Victoria Reminiscing by Syd Blackwell
I arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, in September 1965. My father drove me from our home in Rossland, in the southeast corner of the province, to my new home, boarding with old friends of my parents, in Esquimalt, a Victoria suburb. I was entering second year at the fledgling University of Victoria, having completed first year requirements through Grade XIII at Trail High School, ten kilometers from my home. Victoria was my choice.
Every kid in the vast interior of British Columbia knew UBC, the giant university in Vancouver, the biggest city in the province. Before 1963, it was the only choice for higher education. Then, UVIC was created. By 1965, when I had to make a choice, there was also the new, sleekly modern Simon Fraser University opening atop Burnaby Mountain, in greater Vancouver. However, Victoria was an easy choice.
In high school, all the students who were eyeing university all knew of older students from their town, their school, who had gone before. But some of those had come back and not returned to studies. There were whispers of “dropped out”, “kicked out”, “flunked out”, and then the comments about how the big city just swallows up some kids. Vancouver scared me.
Victoria was seen as quaint, pleasingly old-fashioned, in comparison to the hustle of Vancouver where much of Victoria´s working class had gone after WWII. There were still industries left in Victoria, but the new growth areas were in the provincial government and in tourism. Victoria was also informally called “the city of the newly wed and nearly dead” which reflected its younger working group and its older, genteel, English side. I would later learn to find it’s not quite so visible bohemian underside. I liked this Victoria. I felt safe in this city.
My classes were split between the Lansdowne campus of Victoria College and the new Gordon Head campus. The former is now Camosun College. The Gordon Head campus had only half the circle road, a few buildings including the library, the Science building, a classroom/lecture building, the Student Union building, two female dormitories, and pheasants in the long grass. There were just 1500 students. I rode the bus, both to day classes and night classes. Coming home from those night classes I rode through lightly used streets, to an empty downtown where I needed to transfer to another bus to Esquimalt. The only other people around were usually also waiting for a bus. It was a different time.
When I began my UVIC studies in the faculty of Education, I was feeling a little uncertain about how I would stand in comparison to the other students. By Christmas, I had an answer. I could compete. I could succeed. I could get first class marks.
However, I had discovered card playing in the Student Union building. I was intrigued and after a time of observation, joined into Hearts games. We played for money. Not that much; we were all students. But, I soon realized I could compete here too. I also began learning to play bridge, encouraged by an older cousin who was completing his final year at the university. Bridge would later become a passion, but in university it was more a learning experience and Hearts was my game of choice. For the rest of my student days, card earnings paid for my social life.
Along with my increased interest in cards came access to a bar. I looked quite young and the legal drinking age of 21 was two years distant. However, a friend took me to a pub near the naval base in Esquimalt. He guaranteed I would get served beer. When we entered, I knew he was right. Half the clientele were youthful looking sailors. Before I became legal, I was familiar with at least ten watering holes in Victoria. Success breeds confidence and in an age before picture ID, confidence mostly won. Of course, there were other aspects of my social life, but cards and beer were surprising and welcome additions.
I made a conscious decision about my studies. I knew that my graduating class would be the largest in the history of the province. We were the front runners of the baby boomer explosion. I knew I would be competing with hundreds of Education graduates for a limited number of jobs. I also reasoned that only the students with the very best marks would win the most coveted jobs open and that all the rest of us, regardless of marks, would compete for what was left. I decided that I did not need to spend my university student days trying to be one of those top students. I settled for a low second class standing which I found achievable with just occasional flurries of intense academic activity. I had lots of time for cards, and drinking, and dating and more in the last half of the iconic ´60s. Only a handful of the persistent card players ever graduated.
More than half the university students knew Victoria well. They lived there or came from nearby Island communities. The rest of us from interior mainland locations, rarely saw much of the city´s attractions and sights. Our socializing was with other students, even when we ventured out to pubs, movie theatres, pool halls, bowling lanes, and fast food eating. I had a very limited knowledge of the city I called home.
I left Victoria in 1969, with a five-year Bachelor of Education. That September, I began my teaching career in Port Alice, a tiny logging community of 1500, on a misty, rainy inlet, near the north end of Vancouver Island. I wondered if I would ever again live in Victoria. However, in my mind was the idea that I would some day return to the quaint city and would eventually grow old and die there.
I did return to Victoria during the 1982-83 school year. Through some strange circumstances, both my wife and I were unemployed. We were looking forward to a year of not working and living on government unemployment cheques. Our days were filled with long beach walks and exploration of the city we had only explored minimally as students. I played bridge at least three times every week. The city had already begun a transformation. It was not the same city I had left thirteen years before. I knew it never would be again. But three years later, and then employed by a college in northern Alberta, I still clung to the old images as I composed a sonnet.
VICTORIA
Victoria, enchantress from my past,
You shamelessly seduced me in my youth;
And yet my love for you will always last;
Eternal flame, 'til I grow long of tooth;
Now dance for me, O temptress of the south,
And let me glimpse your lily English breast;
Your passion showing through your reddened mouth,
And hidden coyly by embroidered vest;
And 'neath your skirts there lies a truer test,
When exiled lovers visit once a year;
Forbidden fruit denied to all the rest,
That have not, somehow, learned to hold you dear;
When death does come, ope' wide your arms to me,
To sleep with you again eternally.
Fairview AB
February 13, 1986
Victoria, enchantress from my past,
You shamelessly seduced me in my youth;
And yet my love for you will always last;
Eternal flame, 'til I grow long of tooth;
Now dance for me, O temptress of the south,
And let me glimpse your lily English breast;
Your passion showing through your reddened mouth,
And hidden coyly by embroidered vest;
And 'neath your skirts there lies a truer test,
When exiled lovers visit once a year;
Forbidden fruit denied to all the rest,
That have not, somehow, learned to hold you dear;
When death does come, ope' wide your arms to me,
To sleep with you again eternally.
Fairview AB
February 13, 1986
I never lived in Victoria again. My last bridge tournament in Victoria was in 1992. My last visit to Victoria was in 2002. UVIC now has more than 22,000 students. The quaint city of 150,000 has been eviscerated of its soul in a climb to 400,000.
I will never return.
Costumed for UVIC Fine Arts “Tom Jones Ball” 1968
