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Don’t forget the ’40s

I enjoyed reading the Fall 2023 Class Notes. The 1950s and the 1970s are there – but where are the 1940s? I am a graduate of Arts 1948. There cannot be many of us left (I will be 98 in December!) but here are a few memories I’d like to share.

Enrolment for 1948 and 1949 was huge. The war was over and young Canadians who had been in the armed forces abroad were happy to stop fighting, put aside their uniforms, and go back to school.

Jim Barker, (Captain, Canadian Artillery, and D-Day veteran) was one of these. He enrolled at Queen’s in 1948 and so did I, a high-school graduate from Kingston.

Aside from academics, there were, of course, plenty of extra-curricular activities. There was a good football team and great rivalry between Queen’s, the University of Toronto, Western University, and McGill. I was a cheerleader (not a very good one – I had difficulty doing a cartwheel and I mostly remember being very cold!).

In those days, the Queen’s Journal office was a long, cold, windowless room in the basement of the old Arts building. We thought it was fine and weren’t bothered by the chill or the cigarette smoke (almost everyone smoked in those days).

I applied for a job on the Journal and was told that I would be assistant to the sports editor, who knew a lot about sports but was somewhat lacking in literary skills. So, he wrote the sports column and I corrected his grammar and spelling. I knew very little about sports, but the sports editor’s desk happened to be beside the Journal editor’s desk, and I was very interested in the Journal editor, Jim Barker.

We both graduated in 1948. After graduation, Jim went to Switzerland to pursue a doctorate in Geneva. Seeking employment after my graduation, (proudly saying, “I have a BA from Queen’s”) I was inevitably asked, “That’s very nice, dear, but can you type?” I couldn’t, so I took a crash-course in typing and shorthand. This enabled me to go to England, live in London with family friends, and work as a stenographer.
Switzerland was not very far from England, and Jim kept showing up in London “to do research for his thesis” – at least, that’s what he said. We were married in 1951 and led a happy and peripatetic life with two sons.

Jim died, age 93, in 2014.

Barbara Barker, nee Bermingham, Arts’48

Editor’s note: The Alumni Review welcomes Class Notes from all years. Regrettably, we receive very few from the ’40s and ’50s but do publish all those that we receive.