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CAUT Bulletin Archives
1996-2016

March 2012

Leadership and Purpose

A History of Wilfrid Laurier University

Andrew M. Thomson. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011; 183 pp; ISBN: 978-1-55458-432-1, paper $29.95 CAD.

On October 30, 1911, a jubilant crowd of nearly 1,500 people gathered in their Sunday finest on the lawn of a large home on the rural outskirts of Waterloo, Ontario. They were there to mark the opening of the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary of Canada. With just four students and one full-time professor, the seminary was modest in size but it had the enthusiastic support of an entire community. Over the next 100 years this small religious school would evolve into a thriving public university with thousands of students passing through annually. In Leadership and Purpose, historian Andrew Thomson tells the remarkable story of the school’s rise to national prominence.

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Text provided by publisher.