graduated from university or teachers college. Kathleen would later instill the importance of education to her eight children.

Kathleen, who enjoyed math and science during her high school years, enroled in the science program at Saint Dunstans University in the fall of 1945. Although she briefly considered taking nursing, she believed that a

science degree would provide more and better job opportunities.

It was an exciting time in the province. The war had just ended, and the wave of prosperity brought about by the war effort made the dark days

of the Depression a distant memory for young people who confidently looked to better times ahead. The campus at Saint Dunstans was also becoming more diverse. With the war ended, a number of veterans who had served overseas came back to resume their studies. The university was also welcoming students from Quebec. The experiences and backgrounds of this diverse group of students, which now included females, greatly enriched and enlivened campus life. They were heady times, and Kathleen shared the new optimism of her generation.

The women who entered Saint Dunstans that fall were at first uncertain about how well they would fit in. Although the university has taken the first tentative steps to admit females, this was the largest influx that the university had seen to date, and they did not know how they would be received by the faculty and their fellow students. However, they need not have worried. After the first female students became a more—or—less active part of campus life in the early 40s, the student newspaper, the Red and White, welcomed the presence of young lay women as both novel and exciting. “Meandering about the campus and along the shady college paths in early September, ‘old boys’ were at first startled, then pleased, at the sight of coeds strolling about or dashing from class to class intermingled with the boys...” said the paper. “The faculty have certainly expressed nothing but complete satisfaction, and the boys — well — they heartily endorse the system. The girls themselves? ‘Swell’ was the very expressive reply given when they were approached on the subject.”

There may have been another benefit from the presence of women on campus. The level of decorum certainly improved, and the male students may even have studied harder in order to prove they were better at academics than women.

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