The Three Bares

The McGill You Knew

An Anthology of Memories

1920-1960

The Goodwill Fountain, also called “Three Bares,” was given in 1930 as “a friendship gift to McGill University by an Admirer of Canada” and was made by Harry Payne Whitney. She explains that it “was symbolic of the nation's strength implanted in the fertility of the soil.”

In 1954 “a number of students lobbied to have a similar sized statue of three naked ladies in the open area opposite the Three Bares, in front of the Macdonald Engineering Building. Surely it would give more symmetry to the Campus”

-p. 53, MacKay L. Smith

Stephen Leacock remembers the Redpath Museum

Montreal: Seaport and City

by Stephen Leacock

Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

1942, New York

 “On the other side of the campus is the Redpath Library, a marvelous repository of books, a hive of working students, busy as bees and (exactly) as quiet. Beside it, in real silence, is the College Museum. Years ago it carried a sign, “Admission 10 cents.” Nobody went in. Professors lived and died (it is literally true) and never went in; the admission, I say, was ten cents. They moved the sign; admission is now free, but people still hesitate. They say that inside are Hochelaga skulls, the oyster shells found on the mountainside by Sir William Dawson (proving the existence of the Champlain Sea), and much else- more than ten cents' worth.”

-Stephen Leacock

The Place to be - The Arts Building Steps

 “While it has been said that marriages are made in heaven, I think a lot were also made on the steps of the Arts building, which were a meeting place and date bureau par excellence for the RVC girls and others, and the male students.”

-p. 35, Conrad F. Harrington, B.A. '33, B.C.L. '36

The McGill Atmosphere: 1931-36

The price one pays for love

The McGill You Knew

An Anthology of Memories

1920-1960
 

After the stock market crash of October 1929, many of the students lost their savings for their whole next year of studies, and so (as J. Gilbert Turner relays)-

“A good friend of mine – one of the many on such limited finances – received from home just enough money each month for bare subsistence. Going out on the town, for him, was minimal or nonexistent. On one occasion his very favourite girlfriend announced her plans to come to town for a weekend. He was broke – so he dashed up to the Maternity and gave a blood donation for $25. On the Sunday, after seeing her off on the train, he said to me: “I sure hope that gal loves me after this weekend – I've given her my life's blood.”

-Twilight of the Twenties

J. Gilbert Turner, M.D. '32

1930s McGill Fashion

The McGill You Knew

An Anthology of Memories

1920-1960

“Remember the thirties? In the thirties, the chic dress for women students was a “sloppy joe,” and enormous pullover sweater, falling loosely over the hips. If it fit, it was not smart. The shoes were saddle shoes, flat, rubber-soled, white with a brown or black "saddle" over the instep and dirty. Only the most uninitiated, only the greenest freshman would appear on the campus with clean saddle shoes. It simply wasn't done.

Then there were beer jackets... they were dirty in a very special way. They carried signatures, and the more numerous and important were the names scribbled on, the more devastatingly smart were the jackets. There were cases reported – tragic cases – when a beer jacket went to the laundry by mistake.”

-Sloppy Joes and Beer Jackets

Barbara Whitley, BA '40

 Note - the 'sloppy Joe sweater' has yet to go out of style!

Useful 1920s Fashion at McGill

The McGill You Knew

An Anthology of Memories

1920-1960

“The main thing I remember about clothes at McGill was wearing cloche hats, beneath which one could go to sleep undetected during a dull lecture.” 

-Life at RVC in the 1920s, by Mrs. H. Wyatt Johnston

Note- If only these hats were still in style!

The James McGill Burial

Montreal: Seaport and City

by Stephen Leacock

Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

1942, New York

p. 289 

“Before the Arts Building, at the front steps, is James McGill's grave, with a strange tree, a ginkgo tree, weeping over it, if such a tree as a ginko can indeed weep. This grave seemed so incongruous, years ago, that they let the bushes grow around the foot of the gingko, and James McGill slept like the beauty in the fairy tale, hidden behind the leaves, his gravestone moldered and illegible. It was forgotten that he was there; the records said that he was buried in 1813 in the Dorchester Street Burying Ground. 

Then an energetic dean- from the States, and hence careless of antiquity- had an opening cut in the bushes and the gravestone scraped and the letters rebuilt, and there it was, the original epitaph of eulogy of James McGill's loyalty to his Sovereign and ability, integrity and zeal as a magistrate. To this was added, This Monument and the remains which it covers were removed from the Old Protestant Cemetery, Dorchester Street, and placed here in grateful remembrance of the Founder of this University, 23^rd June, 1875.

So now the students on their evenings of merriment sing, -

James McGill,

James McGill,

Peacefully he slumbers there,

Though he knows we're on the tear,

He's our father

Oh yes, rather,

Janes McGill!!!!!

Yet they do say he's not there at all; that he was meant to be there but was never moved. Some day another American dean may come and exhume him. Till then we cannot know. It is probable that this legend of McGill no occupying his own grave arose from the fact- if one may be pardoned for referring to such grim details of the record – that James McGill is not all there and never was. Only the “skull and a few of the greater bones and the bottom of the coffin” were left to remove in 1875. ”