Colonial...by design: rethinking the name Simon Fraser University
On September 9, 2005, Simon Fraser University officially celebrated its 40th birthday — an event that has marked the beginning of a yearlong commemoration of the many stories that have defined the university’s short but turbulent past. Using the framework of Daniel Francis’s National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History, I argue that the stories we tell about our past here on the hill largely shape the images we use to define both our present and our future as a community. Indeed, one of the most obvious goals of the official 40th anniversary celebrations thus far has been to promote an atmosphere conducive to creating a more vibrant community. However, if we hill-going folk are not encouraged to participate in the process of rethinking and retelling the stories of our past then it will continue to be difficult to imagine SFU’s present or future as anything other than a cold, concrete, and exclusive pedagogic encampment atop Burnaby Mountain.
The 2005 SFU History Honours project — a historical walking tour entitled “Walking Past SFU” that took place on November 20, 2005 — clearly illustrated that the stories of our university’s past are accessible to students and are contained in a variety of sources. Although most stories are told in narratives, the stories of SFU’s past can often be found in symbols or in art and indeed, as our walking tour demonstrated, they can also be deeply embedded in specific sites around campus that are shared by all in different and interesting ways. As part of my contribution to this amazing project, I sought to voice the profound and yet equally unknown origins of the name Simon Fraser University. Using the primary source material that I collected during my research in the SFU archives, I will reveal my preliminary findings from my critical investigation into the colonial legacy of explorer Simon Fraser while asking whether our university is actually named in his honour, as most assume. To this end, I will illustrate the colonial foundations of SFU and argue that it is perhaps best understood as being “[Colonial, rather than] radical . . . by design” this 40th anniversary year.
S.F.WHO?
Simon Fraser University’s annual academic calendar reminds students that our institution is indeed named in honour of Simon Fraser (1776-1862). It also provides a description of him as a “Loyalist, fur-trader, and explorer” who, in 1808, completed one of the “greatest journeys in the annals of Canadian history”: descending the mighty river which today bears his name. In the introduction to the edited version of The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser, 1806-1808, W. Kaye Lamb argues that although Simon Fraser is the most neglected of the major explorers of Canada, he should be viewed as the “pioneer of permanent settlement” on what is now the mainland of British Columbia — a view recently shared by the Vancouver Sun’s epic seven part series, “Simon Fraser: The Birth Of Modern British Columbia.” Due to these and other similar romanticised depictions of this colonial figure, it is not difficult to understand why Simon Fraser has been accepted as a regional folk hero in the (colonised) minds of many British Columbians.
These celebratory descriptions, however, ignore the reality of Simon Fraser’s legacy. For example, consider this alternative interpretation: Simon Fraser was not literally a Loyalist — he was an infant at the time of the American Revolution, and essentially a failure as a fur trader — he failed in his objective to establish trading posts for Britain and supply routes to the Columbia’s mouth before the Lewis and Clark expedition could claim the area for the rapidly expanding United States, and most importantly he was only a “great” explorer in a Western, racist sense — he did not “discover” the Fraser River, it was there for millennia and along its bank thrived a series of First Nation societies. Therefore, by naming our university in honour of the “values” of Simon Fraser’s voyage of exploration and discovery we also celebrate and legitimise the worst aspects of Canadian history: environmental degradation and the subjugation and depopulation of local First Nations peoples, processes that his journey initiated by encouraging colonial settlement to the area. When considering this darker side of Simon Fraser’s legacy is should be clear that his name in no way represents the humanism, democracy, nor intelligence that a university should reflect.
Although this criticism seems logical it erroneously assumes that Simon Fraser University was actually named in honour of Simon Fraser the explorer. What? According to Gordon Shrum — the university’s first Chancellor — he alone decided that “Simon Fraser” would be a dynamic and innovative name for the university and the fact that it was also the name of a daring explorer thus fit perfectly. However, recent works on the early history of SFU have actually pointed out that the origins of the “S.F.” or “Simon Fraser” part of our name remains a matter of considerable debate. It is doubtful indeed that Shrum alone decided upon the name SFU — and yet, what is valuable about his assertion is that it suggests the association of our name with the colonial explorer was largely a convenient afterthought once the “Simon Fraser” base had already been established for other “dynamic” reasons. You may be asking yourself, “If Simon Fraser isn’t named after Simon Fraser, then who is it named after?” Well, the answer to that question should be obvious: Simon Fraser, of course. Huh? To understand this bizarre conclusion we must better understand the story/stories of the naming of SFU.
There are three main accounts of the original naming story of Simon Fraser University. The first — and perhaps less-convincing story — credits Ronald J. Baker, the university’s first academic planner and co-author of the 1962 MacDonald Report. In an interview with John Henry Harter on April 24, 2001, Baker claimed that when it was made known in the early 1960s that a name for the “instant university” was needed, it was he that first suggested it be called “Fraser University.” Baker stated that there were two reasons for his choice. The first was that the new university was to serve half a dozen municipalities in the lower Fraser Valley. The second reason was that the name of his wife of 25 years just so happened to be “Fraser” but with a “z.” He argued that after he proposed the name he quickly wrote his wife to tell her, “I’ve just named a university after you, but unfortunately, I can’t spell it properly.” Then, to his outrage, Baker was informed that the name he suggested had been changed at the last moment to Simon Fraser University. The adding of the “Simon” to our name brings me to the second naming account.
In Radical Campus: Making Simon Fraser University, Hugh Johnson, a Professor Emeritus at SFU, points out that most people give Leslie Peterson, the Social Credit Party’s minister of education at the time, credit for the name (see also: Dionysios Rossi’s Mountaintop Mayhem). The popular story is that Peterson rejected Baker’s proposal and was rumoured to have said, “If you think that I’m going to name a place FU, you’ve got another thing coming.” Adding “Simon” was the solution. Baker contextualises this language sensitivity by pointing out that it was around the same time of the naming of SFU that Peterson was a driving force behind the huge controversy over banning Catcher in the Rye from B.C. schools for having the word “fuck” in it. It is thus easy to accept that the “Simon Fraser” part of our name should be seen as Leslie Peterson’s initiative. Even Gordon Shrum contradicted his earlier statement by claiming that Peterson “deserves nearly all the credit for the idea.” Although this story is quite interesting, it does not definitively distinguish the meaning behind the “Simon Fraser” part of our name. For this I turn to the third and most compelling naming account.
In an interview with John Henry Harter on February 9, 2001, George Curtis, who during the early 1960s was the Dean of Law at UBC, claimed credit for naming Simon Fraser University at two o’clock in the morning on the day the name was to be penned to the 1963 Universities Act. Curtis argued that he chose the name “Fraser” in honour of a hostess by the same name he had met years earlier and who was “intensely proud of her lineage.” He claimed that the name “Simon” occurred to him shortly thereafter, as he recalled seeing legendary British D-Day Commando Brigadier General the 17th Lord Simon Fraser Lovat lead a column of marching scouts during World War II in Nova Scotia. It is thus difficult to reach a definitive conclusion regarding the question of who Simon Fraser University was originally named after — however, when considering the fact that Lord Simon Fraser Lovat was asked by the university to attend the opening ceremonies as the administration’s guest of honour, it seems only logical to view Curtis’ account as the most accurate. When Simon Fraser Lord Lovat was confronted about his relation to the explorer by the media after the opening ceremonies in 1965, he stated that although the Fraser Clan is “all related by blood lines . . . the explorer’s line of the family died out many years ago.”
With this comment, the controversy and confusion over whom our name celebrates thickened when Lovat’s statement was found to be far from correct. In fact, Donald C. Fraser, a Fargo, North Dakota postman and great-great-grandson of the explorer, was “not only alive but was present at the opening ceremonies.” Forced by the administration to sit anonymously in the crowd, Donald Fraser attended the university’s official opening at his own expense, despite the fact that he was donating to the institution personal letters penned by the explorer, along with a number of other authentic heirlooms. In stark contrast to the treatment afforded to Donald Fraser, Lord Lovat was allowed to speak at length during the widely publicised ceremony, his travel costs were provided for by the university, and he received the second honourary degree ever awarded by the new institution. Given the disrupted and hasty adoption of the name “Simon Fraser” itself, this entire episode is perhaps symbolic of the ambivalence surrounding whom the name of our university is supposed to be honouring. Although I cannot be sure which naming story to privilege, I think it is fair to say that with the information I was able to collect about the connections to Lord Simon Fraser Lovat there is considerable doubt that the name Simon Fraser University was originally designed to honour the explorer. Whatever the origins of our name, though, it is impossible to deny the fact that SFU quickly became — and continues to be — associated with Simon Fraser the explorer and his colonial legacy rather than the legacy of Lord Simon Fraser Lovat. In fact, the confusing association of our university with Simon Fraser’s colonial legacy is not a new phenomenon, rather it is embedded in our very foundation. As a result of this confusion, our institution continues to celebrate our erroneous association with the legacy of a colonial figure. More importantly, the name that was chosen to identify our university’s very foundation as a place of forward-thinking education actually embodies a backward and colonial way of thinking that ignores the darker aspects of our province’s past which the legacy of explorer Simon Fraser embodies.
So what?
By voicing the largely unknown story of the naming of Simon Fraser University, I have shown how the rethinking of just one of the many stories of SFU’s past can reveal both the colonial design of our university’s foundation and illustrate how such stories are being told, if at all, in inaccurate, incomplete, and ambivalent ways during SFU’s 40th anniversary year. It is now your responsibility to continue to critically rethink this and other stories that you are hear about SFU’s past and to question how they influence your desire to participate in forging a stronger community experience on campus. This process is especially important as we approach British Columbia’s 150th anniversary in 2008, which also coincides with the 200th anniversary of Simon Fraser’s journey of exploration — an anniversary that SFU will undoubtedly and ambivalently celebrate unless we as a campus community unite in the rethinking process. Remember that decolonisation is most importantly a mental process of rethinking the stories we choose to tell ourselves about our past. What stories are you telling?