Where I've Lived, and When: Part One

In 2014, we went back to Flin Flon and shot a photo of our old house. 

A few years ago, not long after Dad died, I asked Mom if she remembered when we moved from Flin Flon, to Thompson, to Leaf Rapids, and finally to Edmonton. Yesterday, I found the post-it note upon which I jotted down the dates she gave me, allowing me to determine where I've lived, and when: 

Flin Flon, Manitoba: February 1969 to July 1971
Thompson, Manitoba: July 1971 to September 1973
Leaf Rapids, Manitoba: September 1973 to March 10, 1979
Edmonton, Alberta (Millwoods): March 1979 to June 1979
Leduc, Alberta: July 1979 to September 1987
Edmonton, Alberta (Lister Hall, University of Alberta): September 1987 to April 1991

The Years Between

It's the first day back at Lister Hall, a warm September morning; Mom and Dad have left and I'm arranging my clothes, my computer, my toiletries and other necessities in my traditional room, 139 Kelsey Hall. I arrived early, but soon I hear other voices out in the hall and I go out to greet many familiar faces from previous years along with some new to Main K. 

I join friends old and new in the lounge, its beat-up furniture showing the years, the television a heavy 32-inch monster. After catching up, I decide to head back to my room to read--only to find that Lister Hall's rooms are now self-locking, and my keycard, wallet, ID--everything I brought with me is in that room. 

I take the short walk from Kelsey Hall to Lister Hall to get some help from the security people. But along the way, I become confused. 

"This doesn't make sense," I think. "It's 2022. Why am I still in university? Why is it taking me so long to get my degree? Wait a minute, I DID graduate--in 1991." 

Security gives me a replacement keycard and I return to my room to ponder my peculiar problem. I mention it to some of my Kelsey friends, but they don't seem to understand what I'm saying. And my body is all wrong; I'm thin and I still have all my hair. By the calendar on my wall, I'm 21 years old. 

I look in the mirror and I see my eyes widen as I realize something terrible is about to happen, sometime between 1990 and 2022. And I'm the only person in a position to stop it. 

But now I'm here, in my other life in 2022, fat, balding, and about to turn 53. And there's no guarantee that tonight I'll transition back to 1991 to fix anything. This has left me with profound anxiety, because from my reference point now, the terrible thing has already happened. Or then again, maybe not, if I take care of it in that other now, sometime in September 1990
and the years between. 

Faculty of ENG

Electronic News Gathering, that is. Well, not really; I'm simply lugging around the VHS camcorder that Grandma and Val gave the family back in the late 80s or early 90s. Here I am in 1990 or 1991, caught in the act of preparing to videotape some Lister Hall shenanigans at the University of Alberta. Behind me stands Iain Getty, who I reconnected with decades later during the brief period we were both working at ATCO Electric at the same time. 

What's That You Say, Mr. Robinson?

The last time I saw Jim Robinson, we were in our early 20s, still in school. I'd met Jim at the University of Alberta during my second year of university and his first; we stayed on the same floor in Kelsey Hall. Jim completed his education at the University of Calgary, so we really only shared the university experience for one year - but what a memorable one. I wound up visiting Jim in Calgary a year after he left Edmonton, but since then our paths went in different directions...until tonight. Jim reached out to me on LinkedIn a couple of days ago, so we met up to share some memories and bring ourselves up to speed on what had happened to us in the intervening years.

Naturally, I told Jim about Sylvia and developing a writing career and all the stuff you've seen on this blog, while Jim shared his exotic adventures in China, where he met his wife (another Canadian, from Ontario), and stories about his young family, mutual friends, and of course the incredible changes in politics and technology that have taken place over the course of the intervening years. It was very gratifying to discover that the connection we had back in university has stood the test of time; it felt very natural to slip into conversation with Jim, something that doesn't always happen when people have been separated by a gulf of years.

It was great to catch up with Jim, and we've made plans to meet in Calgary or Edmonton or both in the near future. To wrap this up, let's have a look at the last time I saw Jim, way back in Calgary in 1989...

Unhappier Accidents

Here's another collection of photos that went wrong. Poor lighting, bad focus, bad composition, underexposed, overexposed...how many photographic sins can you spot? 

A Long Glimpse Backward

In an e-mail discussion about my friend Pete's birthday today, I asserted that surely it was only six or seven years since university, and yet...my math seems to be wrong. Someone took this photo of me sometime between September 1987 and May 1989 in my room at Lister Hall - 119 Kelsey. I still have the Enterprise blueprint on the cork board behind me; I wish I still had the Lister Hall Students Association calendar hanging underneath it, or even the Ship/Marina pizza menu next to the calendar.

Even more, I wish I remembered who took the photo. I look rather goofy, but it's nice to have an image of the stuff in the background.

More importantly, happy birthday, Pete!

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. 

The Day I Lost the Pillow Fight at Lister Hall

I retired with a record of 1 win, 1 loss. This would have been an event for "King Louis," the annual...I'm not sure what you'd call it. It was a sort of contest of champions between floors at the residence. We competed in offbeat games like the one above. 

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.

The Senior or the Pillow?

1) Describe the action in 100 words or less. Who is the protagonist of the story? The antagonist?
2) Describe the conflict of the story. Is it man vs. man, man vs. nature or man vs. himself? Why?
3) When does this moment take place in the story - during the rising action, at the climax or the denoument?
4) Name three stories you'd rather be reading.

A Quarter-Century Ago...

25 years ago this week, I headed off to the University of Alberta to earn my Bachelor of Arts degree. Having just loaded up Mom and Dad's car with my clothes, Atari 130XE computer and other essentials, I posed for a going-away photo in the driveway before departing for Lister Hall.

That first week at university was very strange. I was living on my own for the first time, with compete freedom to schedule when I'd eat, sleep, read, complete assignments for class and socialize. I enjoyed living with Mom and Dad, but my first year away from home started to shape who I'd become as profoundly - or perhaps more so - than any other stage of my life. I was exposed to new ideas, new kinds of people, new challenges. I was no longer one of the smartest kids in school; now I was just one of tens of thousands of young people sufficiently bright enough to make the leap to post-secondary education. It was humbling and delightful at the same time.

How different it must be to attend university now. Back then my 8-bit computer was connected only to local bulletin boards at 300 (later 1200, later still 2400) baud, text scrolling by much slower than I could read it. If I wanted to research something, I did it by traipsing across campus to one of the libraries, searching through the stacks. There was a computerized card catalogue, but it was only half-complete. There was no Google, no Yahoo, there wasn't even Mozilla or Netscape; there were no cell phones, and I listened to music on cassette tape on my Walkman. A ticket to one of the dances cost $2; tuition that first year was $800. Our meal cards were loaded up with, I believe, $700 per semester, barely enough to keep you fed at the Lister Hall cafeteria for the year if you limited yourself to about one and a half meals per day.

There was a bit of early snow that first week, and on my way to class one morning I slipped on a patch of ice just outside the entrance to the Butterdome. I flew off my feet only to land in the arms of a petite but surprisingly strong brunette.

"Thanks!" I said.

"No problem," she smirked. She introduced herself as Candy White and asked me to come see her sometime on the 11th floor - one of the all-girl floors. She was a nursing student, and while I did go up to see her the next day, I met only her very friendly parents, who assured me Candy would be sorry I missed her. I never worked up the nerve for a second visit, and whatever meet-cute romance may have blossomed was nipped in the bud by my adolescent cowardice.

Still, that first year was wonderful, and my second and third years would be even better. The fourth year, well...it was wonderful too, but...that's another story.

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.

Dark Enigma

I shot this strange back-lit self portrait sometime during my first year of studies at the University of Alberta. The lamp looks goofy behind my head, and I don't know why I thought it would be cool to pose in my pajamas, but I do like the lighting effects. Behind my right elbow you can see an old Atari floppy disc drive; next to my forearm, there's an Atari 130XE 8-bit computer. It may sound a little strange now, but I was one of only a small handful of students with computers on our floor at Lister Hall. Our rooms were often crowded with video-game enthusiasts. These days, I'm sure most U of A students have smart phones more powerful than my old Atari.