So? .... I do not believe that the question of an alternative---or a sequel ---to R.M.C. had ever occurred to me, or the matter of a career. But nor do I remember consciously thinking about being an architect until the summer after the R.M.C. debacle. But one day it suddenly seemed obvious that architecture was for me. So I sat down and sketched out plans and elevations of a sort of Westmount Tudor house (I had occasionally toyed with house plans and road layouts) and I sent it off to McGill with an application for the School of Architecture. And I was accepted (and so probably were all others who applied ---at any rate we started as a class of eight or nine, which had shrunk to six by graduation).
The course in Architecture was fun, and, as far as we knew then, pretty good
training. In 1926, 20
Century architecture had not hit Canada---
certainly not Montreal or McGill. To us, contemporary architecture consisted of
the skyscrapers going up in the U.S.A., whether neo-classical or neo-gothic. We
were taken to see such Montreal wonders as the Royal Bank building on St. James
Street, where I saw that the keystones of an arch were put in place first,
supported on steel, and followed by the rest of the voussoirs similarly held up
---the exact reverse of rational arch construction; and the Bell Telephone
building, where, as a dare, I walked 20 feet along an outside wall beam, column
to column, some sixteen floors above the sidewalk below.
The architects whose names we knew were chiefly the big American firms doing pseudo classic and gothic, or the ``benighted'' (Sir Edwin Luytens, Sir Robert Lorimer, Sir Herbert Baker, Sir Aston Webb, etc. etc.) English ones: not any of the Dutch, French, German or Swedish people then leading the way. There were of course the few Montreal offices, our source of mandatory summer jobs.
We were taught the rudiments of our trade as it was then seen: draughting and freehand drawing; how to cast shadows graphically; how to plot geometrically the entasis on classical columns and the volutes of an Ionic capital; how to ``stretch'' a double-elephant sheet of Whatman's smooth-press paper on which to make presentation drawings rendered in monochrome wash of accurate details of all the classic orders. We were taught some structural engineering, about construction methods and materials and specification writing, and something of ancillary subjects such as plumbing and sanitation; but precious little if anything about heating or electrical services; and of course such sciences as air-conditioning and acoustics were virtually unknown to us.
We followed the history of Architecture all the way from the Egyptians through Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Mediaeval and Gothic Renaissance. But we heard nothing of the mdern movement then already well under way in Europe: that we discovered for ourselves mostly after we had finished college. But we did have a good course in the principles of design, taught by Percy Nobbs who was himself a very good practising architect and the best teacher on the staff. (He alone could keep the class awake and alert when the hot spring afternoon sun flooded our lecture room in the Macdonald Engineering Building, S. W. corner.)
Ramsay Traquair was Macdonald Professor of Architecture and Director of the
School. He was a small funny faced Scotsman from Edinburgh, with a warus
moustache, and he was inclined to splutter.
``Traq'' was probably less interested in running the school and in teaching
history than in his pet project of recording the native architecture of Quebec,
on which he did a very thorough and excellent job: his publications were
prousely illustrated with his own photos and measured drawings of churches and
houses, most of them measured and drawn by his students on excursions for the
purpose to Quebec City, l'Isle d'Orléans, Old Montreal and elsewhere. As a
sideline, he taught the McGill C.O.T.C. bayonet fighting!
Another faculty member was an Englishman named Carless, 2.I.C. to Traq, whom we teased unkindly by such inane tricks as piling up two or three samples of structural steel sections, precariously balanced on the edge of a draughting table so that, when Carless was nearby but with his back turned, a gentle nudge of the table would cause them quite accidentally to crash thunderously to the floor. And there was my parlour trick of wood ``sawing'', set up with two fellows holding two long Tsquares back to back and apparently gang-sawing a table in half, with me under it providing the sound effects. We worked so hard, including occasional traditional all-night sessions before a design went in, that we needed these little respites.
Our little School, totalling never more than 30 or 40 students in those days, was closely self-contained in the south-west corner of the Macdonald Engineering Building. It consisted of one large draughting room, a 15 seat lecture room and a small library between them; a workshop storeroom, two offices, and downstairs a ``museum'' full of casts of architectural elements and classical sculptures used for freehand drawing, and one or two ancient building models. For five years we did 90% of ourr practical and theoretical work in that one locale, leaving it only in the earlier years for certain letures with the engineers, or in the Physics Building, or for life drawing class in the Art Gallery with a wonderful little Frenchman named Dyonnet, a Montreal painter; or for occasional field trips. Rarely, if we remembered about it or had time, we might visit the stacks of the Blackadder Library of Architecture in the McLennan. The course schedule of lectures and draughting meant a 9 to 5 day, plus frequent evenings, at home if not actually in the School. This rather tight and isolated program meant tat we had less exposure to campus activities than, say, the Arts or Commerce boys or even the engineers. My only major extra-curricular activity was to design and produce the scenery for the McGill Red and White Review (1929 I think), a job always given an architect.
At the end of our second (?) year we spent two weeks camping on mattresses on the balcony of the Macdonald College gymnasium in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, while we learned the art of sureying (which I doubt we ever used professionally). We chained, levelled and angled a large section of the fields I now like to ski over. Our class of Arch'31 did this in company with the much larger class of Sc.'30 (thus showing our superior intelligence over the engineers). It was a tradition for these survey schools to record their presence for posterity by plastering their logo in paint over various parts of Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where some are still to be seen today as on the highway bridge. In our year the more hoodlum element of the engineering class thought it clever to vary the prank by painting their mark in huge whitewash letters across the central lawn of Macdonald. This vandalism which embarrassed and angered us environment conscious architects who took no part in if, finally faded back into green grass about 5 years later (having cost us all our ``caution money'').
Another year, after term, Traquair took two classes off for two weeks sketching school based in Quebec. This was a good thing and we got to know the city, its surroundings, including the Ile d'Orléans, and under Traq's guidance I for one became very fond of the old houses, manors, churches and other heritage of old Quebec. Besides measuring up some of these charming buildings we also tried our hand at waterolour sketching. But no-one thought to teach or encourage us in the art of photography.
One Christmas holiday Percy Nobbs commissioned Bob Montgomery and me to measure
up the old church at Château Richer, some 20 miles below Quebec on the north
shore. We spent the best part of two weeks (interrupted by a trip home for a few
days over Christmas)
in a farmer's little old house in the village. We had a
ground floor bedroom behind the family parlour. We ate mostly thawed pork from
the household's winter store. In the mornings it was so cold that not only was
there an inch of ice on top of the water jug we washed with, but our pillows
were frozen stiff to about 8 inches from our noses. But it was great fun, and we
allowed ourselves a few breaks to ski over the surrounding countryside. I think
Percy paid us $100 each plus transportation and lodging.
To get a degree it was necessary to chalk up a certain period of ``apprenticeship''in an architect's office. Brother Stuart introduced me to Ernest Barott who at the time was enjoying one of the more sucessful practices in Canada. I worked in his office for 2 or 3 months each of the 4 summers while at McGill, receiving emoluments ranging from nil the first summer through $8 a week the second, to a high of $25 a week. During that time Barott, with no partners, had on his boards, one after the other, the $6 million Hudson Bay store in Winnipeg, the Bell Telephone Head Office in Montreal (some $3 million) and the Aldred Building (about $2 million); I got a very rosy impression of architectural practice. When I went to see E.I.B. just after graduating he greeted me with ``Sorry, no job this year''---the Great Depression had begun, and fortunately for me I was able to tell him that I was off to Europe.
In my second year I joined a fraternity---
---it was the
``in'' thing in those days. My classmate Bob Montgomery, who was fast becoming
my best friend, belonged to it and he and I became respectively the President
and Vice-president (or whatever werre the greek terms for those offices.)
Because my exams were over earlier than some others I was lucky to be appointed
a delegate for the chapter to the `National'' Convention in Chicago: an
enjoyable trip. Another summer after my stint in the office I took my first trip
to New York, stayed at the N.Y. chapter house of the fraternit free, for two
weeks and explored the city and its buildings all on my own.
Of the six in our class who graduated together in 1931, five practiced the
profession as principals. Only Dick Eve (father of Elizabeth) did not: he ended
a chequered career teaching at the Architectural Ass'n in London where he died
about 1972. Bouchard had a successful partnership in Bermuda; Doran had a small
office in Montreal---they are both dead. Kalman made an early killing in
speculative developments in Montreal and long ago retired to Ottawa. Bob
Montgomery, the best of us, joined E. I. Barrott's firm after the war in 1945,
but after a long bout of cancer he died in 1956. I joined that frim in January
1946.