Family VI
April 12, 2020My four and half years at the University of New Brunswick were some of the best years of my life. I went to UNB after deciding not to go to the University of Waterloo mostly because I had never been to the Maritimes, and Dr John Meagher-Faculty Head of Health and Physical Education-was from McGill University and that was good enough for me. During Frosh Week I met students that were to become life long friends and roommates. I remember flipping a coin with David Moreland on a dare to see who would sky dive first out of an airplane, I won! I jumped eight times on a static line as a member of the UNB Sky Diving Club before I decided that this was a bit crazy after watching my instructor almost “bite the dusk” when he was going for a new ticket.
First year, first semester I lived in the upstairs suite of a house downtown Fredericton and I hated it-I was lonely! Second semester I moved into the new Student Co-op that had just been completed and things turned around for me thankfully.
Second year three of moved into a house on Scully Street downtown Fredericton and Max, Ernie and Ed were my roommates-all foresters. Max was from Newfoundland and introduced me to Screech. That was brutal! Max lives in Northern Alberta and is more Albertan than the home grown boys. He’s a real cowboy-cow cutting competition-and it’s great seeing him from time to time after fifty years of knowing each other.
Third year I had two new roommates, David and Peter where we lived in the boonies on Hanwell Road and that is where I carved the soapstone in the photograph. David was BMOC-Big Man On Campus-he seemed to know everyone. So when we had a party the whole student body or so it seemed showed up, and invariably the RCMP would shut us down. We had an expression, “The Schooner the better!” David passed away in 1982 and I remember the phone call from Neil like it was yesterday. I was standing in the sunroom of my house on Marine Drive in White Rock, British Columbia looking out over the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Neil’s phone call hit me like a rock and I think my eyes watered up for months afterwards. In fact, they still do when I think of David and that we never got to share stories, and a beer in our senior years. Side Story-I met David Junior (he was 6 months old when his dad died) in 2014 the year I was on special assignment in London, Ontario with The Original Cakerie and his son David III. That was very special and the money twenty of us put into a University Child Savings Fund in 1982 paid for his university education at Acadia University.
I played rugby at UNB in my final year (we won the Maritimes Championship in Halifax and I played first string winger) and I should have played ice hockey and/or football but I didn’t. That’s another story for another time. Rugby was fun and a steep learning curve for me but I truly liked football and ice hockey much better.
Fourth year David, Peter, and I moved into the Graham Street Apartments just off campus and that was a blast. There was probably too much partying and not always at our place but somehow we kept things in control. I remember Peter labelling his marijuana plants to disguise them as a Plant Anatomy course experiment before heading home for Christmas Break hoping that our landlady wouldn’t know what we were up to. Yes, we were young and silly!
I went back after graduating thinking I wanted to become a marine biologist and go to Memorial University of Newfoundland. I discovered very quickly upon deeper reflection that was a crazy idea. What was I thinking of? Within five minutes of bobbing on the ocean I get as sick a a dog. I was a lab instructor for Human Anatomy, Human Physiology, and Kinesciology to Third and Fourth Year undergraduate and Pre-Med students that Fall semester so I stayed until the semester ended at Christmas. I felt I owed it to Professor Barry Thompson who got me those jobs and a real gentleman. Little did I know Professor Thompson grew up in the little village of Britannia Beach on the way to Squamish, BC during its hay day as the largest producer of copper in the British Commonwealth. So that January I was saying my good-byes to mom and dad, and I was on my way to the West Coast to reinvent myself after “living the dream” at UNB.
Student Summer Jobs-After First Year I was a swimming instructor and lifeguard at the Otterburn Community Swimming Pool. Second and Third Year I was the Executive Director of Anderson Sports Camp-50 Counsellors and five Sports Directors, 300 boys 13-16 years old with football, baseball, sailing, aquatics (waterpolo), water skiing, and I ran an ice hockey camp for two winters during Christmas Break-in Choisy, Lake of Two Mountains Quebec. Anderson Sports Camp is now Club du Hudson, an exclusive boutique community built on the property Anderson Sports Camp occupied. Maurice, another old university bud who lives in North Vancouver put me onto the job at Anderson Sports Camp. Thanks Maurice-he always called me “Herc!” Fourth Year after graduating I was in Northern Manitoba working for Frontier College with First Nations and miners at a Falconbridge underground mine site. Talk about culture shock. That’s where my beaded moccasins in an earlier blog came from. An elderly First Nations lady made them for me and I am so grateful for her kindness that she and her husband bestowed on this young lad from rural Quebec.
