A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Observatory
Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Department of
Occupational Health and Safety, Department of
Oil Thigh
Okill Street
Old Arts Building
Old Gymnasium
Old Medical Building
Old Mill
Old Richardson Stadium
Oncology, Department of
Ontario Centre for Materials Research
Ontario Hall
Ontario School of Mining and Agriculture
Operation Happy Birthday
Ophthalmology, Department of
Oral History of Queen's
Orientation Activities Review Board
Orientation Week
Original Buildings
Original Property
Otolaryngology, Department of
Ottawa and Queen´s
Observatory. The roots of Queen's Observatory lie in the founding of the Kingston Observatory in 1855 by a group of local "Gentlemen Amateurs" interested in astronomy. This observatory, located in City Park, was the first in Ontario. The city initially provided the operating funds, but some councillors objected to paying for such a specialized facility "which no one knows anything about except a professor and one or two students at Queen's College." In 1861, therefore, the city happily sold the observatory and an acre of the park to Queen's for $1. There were several conditions, however, including that the observatory arrange weekly corrections to City Hall's clock and allow the Mayor and all councillors and their successors to use the telescope at no charge. Due in part to repeated acts of vandalism, the observatory moved in 1881 to a location just west of where carruthers hall now stands. It was taken down in 1901 and in 1909 rebuilt in a small domed building at the foot of university avenue. This was destroyed to make way for mclaughlin hall in 1946. The observatory has been located on the roof of ellis hall since that building was constructed in 1958. Its green metal dome, a conspicuous campus landmark, now houses a 15-inch reflecting telescope built in 1958. Although modest in size by modern standards and somewhat limited in its performance by the brightness of Kingston's city lights, the telescope is still heavily used, partly as a teaching and demonstration tool in the Department of Physics' undergraduate and graduate Astrophysics degree programs, and partly in hosting public groups of varied kinds. During the fall and winter sessions, boy scout and girl guide groups, school classes, and other organizations frequently visit the observatory for a glimpse of the moon, planets, and clusters of stars. The telescope also forms a central part of the popular "Science Quest" program conducted for high school students on campus in the summer months.
Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Department of. This department traces its history to the founding of the Faculty of Medicine in 1855, when j.p. litchfield was appointed Professor of Midwifery and Forensic and State Medicine. When Queen's officials discovered to their shock that Litchfield was not qualified to teach midwifery – indeed, he had never even attended a birth – they removed him from his post. He was replaced in 1861 by Michael Lavell, who held the post of Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. Obstetrics and gynaecology were taught in conjunction with children's medicine until well into this century. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology was established as a separate unit in 1928. Today, the department is centred in Kingston General Hospital, where its 15 full-time faculty provide care for patients, conduct research, and teach. Major changes in the last 30 years include the expansion of pre-natal care and the development of a birthing centre in the hospital which encourages the participation of the father and family. Five specialty divisions have also been established in recent decades in the fields of maternal and fetal medicine, gynaecological oncology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, sexual medicine, and urodynamics. The department's offices are located in Kingston General Hospital.
Occupational Health and Safety, Department of. See Environmental Health and Safety, Department of.
October 16. See University Day.
Oil Thigh. This combined song and dance is a distinctive Queen's tradition, performed at sporting events and most university occasions less formal than convocations. It consists of the old song "Queen's College Colours," sung to the accompaniment of a low-kicking sort of can-can dance. The name "Oil Thigh" comes from the chorus of the song, which begins with the gaelic words "Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath" ("The College of the Queen forever"). At football games it is a tradition that students perform an Oil Thigh after every touchdown. The song "Queen's College Colours" was written in 1898 by student Alfred Lavell to inspire Queen's football team to victory after a disappointing loss to the University of Toronto. Its staying power is somewhat surprising: it was just one of countless university songs penned at a time when songwriting was a booming pastime among students, and even Lavell later described its verses as "sophomoric." Its survival is due partly to its rousing Gaelic chorus, which was actually written separately as a university cheer in 1891, and its popular tune, stolen from the American "Battle Hymn of the Republic." But it has also prospered because most of its rivals suffered even more noticeably from oversentimentality and clumsy rhyme. The song's original line "So, boys, go in and win!" was changed to "So, Gaels, go in and win!" in 1985 to include Queen's women athletes. The full version of the song is printed below. See also Guy Curtis and Gaelic for the separate origins of the chorus, Cha-Gheill!
Queen's College colours we are wearing once again,
Soiled as they are by the battle and the rain,
Yet another victory to wipe away the stain!
So, Gaels, go in and win!
Chorus:
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath!
Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill!
Varsity's not invincible, they tremble at the news
Of Queen's College Colours and are shaking in their shoes.
Yet another victory, the chance we dare not lose.
So, Gaels, go in and win!
Chorus: Oil thigh, na Banrighinn...
McGill has met defeat before, they've heard the same old tale
Of Queen's College colours, boys, the ones that seldom fail,
Remember Captain Curtis and the conquerors of Yale,
So, Gaels, go in and win!
Chorus: Oil thigh, na Banrighinn...
There may be other colours to the breezes oft unfurled,
And many another college yell by student voices hurled;
Queen's College colours are the dearest in the world,
So, Gaels, go in and win!
Chorus: Oil thigh, na Banrighinn...
What's the sport of Kings?
Queen's! Queen's! Queen's!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill!
Oil thigh na Banrighinn Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill! Cha-gheill!
Yay Queen´s!
Okill Street. This short street runs from Barrie Street to george street a block north of King Street. It is one of five streets on campus named after Archdeacon George Okill Stuart, an Anglican cleric who was the original owner of Summerhill, Queen's oldest building. The other streets are Arch, Deacon, George, and Stuart.
Old Arts Building. See Theological Hall.
Old Gymnasium. See Jackson Hall.
Old Medical Building. Completed in 1858, the Old Medical Building was the first permanent building on campus or elsewhere that Queen's arranged to have built itself. (Summerhill, the oldest building on campus, was originally a private home.) The building was constructed to house Queen's Faculty of medicine, which was founded in 1855. It was a simple, Georgian-style building, strategically located behind Summerhill by Queen's cost-conscious leaders "so that no architectural ornament would be at all necessary." Since then, it has undergone more major alterations than any other building on campus, the result of expansions, contractions, renovations, and a fire in 1924 that destroyed its top floor. But much of the original building, including its ornate doorway – the builders' only real concession to decoration – still stands. In addition to housing the medical faculty, the building has at different times held Queen's Convocation Hall, a primitive gymnasium, a small medical museum, and a variety of arts and science classrooms. Today, the old spacious lecture rooms have been transformed into a warren of administrative offices. The building forms one side of the Medical Quadrangle. See also Fires.
Old Mill. Built in 1894 and torn down in 1949, the Old Mill was originally a mining laboratory and machine shop and later held the campus bookstore. The two-storey structure was located on the site of clark hall, which was built between 1949 and 1951.
Old Richardson Stadium. See Richardson Memorial Stadium.
Oncology, Department of. Oncology, the science of cancer, has been a subject of research, teaching, and clinical work at Queen's since the 1930s. But it was not until 1986 that a separate Department of Oncology was established in the then Faculty of medicine, with Dr David Ginsburg as its first head. The discipline has three main areas: medical oncology (the treatment of cancer with chemo-therapeutic drugs), radiation oncology (the treatment of cancer with radiation), and surgical oncology (the surgical treatment of cancer). The department is located in the Burr Wing of Kingston General Hospital and has about 15 full and part-time faculty. Most members of the department also conduct work in the kingston regional cancer centre. The department is now part of the Faculty of Health Sciences. See also Cancer Research Laboratories and Clinical Trials Group.
Ontario Centre for Materials Research. Founded in 1988, this is a provincial centre of excellence with its head office on Queen's campus. It is not part of the university, but it rents space and services from Queen's and also funds research in various Queen's departments – mechanical engineering, materials and metallurgical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, biochemistry, and medicine. Supported by Technology Ontario, the centre has more than 50 industrial members and has an academic research team of more than 500 faculty, research associates, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students at five universities: Queen's, McMaster, Toronto, Western Ontario, and Waterloo. It coordinates research in such areas as polymers, plastics, metals, ceramics, biomaterials, coatings, electronic and optoelectronic materials. Its goal is to strive for international leadership in development of knowledge about materials through research and to ensure the transfer and diffusion of that knowledge and technology to industry. The centre's office is located in a trailer adjacent to Carruthers Hall.
Ontario Hall. Completed in 1903, this Victorian Romanesque building houses the Department of Art. Like nearby Kingston Hall, it was named for the level of government that funded it: it was built by the provincial government to house the ontario school of mining and agriculture, which later became Queen's Faculty of applied science. It subsequently housed the Department of Physics. In the 1950s and 1960s the basement held a sub-atomic particle accelerator and was fitted with a thick shield of concrete to contain the radiation that the accelerator produced. Today the building features several art studios, display rooms, the Art Library, and many lecture halls. It is located beside Grant Hall on University Avenue.
Ontario School of Mining and Agriculture. This school, established in 1893, was essentially a subterfuge designed to provide Queen's with an engineering faculty. The provincial government was not permitted to provide Queen's with any funding as long as it was a denominational university, which it remained until 1912. But Principal george grant and Premier Oliver Mowat (son of one of Queen's founders and brother of one of its senior professors) got around this technicality by establishing the provincially-supported school as an independent institution – one, however, which shamelessly shared the newly-built carruthers hall as well as its professors with Queen's Faculty of applied science, which was deliberately founded at the same time. The sleight of hand was not universally appreciated. One University of Toronto professor remarked bitterly some years later that "Grant had this Province on its knees." The school vanished from the campus scene in 1916, when it and the faculty united to become the modern Faculty of Applied Science. ontario hall, donated to Queen's by the provincial government, was originally built to house the school.
Operation Happy Birthday. This is the name of one of the most imaginative student pranks in Queen's history. On 22 February 1956, George Washington's birthday, three carloads of students drove to four towns in upper New York State, hoisted Union Jacks up the flagpoles of prominent buildings, and posted proclamations in Georgian English script declaring that the surrounding lands had been repossessed by the Crown, retroactive to 4 July 1776. The prank was reported by news services across Canada and the United States. The city of Watertown sent a bill to Queen's for $40, the cost of hiring a steeplejack to remove the flags. Engineering students promptly paid the bill in pounds, shillings, and pence.
Ophthalmology, Department of. This department was founded in 1889 as the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat (EENT) Department under the direction of Dr j.c. connell. However, the human eye was studied at the university as early as 1854, the first year of medical studies at Queen's, when Dr J.R. Dixon delivered lectures on diseases of the eye. The EENT Department was divided into Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology in 1955 with the arrival of Dr D.A. Rosen at Queen's to head the former. The department's present complement of about half a dozen full-time members was established in the mid-1980s under the headship of Dr. R.M.H. Pinkerton. The department offers a nationally recognized graduate training program in ophthalmology. The clinical facilities for this and the department's patient-care facilities are located predominantly at the Kingston General and Hotel Dieu Hospitals. With the arrival of Dr A.F. Cruess as department head in 1992, a significant research program has been developed, resulting in the location of the prestigious Canadian Ophthalmic Study Group at Queen's. The department is part of the Faculty of Health Sciences. Its offices are located in Etherington Hall.
Oral History of Queen's. Although there are official (to 1961) and less formal Queen's history books (to 1981), plus film and tape collections available to researchers, RAQ and the University Archives have jointly set up a new oral history project that is called The Human History of Queen's. For more information please visit "An oral history at Queen's"
Orientation Activities Review Board. The board was originally established in 1985 by the Alma Mater Society on the recommendation of the Senate. Its purpose then was to review Orientation Week events, and report on their consistency with the university's Code of Conduct. But in 1991, after a recommendation in an influential report by the Ad Hoc Senate Committee to Review Orientation, the board was transformed from an AMS body to an ordinary standing committee of the Senate. Its mandate now is to set general policies for Orientation Week, policies to be carried out by the Alma Mater Society and the faculty societies. Each fall it observes Orientation to monitor how well its policies were carried out, and invites submissions from inside and outside of Queen's, before making a report on the year's Orientation to the Senate. In making its policies, it is instructed to consult widely, and to use as its principal set of criteria the official goals of Orientation as formulated by the Senate in 1988 (see entry on Orientation Week) and the university's Code of Conduct. It is made up of students, faculty members, and staff members, all appointed by the Senate Nominating Committee. The formal name of this committee is now entitled the Senate Orientation Activities Review Board (SOARB).
Orientation Week. Organized welcoming activities for new students began at Queen's in the late 19th century. Most early events, such as the candlelighting ceremony for women, were formal and sedate. Early this century, however, as Victorian constraints began to disappear, more boisterous activities emerged. Prior to the First World War, there were "rushes," in which outnumbered first-year students and upper-year students clashed in a free-for-all fight, inevitably ending with the younger students bound hand and foot with ropes. Following the war, during which such activities were suspended, individual faculty societies revived the rushes as "freshman initiations." Most initiation rites involved innocent stunts and rules, such as taking the measurements of fields with sausages, paddling imaginary canoes, and requiring first-year students to wear mismatched socks. But there were rowdier activities as well, including tomato and egg fights between arts and engineering students, ceremonies in which first-year students were covered in molasses and feathers, and various battles with visiting football fans.
Following the Second World War, student leaders and university administrators made repeated efforts to reduce hazing and shift the focus of the welcoming activities to academic counselling and orientation. But it was not until the 1970s that "Orientation Week" was established at Queen's as a series of activities to acquaint first-year and transfer students with the opportunities available to them at the university. At the same time, the senate passed a resolution forbidding "the use of physical force on any person as part of initiation activities at Queen's University." Problems, however, persisted, including overly rambunctious behaviour and tasteless rituals. Since the mid-1980s, university and student leaders have made enormous progress in toning down Orientation Week, and recent weeks have generally succeeded in introducing students to Queen's according to goals set out by the Senate in 1988. These are to emphasize the community of Queen's and its intellectual, cultural and social resources; to offer events that provide for students' diverse needs and interests; to foster an awareness of the Kingston community and encourage responsible citizenship; and to generate enthusiasm and a sense of pride in becoming a member of the Queen's family. Orientation Week events are planned and scheduled by individual faculty offices, residences, and by upper-year students in the alma mater society and various faculty societies, but since 1991 they have been reviewed each year by a standing committee of the senate, the orientation activities review board. (The board existed prior to 1991, but as an Alma Mater Society body, not a Senate committee.)
Original buildings. Before Queen's moved to its present campus in 1853, it occupied a variety of rented houses around Kingston – all of which, remarkably, still stand. Queen's first home was a small wood-frame house at 67 colborne street, where two professors and 13 students met for the university's first classes on 7 March 1842. However, Queen's stayed in this cramped building for just six months. In the fall of 1842 the professors and students moved to rented quarters at 320 Princess Street, a stone building opposite St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, the meeting place of Queen's first trustees. But this building soon proved too small as well, and, in 1844, Queen's shifted to two stone houses at 203-205 William Street. Two more adjoining houses were added in 1847, one as a boarding house for students and the other for classrooms. But university officials always regarded these modest buildings on William Street as temporary and kept up a search for a spacious and "sightly edifice" that would match their grand ambitions for Queen's. They found their answer when Anglican Archdeacon George Okill Stuart decided to sell Summerhill, his elegant villa opposite Kingston General Hospital. Queen's trustees bought the building and its seven acres of property in 1853, and thus settled Queen's on its present campus. See also Original Property, Main Campus, Colborne Street.
Original property. Queen's held its first classes in 1842 in a small rented house on colborne street in north Kingston. But this humble home was not the first property associated with the university. In 1840, even before Queen's had secured its royal charter, its trustees purchased 50 acres of undeveloped land stretching from King Street to just north of union street between what are now Sir John A. Macdonald Boulevard and College Street (hence the name "College"). The land was intended to be the site of a grand, new campus. The site was opposite Alwington House, the mansion of Canada's Governor General, who lived in Kingston when the city was briefly capital in the 1840s. For a short while, then, it appeared that Queen's would have an enviable location on an ample site near the very centre of Canadian political life. But the trustees could never raise the money to construct buildings and Kingston, in any case, soon lost its status as capital. After occupying a series of small houses in the city the trustees bought Summerhill and the surrounding seven acres of land in 1853, settling Queen's on its present site. The university subdivided the portion of its original 50-acre holding north of Union Street in the 1840s and sold the rest between 1868 and 1878. See also Original Buildings.
Otolaryngology, Department of. Otolaryngology (the study of ears, nose, and throat) was first taught at Queen's in the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Department, established in 1889 under the direction of Dr J.C. Connell. Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology became separate departments in the 1950s. J.R. Purvis served as acting head of Otolaryngology until the appointment of D.M.L. Williams as the first full-time head in 1969. From a two-room office in etherington hall and a single-room clinic at Kingston General Hospital, the department has expanded into a space of 10,000 square feet at Hotel Dieu Hospital. Its faculty maintain a tertiary care clinic, teach both undergraduate and graduate medical students, and conduct a wide range of relevant research. They also encourage the use of multidisciplinary teams for the treatment of certain patients; have developed clinics in such fields as cancer, facial anomalies, hearing impairment, and voice; and established cross-appointments with other departments, including Psychology, Oncology, Music, and Surgery. The department is part of the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Ottawa and Queen's. From about 1910 to 1965, a group of Queen's professors and graduates exercised striking influence in Ottawa, and in the process helped to change the way Canada is governed. In the 19th century, Canada's public service had been a small and notoriously inefficient network of patronage appointees. The group of men from Queen's helped to turn it into a professional, neutral, and highly effective service that, by the end of the Second World War, was envied around the world.
The Queen's connection began with Adam Shortt, a Queen's alumnus and a professor of politics and economics at the university who was chosen in 1908 as the first head of the Civil Service Commission, the body created to professionalize the service and reduce political patronage. He held the post until 1917, when he was appointed head of the Dominion Archives. One of his students at Queen's had been Oscar Douglas Skelton, who later succeeded him as head of the Department of Political and Economic Science. Skelton served as an advisor to Prime Minister Mackenzie King starting in 1921 and was appointed by him in 1925 to the position of under-secretary of state for external affairs, which he held until his death in 1941. He was considered the leading civil servant of his day and the founder of the Department of External Affairs, and was a key adviser on domestic as well as foreign policy.
W. Clifford Clark was one of Skelton's students at Queen's and was recruited by him to teach politics at the university in 1915. He worked in business in the 1920s, but Skelton recruited him to Ottawa in 1932 and convinced Prime Minister R.B. Bennett to appoint him Deputy Minister of Finance the same year. Clark greatly expanded the Department of Finance and it was largely at his urging that the Bank of Canada was created in 1935. He remained deputy minister until his death in 1952.
William Mackintosh was another of Skelton's students and, like Clark, was recruited by him to teach politics and economics at Queen's. While teaching in the 1920s and 1930s he was a frequent adviser to the government on economic issues; during this time he was also one of a disproportionate number of Queen's faculty and alumni to contribute to the work of the Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, which established the modern regime of fiscal federalism. In 1939, Clark recruited Mackintosh as his special assistant in the Department of Finance to help with the wartime economy. Mackintosh moved to the Department of Reconstruction in 1944, where he was a key shaper of the government's postwar economic plan that laid the foundations for the contemporary welfare state. He returned to Queen's in 1946 and was appointed principal in 1951.
John Deutsch graduated from Queen's with a degree in commerce in 1935 and immediately went to work as a researcher in the Bank of Canada. He held a variety of senior appointments in the Departments of Finance and External Affairs in the 1940s and 1950s, and was Secretary of the Treasury Board between 1954 and 1956. Between academic appointments at Queen's and UBC, he was the first chair of the Economic Council of Canada (1963-1966). He returned to Queen's for good in 1967 and served as Principal from 1968 to 1974. He was the last of a line of Queen's men who, according to Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, helped to create the great central agencies of the modern civil service, and essentially transform Canadian government.
Not all of Queen's influence in Ottawa during this period was exercised from within the ranks of the public service, however. Another member of Queen's Department of Political and Economic Science, Norman McLeod Rogers, also made the trip to Ottawa, but as an elected politician. Elected in 1935 as Member of Parliament for Kingston, he served as King's labour minister and defence minister. He was the leading progressive member of the cabinet until his early death in a plane crash in 1940.
Since this period, Queen's influence in Ottawa has been less disproportionate, but still, numerous other Queen's professors have made the journey to Ottawa in recent decades. Prof John Meisel, for example, served as head of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission between 1980 and 1983, and former Principal Ronald Watts was a key constitutional advisor to the government leading up to the creation of the Charlottetown Accord in 1992. Moreover, the year 2000 marked the election of the Right Honourable Peter Milliken, Arts'68, to the prestigious position of Speaker of the House of Commons. The same year also featured David Dodge, Arts'65, being selected as the new Governor of the Bank of Canada.
The university now has several research groups devoted to policy issues, including the Institute of intergovernmental relations, founded in 1965 – the only research institute in Canada solely devoted to research of federal issues. Since 1970, the School of Public Administration (part of the School of Policy Studies since 1994) has trained future public servants. And one of the mandates of the School of Policy Studies, opened in 1988, is to continue the tradition of influence in Ottawa by providing a forum for interaction between policy makers and academics. The Departments of political studies and economics and the School of Business are other Queen's units that supply advisers to government. See also Skelton-Clark Fellows.