Freshman on Campus

Mining school. What was I thinking? I wasn’t, apparently.

The facts as I knew them. Timmins was/is a mining town. So, I was very aware of mining as an employable industry, with thousands of jobs in the district. My neighbour, George Miller, worked for Texas Gulf (the anomalous copper mine in a gold camp) for as long as I knew him, so did his brother, so did most of his friends. Marc Aube, my future ex-brother-in-law, had gone off to the college to take Mining Engineering Technology at Northern College’s Haileybury School of Mines campus. Aside from that, I was utterly clueless about mining. I had never been particularly good at math or physics, so why did I choose that as a career path? I have no idea, not a one. But I had enrolled, was accepted, they took my money, and I was on my way. Glory be.

College began in the usual way, as I’d learn in the coming years. I packed the essentials, not knowing what said essentials might actually be. Dishes, cutlery, clothing. Most everything I owned was still at home, only two and a half hours away, so all was not lost should I discover I’d forgotten that crucial this or that. But I did pack what I thought I would need for the year, including winter gear.

I need not have packed winter gear yet. I was a young 18 and travelled home every weekend that first year, regardless what might be happening in Haileybury. All my friends were still in Timmins, still in high school, where, I believe now, I should still have been, too. Water under the bridge.

Did I enjoy that first year? Yeah, I suppose I did. I’m of mixed opinion about that. Did I really enjoy where I was, what I was doing, who I was living with, who I was meeting and hanging around with that first year. No, I did not, not particularly. There were some guys I liked or I wouldn’t have stuck it out, I suppose. But I was persistent. I was tenacious. I was stubborn.

I packed everything I/we thought I needed into the trunk of my parent’s car and we drove the two and a half hours to Haileybury in a talkative state. I was nervous, new chapter in life and all that, the knot in my gut tighter with every kilometer. We arrived, piled out of the car, and were greeted by my landlady, Shirley. I’d opted to live in the same rooming house as Marc, the same place he’d lived in the year before, 680(?) Lakeshore Rd. S, on the corner of Georgina Street (Georgina is little more than a laneway).

Shirley’s rooming house was a two-story house, with a converted attic. We students were crowded in, five to the 2^nd floor, with the potential for four more on the 3^rd. Marc said the rooming house was full the year before, but I don’t recall there being boarders on the 3^rd that year. My room was a long, narrow closet overtop the porch roof, hanging off the front of the house and exposed to Lake Temiskaming. Its floor sloped away from the center of the house in two directions. I would discover it cold and drafty in the coming months, the space heater within running 24-7 just to keep the icy winds that blew off the lake at bay. Winds howled off its walls, traffic sounds rattling them as clear as day, despite its paper-thin insulation. Dan Seguin shared my precarious perch across the hall to the north. He had the worst of it; he awoke one morning to discover a snow drift laid over his scalp. The one phone available to all tenants was set between us. Cream coloured, rotary dial, as heavy as a brick; remember that? My mother was probably horrified of the prospect of leaving me there for a year, but she handed over the postdated cheques, all the same. We left the house, drove up to the school at the top of the hill, went inside, and looked around for a few minutes. There wasn’t much to take in. It was an old school, two stories, two hallways, one stacked atop the other, and no more. The expected graduating class photos lined the halls, between classroom doors. Peering through windows revealed an amphitheater, labs, classes, much like any school, but with higher ceilings than most. Lots of aged oak. There was a gym, a library. With that, the tour was complete. We found a restaurant, ate, and then there were hugs and kisses all around, and with me holding back my tears and fear of abandonment, I watched my parents drive away.

That’s when the drinking began. Marc took me in hand, so to speak, and the house dragged me to the Matabanick Hotel to initiate me.

The Matabanick was a dilapidated, somewhat tumbledown, hole in the wall, even then. God knows what it looks like now, if it still exists (I’ve seen its exterior on Google Maps, so I suppose it still does). We tumbled in and I saw tables wrapped around its thrust bar, a stage near the entrance on its north wall, washrooms and jukebox on the west, pool tables to the east, beyond which, I remember, was an enclosed porch where the shuffleboard table lived. There were fellow students already in attendance when we arrived, some already three sheets to the wind.

Rounds were bought, and I immediately fell behind. I didn’t have the year or more of their future 12 step program under my belt. The night flew by, and then dragged by. Towards its end, there were five opened, untouched blurry beers floating on the table awaiting me. But I could not drink anymore. I was so drunk that my body refused to swallow more than a drop at a time before my throat closed to it. I heard coaxing from some distant fuzzy voices, and what I suspect mockery from others. There was mockery. Given time, given proximity, exposure, and familiarity with these people, I began to recognize from which voices each came. I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake coming there.

We stumbled back to the house, and I was introduced to the 680 Lakeshore 1 am tradition: after-hour’s spaghetti and Bravo sauce and about a litre of choked back water.

School began the next day under the cloud of the worst hangover of my life. No classes, thankfully, just the expected hazing. We wore togas for the occasion, much as I did for O’Gorman’s now distant prep rally induction.

There were activities the whole week, usually scavenger hunts and the like, usually involving more beer and rye and vodka and shots. Sign-ups for clubs, to which I chose archery, thinking that might be the coolest club I’d ever heard of, or imagined. And classes. I met new people, those who I’d be spending the next year with. Hangovers every morning. Comas interrupted by the incessant blare of the fire engine red Big Ben wind-up alarm clock that would accompany my entire post-secondary career.

Then came Friday, the first weekend of college. I bought a ticket on the Northlander bus to Timmins, to get home and dry out for two days before beginning the process all over again.

I was so happy to see my friends. They missed me. They pounced on me. They buried me with questions. I filled their heads with stories and expectations of what for them was yet to come.

Thus ended my first week of college. I’m surprised that I remember anything at all.