When Montreal’s Loyola College and Sir George Williams University merged in 1974 to create Concordia University, not everyone was thrilled.
Loyola College had been founded in 1896 as a Jesuit institution and many of the college’s alumni felt the school should have been granted university status on its own.
So when a group of Loyola College alumni started a campaign in 2005 to raise $4-million to refurbish the college’s Refectory building, they knew they faced a serious challenge.
“There was a strong sense of non-affiliation with Concordia,” explained John Lemieux, a Montreal lawyer who graduated from Loyola in 1966 and co-chaired the campaign. Some alumni “felt it was kind of a forced merger.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/careers-leadership/giving-back/refectory-renewal-funded-by-loyola-grads/article2209917/
The Loyola Alumni Association Refectory Campaign Committee, at the mid-Campaign renaming announcement of the building as the 'Loyola Jesuit Hall and Conference Centre' (from left to right Jim Donaldson, Rod Rousseau (late), Father Marc Gervais, John Collyer and John Lemieux Campaign Co-Chairs, Rick McConomy and Brian Marcil ).