If he’s in a good mood, facility co-ordinator Bruce Anderson will talk about the secret agents who stake out Convocation Hall. No, really.
One lesser-known point of interest regarding U of T’s foremost rotunda is that undercover operatives regularly snoop around the premises during high-profile events. (Excluding commencement, unless you know something we don’t). Even Margaret Atwood, who became Canada’s secondary head of state when she forced Stephen Harper to retreat from his war on art, didn’t rate one Mountie. On the other hand, Al Gore, who became America’s secondary head of state when he was actually elected in ’92 and ’96, brought a battalion of security to the dome last year.
“CSIS, the FBI, MI6…we’ve had all sorts of security in here,” Anderson recalls.
MI6? I imagine Britain’s secret intelligence service, which has somehow
maintained its cosmopolitan air of Cold-War romance, operating in my old sociology classroom.
Anderson oversees the ushers of Con Hall—the irregular, constantly changing event crew that guards the entrances, points you to your seat, and generally blends into the background—though not quite as impeccably as the suit-and-ear-radio crowd. Any student can sign on to usher an event, getting a free seat and payment in cash. Another point of international intrigue: Con Hall is one of the few places foreign students can legally work without a green card.
The most senior usher, Rachel, has been working events in Con Hall for six years, ever since she was an undergrad. Hoping she could shed some light on what MI6 gets up to on their visits, I ask what it would take to get black-bagged and dragged off.
“Get in the way,” she laughs, before offering assurance that the national security types are ordinary people who mostly make sure no one blocks a politician’s path. No doubt they’ve already gotten to her.
Next time you’re in Con Hall, if you’re not on the lookout for men whose bowties are actually cameras, try and spot the handiwork of the ushers’ arch-villains: engineers. Con Hall is a bull’s eye for the manic, purpled, cannon-monkeys whose undergraduate attempts to annoy civilization give way, ironically, to careers spent building sturdy trusses and keeping city sidewalks well-surveyed. According to Anderson, they usually go for windows—the higher the better. Well-equipped applied scientists bent on ludicrously dangerous break-ins have been known to scale the building’s exterior wall or even, in one case of Batman-like ingenuity, “walk directly up” the protruding brickwork.
Great minds, no doubt.
