ECE Lore & Legends: The Electrical Engineering Story Behind the Sci '44 Co-op

By Robert B. Marks

(To Walter Runge and William Pardy)

February 23, 2007

It is perhaps the greatest of ironies that one of the most famous wartime stories of Queen's University had absolutely nothing to do with World War II.

Almost every undergrad is told the story of the Sci ‘44 Co-op. It's a bona fide Queen's urban legend. According to the myth, a group of engineers, about to embark for the war in Europe, founded the co-op with the help of one of their professors.

But, while there is a grain of truth, the real story of the early years of the Sci ‘44 Co-op is very different, but no less interesting.

* * *

Queen's University in 1941 was a very different place than it is today. While some of the buildings familiar to every undergraduate were there, the campus was much smaller. A student population of 2000, lower than most of today's high schools, walked the hallowed grounds. The engineering faculty only had 124 students graduate from the class of 1944.

It was a close-knit group. Like Queen's today, the engineers would pick their departments in their second year, and those who became electrical engineers found themselves in labs studying radio tubes or power engineering.

Walter Runge, known to his friends as Wally, was born in Ottawa in 1920. When he finished high school he took two years off to work, and then began to pursue an electrical engineering degree. When he arrived at Queen's in the autumn of 1940, he was a couple of years older than his fellow students - a fact that would prove important once the co-op got started.

While the founding of the co-op had nothing to do with the war itself, it was impossible for Runge, or any of the original founders, to avoid its impact. With Europe under Nazi occupation, the Canadian government insisted that all Queen's students join the Canadian Officer's Training Corp (COTC). Every Saturday, the students would undergo a route march at the same time as the students from the Royal Military College. With most of the Queen's engineers being thin and not in the greatest of shape, the end result was somewhat less than distinguished.

"We were kind of a laughing stock in a lot of ways," said Runge, "this sort of straggling bunch compared to the RMC boys."

But, even though Runge and his friends had to march like soldiers, almost none of them eventually joined the army. The co-op they founded would become legend, but outside of taking place during the years of the Second World War, and feeling the occasional effect of the war, the co-op had nothing to do with it.

* * *

The Sci ‘44 Co-op began in 1940 when a group of first year engineering students decided that the cost of living was too high, in part because of a housing shortage brought on by Kingston being used to train troops for overseas. While the war added a new element, the cost of living wasn't a new observation by any means - even now the price of rent can be a hot topic for students. However, the founders of the co-op were able to do something about it.

One of the primary movers was James S. Wrong. Wrong, who would graduate in Civil Engineering, had read about co-ops at the University of Toronto and a couple of other universities. He approached his friend William Pardy, who would go on to graduate as an electrical engineer, and suggested that they organize a co-operative student boarding house.

The next person they contacted was Clyde Lendrum, who went on to contact some of his own friends and bring them into it. On a cold January evening in 1941 at Donald Lane and Clyde Lendrum's apartment at 195 Collingwood Street, a plan was outlined by Wrong, and the first semblances of the organization took shape.

While the committee, now a group of nine students, had done their research, the problem the original board faced was in regards to the real estate. There was some housing available, but nobody would rent or sell it to a group of first year students. So, the organization approached Principal Wallace and proposed their ideas.

Wallace thought it was a good idea, but couldn't justify the university spending the money to buy a property to rent to a bunch of first year students. However, he knew somebody who could. He introduced the co-op committee to E.A. Collins - an executive of the International Nickel Company and a benefactor of the university. Collins liked the idea, and in March 1941 wrote a cheque to Queen's University for $7,500. The university purchased 329 Earl Street, the first choice of the co-op committee, on April 26, 1941. The rent to the co-op was set for $720 per year. The Sci ‘44 Co-op was born.

What ended up forming was a community. Everybody living in the co-op was required to pitch in - for most of the members, this amounted to three to four hours a week. While services such as cleaning up and finances were covered by the students, cooking was another matter. A cook, affectionately named Aunt Annie, was hired by the co-op, and she was responsible for making the meals.

Being over 21, Runge found himself in a particularly good situation. Not only was he needed for the board of directors, but he also became the treasurer, a role that provided him with free room and board. He later found himself nominated and appointed to be the nutrition expert, something he knew little about.

"So I went to the library and read up on it all," Runge chuckled.

While Runge was busier than most, he still had time to participate in the comradery of the community. Sometimes he would sit in the Sun Room, socializing with the other members of the co-op. Other times he would join a friend in the library to listen to classical music. While the war raged in Europe, there was no doom or gloom on the campus - one of the only impacts it had on Runge was being "a pain in the ass" because of the route marches.

But, most of his life was very much like it is for Queen's students today, although the technology was very different.

"It was a routine going to classes, coming home, doing homework," said Runge. "The old standard sort of stuff."

The one thing that Runge didn't handle on his own was laundry. That he sent home to his mother by bus every weekend. When he wanted to go visit her, he hitchhiked.

Runge's story was representative. The Co-op founders were students - it was founded by students for students. They studied like students, lived like students, and in the end, graduated like students.

* * *

The founding of the co-op had a ripple effect that continues to this day. That is, perhaps, the most telling test of its impact.

When the class of ‘44 graduated, the founders of the Co-op left it in good hands, with every reasonable expectation that it would continue to serve the purpose they had set for it. The co-op was only four years old, but it had affected the lives of everybody who had lived there. One of the mechanical engineers, Ken Rush, went on to study in Ottawa, where he opened up another co-op in 1946.

For Walter Runge, the co-op had taught him a number of life skills. He had to learn how to keep books and deal with banks. And, in the end, he learned how to come out of his shell.

"I learned how not to be a hermit, how to be sociable, and we all got along very well," said Runge. "There never seemed to be any friction that I can remember."

* * *

Perhaps the greatest contribution the Sci ‘44 Co-op would make to the university would be, of all things, a castle.

The contribution was an indirect one, but one that had its seeds in the very first year of the co-op. A young 20 year-old Austrian refugee named Alfred Bader, who had fled to England to escape the Nazis in 1934, had been deported to Canada in 1940. After spending time in an internment camp in Quebec, he had finally been accepted to Queen's in the chemistry program in 1941. However, he needed a place to live, and had almost nothing to his name.

"He went to the dean, and the dean sent him to the co-op," said Runge. "He lived in the room next to mine. He was very quiet, very serious, a nice young boy. He was always grateful to Queen's for taking him in."

Bader would go on to a doctorate at Harvard, and found the Aldrich Chemical Company, which later became the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation. With the wealth he earned, he donated several works of art to the University, and in 1993 he donated Herstmonceux Castle, which now serves as the International Study Centre.

* * *

It's been sixty-six years since a group of nine engineering students, three of whom (Runge, Pardy, and Lane) were in electrical engineering, founded the Sci ‘44 Co-op. The co-op has expanded over the years to house around two hundred students, and become a Queen's University legend in and of itself. But, even more than that, it became an essential part of the Queen's community, and it is unthinkable to consider Queen's without students in the co-op.

The work of its founders has affected people on a personal note as well, and not just by building a lasting community. Only a couple of years ago, a young Queen's student living in the Co-op was startled by a photograph she saw on one of the walls.

It was her grandfather, Walter Runge.