[My family saw me off at Sexsmith station on the evening of September
17]
September 18, 1963, 10.05 AM, NAR #2, Dunvegan Yards
near Edmonton
Dear Fambily, and anyone else,
The night hasn't been long at all - I've slept about 6-7 hours, and the
rest of the time made friends with the crew.
John Culyk is the newsy, a squat Pole who combs his hair sideways to
cover his bald top. He lives alone in Edmonton when he isn't on the line
- friendly hand-patting man. He comes back for a chat every so often - once
he brought a pillow and wouldn't let me pay for it (it was his last) and
last time, a chocolate bar. The conductor stayed for a talk too - has a
son in university and a pretty wife. The two baggagemen showed me through
their three cars and we sat around their pot-bellied stove there for a while;
they have a crate containing both a lonesome puppy and a distainful cat.
What a howl! On one place on the wall there is a scribbled "Sexsmith"
with "La Glace" penciled underneath. This is where plums bound
for "E Epps" are stacked when they travel NAR.
For the last hour-odd the conductor, Win Campbell (Baggageman) and a
sleepy-eyed gum-chewing Trainman and I have been littering the "Reserved
for train personnel" seat with coffee and tall railroading stories
to make it a party.
According to Win (he's the lanky fellow you saw when we passed the baggage
car) the railway carries corpses, crated, fairly often. It happened once
that they were carrying an empty crate. One of the Negro porters was coaxed
into the baggage car at about 2 AM - to his horror the 'corpse crate' began
to moan, and there was a feeble kicking inside.
He had to be slapped to bring him out of it - frozen with horror, literally.
And when he did come out of it (sez the conductor with a reminiscent chuckle)
"the door wasn't wide enough for him."
Another Negro porter reacted differently. "Win Campbell," he
said, "You jes' come out. I knows you's in theh!"
More stories: a baby born in the baggage car with porters scurrying for
towels and newspaper. Six kittens born in the same place. A "quiet
man" who suddenly jumped train and ran away. (Found later hanged in
a barn.)
Evidently the RCMP once shipped a dog to another detachment. It was crated,
in the baggage car. At one of the stops Win noticed very suddenly that the
crate was empty and the dog running about on the platform. A mad chase over
the fields recaptured the dog and recrated him. The RCMP, though, was ungrateful:
they sent a diatribe complaining bitterly of the "mongrel" they
had been sent. Win had recaptured the wrong dog!
And then there was another story. A woman psychiatric patient was being
sent to Edmonton with her keeper. The two ladies bought a sleeper ticket.
But when they were pyjamaed and ready for bed the woman approached the conductor,
tapping him on the shoulder. "You can't fool me, oh no," she said
slyly. "I'm not getting into bed with that old man."
"What old man?" the conductor protested.
"Him!"
"But that isn't an old man. That's your companion. That's a woman."
"Ah you can't fool me, I know!"
Edmonton depot
Since arriving at 10:30 this morning I've been having swell fun people-watching.
My Super Continental #2 leaves at 3 PM - that is in an hour. A very nice
old man befriended me here, a telegraph operator since he was thirteen -
Fred Pendle. He and I watched the 12:30 arrivals from the east flood in,
enjoying the smoochings and fuss. "It's a good thing, affection"
was his comment. When he left we played relatives: shook hands and wished
each other bon voyage. Rather warming! Hey, what is supposed to be
so awful about people, hmmm?
Now back to watch-birding -
September 19, Thursday 7:45 AM nearing Winnipeg - Super
Continental #2, eastbound
The woman in the seat ahead of me, petite pretty Mrs Fahrall who is 78,
comes from the Devon area in England, a section described in that last National
Geographic. She has had a life! She came to Canada a long time ago to marry
a man her brother had brought home from boarding school when she was eleven.
Their homestead was next door to the home of Chief Poundmaker (Paul will
probably know who he was - I do not) and she was good friends with the Indians.
("They were grand people, so kind to me" was her comment.) She
is passionately fond of the royal family and speaks of Elizabeth's expected
child in ecstatic whispers. A dear!
Mrs Fahrall has just been leaning across the back of the seat with her
chin in her hands like a very pretty ten year old, telling me about the
Manitoba lake country. She remembers very well when the Crees would gather
there to pick blueberries. They would finish the picking season with a grand
powwow around a campfire - drums and dancing all night.
The freight trains passing westbound have carried a flashing display
of new cars - the many colored flanks of Impalas, Malibus, Parisiennes,
and others. Sleek and svelte.
The friendly trainman here has promised me a ride in the engine but inspectors
on the train have frustrated that until now - but high hopes.
Back to Mrs Fahrall again - her Indian nickname was "Little Nitchimus,"
a good name for a Queen's frosh too because it means "Greenhorn."
We are rolling through a vast flat prairie approaching Winnipeg - lovely
flat fields. They seem already harvested, but the flax fields are still
uncut.
To whom but family would anyone dare scribble such an unmannerly letter
on old sheets of scrap?
Afternoon. With the borrowed pen of a Montreal waiter named Claude, je
recommencer. (Posez à Judy la question de qu'est-ce que c'est que
je dire.) We have been reciprocating a teaching session, English-French.
What fun!
We are rolling through north Ontario just beyond Lake of the Woods. It's
lovely! Lake after lake in round-rocked hollows, flashes of gold-leaved
alder and birch among the jackpines, canoes and cabins hidden in the trees,
red-leaved autumn underbrush. I'm raving! Lumbermen and railroaders wave
to us as we pass. Tiers of rock rise beside the track like seats of an amphitheatre,
covered with glowing green-grey moss.
For dinner I had a $2.10 steak - might as well, for my all inclusive
special ticket covers all meals and I eat as much as I like.
Phoned Blocks in Winnipeg. Mrs gave me Mr's school phone number but when
I got the school he was already in class and I couldn't get him, but left
a number. I didn't find either Aunty Lou's or Uncle Bernie's phone though,
so didn't stay there because I didn't want to be hung up high'n dry. I'm
glad I didn't, for the new crew that stepped on in Winnipeg is French-Canadian
and great fun. Another Claude who looks like Gilles has promised to let
me help him wash dishes later.
Some of the crew are dead-heading, ie they are riding to Montreal off
duty as passengers - therefore a bit of booze. They remind me of the cowboy
in Edmonton who blinked his blue eyes at me and demanded to know whether
it was Wednesday or Thursday - a 'week off' is confusing. And expensive!
He says he 'blew' $280 with no trouble. One week!
-
Whee! I "am" (as the French would say) just returned from several
glorious discussions - I found three girls going to Queen's! Two other frosh:
Margaret, a pert pretty doctor's daughter who is a biology maniac, and Judy
- a blond sophisticate who intends to become a nuclear physics researchist.
They are both in Ban Righ too (Ban Ree is the pronunciation). There is one
senior too; lovely! Moira is a pert creature too, naturally pretty, enormously
intelligent. She began at Queen's with a Provincial Scholarship from Saskatchewan.
She looks like Rita Egan, almost exactly. Here is the beginning of a traditional
frosh crush on the gorgeous senior.
Whee! We arrive tomorrow 6:45. I won't stop off anywhere because these
kids think they can get into the dorm tomorrow - we'll have a head start
on the others then. I am excited! Judy, wouldn't you be?
Sept 20 Kingston, Friday nite, 49 Ban Righ Hall
I am arrive', as Claude would say, but should go back to the train trip
for the letter so that is all properly taken care of. Queen's issue in the
next installment.
After yesterday's note we picked up three Queen's boys and a would-be
politician commerce grad. As a result we talked and looked at yearbooks
and ate the lunches their anxious mothers had packed until late. Then a
long non-sleeping night.
But in the morning - the Muskoka area of north Ontario. It really is
lovely, especially now. There is no soil as such, only brutal grey or black
rock, rounded into ages-old curves. Among the black boulders and outcroppings
are many slender trees, now scarlet and yellow against the dramatic rock
background. A river with mist hanging above it in wisps; beaver leaving
silent V's in their wake as they swim across; ducks, sky.
I was up at 5:30 and watched morning come from the club car. Claude was
already up too, and sang a very haunting French song for me. (He sings in
Montreal, as a singing waiter, or a nightclub entertainer. He has the usually
reedy-sounding French voice, but it is more attractive than most.)
And then I had coffee in Hornepayne with the commerce grad and a huge
Negro porter called "Little Hughie." Hugh has the oddest freckles:
black, and slightly raised like specks of tar fallen from a ladder onto
his face.
Breakfast (buckwheat cakes with maple syrup) in the dining car with yellow
asters on the table, linen napkins, discussion over coffee.
Toronto at 3 PM. As usual I saw no more than the underground depot -
this is three times I've been in Toronto, yet I've never seen it!
The Kingston train was full of U students. By today I was com-plete-ly
wilted - hair like witch whiskers from the hairspray that's kept it in order
for, ... how many? days; purple-pouched eyes, a constant sniffle from a
Monsterian cold, runny nylons, flat shoes. This of course made me feel like
a hideous species of lizard creeping feebly into the society of hummingbirds.
Howevah ...
Kingston is Oh Oh Oh! Called the "Limestone City," it has endless
rows of medieval looking buildings (many cathedrals), most of them ivy colored,
and many enormous maples. I'm ecstatic.
But tired. Tomorrow -
September 21, Saturday afternoon, Ban Righ Hall
I'll begin your orientation here by telling you about Ban Righ. How to describe
it to you! When we drove up grandly to a side door in the taxi last night,
ie after dark, the street lights under the maples along University Avenue
made them seem to glow of themselves, scarlet and orange. Ban Righ rose
above the lawn and trees like a medieval castle in grey limestone with narrow
windows (still dark for the most part), large oak doors, and slathers of
ivy spread over the walls to the very top. Inside was a very little old
lady at a desk, a common room with a fireplace and a Degas print, more sitting
rooms, a vast, echoing cafeteria, and a 'normous bullitan board full of
regulations and notices of extra-curricular activities.
My room is on the top floor, a floor with only about twelve inhabitants
(which makes these twelve closer) and one telephone, one ironing room, one
very large bathroom and a dimmly lit carpeted hallway.
The room itself is painted a stark cloister white, with oldish brown
furniture, a brown-doored closet, a desk with a goose lamp and a very good
desk chair, a large antique looking chair jest for settin', and a tall narrow
bookcase. Because it is so like a nun's cell, it will be grand to rip into
it and make it Ellie, Class of '67.
My window has the dorm's prize view, a wide-angle shot of University
Avenue and the many-acre park beyond it. I am nearly above the front door,
and so can watch all comings and goings. Last night a group of Med frosh
who were feeling alcoholicly high sang "Good night Ladies" to
us as they passed, and this morning the entire freshman Medical class was
put through their paces, ridiculous as they are, directly in front of my
window. They caught sight of my yellow night cap and focused camera peering
down at them, and on the barked order of a tyrant sophomore, the entire
line in their frosh tams and initiation getup waved to me.
Last night another girl who was rattling around on second floor went
for a walk with me. Two blocks took us to the lake, very dark, very quiet
and stealthy on the rocks below us. We can see the lights on the other side
from here because the lake has narrowed to form the "Thousand Islands"
entrance to the St Lawrence River [actually it was an island]. The streets
bordering the lake walk are grassed and flowered to form a long strip of park which I
can imagine would be a very popular lovers' lane. The leaves are indescribably
beautiful.
Now I smell supper, and as I've eaten nothing but one chocolate candy
since yesterday's CNR dinner, I believe I'll go make use of some of the
enormous board and room charges I'm paying. $590.00. Good news, one of the
girls says that Queen's doesn't like to start things and not finish them.
Hence, according to her, scholarship students are usually given another
bursary or two if they run short.
September 22
Think you deserve a letter even on Sunday? You'll want to know, did I
go to church? Of course! All the innocent little frosh were bundled up into
groups of about a dozen girls with what is called a vig, and shepherded
away to Grant Hall, Queen's auditorium, for a special interdenominational
service featuring the Queen's chaplain.
A beautifully sunny morning, all the coeds sleek and pretty in their
church clothes, hats too! Evidently the church custom here in the east is
always to wear hats - I'll have to get one. Elegant!
The service was very United Church, dignified and rather warm. The scripture
reading was I Corinthians 13, a good omen I thought for that passage has
been my favorite for a long time. The chaplain spoke on the "Validity
of Religious Experience," and used as main points the arguments that
something we have not experienced is not necessarily invalid, just as aesthetic
enjoyment of classical music is not invalid just because many do not appreciate
it, and that religious experience requires preparation. The last point was
that religious experience would be more valuable and real (valid) if we
tested it rather than merely speculating. - Do you approve? I found him
a very good and honest speaker, so enjoyed the sermon.
After dinner Bob (one of the boys from the train) phoned and asked whether
I'd like to stroll about and explore a bit with him so I did - now, have
you pricked up anxious ears, Mother? This one is nothing to worry about!
Bob is a little brother type who likes to discuss philosophy. He's fairly
short, blond, blue-eyed, innocent looking, with a slash across his nose
that hasn't quite healed yet, I think from a lumbering accident. He isn't
a Toronto-and-suburb-ite either, but a lumber-woodsman from northern Ontario,
taking honours science.
We are beginning to know the people on our floor, and have noticed some
omniscient being behind the placement of rooms - for instance, two phys
ed girls are together, and immediately next door to me is a girl who not
only looks like me (almost identical to Aunt Lily) but is also here on scholarship
(also taking languages) and also from a small town high school. We discovered
each other last night and shall be friends - Bonnie, from near Toronto,
majoring in French and Latin. Petite, brunette, a piquant look like Auntie's,
glasses. Fairly friendly personality, but a chameleon like me - quiet when
with superior people, but outgoing with peers or inferiors. I'll save character
sketches of the others for later letters. By the way, could you file these
letters for me in a ring binder or something? I haven't time to duplicate
it all for my journal so will depend on this as a record, hence the holes
on the sides. This has been none too chatty, but it is all I can manage
to keep up on the informational stuff - we can chat later when less is happening.
Another thing that is interesting was the vig meeting. Now, at last,
I can explain these vidges! The word is an abbreviation of 'vigilante',
a creature who watches over other creatures I presume. In our case, a number
of girls are assigned to a second year student who is responsible for getting
them to the right places in time and keeping them from rebellion during
initiation.
At the meeting, where all the girl frosh and their vigs met in Dunning
Hall, we were welcomed, warned, taught the four-odd school songs and yells,
browbeaten about initiation and inspired by a talk by our dean, Mrs Bryce.
She is a tremendous person. I'll rave about her later when I have
more time.
After all the vig meetings I sat up in my nearly-attic room and watched
the student body passing underneath. A scattering of Med students sat on
the lawn just across in the park, some of them with guitars and ukes, singing
folk music crosslegged. All the frosh in their frosh tams strolling about
making friends. Oh, you'll want to hear about the tams - they are Scottish
curling tams, navy blue with a red-blue-and-gold plaid. Those, incidentally,
are the Queen's colors. Arts - red; Science and Engineers - yellow; Medicine
- blue.
On the tour of the campus this afternoon with Bob, we wandered into the
Queen's radio studio, browsed in their thousands of records, teased a young
professor who is a radio fiend and devotes much time to the station, stared,
listened.
My phone number, by the way is 482, just in case.
[sketch plan of Ban Righ floor 3]
September 23
The Monday of our first whole week as freshmen. Today has been relatively
slow, but there is enough and more for today's page to you - I feel almost
as tho I should send you a slice of every day so that you can be here with
me. Bonnie, next door, feels the same way about her parents who brought
her on Saturday and were both wistful and enchanted when they saw the campus.
I wish you could see it.
Being a frosh was emotionally grinding until I decided to go at my own
pace and no faster, skipping uncomfortable situations like the banquet tonight
to take a long walk around the nearby residential area and sit on a heap
of sun-bleached boulders along the lakewalk to make some rules for myself
and internally organize a bit - this seems important. The rules were about
all sorts of things - food, clothes, social situations, emotions, attitudes,
money .
Which remind me that this morning I picked up my cheque, $1000 dollars,
and stowed it in the bank, a brand-new chequing account at the Bank of Commerce.
Judy, you'll be interested to know that instead of the conservative brown
flats I had intended to get, I weakened to the enormous extent of buying
a pair of red ones, a sketch of which appears below, she said grandly.
Initiation begins tomorrow, but I'll save the description
of that. If we are rebellious, and the malicious (not really) sophs encourage
us to be, we are given 'charge slips' which like supermarket stamps are
redeemable for certain 'rewards' come Friday and the kangaroo court.
I drifted through the library on a solitary tour this afternoon. What
a heaven! The music library was the first stop, a large room eyebrow-full
of books about musicians, country music, opera, scores of operettas, librettos,
books by and about the maestros, books on ballet and modern dance choreography,
national folk music - words and melody - and RECORDS! Everything, everything.
Also a cello, a grand piano, and a phonograph.
I see that this economical typing-on-the-back idea is not a very good
one so will start on a new page -
There was a periodicals room on the next floor, ringed by shelves containing
all the newest and most important periodicals - hurrah, Judy, I can keep
on reading the New York Times book review section without buying it myself.
The top floor was entirely taken up by the reading/reference rooms, a
huge sprawling one for the lowly undergrads, and a closety exclusive one
for graduate students.
Sept 24 Tuesday
Last night's note was interrupted by a bridge lesson by three second
year students who weren't at the banquet either. As we were on the third
round voices were heard under the window four floors down, and when we rushed
to the window we saw half the campus strolling along the dark street behind
a half-dozen seniors with guitars, scuffing through the leaves, singing
enthusiastically, meeting fellows (or girls) by 'accidentally' bumping into
them in the crowd. After we scurried away to join the pied pipers, I met
a few fellows myself! An engineer whom I liked because he laughed at all
my jokes, a Richard Parlee looking frosh who knows an enormous amount about
music and who harmonizes very inventively, a shy blunderer named Chris who
wants to become an actuary and make lots of money. An assortment. But I
still haven't met any men. You know what I mean.
Initiation this morning. All this fol-de-rol is a bit childish, I think,
for university people, but the very disillusioning reality is that many
of the people who are here are here for fun and games. One of the loathesome
college songs that we're expected to sing finishes this way: "for it's
not for the knowledge that we go to college, but to raise hell all the year."
This can't be true for all of us tho, and after classes have begun the
sheep will look a little different from the kidlets. Our costumes are now
thus:
Odd shoes, different colored kneesox, short skirt or kilt, man's shirt
with our name, phone and group number stencilled on the back in Queen's
colors, a braid of red-gold-blue holding our mitts around our necks, our
frosh tams, and a stuffed animal under our arms.
Out on the outer field early for an idiot scavenger hunt and calesthenics
on the cold, cold grass. Interesting - I had breakfast with two Indian nurses
in saris, lovely girls with shiny hair.
Our 'vig groups' have been rebelling rather interestingly - hauling our
leader off the field bodily, stealing her food, bawling out the school song
during meals, refusing orders - but how ridiculous really! I'm waiting for
those classes to begin (Thursday) after tomorrow's registration.
Sept 25 Wednesday
Now I know why the cliché "the ordeal of registration' was
invented! Billions of lineups with billions of people ahead of you, billions
of little white cards that make you write your name until you find yourself
in the wrong lineup because you can't remember that "Epp Elfreda (Ellie)
Helen" begins with an E. My timetable is as below:
- Monday:
- 9:00 Philosophy 1: Ethics, Logic and Metaphysics
- 10:00 Psychology 2
- 2:30 Music 1
-
- Tuesday:
- 10:00 French 2
- 11:00 English 2a
- 2:00 oral lab in French
- 3:30 a tutorial in philosophy once every two weeks
Wednesdays and Fridays are like Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays like
Tuesdays. Now all that is left is paying the fees!
While sitting in the park yesterday afternoon and reading Shaw's Pygmalion
I met an interesting soph, a men's vig - Andrew Kennedy-Marshall, a very
attractive Tony-Perkins-looking Scot with a well-enunciated radio-announcer
voice. We hashed the usual philosophy-psychology-what-are-we-here-for-and-what-makes-us-tick
questions and had coffee in the Students Union cafeteria where beardy men
and tangly-haired girls were hashing the same things, and I enjoyed it!
Still haven't met any men tho.
Last night the science frosh had a party, and as a result were mildly
'looped' by eleven o'clock - a straggle of them with guitars serenaded nearly
underneath my window, very badly. A larger straggle set off fireworks and
threw other stragglers into the water.
Oh these leaves! These trees! These yellows and reds and tans and blacks
and greens! These stone towers and casement windows and awesome entrance
halls! And classes tomorrow too! And red shoes! And the cleaning lady who
sweeps my floor and tugs my rug straight every morning!
And yesterday there was Hughie: ten years old, pudgy, back peddling on
a rusty old bike with a paper bag in his fist. "Hey, do you want to
buy a tassel?" he asked. And then the story came out! He has spent
the afternoon snatching pompoms from the tams of unwary freshmen, and was
now selling them for a quarter - 250% profit! When I suggested that he go
into commerce when he was old enough for Queen's he was all bland assurance.
"Yeah, I'm a pretty sharp cookie."
Sept 26, Thursday.
Classes are all sorted out and begun, books and books and books bought,
professors scrutinized. The rampant question is "How'd you make out?"
My answer is a little groan, mainly because of the French. It appears that
Ontario people have five years of it, in contrast to my two (if one could
call correspondence and Ray adequate years). My crystal ball shows midnight
lights burning behind a certain set of blue curtains on the top floor of
Ban Righ.
English looks promising. Mr Robertson is a tall masculine middle-aged,
with a thick crop of black hair, a long, lean chin, and a pleasantly bookish
air about him. Our course begins with Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales.
But that was classes this morning! Now study - freshettes get two two-thirty
late leaves a week, har. I won't need 'em - the library is only open until
eleven.
27, Friday
Philosophy and psychology this morning. The phil class is enormous, taking
up half of an auditorium and half of the arts and science faculties' first
year student body, as philosophy, one course, is compulsory. We begin with
a study of ethics, the definition of right and wrong, of duty, of morality.
According to Dean Dunnings who teaches the course, it is not to give us
new values or morals, but to teach us to examine definitions of the terms
we use, to examine our beliefs, to distinguish between true knowing and
mere believing, and so on. I think I shall enjoy the course.
And the psychology course! We have an exceptionally good professor, Mr
Campbell, whose Scottish accent is just light enough and educated enough
to be charming. The cadence of his speech is particularly interesting, being
a fluctuation from very light to sudden emphasis. Also, he strides about
continually, almost like a cat tho, very quietly. This is an example of
the way he talks:
"The TEXTS you will need (step) are LISTED on the sheet (step) I
handed you in the beginning of the class (turn, step) and I should LIKE
you to READ them in the ORDER I've indicated (step) BEGINNING with the book
(step) by ROSS." This gives his speech a headlong, breathless quality
that is difficult to ignore, and because of the intervals between emphasized
words are so quiet, he keeps the full attention of us all. So far.
Something interesting on my program tonight is the year's beginning welcome
party of International House, an organization for overseas students and
Canadians who are interested in these overseas people. They maintain a house
accommodating several students, and organize social/intellectual events
to help foreign students meet the rest of us, and vice versa. I am planning
to join that as well as the Interfaculty Choir.
Hey, you'll never believe it, folks, but I have occasional moments of
HOMESICKNESS.
The meals are wonderful - fruit juice for every meal, milk either whole
or skim, three or four choices of dessert, two or three choices of main
course, rolls, fresh fruit for breakfast, fancy pastry on Sundays, cheese
on the sideboard for dinner which is our fairly formal evening meal. But
they are so distressingly regular that I'm hungry all the time. Same old
story. It keeps the kitchenette coffee pot boiling, which makes for kaffee
klatches in one of the girls' rooms with everyone sitting on the floor.
28, Saturday
It was raining last night, the first time since we have been at Kingston,
a hard warm rain that flattened all the leaves onto the sidewalk so that
they looked like patterns on linoleum, exhilerating rain. And a good prelude
to the party at International House. IH is both an organization (to which
I belong now) and a building. The latter is an old-fashioned brick house
with the standard (in Kingston) front verandah and narrow windows. Inside
were Jamaicans, Nigerians, Sierra Leonians, Pakistanis, real Indians, Chinese
from Hong Kong and from Trinidad, Englishers, Germans, and four Albertans,
strangers too! Ahmed from Pakistan explained Mohammedanism to me, Keith
from Kingston explained Christianity. "X" from India and Simon
from Singapore told me what they missed most here - food - and what they
found most different - the easy intermingling of the sexes. Another Pakistani
told me about the international work he is doing as an entomologist researcher,
finding weeds and insect pests which both countries, Canada and Pakistan,
are plagued by to varying extents. If weed a is common to Canada,
for instance, but relatively well controlled by natural factors in Pakistan,
the researchers will experiment to find the natural enemies, either insect
or disease, which can safely be transferred to Canada to control a
there. This is happening on both sides of the ocean.
The two Germans and three English 'chaps' - Peter, Tim, and effervescent
Jim - and I washed up coffee cups in the wee kitchen, singing old English
songs like "Poor Cock Robin" and another about what will happen
if some lovestruck fool goes out onto the damp moor at night without a cap
on, in amazingly good harmony.
Wolfgang - another frosh, nicer than most, who claimed on his nametag
to be German tho he's been here six years, walked me home - altogether a
very good evening. Doesn't it all sound great? First hand information on
why Pakistan will never become Communist and India will (difference of religion)
and the Hong Kong social structure and the changes in Asia as conversation
pieces rather than the latest exploits of the Golden Gaels (our football
team) or what boy who nabbed last night.
This is during 'noisy hours', the time between twelve and one-thirty,
five and six-thirty, ten and eleven when radios, typing, banjos, phonos,
and chatter are not verboten. Altogether, the study situation is quite good
especially as our floor is so small (under one half the usual size) and
as we can't hear thumping over our heads. No one up there but the pigeons.
29, Sunday
A stormy, windy, rainy, tempermental day in Kingston. Rather a day for
nostalgia, especially after writing seven letters and three postcards and
thinking of this summer. Wrote Grandma and Grandpa, both sets. Aren't you
pleased? No, really, this summer was awfully good for getting to know them
as people and as part of this phenomenon called 'family'.
Down the hall a knot of girls are sitting on the carpet around a banjo
and singing sad ballads. As if we aren't a little grey around the heart
already - but they sound actually quite nice.
Some mundanities: Judy could you send me a money order for what is in
your account that belongs in mine please? I shall probably need it as I'm
a little low and should have some dental work done and take out some hospital
insurance in case. And when/if you send my blouses do you suppose you could
throw in one of the Mexican pottery jugs - I need a pencil stand and toe-cover-holder.
How did the pictures turn out? I want copies please if they aren't too bad,
and even if they are.
I've been having a peculiar sensation of standing at the edge of something,
whether of a precipice or of a magic door I don't know.
Have you heard about my Music 1 class yet? It is held in the living-room-like
atmosphere of the library music room, and to make it seem even more of a
social afternoon, there are only about thirteen of us, four fellows and
nine girls. Our professor is a tall fairly old Britisher with a husky low
voice, potentially warm, and a face that much resembles Harold Macmillan's.
I know I'm going to like him a great deal. What he proposes to do in the
class is to listen and listen and listen to music until we get some glimmer
of an 'understanding' (which is not an understanding of form at all)
of the music. Also we want to look at the evolution of music a bit, and
the structure of the various types and variations. Our professor, whose
name I don't know yet, spent most of the first class sitting in an armchair
in front of us, speaking very informally. Before he began he smiled a wisp-smile
and said "Now don't take notes please: this isn't going to be note-worthy."
Isn't he nice?
From somewhere in Kingston cathedral bells are tolling in the rain, both
eerie and moving. Kingston has the most beautiful churches I've seen, so
many of them, set back on huge lawns, made of the traditional grey stone,
most of them with tall Gothic towers rather than spires. On a Sunday morning
all the bells ring out across campus: it's breath-taking.
Spose this could be mailed tomorrow to keep it from plugging the mails
- do write!
Monday night 12:13 a.m.
Dear Mom -
From Queen's to an extramural student who is here by proxy -
Now that all the initiation nonsense is done with, books! I think of
you often, knowing how well you would like to be immersed in the bookish
atmosphere that is so common here, a few inches under the surface football
and partying. I do know, though, that you will be plowing ahead through
your high school - and we the family do admire you for your tenacity.
I hope you will write when you have a bit of weltschmertz to get off
your chest: it won't bother me unfairly to listen because here I'm
relatively free from it myself and would like to share yours - fair enough?
How am I really? A little lonesome so far: making friends too quickly
is not appealing or a good idea. In the meanwhile, I miss Frank rather acutely
at times, Mr Mann, Peter, the Windrims, the Grandparents even, and Paul,
Rudy, Judy, Father, you.
And until I became caught up in the books and classes I was a little
lost, a little desolate, a little rootless. But these things - philosophy,
psychology, music, English - are home.
It is very late.
Tuesday October 1
It is called Dinner with the Dean. It is something which happens to every
freshman at least twice in the first year at Queen's. It is a very awesome
thing, remembered with trepidation, anticipated qualmingly.
Hi! That was just me having some fun with last night's semi-ordeal. Do
you want to hear what really happened?
Our floor, together with several other girls was formally invited to
eat our evening meal (at dinner) at the Dean's table. This is Mrs Bryce's
way of learning to know all of the new 'little ones,' and is a tradition
with all the rite and ceremony of a coronation.
One first puts on one's very best dress and one's highest sophisticatedest
heels and one's most expensivest jewellery, and then one marches tremblingly
(if it is possible to march tremblingly - it must be) downstairs to the
Dean's office where one is scrutinized and named. Evidently Mrs Bryce, who
is the paradoxical combination of efficiency and feminine gracefulness,
spends hours before these 'ceremonies' in studying photos of us and attaching
the blobs of faces to the corresponding blobs of names.
After she has correctly named us one by one, last names too, and astonished
us deeply enough, we trot behind her in straggly pairs to the dining room.
The moment she enters, everyone in the dining room rises and stands foolishly
with her napkin clutched against her knees to keep it from sliding off entirely.
We file into seats somewhere along the semicircular table, with Mrs Bryce
at the head and some of us on both sides, both adjacent to and opposite
to this formidable female Arthur at her round table.
There is a salad plate beside our places - nothing else. (Salad = half
a canned pear on a skimpy sheet of lettice with a tortured mass of whipped
cream on top.) Is this all of dinner? We aren't that lucky! Two little maids
in white uniform appear carrying bowls of food. The Dean serves out the
monsterous slabs of baked ham, then hands the plate (white china with a
Queen's crest in gold) to the girl next to her who adds a potato, then to
the girl across the table who adds a coblet of corn. Then the plates are
passed on down the table until at last we all have one. All this takes ages.
During all this time the Dean is making polite chatter to those of us she
can conversation-spear without stretching (so to speak), being careful to
talk to each only a very short time and then going on to another one.
Finally she picks up her fork and begins on the ham. All down the row
heads swivel to see which fork it is that she has picked up and then swivel
back, all together, to contemplate their own row of forks. Between main
course and dessert there is a recuperatory pause of about fifteen minutes
- more ceremonial chatter - while the maids clear plates away and bring
out the dessert. Voila! Small banana splits. Even the Dean lights up.
Eventually, eventually, she rises, motions to us, and leads us out. Then,
at the door of her office, she shakes our hands in turn, being careful to
mention our names to prove that she can do it again, and says a gracious
"I was so pleased with the little talk I had with you, good night"
accompanied by a very regal touch of a surprisingly soft hand as we pass
toward the stairs.
Oct 2
Surely this must be Wednesday, yes it is.
Several things to be caught up on: first a small or rather fairly large
jubilation because for the first time in Ban Righ - two weeks since Sexsmith
station! - there was a fairly decent non-bill letter in my cubbyhole downstairs.
Do write again.
At the moment there is a band rehearsal going on in the park grounds
across from my window - the timpani are helping me in the jubilee. It seems
that for a universitier much of the spelling in these edition-after-editions
is not quite all it should be, but the thing is: 'hem - that when I'm typing
it takes too much time and trouble to erase things that shouldn't be left
for posterity. I'm racing a noisy-hours deadline, you see, for the woodpeckery
clicking of a typwriter is (there I go again! Did you catch it?) not quiet-hoursy
enough for other times.
Last night was oooooo. It was the first Interfaculty Choir rehearsal,
for one thing. We meet in the Music House, another ramshackly brick 'ediface'
(no other word is suitable) there should be a period at the end of that
but I forgot it. Anyway, the wonderful Dr George who is the warm Macmillan
looking music professor I mentioned before, is our director and accompanist.
Last night's beginnings were a long Irish ballad in semi-cantata form called
"Praudrig [Phaudrig] Crohoore," and a tender Elizabethan hymn
with breath-taking harmonies. But what I was aching for all evening was
a real tenor - I thought very wistfully of Mr Mann and Pierre singing down
the hallways at school last year. But we had not one reasonable tenor and
not one better than reasonable bass. But the songs themselves carried the
rehearsal and I walked out afterwards into the witchy first night of October
in a bit of a witchy rapture. A night! Absolutely empty sky very far away
and pale, yellow trees glowing in the streetlamp light, a luminosity around
the Grant Hall belltower that hinted of a moon behind it, dry leaves swirling
and skipping with only the smallest rasp of a sound when they touch the
sidewalk, a pretty blond girl in a collegiate trench coat and sneakers scuffing
along ahead of me.
And you must meet Ferguson - an abrupt change of topic this is, but you
will be able to detect an 'autumn' tone in it too. Ferguson is in the fourth
year of a rather wandering general course here, taking two politics courses
and an advanced Spanish course with two heavy histories as well. The library
and the students' union know him well: he has a pass card to the library
stacks and can become lost in them (they are vast) whenever he likes. What
is notable about Ferguson, though, is not his querying intellect or his
bookwormy habits, but his age: he got his first degree from Queen's thirty-four
years ago. Now he is continually bumping into undergrads and even graduate
students who are children of his university days colleagues.
He looks as amazing as he is too: tall, stooped, with a nosy neck-forward
posture that gives him a prying air; hairy and scraggly, with odd fuzzy
long whiskers growing all around his neck and the top of his head always
thatched-looking from pushing his fingers through it.
A few other headlines: for my compulsory phys ed I am taking ARCHERY!
And next Friday night I'm to babysit for the head of the psychiatry department
- six children in a huge old house. Really a mad situation, hmmm? Hope they
turn out as well as the Windrims.
3, Thursday
It seems that the problem of what to do for the Christmas holidays will
not be especially troublesome. One of the girls on the floor, a very appealing
little English girl from Toronto, has already invited me, so if I can manage
the trainfare (probably about ten dollars return) I would like to spend
at least a weekend there, just as you would like me to bring people home
for weekends if it were possible. The residence closes up tightly, so I'll
be evicted at any rate. Going to New York would be great if I could manage
it. Perhaps if I can scrape up a few more bursaries (I owe $200 on residence
fees not due until January and unaccounted for) baby-sitting money can go
for that. Or a job, or a bright suggestion from Mrs Bryce who wants to talk
to me about it later.
Judy please send that money.
Last night very little was accomplished in the way of homework. First
was the rousing band practice, then an impromptu happy-jazz concert by strolling
bandsmen on their way home, freelancing off-beat harmonies and stopping
in the middle of the street sometimes to bay a high note into the sky. Moonlight
and blowing leaves again. Then Olivia, the English girl (and the perfect
image of a curly-haired tomboy from the English-schoolgirl stories) came
in to talk for a while because she was lonesome, worried, uncertain of why
she's here, loose-ended and wistful - which is the state of frosh ennui
that I got rid of (like the flu) last week. Anyway it was nice to pick up
the role of confidante, feels like being home with myself again.
In English Prof Robertson is guiding a study of Chaucer's The Parliament
of Fouyles which was written in the German-sounding Middle English of 1383.
It is a poem, complex, very allegorical, about love, which was the main
topic of conversation in the contemporary court. But I mot gon to rede some
bokis - anon!
-
Later on the same day. I have just come in smelling deliciously of smoke
and full of coffee. What happened was that while studying French in the
little languages study room in the library, half hidden by the enormous
dictionary I was using, one of my International House friends dropped in
to study some French too, and after hours of sitting wordlessly across the
table he said "Voulez-vous avoir une petite tasse de café?"
so we wandered down to the Union coffee house and sat among all the discussers
discussing for a while. The friend was Jim, an especially appealing twenty-six
year old Britisher who sings "Cock Robin" with an authentic East
London accent. He's medium-sized, wiry, at least superficially debonair
with crackling brown eyes and a naughty smile, interested in mountain-climbing,
intelligent, witty, easy-mannered, potential friend material. While we were
there who should happen by but my friend Wolfgang and a German friend of
his who is just back from a year's study of pre-med in Vienna. Typical old-mannered
European: wire-rimmed spectacles too. That was a fine party - our eleven
piem (figured that one out?) (it saves the bother of period-ing) curfew
is too early.
Are you interested at all in a typical day at Queen's? (I'm writing double
today for there'll be no time tomorrow.)
7 ayem: bound out of bed to have a look at the weather, scrub up in the
washroom with the few early risers who have eight o'clock classes, make
bed and fold up sheet and pillow case and set them outside the door for
the cleaning ladies (Thursdays only), leave my cloister-room speckless (altho
the cleaning lady, a dear 'little' overweight woman who calls us 'dear'
indiscriminatingly, sweeps the floors and picks up after us, I'm disturbingly
tidy ... sigh, for the days of shambles), skip downstairs for breakfast
(toast, grapefruit juice, an orange, bacon, scrambled eggs), study for an
hour in the common room downstairs, go to French class and teem with frustration
and ignorance for an hour, scramble to English to beat the professor there,
study ten minutes while waiting for him, spend an hour and a half on Chaucer's
ribald little jokes - cute, this fourteenth century humour - float to dinner
[lunch] in the sunshine and falling leaves (milk, tomato juice, carrot sticks
and celery, a fruit salad plate, dessert, cookies, tea, getting-to-know-who-you-are-or-at-least-what-your-name-is
conversations), a dash downstairs to check the mail niches, study in library
until 2:30, an archery class way over at the stadium, a furious run back
to the library to make it in time for the 3:00 music class, studying from
4:30 to 5:30 supper (orange juice, milk, roast beef, squash, peas, cheese,
crushed pineapple), back to the library or to music appreciation or to choir,
or to IH or babysitting till 10:00 or later, some letter-typing and gab
or singing on the stairs, 'ritual of retiring,' zzzz.
Saturday October 5
Today was an important day for Queen's: the university idolizes football,
and today our Gaels routed the Toronto Blues, long-time arch-enemies. I
didn't go to the game, but heard it: bellowing commentators, the skirling
bagpipes, the two bands, the cheering crowds from both Toronto and Kingston.
After the game the campus was overrun by couples on their way to after-game
dances and banquets. I turned down a movie date from Bob to do some studying,
but am not feeling studious a bit so will tell you about the baby-sitting
last night.
When I got to 26 Centre Street, the address I'd been given, I thought
I'd been mistaken. It was an enormous Colonial style house in grey stone
with three stories, a gothic-pillared front verandah, a royal front lawn,
a sports car in the vast garage, and acres of low storage buildings attached
to the back of the house. It was the correct address tho', and I soon met
the family: nine-months old Eve (born last Christmas Eve), four-year-old
Robin, eight-year-old Polly, or Pog, eleven-year-old Billy, and two sparrowy
early-teenage daughters - and the maid. The reason they need a sitter even
with all these daughters and things is that the daughters have other things
to do and are sick of sitting, and that the maid is not terribly intelligent
and Mrs Sloane doesn't like to leave the baby with her. Mrs Sloane's dignified
old father is also with them. And they entirely fill that enormous house
- no empty corners at all.
And how beautifully they fill it - their furniture is a great mish-mash
of stark contemporary and beat-up old-fashioned, the floors are all wooden,
the ceilings are high, the closets are formidible, the stairs narrow and
winding, the windows long and thin, and upstairs are often in the shape
of a porthole or cathedral window. In Mr Sloane's study are two walls full
of books, about half of them technical: psychiatry texts, and the other
half best-sellers. Scattered in every corner are bits of sculpture. Beside
the huge home-made stereo set which has speakers in several of the rooms
is a mountain of records. A grand piano. Original paintings. [One of these
was by their friend Harold Towne.] First-rate prints everywhere, even along
the stairways and upstairs.
Their kitchen is much like my idea of a castle scullery - vast, low-ceilinged,
papered with large and frenzied pictures crayoned by the neighbourhood children,
posters, memos, work the children have brought home from school, cartoon
clippings. Baskets of fruit, a Siamese cat, a Scotch terrier, a mongrel
kitten, cook books, a dishwasher, heaps of things the kids have dragged
in, toys, baby carriages, the kids themselves ... All that is needed is
a long, deep fireplace with a kettle boiling over it instead of the electric
range.
Both Mr and Mrs Sloane are very attractive people, about forty but younger-looking,
English, rather easy-mannered. He has private patients as well as teaching
in the psychiatry department.
At sixty cents an hour, high for baby-sitting, that was three dollars
for five hours, until eleven. It will certainly help if I can do this once
a week or so.
Went to a funny little old dentist yesterday, but Dr Martin has lost
one 'customer.' All the while he was poking about in my mouth he was trembling
so much that he had to brace himself against my shoulder - when I saw the
1922 date on his certificate I understood why!
Back to The Scientific Principles of Psychology - Oh, there was a letter
from Grandma, rather a nice one, altho she did bring out her "Bleibe
fromm und halte dich recht" axiom.
One thing that is rather painful is seeing so many girls here on campus
who look like Judy Doerksen: I wish she could have been here.
What are you doing at home, two time-zones earlier? Let me guess - the
record player is on, either a quartet or the Emperor. Paul has finished
calf-feedings and is reading in a living room chair. Judy would be piano-practicing
if the record player wasn't on, but is studying instead. Rudy is sitting
on the floor with a magazine wishing he had something to do. Father is sitting
on the 'sofa,' sprawling rather, with a far-away plotting look. Mom's beside
him with a far-away reading and dreaming look. This is Sunday evening, by
the way, 10:30 piem.
I tripped off to church this morning in a very large velvet hat, red
with my red suit and beige coat and red gloves (the extra finery donated).
The hat is a large derby-mushroom crossbreed, a marvel. And I shall have
to buy myself a hat too - idiotic things! Idiotic females! Church this morning
was mass in the cathedral, because my music class is studying mass music
and I wanted to see for myself - and the music is beautiful; the Sexsmith
choir, Judy, is no indication. The end of the sheet and of my noisy hour
- goodnight.
part 2
- raw forming volume 1: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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