A GEE Aa il

iN HBR EW

by Hilary Clark

My interest in Capilano College began
when the school was only a "gleam in the
eye" of people like Peter Jones and Les
Brooks. I remember Caroline Smith and I
eollaring Peter after church one Sunday
and saying, "when can we apply to teach
at that new college? - we'd both like a
job." A year later, all dreams of an
exciting "Simon Fraser" - type, new
eollege were shattered when I met my
first class . . . on a Saturday morning in
1969, in the dirty awkward pottery lab.
of West Van High!

Interior Design is a fascinating course to
teach, but to teach it in the rooms I was
allocated was a fascinating challenge.
After the pottery lab. I graduated in
1972 to a Sunday school room at St.
David's United Chureh . . . and had to
teach the "effects of interior design on
the psyche" in a room whose drapes had
been made of a one-way patterned fabric
hung upside down! Highlands in 1973,
was a breath of fresh air after St.
David's, rather too fresh actually
beeause the furnace seemed to be
activated only for Sunday worship, a day
on which I never taught.

After Highlands we moved the entire
Retail Fashion programme to a
warehouse on Welch Street (1974). The
Art department had taken pity on us, and
generously offered to share their
accommodation. (Either that or misery
loves company.) We were assigned 400
square feet and access to a toilet which
overflowed with sickening regularity. A
great "esprit de corps" sucecoured the

inmates at Welch Street, and short of the
occasional shocks (fashion students
seeking the coffee machine through the
life drawing lab. and walking head on
into a totally nude male model; the Dean
searching out the Retail Fashion
coordinator (me) and _ opening the
elassroom door onto 25  ballet-tighted
students including the coordinator, all in
the lotus position with eyes closed. We
all got along surprisingly well.

The move into the portables on the North
campus in 1975 was marvellous. At last
the programme was on campus. We got
on campus Sunday at noon. I had an 8:30
elass Monday morning. Sunday noon, all
the equipment from Welch Street was in
a pile in the middle of the classroom
while the carpet layers finished gluing
down the carpet around the edges. My
husband, David, and my three sons,
helped me unpack and set up the room
for the early morning class.

The Tower was a breakthrough! Being
allowed actually to design the facility
the programme required, after all the
years of imperfect accommodation was
sheer bliss! We moved in with a sigh of
relief and satisfaction in the fall of 1976.

In retrospect the years before the Tower
hold tremendous nostalgia and romance.
It's hard to reeal the frustrations, the
awkwardness, the physical exhaustion
involved in teaching in the best that
eould be managed at the time. But we
all did manage, and we kept the students
learning and enjoying their college
experience, as we were, in the building

of today's college community. =

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