The New Campus: 1959-1965
I am told that in January 1959 the Chemistry students took their lab locker drawers and boarded a bus that took them to the new campus. The equipment was installed in the new laboratories on the fourth floor of the Tory Building. The Tory Building was formally opened in the Fall of 1960 by Premier Leslie Frost, who had earlier laid the cornerstone. Harry Thode, E. W. R. Steacie and John Polanyi were among the guests.
The Chemistry Department occupied the fourth floor of the Tory Building. I was in Room 421, with a small lab next door. My office had a vacuum rack, which served as a laboratory for the third-year Inorganic Chemistry course.
Aside from the main first year lab, there was one other lab where, on designated days, organic, inorganic and analytical labs were done. Physical chemistry was done down the hall further. There were not many research labs at that time. One, next to my office, was nominally used by Paul Laughton and by summer students of mine. Jim Holmes had some vacuum stuff in another lab, and that was that.
Fourth Floor Tory Building – 1963
The Faculty:
The Faculty in 1959 consisted of John M. Morton, James M. Holmes, Paul M. Laughton, Donald R. Wiles and A. Guy Forman (Lecturer). Reg Elworthy was the Senior Demonstrator. In the early 1960’s there was hiring of more new Faculty members. The first was Gene Cherniak, fresh from Fred Dainton in Leeds via NRC. Cherniak left after a few years and went to the newly-founded Brock University. There was an attempt to lure Alec Sehon from McGill. I think this was partly a ploy by Bert Nesbitt to get rid of Jim Holmes. Alec came for a visit and, after demanding nearly the whole fourth floor of the (Tory) building for his research, he left and was never seen again. Mike Parris came in about 1964. John Apsimon, from NRC (Ted Edwards) soon became a going concern, with such students as Bill Craig, Alfie Chau, and many others. Guy Forman was at the same time trying to finish his PhD under C.C.Lee, at the University of Manitoba.
Gene Cherniak left in 1964 with James Gibson to the new Brock University, Forman left, Forman died, Cherniak died much later in St. Catherines.
The Staff:
Reg Elworthy, a retired Agriculture Chemist was the main lab assistant in the senior labs, and stayed on in that function for several more years. (He had his 85th birthday cake in the Department!) Terry Begin was the store keeper, as well as being a student. A few others, (Gerard Dubé, Gus Klee, Peter Draayer) drifted in and out. I was never sure how they came to be associated with the Department, but I believe that they were earlier graduates. John Birchall, Senior Technician and Joyce Lemke, Senior Technician were appointed in April, 1964
Murray Wood was in charge of the first year lab for one year. Then he went on to be a Ministry of Education inspector, working out of North Bay. Natasha Hollbach was in charge of the first year labs for one year before going to teach at Algonquin College. She was assisted by Irene Brownstein. Lothar Klimpel took over until Mary Wilkinson was appointed in 1965.
Secretaries: Doris Foote, Gail Park, Joan Kuervers; Eleanor Egan came later
Glass Blower: Jack van den Hoff , from NRC, came on Saturdays mostly to work for Jim Holmes, but also for me and others. Henry Christie became a Laboratory instructor and then became the glass blower. Henry was also a TA in analytical chemistry, having been educated in Chemistry at Acadia. He had been a glass blower at AECL in Chalk River. Later, after we moved to the Steacie Building, Henry Christie stayed as glass blower.
Electronics: At the beginning, Brian Weston, from N.R.C., came on Saturdays. Then, Jim Ross was hired, again part time. Jim Ross became full time in about May, 1964.
Hiring Karl Diedrich Karl had been working in Almonte while taking Chemistry 10 and then 100. He came to see Jim Holmes and was hired on the spot, because Terry Begin, our Storekeeper at the time, had just resigned.
Karl became a most important member of the Department both in managing the Stores and in helping the students in the third year organic labs. The final organic synthesis was often done well past midnight, with Karl always present to give advice and help. Karl has many interesting stories to tell about working on the final organic synthesis with the students. Many students owe their degrees to Karl. However, as a result of helping so many, Karl was unable to complete his own degree program. Karl continued in the stores, but also was the Faculty Club bartender, member of the University Safety Committee and Spring Conference bartender and did many other things beyond any job description.
One year (1962?) we hired an assistant for Karl – a Hungarian refugee, who seemed to be very bright and diligent. After only a few weeks he disappeared, saying that he was going away to fight the Communists. He was picked up soon by the police, apparently on his way to Cuba . He was carrying two full bottles of sodium cyanide.
The Courses:
In 1959 the Courses were:
110 Qualifying year JMM
210 First year JMM
310 Physical Chemistry JMH
320 Organic Chemistry PML
330 Analytical Chemistry JMM
340 Organic Chemistry PML
360 Inorganic Chemistry DRW
420 Organic Chemistry PML
In the early days there were classes up to noon on Saturdays. I started in September 1959 with Chem 360 − the third-year Inorganic course . Prominent students included John Birchall, Keith Chambers, Arlene Cross, Don Davies, Gary Hicks, Bill Meath, Claire Quesnel, Bill Craig.
In 1960-61 I taught Chemistry 210 − the normal first-year course − in addition to Chem 360. Bob Hamilton was an outstanding first year student who won a CRC national prize in Chemistry; he was one of five in North America. He had worked in my lab during the summer of 1960. However he flunked everything else and disappeared. Others in that class included Les Copley, John Callahan, Peter Legzdins, Jean Arnason, Claire (Franklin) Bailey, Herb and Michael Wheeler, Tim Bond, Alex Jeletsky, John Lewis and many others. Then Chemistry 452 − Radiochemistry − was added.
Each year, the first days of the organic lab were very musical. Paul Laughton had the idea that every student should make his own spatula, so he got lengths of nickel wire and everyone hammered out a spatula on an anvil for most of the afternoon. He was also convinced that strong unpleasant smells were part of organic chemistry, so he made no apology for things that could go wrong. We have outgrown both of those ideas.
Third year organic course (340) required identification of an unknown. Many ingenious methods were used to accomplish this identification – many of them involving Karl Diedrich’s nose. A final synthesis was also very demanding, and drove many a student out of Chemistry. Bill Craig and Leo Hakka were among those who stuck it out. Others, such as John Birchall, took their degrees nominally in Mathematics.
Chemistry 360. The course involved some changes from the earlier course: a gentle introduction to quantum mechanics, orbitals and non-aqueous solvents and gradually got into crystal field theory. The lab involved non-aqueous syntheses (NOCl, SOCl2, etc ), high-temperature syntheses, gas-line syntheses (Nickel Carbonyl and others) and so on.
The inorganic lab work was done partly in my office (421 TB) where I had a vacuum rack, a furnace and a lot of other stuff. The next year I started a Radiochemistry Lab, which was put into Rooms 244 and 245 in Tory. These rooms had been used by Amal Ghosh, who was on leave in Sweden. Claire Quesnel worked in that lab, as did Pat (Dave) Vasudev.
Notable Students from the Period 1959 – 1965
Blagoje Zogović and Zahir Khan were early graduate students. They never finished their degrees, both having failed the fourth year Physical Organic course. Some of us felt that the
standards set were too rigorous and inflexible or that the course material was too far from their interests.
Blaže Zogović had come from Jugoslavia via UBC to work in chemical metallurgy, but was forced to take senior courses in physical organic chemistry, for which he was unprepared and uninterested. He failed and returned to Jugoslavia. Fazal Ilahi Nagi was another. He came to work on radiochemistry and, on failing the fourth-year organic course, he left and later got his Ph.D. at Queen’s University in Belfast. He returned to become a chemist at the Pakistan Atomic Energy establishment in Lahore.
Dave (Pat – Pathiyil) Vasudev was the first graduate student to enrol who actually finished. (Zogović and Zahir Khan had not finished; Oliver Bernardini finished first, although he had started later). Vasudev came from Ottawa U, where he had failed a course in Statistical Mechanics and therefore failed out from his qualifying year. His supervisor, Alan Westland, assured us that Dave was worth a try, so Jim and Paul agreed to accept him. Seeing that he had never had a course in Calculus, we started him in Math (101 and then 202). After a year or so, some courses had been so hard on him that he had to withdraw from full time study. I hired him in the lab, and he continued to take courses part time until he was accepted again. He finally did well and finished a M.Sc. before going on to Cambridge to get a Ph.D. He became an important scientist with the Atomic Energy Control Board.
Early Graduate students were
Pathiyi Vasudev Now retired from the Atomic Energy Control Board Paul DeMarco Now retired from Eli Lilly (pharmaceuticals) Inc
Oliviero Bernardini Italian Electric and Gas Energy Authority
Herb Wheeler 1967
The Honours graduates from the early Tory Building days are:
William J. E.Meath 1960
Donald H.Davies 1960
Bryan Hollebone 1963
Thilo E. Vollrath 1963
William G. Craig 1963
Peter Legzdins 1964
Herb Wheeler 1964
Lawrence H. Allen 1965
John K. Lewis 1965
Robert A. Creswell 1965
It is interesting to note that of these nine, at least six went on to become University Professors. The rest have become distinguished in other ways.
Tim Bond, son of local historian Courtney Bond, was a bright and very artistic student. He had occasional temper outbreaks, especially directed at Karl. He went on to become a movie director in Toronto and Hollywood. He worked with me for one summer to develop a projector for showing chemical reactions on screen. This used a long projector that was designed for the old 3-1/4 x 4-1/2 slides. Louis Raffler modified this projector to accommodate thicker slides, which he made of Lucite, with a 1 cm thick chamber for the reaction. This device I used in Chem 100 lectures, until we found that AgCl is shown to be black (opaque). Ross Dickson and later Ken Larose were early summer students
Bryan Hollebone worked with me on an interesting project – the dissolution of refractory metals and their oxides in molten pyridinium chloride. This came about when Bill Morgan, then of the Mines Branch (later EMR and NRCan) challenged me on the matter of doing applicable research. The project worked, and we patended the procedure in Canada, USA and UK. This might have been Carleton’s first patent. Peter Legzdins finished the project the next year.
Peter Legzdins was an exceptionally good student. He chose to take a couple of very difficult Physics courses in his final year. These brought down his average to the level of High Second Class. After discussing the matter with the Department (Jim and Paul) we took the proposition to the Registrar that he was in fact a first class student who had the courage to take difficult courses. The Registrar agreed, and Peter graduated with First Class Honours. He went on to MIT (Al Cotton) and London (Geoff Wilkinson) and became ultimately Head of Chemistry at U.B.C.
Several became University Professors: Bill Craig at UPEI, Don Davies at St. Mary’s University, Bryan Hollebone at Carleton, Norm Hunter at U Manitoba, Peter Legzdins at U.B.C., John Lewis at Memorial University, Bill Meath at U of Western Ontario.
Others went on to become significant scientists in Government or Industry: Larry Allen at PPRI, Allan Ashbrook at Eldorado Nuclear, Oliver Bernardini went to Harvard and then back to Italy, to become Head of Energy Projects for the Italian Electricity system, Keith Chambers at AECL Whiteshell, Dave Cooney at NRC, Dave Hall, Pat Vasudev at AECB, Thilo Vollrath, Neuroscientist in Ottawa, Bill Welsh at Radiation Protection Bureau, .
Others from that era went into teaching at other levels: Arlene Cross (Salmon), Don Herbertson, George Holland, Lothar Klimpel at Carleton, George Rogers, and Richard van Loon at Carleton. Terry Begin and George Seaby became Patent Agents .
Other prominent students of this period included: Ron Goldberg, John Birchall (Birchall was a chemistry student, but actually took his degree in mathematics because largely of the difficulty with senior organic chemistry courses.) Oliver Bernardini, Tim Bond, Russ King, Ross Dickson, Leo Hakka, Ted Hodges, Other significant students included for many years, Steve Redfern, Bill Wilson, and many, many others.
(Bill Craig became Dean of Science at UPEI and then returned to found Paracel Ltd. in Ottawa along with John Apsimon) Others included: Jean Meranger, Michael Antoniades, Anthony Fan, Terry Lynch, Norman Rath, Mike White, Bruce Paynter, Bruno Siurna, Herb Wheeler, Michael Wheeler, Keijo Aspila, Doug Begin, Claire Quesnel, Murray Martin, Dick Monks, Terry Stein, Bob Wills, Bob Begley, Matti Jaakimainen, J.P Farant, Udo Mehner, Eric Scheuneman, Brenda Tomta, Clarke Slemon, Frank Feiner.
Early Research:
In the early days, there was no research done in the department. Jim Holmes had friends and colleagues at NRC (Ira Puddington and Allison Flood) although not much research was actually accomplished. Paul Laughton worked with Ross Robertson at NRC. Reg Elworthy had worked extentively at Agriculture Canada before coming to Carleton. Guy Forman was working on his Ph.D. with Chuck Lee at the University of Manitoba.
The first actual research on campus was done by me and my small group, because I had no colleagues off campus. After some early studies on hot atom chemistry with Claire Quesnel, in Room 254 Tory, the work moved to the new laboratories on the Sixth floor of Tory. This work involved electron exchange studies on thallium. While a few other projects were started, only this series led to publications. With the arrival of Gene Cherniak, more things got under way − flash photolysis was his field. Jim Holmes was measuring surface areas of bone mineral samples, and published a review paper with a Russian colleague, Kiselev. Only when John ApSimon arrived did much actual research get started, and since then it has never stopped.
An early and growing concern of mine has been that no one in the department was able to collaborate with anyone else in the department, This was partly the result of Jim Holmes’ plan to cover the field of Chemistry widely in his hiring practices. This was probably the right thing for Carleton at that stage. It worked well for teaching in the undergraduate program, but didn’t help the graduate research program. Unfortunately, while it led to strong individual efforts, there didn’t develop any sort of centre of excellence within the Department. This is now changing.
Jim Holmes worked on surface area measurements by the BET method. He was apparently very good at that and had well-calibrated simple equipment: gas burettes, mercury diffusion pumps, Toeppler pumps, Tesla coils. He had good collaboration with other surface chemists in several countries: Ralph Beebe, Egon Mateevic and one (Kiselev) in Russia. We had a liquid Nitrogen generator in the basement of the Tory Building.
Paul Laughton collaborated with Ross Robertson of NRC on the thermodynamics of organic transition states. I think Ross did the experimental work and Paul helped with the theory.
Gene Cherniak worked on flash photolysis, in his lab in the basement. His students were Herb Wheeler, John Lewis, Oliver Bernardini and perhaps others. Herb was not happy, and actively disliked working with Cherniak.
New labs on top of Tory. In 1962, a block of labs was built between the north and central towers on the sixth floor of Tory. This followed a memo from Paul Laughton (Chairman, pro tem) of 24 August, 1961. Here is where I had two inorganic chemistry labs, the radiochemistry lab and some space for research. There were also grad student carrels a small class room and a small store room. A similar set of labs was built between the other towers for the biology department – largely for Frank Wightman, I think. These labs were later dismantled entirely.
Fasal Nagi was my graduate student, as was Rick van Loon. Nagi failed the senior Organic course and had to leave. He finally got his PhD at Queen’s University in Dublin. He became a senior person in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Richard van Loon was another radiochemistry graduate student, for a short time. Rick moved into Political Science by our mutual agreement. He soon became a major authority and a senior official in several Government Departments and finally Carleton President.
Major Equipment:
There was little equipment in the early days. We did have a spectrophotometer avialble to undergraduates, and there came to be a spectrophotometer in the Inorganic-Radiochemistry labs.
Gene Cherniak acquired spectrophtometers for his flash photolysis, available to his own students.
The neutron source For radiochemical studies it is important to have a local source of nuclear activation. Quite early we were able to borrow from AECL Commercial Products Division a Radium-Beryllium neutron source. It belonged, I believe, to the US Air Force, but was privately made available through my friend Dave Rowat. This was 5 Curies of Radium mixed with beryllium. This was put inside a block of paraffin wax about 30 inches diameter by 5 inches high, and was located under the bottom stairway, just near the liquid nitrogen generator and the University’s heating plant. It gave a small flux of neutrons, just enough to be able to produce 108Ag or 128I for class demonstrations. It was good exercise, running up to the top floor with its 2 minute half life. This was later replaced by a much bigger one in the Steacie Building.
The Physics Department had a 14 MeV neutron generator for a while. This was not of much use to chemical work. We had a single-channel γ spectrometer.
Notable Events:
Broomball: We had an annual broomball match – the Faculty against the students. The rink was just about where the fountain is now near Robertson Hall. Prominent players from Chemistry were JimHolmes, Karl Diedrich, Paul Laughton, Gene Cherniak, Peter Legzdins and me. James Gibson (the Dean, and later founding President of Brock University) was the fastest runner on the ice. Jim Holmes occasionally picked up the opposing goalie and deposited her(!) in the nearest snow bank. Claire Bayley from Chemistry was a prominent student player.
Jim’s dinners. Jim and Helen Holmes made a practice of inviting faculty members and their wives to dinner once or twice a year. Jim poured the drinks, which were massive beyond belief. Helen served a standard dinner of chicken and ice box cookies – her only dessert, or so it seemed to some. Both Jim and Helen were very friendly hosts.
An early departmental party was at our house in about 1962. In the back yard and later in the basement, the mood was very jovial. Apsimon’s post doc from Poland, Danuta Rozwadowska was there with her husband. Dave Hall is remembered for teetering drunkenly at the top of the cellar stairs, Peter Diedrich is remembered for holding up the basement wall to prevent its caving in (and to keep him amused and out of the way).
Jim’s COTC: Jim Holmes was a Reserve Major, and looked the part. He was able to establish an army-type bar for Friday afternoons. Most of the Chemistry Department became honourary members of the COTC. John Birchall was an important real member.
Faculty Club Gourmet Dinners. There was a Faculty Club, whose annual fee was $1. There were two yearly events: a Gourmet Dinner and a Christmas Party. The Gourmet Dinner involved Faculty wives who brought each her own favourite dish – many tuna salads, scalloped potatoes – no wine, of course. The Christmas Party was mostly for children – many of the Faculty Members had young children – and was quite an affair. Santa Claus was either Jim Holmes or Rusty Wendt (Psychology Professor), all dressed up in a costume, usually bolstered by several jolts of rum or other chemical.
Chemistry Shows: It all started at a mock debate between Science and Engineering students (in the Egg) on the topic “Resolved that the world would be better off without Artsmen”. I was the referee, sitting up on a step ladder drinking liquid nitrogen when John Apsimon put a large porcelain dish on the desk. He then squirted it with water and created the huge mushroom cloud that I used so many times later on. Don Ford, a chemistry student, was the photographer. This event led to the development of the “Chemistry is pHun” shows that became quite popular later. (That name was coined by Cooper Langford’s young son and seemed so apt that it stuck.)
The computer was introduced into the University – an IBM 1620 was housed in one of the rooms in the south-east corner of the fourth floor − the Chemistry floor − of the Tory Building. There was also a card punch machine into which I was able to enter the marks for the Chem 210 (later 100) students. Using a strange frame with patchcords I could set this up to sum the marks according to an unvarying protocol and enter a final mark for each. I think this was the first use of the computer by the Chemistry Department. Dave Sutherland was one of the main student users.
Community Outreach
Jim Holmes was active in EOSEC (Eastern Ontario Science Education Committee) We put on a series of lectures for the local high school teachers in about 1961. I became president of the Ottawa chapter of the CIC, and then Councillor and ultimately a National Director. Jim, Paul and I always went the the local CIC meetings. We frequently invited teachers to bring their classes to visit the Department. One year we gave a short refresher course to many of the local highschool teachers. I became External Examiner for the University of Guyana.
Planning the new Building
The building was designed by Adjelian, Goodkey and Weedmark, with Jim Menendes, John Lund (who enjoyed speaking in Norwegian) and others as engineers. In fact, Jim Holmes had a lot to do with the design and spent much of his time hasseling the designers. The larger idea was that this would form part of a larger building with C2v symmetry around a rotational axis in the middle of what is now the central foyer. Because of many competing plans and objectives, this is not likely to be realized.
General layout and lab details were mostly by Jim Holmes − labs, classrooms, offices all readily accessible to students. This was different from the design of the Physics building later, where research labs and offices were separated from the classrooms and teaching labs. The Chemistry labs were of a modular design, with 24-place undergrad labs, readily adaptible to other uses. Rooms 310, 311 and 312 were all fitted with exhaust systems, so that they could become laboratories later. (This has now been done in 2007, over 40 years later.) We were all asked to design our own research lab spaces, and that also worked well.
The building was ready on schedule and on cost. Cost: ~ $3.7 M. We moved into the building in late August, 1965, and everything worked: ventilation, water systems, temperature control, electrical systems, elevators – everything functioned right from the first day. The workmen included Belair père et fils, Les Adams, Earl Thomson, Mickey McGuire and others who eventually became important members of the University Maintenance Staff. They were all very friendly with members of the Chemistry Department (perhaps because of Jim Holmes’ COTC lounge and bar?).
The Faculty at that period comprised:
46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
JMMorton
JMHolmes
PMLaughton
AGForman
DRWiles
EACherniak
JWApSimon
MParris