Fancy balls and hootenannies headline student life in 1966

Maureen McLeod remembers feeling “scared to death” about starting her university life.

Originally from Cold Lake, her family had moved to Calgary when she was in high school, where she graduated from St. Mary’s Girls School in 1962.

That fall, McLeod and her best friend entered what was then known as the University of Alberta in Calgary (UAC), looking to meet new people and make their mark on the world.

Over the next few years, she says they experienced more than they ever could have imagined, including the institution receiving autonomy and being renamed as the University of Calgary.

“That year when the university was coming into itself, I was coming into myself, too,” says McLeod, whose surname was Milaney during her time at the university. 

“I became ‘me,’ in a way, and the things I did afterwards, I would never have done had I not done those things in university.”

While the campus has evolved dramatically since she was a student, McLeod, who graduated with a Bachelor of Education in 1966, says coming back always brings a flood of memories from her time at a rapidly maturing school.

Finding her place on campus

She vividly recalls coming to what was a small campus with only three buildings, comparing it to a high school in size.

One of the first places McLeod and her friend visited was the office of the relatively new publication, the Gauntlet.

“We were both pretty good at writing, but we timidly approached the office with people inside who looked like they knew what they were doing,” McLeod says.

While she admits to being intimidated, the Gauntlet team welcomed the pair with open arms, including their first boss, John Macfarlane, who would later go on to be an editor at the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Maclean’s, and be named a Member of the Order of Canada.

Aside from her studies, McLeod went on to hold several positions at the school paper, most notably as editor-in-chief in 1965-1966.

Fighting for their rights

As someone reporting on the big issues of the day for the publication, McLeod had a unique vantage point to see and hear what mattered most to students.

While many around Calgary were continuing to raise their voices towards autonomy for their own university, she says students knew that, in reality, they didn’t have any control over the matter.

Some took part in demonstrations, but most were more interested in issues that impacted them directly, like censorship and the rising cost of tuition.

“We were more concerned with the bigger picture and the smaller picture,” McLeod says. 

“For instance, one of the headlines we had was ‘UAC students back U.S. war policies in Vietnam.’ The campus was also growing quickly, so there was a lot of talk about new buildings.”

Being it was the 1960s, equality was also a major issue in the newspaper.

“The era of free love was much more prevalent in the U.S., while we were still pretty conservative,” McLeod says. 

“I wrote an editorial about a university rule regarding the bus trips we took to see the Dinosaurs’ (as the Dinos were known then) football team in Edmonton, for which we young women had to get signed permission from our parents. 

"I was totally incensed because we were the same age as the boys.”

Lessons for future generations

While students were focused on their studies, McLeod says social gatherings on the growing campus were just as important in the 1960s.

Everyone seemingly knew everyone, which, in her eyes, made it easier to get together and celebrate.

“We had quite a few fancy balls where the women wore long dresses, and had a campus queen contest sponsored by several faculty undergraduate societies,” says McLeod, who graduated in the spring of 1966. 

“School sports were also very popular and well-attended, with everything from football and basketball to volleyball and rodeo.”

Another thing prevalent in the broader community were hootenannies, which were popular gatherings featuring folk music. 

That genre, according to McLeod, was also popular on campus with events featuring performers like Bruce Innes and Dixie Lee Stone. 

Socialization is an aspect of student life that she hopes current students don’t overlook as they go about their academics.

McLeod says many of the opportunities that came her way after graduation wouldn’t have happened had she not “crept into the Gauntlet office” in the fall of 1962.  She worked as a junior high school teacher in Calgary between 1966 and 1979, then taught in Japan, China and Macao for about a decade. She recently ran for office in the federal election as a Liberal candidate in the Grande Prairie riding. 

“I think university life should be fun,” McLeod says. 

“There are many ways to make it fun and there are opportunities that you don’t know are there until you try.”