Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
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The old alma mater
My principal purpose in paying a visit to my home town, Edmonton, in the days between Christmas and New Year’s, was to see my ailing mother in her nursing home. As I told you in my last column, she passed away soon thereafter.
But there were a couple of other items of business I wanted to take care of while I was there. One was to thank a woman I’d never met for a Christmas gift I never expected.
A couple of weeks before Christmas, while planning my Edmonton trip, I got a call from someone in the admin. office at the University of Alberta, who’d tracked me down on Google as an actor who had experience at reciting the poems of Robert Service. They needed such a person, she explained, for an event where many of the Yukon paintings of Ted Harrison were being donated to the university’s permanent collection. When they mentioned my name to Mr. Harrison, he said yes, he knew me, and heartily recommended me.
So I replied yes, I knew Ted Harrison from my days in the Yukon. I also happened to be an alumnus of the U. of A., was that a good thing?
She said great, was I free to come out to Edmonton for the event, two days hence? I said I was planning a trip there anyway, so I’d be happy to come. Super, she replied, she’d call back shortly to confirm.
When she did call back, it was to say that her boss had nixed the idea for budgetary reasons, that they would be hiring an inferior local actor instead. Hmphh, I thought, Ted’s donating a zillion bucks worth of canvases, and they can’t spend a few hundred flying out the best Sam McGee or Dan McGrew reciter on the planet?
But I put on my best telephone smile, said never mind, maybe some other time, and promptly put the whole sad affair out of my mind.
So imagine my delight when a few days later, I found a package in my mail box and opened it to discover a beautiful recent biography of Ted Harrison, complete with plates of many of his most famous paintings. Attached was a card from the U. of A. employee: “Hopefully this makes up somewhat for the disappointment of not coming to our event...”
So now, here I was in Edmonton a couple of weeks later with a couple of hours to spare, wandering the snow-covered campus of my old alma mater in search of one Alison Faid, to thank her in person for her thoughtfulness.
What hadn’t occured to me, of course, is that like every other university campus in the country, the U. of Alberta is totally deserted between Christmas and New Year’s. I found the library building where Ms. Faid’s office was located, but it was locked up tight. For all I knew, Alison was in Banff or the Barbados. The voice at the other end of the telephone line would have to remain faceless.
But not all the buildings were closed. The residences, the Student’s Union Building, Convocation Hall, these were still accessible, though very thinly populated. So for the next hour or so I wandered, and as I did, I found myself gradually being transported in a mental time machine back to Frosh Week, 1967, when I first experienced this campus as an awestruck teenager. Unlike most high school grads these days, it seems, it was pretty common in 1967 for university students to stick to their home town. My family could barely afford my $235 per year tuition, and even though my marks were pretty high, scholarships were few and tiny. So my father would drive me to the campus most mornings, or I’d sometimes take a bus.
In 1967, the U. of A.’s Student Union Building was brand new. Now, 42 years later, I noticed a plaque saying it had been totally renovated. And sure enough, I discovered in my ramblings that a lot of my old haunts had disappeared. The open fireplace around which I often slept while awaiting (or skipping) my first class - gone. The basement curling rink where I took my obligatory first-year phys.ed. class - gone. The second-floor cafeteria where I ate most of my meals during my brief university career - gone, to be replaced by a mall-like food court. The office of the Jubilaires musical theatre club, which was my favourite hangout during those years - transformed to the office of the Native Students’ Society.
SUB wasn’t the only building changed, of course. There used to be an open-air courtyard in the middle of the drama building at the south end of the campus where, for two summers, I got my first taste of professional theatre. I couldn’t even find the courtyard, let alone the stage. But enough of the old section of the campus was the same to bring back the ghosts a little. I stood in the middle of the Quadrangle, drank in the crisp December prairie air, and tried to remember what it had been like four decades ago, when all my life stretched before me.
I thought of the decisions I made during those years, the paths I took, the ones I didn’t. I started to do what all of us do when the past haunts us, to question the follies of our youth.
Then I stopped myself. Whatever roads I missed, the ones I took brought me here. So I did something right.
I blew out my breath in the frigid air, took a last look around, and left my youth behind. But at least I know I can go back whenever I want.
