This first page contains images primarily of the buildings and grounds. As usual I have seen fit to add my own unique observations and commentary. I have not managed to produce another installment of my musings, so after I got started, I got carried away with some of the figure captions. I hope that they are not too distracting. dgf 9/11/03
| The old girl in all her glory. |
| Although I don't remember doing much of this, it's obvious
from the above picture that for some people, on some occasions,
the front balcony was a place where boys
and girls congregated in defiance of the standard rules.
This site is my answer to one of those questions about where were you when... I was on the porch with several other people when John Baxter hurried over and told us that JFK had been shot. I remember the feeling of anxious disbelief that I felt upon hearing the news. After the news had circulated and been confirmed, all the staff and students assembled in the chapel for a prayer vigil. This was probably the first time in a while, and as far as I can remember, the last time I actually sincerely prayed for something or someone. Sadly, a few minutes into the service someone came in and announced that JFK had been pronounced dead. What I remember after that is scattered thoughts and images: rumours swirling around about who was behind it since it seemed impossible and even frightening to believe that Oswald was acting alone. I remember watching TV images of LBJ being sworn in, the funeral cortege, the heartrending views of JFK's young children , the scene in the hallway when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. Whenever I look back at this sad event, I think that the thing I most regret is the abrupt, shocking termination of the promise that JFK's presidency seemed destined to fulfill. |
| This is a very familiar view for me since it was
what I saw when I looked out my bedroom window. I have this vague
recollection that it was quite common for girls to hang out on the fire
escapes. From the first sentence it should be obvious that both the
3rd and 4th floor fire escapes on the Girl's Side
overlooked our apartment, and that anyone on either of these platforms
(and elsewhere) could see into the rooms of our apartment (I seem to recall
a story posted previously on another site in which this fact played a prominent
role). In any case, I became aware of this when one morning I was floating in the dozy state between sleeping and waking, enjoying the guilty
pleasure of waiting until absolutely the last minute to leap out of bed,
brush my teeth, grease up my hair, throw on my clothes and rush over to
chapel. I had recently re-arranged my furniture so that the headboard of my bed was facing towards the window. This particular Spring
morning, the curtains were open and I was lying with my knees bent luxuriating
in the warmth of the sunlight streaming in. Apparently my knees were visible
to the girls on the fire escapes, since I was suddenly heckled from the
main building. Hey Ferguson you lazy so-and-so, why aren't you up?
I was so startled that I abruptly straightened my legs and my knees disappeared
from view. Being in the 9th grade and recognizing the
voice as belonging to one of Kathy's grade 11 classmates, I believe that I blushed furiously.
But almost immediately I woke up enough to hear the amused chatter that followed
my sudden disappearance and I realized the humour in the situation. I think I must have looked out and
perhaps waved at the hecklers because I remember who
two of the culprits were.
Also visible in this picture is the Girl's Tube. As I mentally repeated that phrase just now, it seemed strange and mildly salacious to my adult ears, but isn't that what we called it? Today, if I used that expression in any venue other than a lecture or lab during the reproductive biology portion of the Anatomy course, I would risk being accused of insensitivity at best. |
| Here we have yet another view of the fourth floor balcony on the girl's side. Although we've seen pictures of this in a number of the girl's collections, this is unique in that it is in Doug's collection. One wonders how it came to be in his possession. Surely he wasn't up there against the rules? Perhaps he lent his camera to prowler? |
| I can't unequivocally identify any of the
people in this picture which was taken in the gym in Massey Hall. But it
did stir up a lot of memories.
The doors from the tubes opened into the dusty, drab basketball court on which I spent long hours shooting baskets, often playing ghost or 21 with Guy Caron. Ghost was a game in which one shooter tried to make an impossible shot and if they were successful then their opponent had to duplicate the shot exactly. If the second player missed the shot they got a letter. The game was over when one of the shooters missed 5 shots and accumulated all 5 letters in the word ghost. For some reason, the identical game down here is called horse, which would have caused some confusion and a lot of teasing for Andy McCullough, if we had called it that at Feller. 21 was a game that involved shooting foul shots, as we called them. I guess at some point the overseers of the game changed the name of this shot to free throws, since that is what everyone now calls them. Almost every evening in the winter, except for Wednesday (cadets) and Sunday (day of rest), I practiced shooting baskets after I finished my homework, often for a couple of hours. I became quite accustomed to the quirks of this ancient court. It was too short and as a consequence, there was hardly any space behind either basket so you had to approach it at an angle or be prepared to stop very quickly after shooting a lay up. Players from visiting teams often ran into the walls until they got used to that. The most significant peculiarity was the balcony that surrounded the court. It projected a few feet out over the court along the sides, but even further in the corners. If you tried to take what we called a set shot from along the baseline deep in the corner, the arc of a normal shot hit the balcony which was out-of-bounds and resulted in a turnover. However, if you took the shot while you were dribbling towards the corner, but still a few feet out, you could get a shot with a somewhat flat trajectory to just clear the overhang (for me it worked best in the left corner since I was right handed). Needless to say, this shot was a challenge that I practiced endlessly so that I could haul it out in desperation when I was losing a game of ghost or when my opponent had g-h-o-s and only needed the t. I was also bold enough to use it occasionally in games. Since I invariably ended up on the baseline when the shot went in, it appeared as if I was shooting from deeper in the corner than I actually was. I remember one game in which one of our opponents, who likely thought himself quite a shot maker, got rather frustrated about hitting the overhang trying to duplicate the shot that I had sunk a couple of times early in the game. The other thing I remember about the court was the surface. When we moved to Grande Ligne, it was a hardwood floor, that had seen better days, apparently a lot of them, and had warped terribly over the years. Rather than taking it up and relaying it, my dad and presumably Butch were convinced by a fast talking salesman that there was this new miracle synthetic surface that was the latest thing and soon would be replacing hardwood basketball courts throughout the land. My generation probably remembers it as a gray, dusty surface that despite being smoother than asphalt or concrete, had a consistency and resiliency somewhere between the two. It was supposed to be low maintenance; the salesman assured us that after it had been poured and hardened, all you had to do was seal it, paint it, and paint the lines for the various courts (black for basketball and white for badminton, I can't remember if there was a volleyball court but we also used orange, so maybe it was that). The surface was then supposed to be "absolutely maintenance free for years". I guess it probably was cheaper than ripping up and reinstalling the hardwood, but the "maintenance free" claim turned out to be something of an exaggeration since a dark ooze leached out of the underlying synthetic base onto the surface for the first several years, and the lines wore off every year. That meant that the floor and the lines had to be repainted virtually every summer. I remember much wailing and gnashing of teeth (but no swearing) as we performed the exacting annual ritual of laying out the masking tape and painting the lines. The claim about this surface replacing all the hardwood gym floors throughout the land may have also been a bit of an exaggeration. Although I've seen a number of synthetic gym floors over the years, all of these were of a much more resilient composite than the one we had, and I've never yet come across a floor anything like the one that was, and presumably still is, in Massey Hall, since that building was spared by the fire. There was at least one unqualified positive result from the great synthetic floor episode. The hardwood from the original gym floor was used to replace the ancient, disintegrating boards that formed the ground floor in the main building. Whoever laid this floor did a wonderful job, since when first installed the gleaming hardwood looked spectacular and it remained in great shape for as long as I was at Feller. |
