Tonight on Nightmare Channel

Seeing this makes me realize I should have been a late-night low-budget cable channel host...Igor's Theatre of the Mad and Macabre or something. 

Return to Lister Hall

For a brief week sometime in...1994, I think, I rented a room in Lister Hall because Dad was out of town and I couldn't commute with him from Leduc to Edmonton for work at the Western Board of Music. I wound up staying in the Main Kelsey Dungeon, which was part of the Main Kelsey floor I'd lived on for four years while earning my B.A.

I'm not sure what I'm lamenting here, but I'm amused by the dot-matrix printer and its full box of tractor feed paper, as well as the ancient Windows PC, which may have been my first or second computer after retiring my last Atari. Note the box of 3.5" floppy disks on the shelf to my right.

I find it kind of amazing that I dragged all that hardware from Leduc to Edmonton for a week. 

Anonymous Love Note, circa 1989

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when I had all my hair and I was still fit, my friends used to tease me about my many girlfriends. Of course I had no girlfriends at all, but that didn't stop the teasing, including this anonymous note, slipped under my door at 139 Kelsey Hall sometime early in my third year of university. I'm pretty sure my friend Susan Shyluk (nee Neumann) was responsible for this light mocking. I was rather befuddled the morning I woke up and found the note. (I kept it all these years because I'm a sentimentalist.)

A little earlier - sometime in second year - I discovered that someone had slipped a girl's bracelet into the pocket of my jacket. Completely lacking in self-confidence and desperate for female companionship, my heart leaped - a girl liked me! Why else would she do such a thing? What a wonderfully cryptic and yet romantic gesture.

My hopes were dashed about an hour later, when my friend Kim (who, it can now be confessed, I was somewhat enamored with) knocked on my door and asked for her bracelet back. She'd stuffed it into my pocket because I'd left my jacket on the floor in the proximity of the volleyball court where she was playing, and my pockets provided a convenient place to stash her stuff.

I meekly handed over the bracelet. If I couldn't have True Love, the trust of a good friend was equally precious.

First Stop at Lister Hall

Over two decades ago, I spent four years as a resident of Lister Hall on the University of Alberta campus. I moved in for a four-year stint in the Kelsey tower in September of 1987, but over a year before that I stayed in the Henday tower as one of a couple of dozen students participating in the Rotary Club's 1986 Forum for Young Albertans. This recovered image captures Lister (and Kelsey and Mackenzie towers in the background) as they stood in May 1986.

I remember a number of things about the Forum, chiefly that Grant MacEwan was an engaging guest speaker and that I got shot down by the founder of Mark's Work Wearhouse. Full of nationalist fervor at the time, I stood up to ask a question:

"Mr. Blumes, many Canadians are concerned by the dominance of American companies on Canadian soil. Mark's Work Wearhouse is in the process of opening stores in the United States. How do you feel about reversing that trend of American dominance?"

"Not an issue at all, ridiculous," Blumes replied. "Next question."

Burn! Oh well. At least the Forum gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with the student residence I'd call home for four years. And what a ride it was...

Jen and Steph

When you attend university, hundreds of people will pass through your life, never met before, and too often, never seen again after graduation. I have many fond memories of my four years at the University of Alberta and particularly of the time spent in our dorm at Lister Hall.

Here's a shot of Jennifer and Stephanie sitting in the girl's wing on our floor, Main Kelsey, circa 1988 or 89. I don't remember why the hallway is strewn with litter, nor how or why we acquired a construction sign. The photo itself is from Wayne Reti's collection, another denizen of Main Kelsey.

Jennifer was in the nursing program; Stephanie, education. One night Kim, Jen's roommate, lured me into their room for a Halloween prank; while Kim engaged me in conversation, Jen fell out of the closet, corpse-like, flopping onto the bed. Stephanie asked me to take some photos of her to enter in the Miss Edmonton Eskimo contest; she placed second.

I never saw Jen again after university, but I did run into Stephanie once, in 1992 or 93, at a Safeway; we exchanged addresses, I sent her a copy of the first issue of Blazing Earl News; the second was returned, as she'd moved on. Wayne loaned me the negatives that include this photo, and I haven't seen him again to return them. Sorry, Wayne. Be assured they're in good hands.

I wonder what Jen, Steph and Wayne are up to today. Maybe they remember why the hallway was so filthy.