Dr. A. Gerald Bedford
The University of Winnipeg History

 The University of Winnipeg: Volume I: A History of the Founding Colleges 
by A. G. Bedford. 2^ndedition. University of Winnipeg Press, 2009 (originally published for the University of Winnipeg by the University of Toronto Press, 1976). ISBN 978-0-9687833-6-8. Cloth. xiii + 479. With photo illustrations, appendices and index. $35; with Vol. II $50.

This new edition of A. Gerald Bedford's long out-of-print history tells the story of the colleges that became the University of Winnipeg: Manitoba College (founded 1871) and Wesley College (founded 1888), which merged to form United College in 1938. Bedford follows the story up to 1967, when United College, at that time still a member institution of the University of Manitoba, received its separate charter as the University of Winnipeg. Not merely an institutional history - though it is definitive as that - the book also tells the human story of the church communities and dedicated individuals who enabled the colleges to survive and thrive through frequent periods of poverty and political turmoil. Among other events, Bedford treats the case of Harry Crowe, whose dismissal in 1959 galvanized support for academic freedom across Canada.

The re-publication of this volume was made possible with generous financial assistance of an anonymous donor.

The University of Winnipeg: Volume II: The First Forty Years, 1967-2007 by A. G. Bedford. University of Winnipeg Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9687833-5-1. Cloth. xii + 270. With photo illustrations, appendices and index. $25; with Vol. I $50.

Published to coincide with fortieth-anniversary celebrations, A. Gerald Bedford's second volume of his definitive history begins with the founding of the University of Winnipeg in 1967, when United College, at that time a small downtown campus of the University of Manitoba, was chartered as a separate institution. It follows the story through six presidents, from the university's first era of expansion to its current one. Always financially challenged, the university innovated and improvised frequently in order to serve a diverse urban student body. In 1971, under its second president Henry E. Duckworth, the modernist design of the new Centennial Hall doubled the university's footprint without taking it beyond the single city block it occupied. By 2007, under the leadership of alumnus and former federal Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, plans were well underway to expand physically beyond that block in three directions and figuratively beyond the campus into local and global affairs.

Dr. A. Gerald Bedford (1925-2008) was a 1946 graduate of United College. Until his retirement in 1991, he served as a faculty member, at first in Mathematics, and then, after receiving his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1951, for 40 years in the Department of English. In 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the University, he published The University of Winnipeg: Volume II: The First Forty Years, 1967-2007.