Huron, Revisited

I look up at the weathered spire as I cross the courtyard, on my way to the archives. It rises above the falsely buttressed red brick walls, as it has since Huron relocated to its current location in 1951. A student in 1951 would have seen the same spire that I see now, probably walking in the same footsteps I am. They were the first few students to walk this way, and I am just one of the latest to do so. The spire would have been shiny and new for them. For me, it has a greenish tint.

Enough wondering. I came today to the archives to learn about Huron’s relocation, and I need to make the best of the short time I have. I lower my gaze from the oxidized spire and go over my research plan. I already know about the architects, John M. Moore and his son O. Roy Moore; today I need information about how the drawings became a reality and why it took from 1938, when they were created, to 1951 for the campus to be built. I pull open the door and head up the stairs, walk the short distance and knock on the archive’s oak door.

In the archives, I wheel the shelves open and look for the boxes I want. After a minute, I find two: one labelled “Principal’s Office (O’Neil)” and the other “Huron Corporation”. The first one is heavy, but the second is light. These should have information about Huron’s relocation. The contents of the Corporation shift, and I almost drop the box. Returning to the table, I set to work.

——

When Huron was a creaky, much-expanded former estate home, his father, John M. Moore, created plans for a new campus. He had a list of things to follow. The college was a mix of residence and teaching. They were a large family, a brotherhood of like-minded and passionately Christian people. The old Huron building evolved from an Italianate home—symmetry, wide cornices, pediments, and pilasters—into an ad hoc monster, a dizzying assortment of additions over 30 years. So, John Moore designed a campus that was laid out like a home—two wings of dorm rooms connecting to a central hallway and a common room in the middle.

His plans were rejected.

The glorious symmetry and strength radiating from the proposed banks of windows and thickly buttressed stone tower were too much for the Huron Executive Council. This was in 1934 and the heart of the Depression. I like to think that John Moore threw up his hands in disbelief, that the rejection was incomprehensible.

John’s son, O. Roy Moore, however, did have a pretty good idea of what Huron wanted. Maybe he tried to convince his dad, a classic case of exuberant youth arguing for innovation in the face of the parent being steadfast to tradition. It was his name on the new drawings of a quaint and asymmetrical building that was accepted as the design for the new Huron College. Where the first design was rigid and bold, the new had a sense of tranquility and unfolding in a meandering way.

——

I open the box and fold the lid over to see a mass of files wedged inside. The folder for 1942 strikes my attention. It has mostly typed letters. Strangely, I find the name O. Roy Moore where I did not expect. I guess it made sense for Moore, the architect, to be in frequent contact with Huron about how the campus design was going to be built. But this letter is not about the architectural plans; it is an invitation to become an advisor to Huron’s Executive Council. I feel the room around me and the thoughts in my head freeze, only hearing my heartbeat. Moore is becoming a buzzword, popping up everywhere I looked for information about Huron’s relocation. It seems that Moore was more than just Huron’s architect. He was a member of the community; a strong supporter of Huron College.

——

Roy walked up the stone steps to his front door. His keys jingled as he picked out the right one, sliding the others to the back of the keyring behind his hand. The deadbolt slid with a satisfying thud back into the heavy door. As it opened, an envelope on the rug was revealed to him. Stooping, he picked up the envelope and opened it with a deft pull of the backside of his finger. Inside was a letter from the Bishop of Huron, C.A. Seager.

“My Dear Mr. Moore,” the letter began. “The affairs of Huron College have been under very special advisement for some months past, by a special Sub-Committee of the Council appointed for the purpose.”

Moore continued reading. “We have now been advised it would be well if we can gather together a few of our leading men to consult with us as to the situation. A luncheon has, therefore, been arranged at the London Club, at 1 P.M., Tuesday, November the 10th for this purpose. On behalf of the Committee and the College, I take the liberty of inviting you to be present, knowing that your presence and advice would be of great value.”

Moore read the letter over the next four days. He let his thoughts simmer. Or maybe he was just busy with other things. The latter might be closer to the truth, but I prefer the first. It helps me understand Moore as a human, more than just an architectural design machine.

On the fifth day, he wrote up a reply. Sitting in his office, he grabbed a piece of paper with his firm’s letterhead and typed out a reply. The keys clattered as he wrote the letter. The motion to press the period key was almost rhythmic after having to type out the four abbreviations to introduce the Rt. Rev. Chas. A. Seager. He kept the response short and direct. “I will be very pleased to attend the luncheon,” he wrote.

Satisfied, he pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and signed his name. The O seems meek and faint next to the grand flourish of the R and Y in Roy. His signature takes up almost as much space on the page as his one-sentence response.

——

Roy Moore is a captivating figure. He isn’t obviously flamboyant, or flashy, as in a story that is so bizarre that you-couldn’t-make-this-stuff-up kind of way. No. Rather, it is the absence of information and craziness that I find so interesting.

Moore drew the sketches and attended the meetings, obviously leaving such an impression that he was appointed to Huron’s Building Fund Committee right away. When Western moved to the Kingsmill property in 1916, he followed his father – who designed the university’s first buildings – and designed the Lawson Memorial Library, among several others. Perhaps these connections endeared him to the Anglicans at Huron.

But where is the charisma? I cannot find it. Maybe it is foolish to look for something so colourful and human in boxes of yellowed old paper typed out in the same garish font. But I don’t have a picture of him or anything that he said or did apart from the stiff letter. He is the person behind the scenes that few recognize but is hugely important. His name commands more curiosity than the others, as it moves through documents and committees, like a breeze that you feel but cannot separate from the regular air.

——

After a week, I return to the archives. I fold the lid back over again, push the box into the center of the table, and open up another one. This one says “Building Fund”. It seems that there are more records about the lead up to the College’s relocation than about the relocation itself. I pull the first folder out, mark its place, and start skimming through the meeting minutes.

Two names continue to show up: O. Roy Moore and Henry O’Neil. The first is the architect and the second the principal. Why are these two figures so prominent?

The principal’s role in leading the College is obvious. But why Moore?

Sure, Moore was the architect, and he designed the building, so he would know the costs. But knowing the costs doesn’t mean he is necessarily suited to helping create a plan to fundraise. It might even be inappropriate for such an action today.

I try to think this through and guess at what relationship Moore could have had, but I can’t. If only I had a document of a rant, or recorded speech of his, I could get a sense of the man’s personality, his energy, or his opinions toward Huron. I have his name staring back at me from the page, laughing, and taunting me to try and learn more.

Frustrated at being unable to find anything that Moore had said up to 1949, I put back the folder and grab the next. It shocks me to find some sky-blue peeking out of the folder, which feels almost blinding after the tan monotony of manila and yellowing paper. The bright document I pull out is a brochure, titled “The Huron College Building Fund Campaign”.

——

Moore listened as O’Neil and the others explain the fundraising plans. The money for the college would come almost entirely from the Church and nearby parishes. He held the brochure in his hand, looking over the neat breakdown of “the plan”: all Anglican families in the Diocese of Huron should average a $10 donation. He glanced over the “why column” on the right side, reading:

New Huron College buildings are urgently needed. The present college rooms are inadequate and overcrowded. Huron college must keep pace with the rapid growth of the University of Western Ontario as a whole. The completed college will stand as a triumphant achievement of the people of the Church and friends of this institution throughout this area—an achievement which should not belong alone to the immediate college family or to the men who initiated the project but to the people at large, throughout the entire area.

——

Clearly, the fundraising campaign was a success, or else the campus wouldn’t have been built. I enjoy reading the brochures because the language and graphics are refreshing breaks from the monotony of formally vague meeting minutes. But they tell me nothing about the relocation. I like to think that Moore was perpetually worried throughout the 1940s—could his participation in Huron’s relocation and fundraising be to reassure himself that he’d get paid? I know I would hear alarm bells if I was designing a million-dollar campus for a small college in 1938 that needed to fundraise the entire cost.

It’s hard to think of Moore and the Huron group as much as humans as myself when all I know of them is the buttoned-to-the-collar formal meeting minutes and letters. There is probably as good a chance that all the events that eventually happened were caused by some irrational or unanticipated action as they might have been rational, grand schemes.

Carefully folding the brochure and putting it back in the folder, I slowly push the box away as I think of what I should look at next. I get up and walk towards the back shelf. I can hear my jeans swishing and the muted thump of my shoes on the carpet—it is impossibly silent in the archives. What I really need is something about the opening of the College or shortly after in 1951. The London Free Press archived across the road at Western probably has an article or two that would help.

November 9th, 1951 must have been an exciting day; the new Huron College was officially opened. The headline from the London Free Press, as I zoom in on the microfilm reader, reads “Archbishop Opens Huron College.” On the right side of the accompanying picture is O’Neil, looking incredibly young beside much older clergymen. While I did not expect it, I was secretly hoping that O. Roy Moore would be alongside O’Neil, his colleague of almost ten years. But it is just hope; Moore is not there.

O’Neil resigned from the office of principal a year after the new College was opened. It is strange to imagine working tirelessly for a decade to accomplish something and then not staying to enjoy it when it is accomplished. O’Neil was fairly young, so maybe he was also ambitious. Was Huron’s relocation just the first step in launching his career? He went on to be General Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, where he most likely had a greater reach to spread his religion. Was that how he thought of Huron’s relocation, necessary for Huron College so that it could better provide more youth with religious education? Was it just a stepping stone on a career path to what he perceived as bigger and greater things?

I wind up the microfilm back onto the roll and walk back to Huron. The microfilm is across the road at Western’s Weldon library, so on my way back, I can see Huron’s campus as I approach it.

The sky is grey and smooth, and the wind rustles the few leaves that remain in the trees. I look up to see a new batch of yellowed leaves flutter to the ground. Through the swirl of leaves, I see three tall pines in the distance, undulating in the breeze. They are quite stout and bushy, planted in a row, and clearly have been around for a while. Nearby, to the right of the trees, is the Hellmuth residence. I see a few people walking across the concrete paths, cutting a diagonal between the parking lot and the residences. These tall pines were probably planted when Hellmuth hall was built, in 1957.

In the years after O’Neil left, the new campus underwent radical change. For O’Neil, the relocation was the conclusion of decade-long efforts. For W.D. Coleman, it was the beginning of a refreshed Huron College. Hellmuth Hall was built in 1957 and the first women enrolled at the College started to live in residence. The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was created; arts courses went from being fledgling electives to full-blown degree programs. More students meant the campus was more cramped, so a new library and reading room were built in 1958 to hold 100,000 books. The same year, the Huron Executive Council became the Huron Corporation, when the Lay Representatives—such as Moore—officially were no longer apart of the Huron Executive Council.

There was no mention in 1949 or 1951 that Huron College would have women enrolled and in residence in less than a decade. Nor was there a plan to build the library and reading room in 1958. The only construction anticipated in 1951 was renovations on the third floor of the O’Neil residence for a handful of student bedrooms.

——

On the 12th of October 1954, O. Roy Moore pulled open the heavy oak doors and walked into the dim foyer at Huron College. He was here to attend an annual report to the Huron Executive Council by the principal, W.D. Coleman, and to discuss the upcoming third-floor renovations to the O’Neil residence. He was quite familiar with the floorplan since he drew it 16 years before, in 1938. Turning left, he made his way to the dining area for a luncheon meeting.

The room was warmly lit with sconces that gave off a yellow-tinted light. Low, oak-paneled beams ran across the ceiling, with large square blocks at their intersections. Through a row of windows on the right side of the room, the wooded riverbank of the Medway Creek could be seen in the distance.

The meeting began after the luncheon, with prayer by principal W.D. Coleman. The principal discussed the summertime use of the residence and adding soundproofing to its first floor. Next was the question about whether to renovate the third floor of the residence. Moore told the group that the renovations would cost $100,000 and provide 65 more rooms. It seems that Moore’s speech went well; the renovations went ahead since it was agreed that increased enrollment was expected to fill the rooms. Shortly after, the meeting was adjourned.

——

I walk through a concrete cloister-walk on the exterior of the dining room’s bank of windows. It’s poured to look like chiseled stone making a ribbed barrel vault, like something out of a church nave. Glancing to the right I can see into the room that many years ago Moore and Coleman ate their luncheon, where they probably queued behind trays of food staying warm, serving themselves portions, and conversing. I wonder if they got along.

——

Moore was a remnant of the previous Huron, from when O’Neil and the end goal of relocation occupied much of the Executive Council’s attention. The drawings that Huron’s Executive Council approved were labelled with his name, not his father’s. He was on the committees and attended the meetings when Huron’s fundraising campaign was envisioned. When Huron College moved to Western Road, he watched as his designs and picturesque sketches on the fundraising brochures came into being. He participated in every step of making Huron’s relocation a reality. But then it all went from plans excitedly discussed in meetings to a physical building. What would happen after? A decade led up to that point and suddenly there was no narrative guiding the efforts of Huron’s Executive Council.

Then O’Neil resigned. Did Moore share the same view of Huron’s relocation as an end-goal? Was it merely another project in his portfolio? His involvement with Huron was remarkably high for an architect, but it was always able to be traced back to successfully relocating Huron College. Perhaps when it was finally built there was a vacuum, where suddenly a decade-long goal and motivator transformed from a future hope to a present reality. Maybe Moore felt frozen, unsure of what his role was.

All the planning throughout the 1940s for the relocation and nothing was pre-planned for what would happen after. It would be back to the usual classes and events. Perhaps the relocation was the final event for the people involved in its planning and fundraising. Moore, as an architect, would have little architectural drawings to propose if everything was built. O’Neil could walk away from the relocation, satisfied with the accomplishment and legacy of his efforts—which he did in 1952.

After the meeting discussing the third-floor renovations, he was elusively absent from meetings throughout 1955 ad 1956. When W.D. Coleman eloquently argued for a new library and the utmost importance of building a women’s residence in 1957—Hellmuth Hall—Moore seemed to be no longer there. Sure, he might’ve been a lay representative in the Christmas Booklets, but he seemed disconnected from the development of Huron. Or maybe not, maybe he was enthusiastic about the changes happening—I don’t know, although to make Moore seem human it helps if I can sympathize with what I assume was a bittersweet attitude towards the new Huron. He accomplished what he set out to do, but at what cost—what changed too much for him to relate to? Was Huron too different, too much like a segment of Western and too little like a riverside estate home?

——

I climb up the stairs to the library and try to focus my thoughts on the next assignment. To the right, the chapel doors are open, and I hear the hum of the organ diffusing through the air.

——

The library that I am walking into was built in 1958, by a different architect than O. Roy Moore. I wonder how he thought of some newcomer architect tacking on a new library less than 10 years after his decade-long efforts became reality.

I don’t think he would have minded too much. The reading room feels no different for me than Moore’s building. The oak paneling, wooden crisscrossed beams, and stone window frames seem to be inspired by Moore’s design of the O’Neil residence.

For someone so crucial in defining the relocated Huron that has been imitated by every subsequent addition and architect, the name Moore is oddly absent from the campus. Perhaps the next parking lot or refurbished staircase could be named after O. Roy Moore. Something that does not attract much attention but is nevertheless essential to daily life at Huron College.