the Walnut Diary

When the papers are full of the fuss surrounding Queen’s Homecoming each year, I can’t help but think back to Frosh Week, 1969, and one of the early moments of the Queen’s tradition.

I was a country kid, just coming off a summer bout of mononucleosis after completing grade 14. Mom had said I was too young to go to university at 17, so she made me stick around for another year. During the year I majored in Volkswagens, repeated French, my favourite course, and caused no end of grief for the teacher while sniping from the back row.

On September 7th, my parents in front and Bet beside me in the back of the family two-door Chrysler, we made our way through the crowded streets of Kingston until we came out onto Union Street. Dad took one look at the slogans printed on the bed sheets which formed a banner across University Avenue and shifted into reverse to do a three-point turn in the traffic and get his innocent son out of there. By the time he had the car half-around, though, I had escaped through the back window with my suitcase.

A hurried goodbye to Bet and I was out of my parents’ reach and into the welcoming embrace of Queen’s University. And what a welcome it was! I was immediately surrounded by more people of my own age than I had ever seen before. We quickly learned that the grinning extroverts shouting instructions were known as Gaels, and that we were expected to drop our luggage, join arms, and do a can-can dance while chanting nonsense. It was kind of fun to lock arms with a thousand people, jump up and down and yell.

The prospect of residence life caused me some apprehension as I had never had a roommate before. As fate would have it, I had no sooner arrived on the fourth floor of McNeil House than someone told me that my room had been changed: the pre-med guy who had the other half of my room had asked to live with his pal from prep school, so the university fathers had re-assigned me to a private room in Morris Hall.

I trudged across the compound to my new building, found 209, and settled into what seemed like a pretty good room. Turns out singles in Morris were usually reserved for seniors or brilliant students, so I gained instant, unearned respect as a brain. My floor-mates soon saw through that when they heard my Leeds dialect and I regaled them with a few tales of hunting and off-road driving, but the Toronto boys were still a bit uneasy around this hick who had landed the single room.

The best part of university for me quickly became evident: I was in a building with two hundred people of my own age with whom I could talk. Of course there were classes and social events and dumb team-building exercises, but what it came down to were the conversations, and I learned as much in residence in that first year as I did anywhere else during my time at Queen’s.

My most memorable night in residence was the first. Apparently the residents of Victoria Hall wanted to get to know the guys on Leonard Field right away, but the rules promised expulsion for any guy who entered women’s residence after curfew. No such rule applied to women entering men’s residence, however. So the first “fruit-of-the-loom raid” was hastily organized.

It must have been about 11:00 that night. On signal Victoria Hall emptied and a mob of young women descended upon the five residence buildings on Leonard Field. Apparently they swept through the buildings, storming into empty rooms and ransacking drawers for trophies. Legend has it one poor guy in Leonard was doing his laundry in the basement, clad only in a bathrobe. The flock of Maenads took every stitch of clothing he owned except the bathrobe.

Merriment ensued, but in Morris our floor seniors had been tipped and we were ready. Crews waited in the downstairs washrooms until the ground floor was full of marauders. Then they closed and blocked the doors. Momentum had carried the raiders up the stairs, where they found all of the rooms locked, and groups of guys politely waiting to escort their visitors into tubs hastily prepared with cold water and a box of detergent in each. For more formal tubbings we used ice cubes, but this event was organized on very short notice.

There may have been some private deals arranged, but to my knowledge no girl gained passage out of the building until she was suitably festooned with wet soap flakes.
After our leaders had dealt with the first onslaught, we locked up the building and formed good-natured human chains to herd any stragglers into Lake Ontario.

The morning after the raid Leonard Field was something to see: no grass was visible, or even the concrete walkways. Everything was covered with a deep layer of abandoned cotton. But in Morris Hall we had held onto our unmentionables because of informed leadership and good battle tactics. We were well started on our campaign to make Morris Hall #1.