A recent Twitter message from UBC Alumni Affairs pointed to a Reddit/UBC message linking to the digitized cover of the March 13, 1956 edition of “Canada’s National Magazine”. The Maclean’s cover shows a happy couple, walking hand-in-hand across Main Mall, lost in their young love while surrounded by other students running pell-mell to their next class. “They look like Archie and Betty”, says Candice, our archives assistant.
In the background is Main Library – recognizable as the heritage core of today’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. In 1956 it was still (to paraphrase former University Librarian and Dominion Archivist W. Kaye Lamb) trying to fly on one wing.