PML - Edit 5

Growing up, I just knew I was gonna come to Guelph. My dad came here, my mom was the secretary to the Department of English. There's actually a picture of her standing behind the circulation desk and him studying at the Horseshoe tables ...and they didn't know each other. First year I was living in Lambton, which at the time, was a very much a first year resident, we were all in the same boat, not knowing many people. I really wanted to take home economics and be a teacher. I think it was one of the best programs that anybody could take. It was really, really, a practical education, and being part of a large community, I think was really great. You really knew everybody and you worked with everybody in whatever you were doing. It's a pretty big place for a little country boy from Harley, Ontario, to come to a city even the size of Guelph at that time. I had decided in grade 7 that I wanted to be a veterinarian. It was so exciting to get here, and to find there was all these people, there were 65 other people, who wanted to be veterinarians. I grew up in Guelph and I really felt that I needed to move away to go to school, probably like a lot of students. I really was drawn to Guelph because it had this great university centre and I felt like it was a really walkable campus, so I stayed home. Being the first class of Wellington, we really didn't have a home, anywhere. So our classes were in many different buildings. It was quite a map, you had to figure out where all your classes were. Grillman Hall was the big spot. As a male who eats a lot, it was very difficult to make your cards last the full semester. We had names for everything. One of them was elephant scabs, which is veal cutlets. You know, we had mystery meat back then too, and we had spaghetti food fights. We had a big milk cooler, where you could go over and- all the milk you wanted, it was not cartons, you had a glass, and you just lifted this lever up and milk came out. and they took the milk bags out and quickly put in some beer. And when it was all done, there was broken glass everywhere 'cause there was just a mad riot to get some beer from the cooler. I stayed in Mountain, and it was interesting 'cause my year was a year that for some reason, Mountain South was all girls. I didn't actually sign up to be in an all girls residence, so that was a surprise, I think, for all of us. So they put everybody in residence rooms, four to a room. So there were no single beds here, there were double bunks, four people to a room, and it was, I'd say, the centre of high energy. At the time the residence was basically, I think, 10 or 12 rooms male, 10 or 12 rooms female, and we got into a battle with the ladies one day, and we decided to take it out on them by dismantling all the partitions in their washroom that night and putting them to the side, so when they came in the morning to go to the washroom, there was just exposed toilets and nothing else, at which point they took over our washroom 'til we put it back together again. Painting the canon was one of the big things that everybody liked to do. And then you just sign your year on it. So about 5 or 6 of us got together and planned this all out, and it was planned with the ultimate detail. It could have been Ocean's 11, the way the planning was. We went out and we watched the security police drive around twice, so that we would know how much time we had to pull this off, and somebody was the lookout, somebody was a timer, and somebody was a painter. or several were painters. The women were all locked up after 7 'o' clock. If they wanted to go to the library, they had to sign out. And through the semester, they could only get, I think it's 3 keys that would let them come back in after the doors were locked at 11 'o'clock. Miss Kid, I think you probably heard about Miss Kid, she was very strict. No boys upstairs. On our first date, Barry came and he had to you know, to sign in with Miss Kid, and she called up, and I came down and all very proper. So there were lots of times when we were boosting Mac girls in through the windows in the Mac Hall Annex at the back, 'cause they couldn't get in otherwise. Looking back, it was interesting how the school was developing. because as I said, we were a small school at the time, they really had to try to blend us with other parts of the school. which was fun, because we got to meet lots of other people. Just about everybody back then who came, was from rural Ontario and this was the very first time they were away from home. And it was a lot of home sickness, a lot of people who, you know, I think benefited from all the camaraderie that we had and all the fun that we had. Now looking back, the exposure that I had, and being able to draw on both my academic experiences and just life at Guelph, really has made me happy that I made that choice. When you think back there, I think you remember just a great bunch of friends that you were sharing a big segment of your life with. And it was really good to be meeting people from across Canada, and they were just good times. University of Guelph has been my stepping stone in life. It helped me grow as a person, and University of Guelph has played a big part in our lives.