The Student Union Building was brand new that year. We were the first occupants, for instance, of The Martlet, The Tryst and the Radio Society offices and studios. Gordon Ferne was the Rad. Soc.'s president that year and his society enjoyed a vast change from the hut behind the Young Building that it had occupied on the old campus. It would be fine to know what Gordon went on to in life. It was Gordon Ferne's Radio Society, after all!
Please, you readers, if you recognize faces here or have biographical information for people like Gordon Ferne or just have UVic anecdotes that communicate the flavour of those years of innocence, send them along. We are already at the age where such information is beginning to disappear with its bearers. Do let's record it.
That huge new S.U.B. that we moved into is very nearly unrecognizable today. Like the rest of our snug and comfy post 'fifties world, it has been expanded and yupped and made nigh grotesque. The wing that you see in the background here, which to us was the structure that housed the vast lounge and performance space, is now just a part of a terrible expansion and modernization. Today, the interior of this space appears to be a women's common room. (Say, do you remember the dark, dingy, smoke filled but oh so comfy men's common room down in the basement of the Young Building? It was just inside the East ground floor entrance. The corridor was a little below grade and the common room was along the South side of the corridor. Hearts was the game.) The vast empty reaches that we see beyond in this photograph are, today, all built up with residences with parking lots behind them again. Ehue.
Speaking of women, here are the first two photographs of UVic days. It's clubs' day in frosh week and here's one of the girls' clubs' displays set up on the walkway in front of the S.U.B. The club, as you may see from the notice on the tee-pee, admits squaws only.
Please, one of you squaws who was up at UVic in 1963, please advise what this club was about (apart from man hating, that is)?
A pair of sunglasses, certifiable refugees from the 'fifties.
Names, please, ladies. Some of you out there can identify some of these girls. The Indian maiden who is the smoker here was at Oak Bay, wasn't she? She looks familiar.
