2025 marks The Muse’s 75th anniversary.
Since 1950, dedicated student journalists at Memorial have reported on campus affairs, community events, politics, controversies, local entertainment – you name it.
This Week in Muse History series highlights notable articles and topics reported on by past students to celebrate 75 years of The Muse. This series also gives insight into student issues of the past – they are not as different as you might think.
Here’s what The Muse reported on this week, February 3rd-7th, in past years.
On February 3, 2005, Nadya Bell reported on contentious debates surrounding the Faculty of Medicine and their right to academic freedom.
Academic freedom refers to an academic’s right to “conduct research and release their results as they choose.” Essentially, this gives professors ‘freedom of thought:’ agency to research whatever they would like, and publish their findings and opinions without being censored or punished. Many academics believe that this freedom is essential to healthy critical thinking skills. The university did not agree that the principle of academic freedom applied to medicine.
Doctors working for MUN at this time had to report to both the healthcare corporation and the university, which often limited the amount of time they could dedicate to their research. The debate asked whether faculty members who dedicate the majority of their time to clinical practice should be granted academic freedom.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), created an individual committee to investigate Memorial University for violations of academic freedom. Various School of Medicine faculty members brought concerns to both CAUT, and Jon Church, the vice–president of MUN’s faculty association at the time.
Church said that multiple faculty members left each year because they “had trouble carrying out their practice in a way they would like.” This suggests that the limitations may have affected faculty resignations.
If CAUT found that Memorial was in violation of this principle, they could pass a motion blacklisting the university and distributing a message to other academics that it does not respect academic freedom as an institution. Entities involved thought this outcome was very unlikely.
On February 4, 1972, Muse affiliate Kirian Gushue wrote about the opening of longstanding downtown gem – Fred’s Records.
Owner Fred Brokenshire spoke to The Muse about prioritizing affordability for customers, and the artistic–economic hub that Duckworth Street was becoming, “Hip–Capitalism,” as he called it.
The store was projected to house thousands of records available for purchase, spanning practically every genre imaginable. Gushue pointed out how it was arranged in a way that made it easy for customers to find whatever records they were looking for. Brokenshire stated that he would try his best to keep prices as low as possible, and vowed to stock vintage classics and new releases. Brokenshire passed away at the age of 69 in 2021, devastating the local community, but Fred’s lives on as a historic landmark of downtown St. John’s.
Early February seems to be a popular time for grand openings – as 1977 saw the grand opening of the Aquarena, in preparation for the Canada Summer Games.
The initial Aquarena cost an estimated 4.1 million dollars to construct, and was open to Newfoundland swimmers training for the summer games, before extending access to the community as a whole following the games that summer. The pool was designed to accommodate recreational community activities as well as larger–scale sporting events. Canadian 10 meter diving champion at the time, Linda Cuthbert, said that it was “the best pool complex she had ever seen,” easily beating the olympic pool in Montreal.
Canada Summer Games manager Bill Burke said that the pool was “the most modern community recreational facility in all Canada, perhaps even North America.”
In the present day, the pool has been closed for over a year, undergoing renovations in preparation for the 2025 Canada Summer Games. This closure has affected frequent patrons, students, and surrounding businesses, and athletes are anxious to get back into the pool. It will be interesting to see if the renovations are as revolutionary as the grand opening in the 70s.