We belong to Queen’s

It’s nearly 80 years old, but Keith Lachance’s beloved Queen’s jacket looks almost brand new.

Sure, there’s a small, frayed hole at the wrist – Mr. Lachance wore it to every reunion of his Sc’47 class he could get to – but the tricolour seems as bold and vibrant as the day it was made.

Mr. Lachance, a chemical engineer who had a long career in the pulp and paper industry, treated the wool-and-knit jacket like an heirloom, a treasured memento of his days at Queen’s.

When he died in 2021 in Vancouver at age 95, his stepdaughter, Terri Macdonell, understood the jacket’s significance. And she knew it should be honoured.

“He loved Queen’s,” Ms. Macdonell says. “It showed in his face whenever he talked about Queen’s. He got a glint in his eye and his face would light up.”

Last year, Ms. Macdonell had the jacket donated by the Lachance/Macdonell families to the Queen’s Archives, where it now joins some tens of thousands of other artifacts that tell the school’s storied history. The class of ’47 was just the second graduating class to have jackets, making Mr. Lachance’s one of the oldest in the collection.

Queen’s was one of the first universities in Canada to establish its own brand, beginning with the famous tricolour of red, blue, and gold, says historian Duncan McDowall (Arts’72), author of Queen’s University, 1961–2004, the third volume of the school’s official history.

In the years after the Second World War, many of Canada’s returning veterans went to school, thanks to the free tuition offered by the government. Fresh out of uniform, they wanted a new way to express the sense of belonging the military had provided. Mature and hardened by war, the incoming first-year veterans were older than most of the senior students on campus.

“The war was over. The economy was hot. There were plenty of jobs available. You had a very intense environment on campus,” Dr. McDowall says.

“The jackets were one of the things the vets brought with them. They’d spent years in a very regimented environment that had all kinds of insignia. They transferred that to the university. The jacket was the manifestation of that.”

Mr. Lachance wasn’t a veteran. Just 13 when the war began in 1939, he spent his teenage years as an essential worker in a pulp and paper mill in Ottawa.

But when the young chemical engineering student saw the war vets strutting about in their Queen’s jackets, he wanted one, too. It was Queen’s blue with red and gold trim on the collar, cuffs, and waistband. The Queen’s crest and motto were on the left chest, over his heart, the year “47” on the sleeve in gold.

In coming years, the jacket material would change from silk to wool, to nylon, to leather. Eventually, each faculty would adopt a colour as its own.

“Even before the war, Queen’s was one of the first universities to really brand itself,” Dr. McDowall says. “In the ’20s it was adopting the tricolour. You would have tams and scarves and sweaters that would be worn to football games and paraded around.

“With the jackets, the colour began to depict what faculty you were in. That was to perpetuate this sense that ‘We are a tight group. We have an identity and a purpose,’” he says. “There was almost a kind of tribalism: We belong to Queen’s, and you don’t.”

Mr. Lachance attended Queen’s from 1943 to 1947. It was there he met his first wife, Verna McClure, sneaking into a dance to meet her. They were married for 25 years and had five children before she died in 1974.

After graduating, Mr. Lachance worked as a chemist with E.B. Eddy in Ottawa before joining MacMillan Bloedel in B.C., where he would live the rest of his life.

He married again, to Pat Crawford, who had three children of her own, was widowed again, and married a third time to Gail Macdonell, Terri’s mother.

Though he was a long way from Kingston, Mr. Lachance’s ties to Queen’s stayed strong.

“Every Christmas he would write to his friends from Queen’s. He would keep in touch with them all. He’d start receiving Christmas cards in November,” Ms. Macdonell says. “He kept every newspaper article, announcement, dance stub, event stub. Everything he went to at Queen’s he kept in this great big red scrapbook.”

When Mr. Lachance passed away, Gail, Keith’s daughter Karen, and Terri sorted through his memorabilia.

Though his children had fond memories of their father in his tricolour jacket, everyone agreed that it would be most appreciated at Queen’s, where its journey began and could continue.

“It’s quite old and there probably aren’t that many jackets like it,” Terri says. “I thought they might want to put it on display.”

The allure of a Queen’s jacket still amazes Dr. McDowall.

“What I find remarkable is how long it has lasted. So many of those things were killed in the ’60s when there was a critical, almost cynical attitude toward old folks’ traditions. But the jacket at Queen’s has continued. I go through Toronto airport and I see people proudly wearing their jackets,” he says.

For students, the jacket provides that sense of identity, flagging them as a senior student and not a frosh. For alumni it’s a symbol that they remain a member of the Queen’s family.

“It’s very touching,” says Dr. McDowall. “When I’m asked to go to Homecoming, you see some of these older graduates with their wives, coming around with their old jackets on. They’re connecting with friends and their eyes are full of nostalgia.

“The jacket continues that function for them as an identifier. It’s a very strong pull. It says, ‘I want to be seen as a Queen’s person.’”