The logo adopted for the WIT Centenary was created for Women in Toronto by the University of Toronto Press Design Unit. Two female portraits in a nineteenth-century silhouette style combine with the modern type-face of the numeral 100. The silhouettes of the two women have been placed within the ligature ovals of the two zeros, allowing each other to contemplate each other across time. The woman of the past looks forward to the present, and the contemporary woman looks back to her heritage, in acknowledgment and appreciation.

The visual similarity to a traditional cameo gives the symbol a warm and pleasant tone without romanticizing the images, and the words Women in Toronto suggest the participation and involvement of women within the university system.

Although some commentators claim that it was the concept of coeducation to which President Wilson objected and that he supported a separate college for women, the effect was the same; and he refused repeated requests from female applicants in his early years in Office. In a letter written to Minister of Education, George Ross, in 1884, he quotes Harvard's President Eliot on the question:

"...the experiment of giving a collegiate education to women is complicated with the social experiment of bringing scores or hundreds of young men and women into intimate relations in the same institution at the excitable age of eighteen to twenty-two."

University College in 1884 was the provincially-funded, non-sectarian college of the University of Toronto and because of its strategic importance, much attention focused on the debate over women's admission. Moreover, there were women who had demonstrated their readiness for university studies by passing the special matriculation examinations established in 1877 for women seeking admission. Passing the matriculation examinations meant that a student was theoretically ready to handle the curriculum of the University. However, women were not allowed to attend classes at University College. In principle they had been admitted to the University, but there remained what Anne Ford describes as the "nagging detail that they were not welcome into the classroom".

The question of women's admission was debated in lively fashion in the press of the day. George Brown of the Globe was a supporter of coeducation, as was Andrew Stevenson, editor of the on-campus Varsity. Meanwhile, in the provincial legislature, there were other male allies in positions of power, notably John Gibson and Richard Harcourt, progressive who espoused the "women's cause". Eventually, the power of the legislature won out over the passive intransigence of Daniel Wilson, and legislation effecting provisions for the admission of women was passed in the House on March 5, 1884. On October 1, 1884 nine women were admitted to University College.

Centenary Events

The impetus for these celebrations came from a group of women within the University, concerned that the centenary not go unremembered. This group expanded into a more representative Coordinating Committee with Professor Jane Millgate as Convener. By November 1983, a Committee of a Hundred had formed, a support group of women representing every major division on campus. The WIT Newsline was started as a means of keeping in touch. Essentially, a "grass-roots" operation, the Coordinating Committee encouraged each division to organize its own Centenary events or to give an annual event a focus appropriate to the celebrations.

Not surprisingly, the range of activities planned is as diverse as the University itself. A few examples a display of work by women graduates of the Faculty of Architecture; a stained glass window depicting St. Appollonia, the patroness of those suffering from dental disease, in the Faculty of Dentistry's new extension; a symposium on women writers of detective fiction; a season of plays by or about women; as well as lectures by distinguished women guests including M.P. Pat Carney and Dr. Helen Caldicott. One event that we are particularly anxious to stage is the re-creation of a celebrated 1926 Hart House Debate. The topic on that occasion, "That this House is of the opinion that Woman has more than come into her own". Clearly she had not; there was not women in sight, and Hart House remained an all-male bastion until 1972.

Events are planned for all three campuses. Plans at Scarborough include an evening musicale with a revival of "The Sweet Girl Graduate"; on the Erinrdale campus a retrospective of the works of artist Charlotte Schreiber will take place.