. . . present

That £15,000 raised, even with the 2:1 subsidy, still left' a sizeable gap to the £100,000 odd needed to build the new block. And so the B.F.A. committee organized the luncheon. The idea of having it in the Gym can only be said to have been inspired. Pretty nearly everyone who should have come did so: we failed to draw the Prime Minister or Hon. Minister of Finance, but there were Sir Humphrey O'Leary. Mr. McCombs, Minister of Education. Sir David Smith. Mr. Appleton, and 130 other prominent citizens. This was an encouraging response, as the committee hadn't dared to hope that nearly that number would turn up. The Gym looked just as you would have liked it to look—a monument.

When the College was built, said Mr. H. R. C. Wild, the Chairman of the committee in his speech, "no provision was made for a building giving the facilities the students would need for their social recreational and intellectual pursuits outside formal lectures." He commented on the fact that many of the men who had tramped the streets to raise the money for the original building were present. When they were at Victoria, he said, the roll was 300 or 400. "Today the roll stands at 2,400. The classrooms and, laboratories are themselves sadly inadequate for that number of students ... All the facilities now available for student meetings, for dramatic performances, for debating, for sports, for student activities of every kind, are those afforded by this building."