Campus Co-op has over 32 houses in the Annex neighbourhood. The main office is located in the Arthur Dayfoot House at 395 Huron Street.

In the dirty thirties, life was harsh in Canada. It was a time of extreme poverty for the average person. Hardly the time to be a student when no loan or grant programs existed, let alone to start a radical new idea in student housing: co-operative living. The four founding members, Arthur Dayfoot, Archie Manson, Donald McLean and Alex Sim, were young students committed to the Social Christian Movement (SCM). From libertarian theologians, such as Toyohiko Kagawa and Fathers James “Jimmy” Tompkins and Moses Coady, these students learned about the Rochdale Principles of co-operation, then applied them in the creation of the longest running housing co-op in Canada: Campus Co-op.

Campus Co-op was started in 1936, two years before the internationally famous Tompkinsville in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, completed its first house. Since its inception, the co-op has been an important vehicle for co-op housing expansions, helping to found over 100 co-ops in Canada, Africa, and the United States, including Toronto’s Rochdale College in 1968.

What makes this story compelling are the people who were involved with Campus Co-op’s various stages. The students founding of the co-op, in a time of economic adversity is remarkable. Involvement in the explosive growth of the co-op movement in the 1960s was a formative experience for many of that generation’s political and artistic leaders; Ed Broadbent is a notable example. People who first learned about co-operative housing from Campus Co-op living, helped start and run the co-op housing sector in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Joey Schwartz