The three-storey semi at 182 University Avenue has changed since Peter Chalkley, Artsci’83, MBA’87, and his former roommates regularly littered its floors with the crumbs of the iconic banana bread supplied by the mother of Mike Gragtmans, Sc’83.
Its brick has the same pinkish cast that unsettled Mr. Chalkley in 1980, but gone is the long balcony running across the second-floor dartboard gallery that also served as Mr. Gragtsmans’ bedroom. The balcony had been the perfect perch from which to gauge the lineup outside Alfie’s, the pub in the John Deutsch University Centre just down the street, says Mr. Chalkley.
Gone too is the pictographic record of the colourful university careers of Mr. Chalkley and his third-floor housemate, Mark Parry – before Mr. Parry’s transfer to York University. It was scrawled in pencil across one hallway wall and down the staircase to the second floor. In an era before smartphone cameras, the pair would doodle whatever significant moment they wished to preserve, says Mr. Chalkley: “Winning a football game. Going to Alexandria Bay and missing the bus ride home …” along with a few other moments that might have been better left unillustrated.
“It was a very Picasso kind of thing: random thoughts of a misspent youth,” says Mr. Chalkley.
He and his housemates had lucked out with 182 University – literally. The home had been part of an Alma Mater Society housing lottery in the spring of 1980 and was won by Laurie Lloyd, Artsci’83. “I knew her, I knew Mark, Mark knew Ian [Friendly, Com’83],” says Mr. Chalkley. “We weren’t a big group of friends; we just came collectively together from different faculties.” The sixth member of their motley band was a one-time Queen’s Journal business manager, Dr. Sarah Borwein, Artsci’83.
Rent for each of them was $50 a month that first year. Mr. Chalkley remembers penning an indignant letter to the Queen’s Journal when it went up to $75 the following year.
They pooled resources for groceries and took turns cooking, regardless of culinary skill. Mr. Chalkley recalls how hard it was mashing potatoes for shepherd’s pie the first time he made it. He phoned his mom and remembers her advice: “You just boil them first, sweetheart.”
If they were lucky, they had Mrs. Gragtmans’ banana bread for dessert. It was a regular part of Mike Gragtmans’ care packages from home and much prized by the housemates at 182 University. “Mike would share it, but if you ran afoul of him or pissed him off … the big line was, ‘You are banned from my banana bread.’”
The best thing about 182 University was its location, says Mr. Chalkley: practically on campus. It invited school involvement and the housemates responded. “I worked at the bookstore, Laurie worked at the Quiet Pub, Mike worked at Alfie’s,” says Mr. Chalkley. “Sarah was on the rowing team, Ian was AMS president for a year, I was a cheerleader.”
In their second year in the house, the housemates enthusiastically took lead roles organizing Frosh Week. “We were just in love with the [Queen’s] life, you, know?
“We were all just so privileged to be there at that time with money and health, wide-eyed and making so many friends, and being part of so many different things,” Mr. Chalkley recalls of his time at 182 University. “Everything just came together.”
Tell us about the University District house you lived in and the memories you made.
