A serious, year-long celebration is formally underway on the College of Guelph because the Ontario Agricultural School (OAC) celebrates its a hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
The OAC welcomed its top notch of 28 college students on Could 1, 1874. Classes, again then, have been held on the property’s farmhouse.
Loads has modified over OAC’s 150 yr historical past, together with new analysis, new buildings, and a rising pupil inhabitants.
“It’s been wonderful to look again at a few of the recollections and recollections that individuals have been sharing with us,” OAC Performing Dean John Cranfield informed CTV Information forward of Wednesday’s celebration.
To assist mark the event, the college put a name out to alumni, asking them to share images and recollections of their time on the AOC. The images vary from black and white stills of individuals in white lab coats, to more moderen photos of individuals proudly representing the varsity by sporting their ‘Aggies’ jackets.
Wednesday’s kick off celebration featured a particular lunch menu developed round a few of the college’s most prestigious creations, together with the Yukon Gold potato that was created by OAC researcher Gary Johnson in 1980 and the Guelph Millennium asparagus cultivated within the early-2000s.
Afterwards, college students, workers and college have been invited to the Waasamowin atrium, contained in the Summerlee Science Advanced, for a social that includes honey and peach ice cream made particularly for the a hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
“Coronary heart of Stone” ice cream celebrates the 150-year historical past of the Ontario Agricultural School on the College of Guelph. (Shelby Knox/CTV Kitchener)
A deep rooted historical past
Though the OAC first began accepting college students in 1874, it wasn’t till 1887 that the varsity supplied its three-year program for a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. The college solely continued to develop over the next a long time.
One of the crucial notable buildings on campus honours the troopers who misplaced their lives in the course of the First World Conflict. Conflict Memorial Corridor was constructed to recollect the 109 college students who enlisted, and later died, in the course of the battle. In response to the college’s web site, the scholars of the OAC 1924 cohort dug the muse for the constructing by hand.
It’s certainly one of a number of legacy buildings that also stand immediately, together with the Bullring which was as soon as referred to as the Judging Pavilion, however now acts as a watering gap for each college students and workers.
“The factor that’s not modified about us is the place. You’ll be able to look again at our historical past and you may acknowledge components of the campus which are nonetheless the identical immediately, which I feel is a extremely wonderful legacy of what we now have as a university, that whereas issues have modified round us there’s components of the school and the campus that also stay true to these authentic days of the OAC,” Cranfield stated.
Performing OAC Affiliate Dean John Cranfield poses in entrance of earlier variations of the OAC jackets on Could 1, 2024. (Shelby Knox/CTV Kitchener)
Past the campus, a few of the early analysis accomplished on the OAC continues to have an effect.
“I look again at a few of the research that we used to do as a university within the late-1800s that at the moment are simply commonplace in agriculture,” Cranfield defined. “It’s actually fairly transferring as a result of I take into consideration the innovative science that we now have now and what we’re doing – the discoveries and the breakthroughs that we’re discovering now, and I hope that in 150 years another person appears to be like again and says: ‘Wow. That will need to have been wonderful that that was innovative science then, however it’s now commonplace.’ It’s an accepted apply and seen as finest apply.”
On a lighter word, the OAC additionally took half in one of many College of Guelph’s longest-standing traditions to mark its anniversary.
The Cannon, lovingly named ‘Outdated Jeremiah,’ is a British naval gun that has been on campus because the Eighties. It’s additionally rumoured to have been used within the Conflict of 1812.
As custom dictates, the OAC repainted Outdated Jeremiah on Tuesday night time below the duvet of darkness.
The Cannon, also called ‘Outdated Jeremiah,’ painted for the OAC’s anniversary. (Shelby Knox/CTV Kitchener)
Reacting to rising wants
Regardless of the dedication to its roots, the OAC has needed to adapt as agricultural wants have modified.
Cranfield stated their present outreach efforts contain encouraging extra individuals to think about a profession in agriculture.
He stated it’s essential to point out younger individuals how various it may be.
“Agriculture isn’t nearly what occurs on the farm stage,” Cranfield defined. “That’s essential to all the things in agriculture, there’s an enter sector that issues lots. After which there’s the entire meals processing sector, and what we discovered helps individuals perceive the position of STEM fields – science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic – in what we do in fixing issues which are confronted by individuals individually or collectively as a society.”
He believes, going forwards, STEM will form how the varsity approaches varied agricultural disciplines.
What’s subsequent
Wednesday’s celebration was simply the primary of a number of occasions deliberate for OAC’s anniversary.
The college is inviting its grads to affix them for the 2024 OAC Alumni Affiliation’s Annual Common Assembly on Could 14 on the Arboretum Centre.
The college will even host an OAC a hundred and fiftieth Celebration Dinner on June 22 at Johnston Inexperienced, coinciding with Alumni Reunion Weekend. The occasion will embody meals, music and the launch of an unique OAC 150 beer.
Extra info might be discovered on the college’s web site.
