Olumide Joseph, Sc鈥12, didn鈥檛 get great marks during his first year at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (now the Stephen J.R. Smith Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science). Turns out, there was a silver lining.
To continue in engineering, Mr. Joseph needed to enrol in the faculty鈥檚 Extended Program, a catch-up regimen established more than 50 years ago to help students who struggle with the rigorous curriculum in first year. Known as J-Section, the program includes six weeks of classes during what would normally be the summer break.
And it was during those six weeks that Mr. Joseph made his best friends at Queen鈥檚. 鈥淔or the summer, we had classes together so we all became like really good buddies,鈥 he says. By the end of J-Section, the new friends figured it would be great to live together.
It didn鈥檛 happen right away. They all had housing commitments for the next year, and not long after, Mr. Joseph had to take a break from his studies for personal reasons. But in the spring of 2008, the stars aligned: four of his friends from J-Section were already living in a 2陆-storey century brick home at 73 Nelson St., and three of their housemates were moving out. Mr. Joseph and two others snapped up the vacant rooms, and his J-Section crew was reunited.
鈥淲hen the opportunity came for us to all live together, we all jumped on it,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t was just so fun. We did a lot of things together.鈥
One of his housemates had a job delivering the Queen鈥檚 Journal to homes in the university district, but the paper route soon became a community undertaking. 鈥淎ll the guys would help him with deliveries,鈥 says Mr. Joseph, who describes tooling around the campus precincts in a van the J-Section crew dubbed the Blue Angel.
And, not surprisingly, this houseful of engineers MacGyvered the internet in each of the seven bedrooms so the group could have in-house LAN (Local Area Network) parties, playing multi-player video games without the lag of Wi-Fi.
The house at 73 Nelson was a fair distance from campus, Mr. Joseph admits. 鈥淚t was a 15-minute walk at a fast clip,鈥 he says. The upside was that it was closer to the nightlife on Princess Street.
Not that Mr. Joseph and his pals had to leave 73 Nelson when they wanted to let off steam; they essentially had a pub on site. 鈥淥ne of the guys was pretty good at woodworking so he and his dad put the pieces together [for a bar] and then we assembled it in the house and painted it.鈥
They put the bar in a main-floor den, stocked it with communal refreshments, and added a dart board and a foosball table. It became a neighbourhood destination, Mr. Joseph says. Given that the houses on either side were also occupied by Queen鈥檚 students, there was plenty of opportunity to socialize.
The housemates even had a kind of uniform for a time. When they realized they each had the same kind of plaid in their wardrobes, 鈥渨e just went plaid all the time.鈥
Mr. Joseph is now a consultant in electrical design in Toronto, a long way from the drafty bedrooms and balky radiators of 73 Nelson, but the old house, and the friends who shared it with him, still hold a place in his heart.
Tell us about the University District house you lived in and the memories you made.
