By: Joe Martin, Class of 1959

It is difficult to write about this episode even after half a century. It was a brutal, angry affair that changed my life from academia to business. NOTHING in subsequent years in business, in politics or in sport touched the intensity of the Crowe Case.

In the 1950s Harry Crowe was not only a lecturer of History at United College, he was also one of the most popular, as good a teacher of undergrads as any in Canada. He was part of a small, but distinguished History department, which also included Stewart Reid, Ken McNaught and G. K. Brown, and which had close relationships with the History department at Fort Garry headed by W. L. Morton.

As we returned to campus after the 1958 summer break, rumours were swirling that Harry had done something awful. As events unfolded we learned that what he had done was write a letter to a colleague, which somehow never reached the colleague but was received by the administration. On the basis of that intercepted letter, Harry was fired.

This was very distressing to many members of the student body. For some reason it particularly bothered those who supported either the CCF [Harry was a supporter] or PC parties – not normally political bedfellows. The more active students demanded action.

We signed a petition protesting the dismissal and made our views known directly to the Board of Regents. Subsequently we made a presentation to the CAUT investigating committee. We even went so far as to picket the College on a very cold January day in 1959 – the only time in my life I was ever on a picket line. Some of us were so distressed that we refused to enter the college, taking our classes off site, with the full support of Harry Crowe.

Sixteen members of faculty resigned – they were recently recognized by the CAUT in Ottawa. For at least one student the Crowe affair meant giving up on the notion of being a professor and becoming a businessman instead. For that student nothing else in life ever came close to arousing the deep and angry emotions that were raised by the dismissal of Harry Crowe and the departure of so much talent from our formerly beloved United College.

It took years before we were able to re-enter the building and to financially support the University of Winnipeg.

The Crowe Case of fifty years ago proved to be one of the most significant academic freedom cases in Canadian history.

Joe Martin and his sister Marian [she was on Faculty and was one of the group that resigned] attended United College in the 1950s. They were the second generation of their family to attend United. Their uncles Jon and Einar Einarsson both attended Wesley College. Jon graduated in 1914 and was killed at Passchendaele. The third generation of the family that attended the University of Winnipeg were Glen Bergman, a 1^st cousin once removed, and Marian’s daughter in law, Christabel Wiebe.

Joe was Senior Stick in 1957/58. In 1958/59 he was completing a BA Honours History degree – he was planning to become a History Professor. The Crowe Case changed his life completely – in 1959, having graduated he joined the Monarch Life Assurance Company in Winnipeg as an investment analyst. Active in politics he became Executive Assistant to the Honourable Duff Roblin in 1961 and worked with him until 1966 when he joined the Winnipeg office of P.S. Ross & Partners [now Deloitte Consulting].

In 1968 he was transferred to Toronto where he became a Partner and where he ran the Canadian practice for 12 years and chaired the Global practice for a decade in addition to serving clients.

He took early retirement in 1995 and joined the Faculty of the Rotman School of Management where he taught Strategy. In 2004 he began the design and development of the only course in Canadian Business History at a graduate School of Business. In 2005, aged 68 he taught his first history course to 14 students. Last year the class, an elective, had grown to 52. His book ‘Relentless Change, A Case Book for the Study of Canadian Business’ was published in late 2009 and had sold over 1,200 copies by year end.