history, a sense of what the University is and where it came from."
He funded the display costs along with Brock Chittim, president and general manager of Wellington Laboratories Inc. in Guelph and a chemistry master's graduate.
Prof. Adrian Schwan, chair of the Department of Chemistry, says the new display "clearly defines the importance of chemistry in the long history of the University and its earlier colleges.
Chemistry is a fundamental component of a number of research pursuits on campus, and many disciplines of study have their origins in chemistry."
Today's department runs 79 undergraduate lab sections in 16 teaching labs in the science complex. Guelph has about 130 undergrad chemistry majors and shares 40 nanoscience students with the Department of Physics. There are also 66 chemistry graduate students.