great trek time capsule

UBC unearths time capsule to mark 100 years since 'great trek' student protest

Items pulled from capsule marked anniversary of protest that pushed for campus at point grey.

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Newspapers, menus and postcards were among items pulled from a time capsule buried on the University of British Columbia's campus 50 years ago to mark the anniversary of a student protest, which helped usher in the school as it's known today on its Point Grey campus.

Five students were drawn at random to open the time capsule, which was buried in 1972 to mark 50 years since students at the school marched to demand provincial funding to finish building the campus.

The ceremony on Friday included present-day and historical student society leaders, local politicians and even former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell, a former student at the school.

"I'm a little terrified about what might be in the time capsule," said Gordon Blankstein, who was a student executive at UBC's Alma Mater Society (AMS) in 1972 when the capsule was buried.

"I hope there's nothing offensive to anybody because it was definitely different times."

Most of the items were made of paper such as a Province newspaper, school records detailing the number of students enrolled in the school, a menu from the ceremony when the 1972 capsule was buried and an engineering student newspaper, which featured some off-colour content.

Blankstein was among several dignitaries to speak at Friday's event, which also looked back to the 1922 protest that ushered in the change needed to create the school as it's known today.

"I can remember the trekkers from 1922. Many of them were First World War veterans that came and wanted an education," he said.

On Oct. 28, 1922, more than 1,000 students marched through Vancouver to Point Grey, a distance of about eight kilometres, to the mostly barren location where efforts to finalize and build a proper campus for the school had stalled during and following the First World War.

The University of British Columbia opened on Sept. 30, 1915, occupying facilities in the Fairview area of Vancouver, what is now Vancouver General Hospital.

The school soon outgrew its modest beginnings, as students overcrowded lecture halls and laboratory facilities. This soon led to students organizing a petition calling for the province to put up funding for the new campus.

Historical documents and newspaper accounts from the time said that around 56,000 signatures were delivered to the legislature in Victoria, while the protest march, later named the "great trek," helped to secure $1.5 million from the province to move forward with the Point Grey campus.

"It represents the first big win for students who really cared on this campus," said current UBC AMS President Eshana Bhangu.

The ceremony on Friday also put a new time capsule in the ground to be opened in October 2072.

Items included an "Every Child Matters" orange t-shirt with the text written in the Musqueam language, a medal commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the great trek, a lab coat, a COVID-19 test, KN95 face mask, an iPhone and hundreds of letters students wrote to be read 50 years from now.

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Bhangu said the project has helped create a sense of togetherness on campus and a link to the past.

"We're very happy to see the participation and celebration of this kind of an effort because while the fight may not be to build a new campus these days, there are a lot of issues that students have to advocate for."

With files from CBC's Early Edition and Maggie MacPherson

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UBC Great Trek time capsule opened 50 years after being buried and a century after students forced campus construction to resume

Student-led march on Oct. 28, 1922, prompted Victoria to resume building Point Grey campus after construction stalled during First World War.

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It was foggy and 8 C a half-century ago on Oct. 28 when students and grey-haired alum gathered at UBC’s Great Trek cairn to plant a time capsule marking the 1922 student march that led to the completion of the Point Grey university’s construction.

Fast-forward 50 years and the day was several degrees warmer under sunny blue skies, but the crowd looked much like it would’ve in 1972.

“In a lot of ways it seems like yesterday,” said Gordon Blankstein, who was on the Alma Mater Society (the university’s student council) in ’72 and who watched the time capsule being put in place, and who was on-hand again on Friday to witness it being opened again.

“I remember some of the original trekkers from 1922 being here when we re-enacted the march in 1972, and I remember thinking how old they were,” Blankstein said. “Now the young students here are going to be looking at me and feeling exactly the same way.”

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The treasures encapsulated 50 years ago, inside a fire extinguisher, were mostly print items, including a student registration list, University of B.C. alum magazine, the engineers’ Red Rag and an Oct. 19, 1972, Province newspaper with the front-page headline “Socreds Challenge NDP on Jobs,” and, of course, a Ubyssey student newspaper.

Many items making their way into the fire extinguisher for 2072’s reopening, unsurprisingly, were COVID-19-related, including a test kit and mask, an Every Child Matters T-shirt (written in ancestral Musqueam), an old iPhone and a jar of honey.

A lot of the students in 1922 were veterans of the First World War and paying for that war preoccupied governments across Canada, not least in B.C.

A temporary campus was housed at 10th and Oak streets for the then-student body of 1,170 while UBC was being built, but construction halted during the Great War and the cash-strapped province said it couldn’t afford to restart.

Students gathered 56,000 signatures from British Columbians — that’s roughly the student population today — to deliver to Victoria and pretty much every student available marched to the fledgling campus and occupied the half-built chemistry building, Eshana Bhangu, the AMS president today, said.

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The march began where University Hospital is today to the heart of the campus, which was re-enacted 50 years ago.

Think about 1972, Blankstein said — the Vietnam War, the Cold War, nuclear Armageddon never far off, draft dodgers flocking to UBC, hockey’s Summit Series, Mao running China, the sexual revolution unleashed by the pill and rampant political activism.

“I remember Moshe Dayan speaking here on campus, we brought in Cesar Chavez , Linda Lovelace came in to talk about Deep Throat. We had a lot of fun. I remember Billy Joel coming in and his band staying at my frat house and he released the Piano Man album while he was here.”

It’s hard to imagine the changes coming in the next 50 years, Blankstein said.

But the changes of the past 100 years give hope for the coming decades to one group of people who were, at the most charitable, shunned in 1922 when the trek took place.

UBC sits at the heart of ancestral Musqueam territory and a century ago they weren’t only not a consideration to student trekkers, but the 1920s were also a dark time for Indigenous people throughout B.C., not least because some of the province’s most notorious residential schools opened, Jordan Wilson, speaking on behalf of the Musqueam, said.

“This has always been a place of learning for our people,” he said. “As with many of my community members, I feel a bit ambivalent. When you read about the Great Trek there is no mention of how this land, these waters, this place factors into our history.”

Think about the disparity, he said, of students being free to march while potlatches and Indigenous mother tongues were banned.

“(The trek) perpetuated the idea that what is now UBC was empty land, free for the taking,” Wilson said.

But he pointed to today’s street signs in Musqueam and the Musqueam art that permeates the campus, it’s not just window-dressing, he said.

“We’re partners — not quite equal yet. I think of the last 100 years and I think of all the positive changes in relations between the settlers and Indigenous people. I can’t even imagine what the next 50 years will have in store, I’m optimistic.”

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Event: UBC students to celebrate Great Trek by opening time capsule from 1972

Media advisories.

Oct 28, 2022    |   For more information, contact Eric Lowe

UBC students will commemorate the 100 th anniversary of the Great Trek by opening a time capsule buried by students 50 years ago.

The Great Trek was a student-led march on Oct. 28, 1922, that prompted the government to resume construction of the Point Grey campus after it had been stalled by the First World War.

The time capsule was buried on the occasion of the 50 th anniversary in 1972. Today, a new capsule will be sealed for future students to open.

Event: Great Trek 100 th Anniversary Celebration and Time Capsule

Date/Time: Friday, Oct. 28, 1 p.m.

Location: Great Trek Cairn, outside 2036 Main Mall, UBC ( Map )

Parking: Nearest parkade is Rose Garden Parkade, 6278 NW Marine Dr. ( Map )

Event speakers

• Jordan Wilson, Musqueam representative
• Eshana Bhangu, president, UBC Alma Mater Society (host)
• John Metras, UBC interim vice-president, operations
• Kim Campbell, former prime minister and former AMS second vice-president, frosh president
• Joyce Murray, MP, Vancouver Quadra, minister of fisheries, oceans and coast guard
• Herb Dhaliwal, former MP, South Vancouver-Burnaby
• Gordon Blankstein, 1972-73 AMS executive

Interviews will be available following the event.

Assignment editors: Please arrive at least 20 minutes early to set up cameras.

Find other stories about: Alma Mater Society , Great Trek , time capsule , UBC students

Eric Lowe Senior Communications and Marketing Manager, AMS of UBC Cel: 604-318-8454 Email: [email protected]

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A 50-year-old time capsule will be opened in Vancouver this week

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A 50-year-old time capsule will be dug up on the UBC Vancouver campus and its contents are a complete mystery. 

Friday (Oct. 28) will mark the 100th anniversary of the Great Trek, one of the greatest examples of student activism at UBC. The massive student protest took place on Oct. 28 in 1922.

UBC Great Trek time capsule: What's inside?

On the 50th anniversary of the Great Trek , a time capsule was buried on campus on Oct. 19 in 1972.

Now, a half-century later, the time capsule will be opened and replaced with a new capsule, which will be opened in another 50 years, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great Trek. 

It will also help "get a sense of what was happening on campus [and] what was important enough to students to put in the time capsule," says a media spokesperson from UBC's AMS Student Society. 

The original 1972 time capsule was seemingly buried in a cement-filled hole and had to be pre-dug for the event. "I promise you we haven't peeked into it," they assure.

The new capsule is made of fiberglass, has a plastic lid, and is 28 inches tall and 14 inches in diameter, making it bigger than the preceding capsule.

AMS Student Society invites UBC students to write letters to themselves via an online form or by dropping off hand-written letters in a mailbox outside of the AMS office. "If we have too many letters we will bury a second capsule beside this one," says the spokesperson. 

Students can also suggest several items that will go into the new capsule and can vote for the top three of five items selected. 

100th anniversary of the Great Trek

On Oct. 28 1922 around 98 per cent of the UBC student body (just under 1,200 people at the time) marched from their temporary campus at Fairview Slopes to the chemistry building at UBC to pressure the government to resume construction of the Point Grey campus.

The efforts were interrupted by the First World War and, after, when Fairview student residencies became overcrowded, students gathered around 56,000 signatures for a petition with which they marched again (in what is now called the Great Trek) to the chemistry building at UBC. In the end, it worked and the government agreed to fund the completion of the campus.

A century later, AMS Student Society invites students along with Musqueam representatives, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Kim Campbell, presidents of undergrad societies, and politicians, to reopen the capsule and commemorate the historical event. 

Five students will be drawn to open the time capsule and see what's inside. 

The anniversary and time capsule event will take place at the Great Trek Cairn outside of the chemistry building at UBC at 1 p.m. on Oct. 28. 

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Time capsule dug up on UBC campus, painting picture of education 50 years ago

Friday marked a historic day at the University of British Columbia campus as a 50-year-old old time capsule was unsealed.

Gold shovels dug beneath the ground as the capsule was unearthed and the dirt was dusted off.

Gordon Blankstein helped bury the capsule half a century ago when he was a student at UBC.

"I think it's the same for young people today as it was for us, as it was for the students in 1922 – we all want a better world," says Blankstein.

The capsule was buried on campus in 1972, to mark the 50th anniversary of what's known as The Great Trek – a student-led march held on Oct. 28, 1922.

The students were pushing the provincial government to resume construction of a new campus called Point Grey after it had been stalled due to the First World War.

"I remember the original trekkers from 1922 and meeting them in 1972 and thinking, Man, are they ever old – how could they ever have fun out here? And now I’m in the same position," he said. "It's a little surreal."

Inside the capsule were newspapers from the ‘70s and a party invitation, complete with a dinner menu being offered.

Current students at UBC helped to seal a new capsule afterwards that won't be opened again for another 50 years.

"To think that people who are here and went to school the ‘70s are here, able to see what we're putting in to our time capsule is super because I don't even know if i'm going to be here in 50 years," says student Christa Heoawike.

Items included a lab coat signed with special messages and an example of a resume and cover letter.

The afternoon saw dignitaries such as former prime minister Kim Campbell and Jordan Wilson, who touched on the importance of history and reconciliation.

For Blankstein, the afternoon on campus brought back many fond memories as a UBC student.

His message to the next generations: "Don't back off of your dreams. Don't think you can't accomplish it – go for it, and you'll make our country better and our world better." 

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"I hope there's nothing offensive to anybody because it was definitely different times."

Most of the items were made of paper such as a Province newspaper, school records detailing the number of students enrolled in the school, a menu from the ceremony when the 1972 capsule was buried and an engineering student newspaper, which featured some off-colour content.

Blankstein was among several dignitaries to speak at Friday's event, which also looked back to the 1922 protest that ushered in the change needed to create the school as it's known today.

"I can remember the trekkers from 1922. Many of them were First World War veterans that came and wanted an education," he said.

On Oct. 28, 1922, more than 1,000 students marched through Vancouver to Point Grey, a distance of about eight kilometres, to the mostly barren location where efforts to finalize and build a proper campus for the school had stalled during and following the First World War.

The University of British Columbia opened on Sept. 30, 1915, occupying facilities in the Fairview area of Vancouver, what is now Vancouver General Hospital.

The school soon outgrew its modest beginnings, as students overcrowded lecture halls and laboratory facilities. This soon led to students organizing a petition calling for the province to put up funding for the new campus.

Historical documents and newspaper accounts from the time said that around 56,000 signatures were delivered to the legislature in Victoria, while the protest march, later named the "great trek," helped to secure $1.5 million from the province to move forward with the Point Grey campus.

"It represents the first big win for students who really cared on this campus," said current UBC AMS President Eshana Bhangu.

The ceremony on Friday also put a new time capsule in the ground to be opened in October 2072.

Items included an "Every Child Matters" orange t-shirt with the text written in the Musqueam language, a medal commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the great trek, a lab coat, a COVID-19 test, KN95 face mask, an iPhone and hundreds of letters students wrote to be read 50 years from now.

Bhangu said the project has helped create a sense of togetherness on campus and a link to the past.

"We're very happy to see the participation and celebration of this kind of an effort because while the fight may not be to build a new campus these days, there are a lot of issues that students have to advocate for."

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Great Trek 50th Anniversary Time Capsule

Departments

Most of today's university undergraduates were born in the 2000s. Like every generation before them, their formative years are being influenced by a distinct set of social conditions, significant events, opportunities, and challenges. What's it like to be a student today? What do Gen Z want from university? And how are universities helping them prepare for their (and our) futures?

alumni UBC’s afterwords is a digital conversation series that shares the stories of some of UBC Okanagan’s extraordinary alumni.

UBC grads defining the future

News from your old classmates

One pressing question. Multiple expert perspectives.

Lives and legacies

Insider travel tips from alumni around the world.

We need more contact with the natural world if we really hope to preserve it.

A non-credit test of your UBC smarts

A glance into UBC’s past

More show, less tell

Q&As featuring well-known individuals with a UBC connection

The Three Cairns of UBC

Mention “The Cairn” to any student or graduate of UBC, and they will likely think of the stone monument on Main Mall between the Chemistry and Henry Angus buildings. In fact, three campus landmarks are commonly referred to as cairns, and each has a unique history.

By Erwin Wodarczak | 11 MIN | January 10, 2012

The Great Trek Cairn Although intended as a symbol of student initiative, this cairn had its detractors.

The Tuum Est Cairn Dubbed by a student as the “Carin’, Sharin’ Cairn,” this monument was financed by an anonymous donor whose identity remained a mystery for years.

The Engineers’ Cairn Technically a truncated obelisk, this cairn was christened with a bottle of beer smashed over one corner.

The Great Trek Cairn

The story of the Great Trek Cairn is familiar to most UBC students and alumni – however, some interesting but possibly unfamiliar details are worth recounting.

The cairn was built at the conclusion of The Pilgrimage, a parade from downtown Vancouver to Point Grey that took place on October 28, 1922. Now known as the Great Trek, the parade was the climax of a year-long publicity campaign organized and led by UBC students to persuade the provincial government to complete the university’s Point Grey campus. Professor Paul A. Boving suggested the cairn to commemorate the campaign. It would be the first completed structure at the university’s new home.

But not everybody in the university community felt the cairn was a good idea. An editorial in the October 26 edition of The Ubyssey summarized their objections, which were primarily procedural and financial:

The memorial cairn owes its useless life to an unfortunate departure from the ordinary procedure of student administration. The Publicity Committee put the plans of the cairn before the student mass-meeting last week – before it had been considered by the Students' Council. It was so presented to the meeting that only the romantic glamour and sentiment of the proposal appeared.... When the plan of the memorial cairn was brought up later in the Students' Council, stripped of its clouds of glory, it was found that the plain facts of the case involved an expenditure of one-third of the total funds of the Student Campaign.

Nevertheless the project went ahead. The university’s official architects, Sharp & Thompson, designed the cairn (with Charles Thompson offering his services free). Professional civil engineer W.H. Powell, assisted by A.H. Finlay of the Applied Science Class of 1924, surveyed and marked its exact position relative to the official campus plan. A local company recommended by the architects was retained for its construction (Figure 1) , with a professional mason responsible for the stone work. The total cost was $125.

At the dedication ceremony after the Great Trek, Campaign chairman A.E. “Ab” Richards argued that any procedural and cost considerations had to be considered secondary to the cairn’s symbolic value:

The building of the Cairn to me is full of meaning. It stands for the combined efforts of 1,178 students. Each rock represents a personal contribution in a worthy and just cause. As the mason with his trowel shapes and cements the rocks together into a complete and unified whole so the Campaign has bound the student body together by a bond as strong as the very granite itself.

The base and sides of the cairn, built of stones gathered from around the construction site, were completed before the ceremony. Into its hollow centre the students threw stones they had collected themselves before and during the Great Trek. A written account of the publicity campaign was placed inside, the top was completed, and the monument sealed. The inscription on the north side of the cairn reads: “TO THE GLORY OF OUR ALMA MATER STUDENT CAMPAIGN 1922-23” (Figure 2) .

In the years since its construction the Great Trek Cairn has served as the centre of student ceremonial life. It has been the finishing mark of the annual Arts ’20 Relay and, later, the Great Trek Relay. Every September during Homecoming Week a ceremony is held at the cairn commemorating the Great Trek and featuring speeches by student leaders, university officials, and prominent alumni. Sometimes covered in ivy, but in recent years kept clear of overgrowth, the Great Trek Cairn remains as a symbol of student initiative.

The Tuum Est Cairn

As students returned to the UBC campus in September 1949, they discovered a new landmark under construction on East Mall across from Brock Hall. A large boulder originally deposited thousands of years before by the retreat of an Ice Age glacier, which until then had been popular among students as a “kissing rock,” was serving as a base for a new monument.

Referred-to by The Ubyssey as the “memorial to people who build memorials,” this cairn’s origins were a mystery as it was paid for by an anonymous donor. The bronze plaque attached to the base indicated that it was dedicated to those students who had contributed to the construction of several important campus facilities. On top was inscribed “TUUM EST – IT IS YOURS” (Figure 3) . Other plaques listed the Gymnasium (1929), the Playing Field (1931), the Stadium (1937), Brock Hall (1940), and the Armouries (1942).

In the years after its completion, plaques for the War Memorial Gymnasium (1951), Student Residences (1956), and the Brock Memorial Hall Extension (1957) were added to the cairn, presumably by the same unknown donor. Construction of each of these facilities had been initiated and paid for, in whole or in part, by the students of UBC. Such “generous actions of student bodies, in providing for their Alma Mater and the citizens of British Columbia,” in the words of its dedication plaque, led one student to refer to it as the “Carin’, Sharin’ Cairn.”

Bracketed by a hedge and flanked by granite benches, the Tuum Est Cairn’s origins mostly remained a mystery for decades. In 1985, however, the Heritage Committee of the Alumni Association confirmed that Professor Frank E. Buck was the person responsible. Buck had been hired as a professor of horticulture in 1920, and in addition to teaching he also supervised the campus’ landscape development until his retirement in 1949. Much of his landscaping work around what is now the core of the campus is still in evidence today.

On October 22, 1985, the Alumni Association and the Alma Mater Society hosted a ceremony (Figure 4) to formally rededicate the Tuum Est Cairn. Professors Alexander Roman and Blythe Eagles of the Alumni Heritage Committee recounted the story of the cairn and Frank Buck’s involvement in its creation, and a new plaque was added to permanently memorialize its origins. Two years later a second ceremony added another plaque with a list of more recent student-initiated projects, including the Winter Sports Centre (1963), the Student Union Building (1969), and the Aquatic Centre (1978), bringing the Tuum Est Cairn up-to-date.

The Engineers’ Cairn

ERTW – Engineers Rule The World – is the motto of engineering students everywhere. On January 26, 1966, UBC’s Engineering Undergraduate Society first attempted to demonstrate the motto in (ahem) concrete fashion.

That day more than 300 engineering students swarmed in front of Main Library. Dressed in academic robes, EUS President Art Stevenson addressed the crowd, condemning the sloppy dress of most UBC students and declaring that from then on, engineers would lead a new trend in being “well-dressed.” They then built a small cairn of rocks and cement, symbolizing their intent to take responsibility for keeping the campus beautiful. The cairn held a marble plaque, dedicating it “in humble appreciation of the diversified and continuing contributions to campus life by the Engineers.”

Two days later, however, the cairn was gone. EUS Vice-president Don Allen claimed that it had been “built only for ceremony and dismantled later” – whether it was removed by the engineers or by UBC Plant Operations remained unclear. Art Stevenson declared that they would build a new and bigger cairn elsewhere on campus. “The engraved plaque needs a resting place,” he told The Ubyssey . “I'm not too sure how big the new cairn will be but no one will be able to move it.”

It would be more than two years before there was a second attempt to build an engineers’ monument. In September 1968 a hole was dug near the centre of campus, in front of what is now Koerner Library on Main Mall. The hole was filled with scrap metal and concrete. The concrete was levelled to form a flat slab with a large “E” stamped into it – thus implicating the EUS, although nobody ever confessed and the individuals were never identified. Like the first one, this monument was promptly removed.

The monument builders struck again in February 1969, during Engineering Week. The new structure was a three-sided monument about five feet high, painted white with a big red “E” embossed on each side and a new memorial plaque bolted to it. Again, it was located on Main Mall, and rumour had it that a car was buried underneath (perhaps even Omar, the mascot car of the Forestry Undergraduate Society), and that it was reinforced with a cage of steel rebar, making it impossible to remove or destroy. So it appeared that the so-called “Engineers’ Cairn” (which technically is a truncated obelisk, as a true cairn is made up of a number of large blocks, while the new structure was a single mass of concrete) would remain.

However, when plans were announced later that year for the new Sedgewick Undergraduate Library, to be built beneath Main Mall, the new cairn was found to be right in the middle of the proposed site. Rather than see another engineering monument destroyed, the EUS arranged to move it. A crane was hired to lift the cairn and transport it to the south end of Main Mall, between the Barn Coffee Shop and the MacLeod (Electrical Engineering) Building.

The Engineers’ Cairn remained in place and intact (Figure 5) for almost two decades, even as it became a target of vandalism by other student groups. It became tradition for clubs, fraternities, and undergraduate societies to scrawl graffiti on the monument or repaint it in their own colours. Bonfires were built around it. A forklift was used in an attempt to tip it over. Still the cairn remained, with the bronze plaque removed for safe-keeping and a fresh coat of red and white paint applied after every vandalism attempt.

On March 4, 1988, a group of forestry students rented a back-hoe with a heavy-duty pneumatic drill. They set to work destroying the cairn, partly as a stunt and also to avenge the many incarnations of Omar, the Forestry mascot car the engineers had trashed over the years. They found no rebar and no remains of the first Omar. Within a few hours all that was left was a pile of rubble, which they used to spell the word FORESTRY on the lawn beside the cairn site.

Ironically, according to The Ubyssey an independent contractor had received an inquiry into the cost of demolishing the cairn and alerted the EUS. For reasons unknown, however, the engineers opted not to investigate and left the cairn unguarded. Their response to the loss of the cairn was surprisingly subdued: “We are rather disappointed in what they did,” EUS Treasurer Peter Gwalick told The Ubyssey , voicing the opinion of most engineering students. “I mean if they had stolen it, it would have been an impressive stunt, but anyone can demolish a concrete cairn.”

Legal action was threatened, but instead the EUS proceeded to replace the cairn. With the support of engineering alumni, this time they would make it bigger and better than before – as indestructible as the old cairn supposedly had been (Figure 6) . A deep hole was dug and a foundation poured with rebar extending upwards, and a wooden form was built around it. As a ready-mix truck poured the concrete, the work crew had to brace the sides of the form with their trucks to prevent its collapse from the weight. In the end, the poured concrete was still four inches short of the top of the form, so the eight-foot structure was finished using bags of concrete mix “liberated” from a civil engineering lab.

The new Engineers’ Cairn was dedicated on February 11, 1989, during Engineering Week. The EUS and the Engineering Alumni Division hosted a dedication ceremony, during which the cairn was christened with a bottle of beer smashed over one corner.

(Sources: The Ubyssey, Alumni Chronicle, Tuum Est, University Archives website , “hEUStory” website .)

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