The one-hundred-year history of the University of Alberta has been a century of vision, a vision borne out of the partnership of two ambitious men: Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first Premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, a McGill University professor who became the University of Alberta’s first president. Critics at the time dismissed their dream as impossible, or at best impractical, but the vision would become a reality. The passing of the University Act in 1906 by the new government of Alberta paved the way to the official opening of the University in 1908. The early years, under the careful guidance of Tory, who served as President of the University of Alberta from 1908 to 1928, were fruitful ones in which Tory recruited the University’s first professors and organized the construction of the first university buildings, starting with Athabasca Hall in 1911. These years also saw the shadow of the First World War fall over campus life, as well as the dark spectre of the 1918 influenza epidemic. Both events took their toll on the university population, and the 1918 epidemic led to a two-month cessation of university classes and activities in the autumn of that year.2 Despite setbacks brought on by these events, the University emerged from these trials stronger than ever, and both building construction and population growth continued.