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Talk to the women who lived in 185 University Avenue from 1987 to 1990, and they’ll tell you it was Liz Greenaway, Artsci’90, who got them into the highly prized Victorian brick home, but it was “Dad” who kept them there.

During the three years Ms. Greenaway shared the home with the six instant sisters she’d met in her first year at Chown Hall, 185 University was a model of decorum: no parties on the lawn, no obnoxiously loud music (blaring the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing was considered a community service), no damage beyond normal wear and tear. Heck, you wouldn’t even see housemates lounging on the roof on a fine autumn day … except maybe that one time when “Dad” was away for the weekend.

“Dad” was what the housemates called Patti McDougall, Artsci’90. “If there was a rule, Patti made sure we followed it,” recalls Dr. Liz Stevens, Artsci’90, now a psychologist in Waterloo. 

Dr. Patti McDougall, who as interim provost of the University of Saskatchewan is kinda still “Dad,” also organized regular payment of the rent and utility bills. There would be no blemishes on the record of 185 University while “Dad” was in charge.

And with good reason: 185 was a sought-after address, a seven-bedroom beauty owned by the university and featuring crown moulding and stained-glass accents. Ms. Greenaway had “won” it in a community housing lottery in the winter of 1987, and knew instantly who would share it with her: Drs. McDougall and Stevens along with Christine Riley, Artsci’90, BEd’94; Robyn Croll, Artsci’90; Christine Chapman, Artsci’91, MEd’04; Bess Aramakis, Artsci’90; and Jeannie (Padfield) Mills, Artsci’90.

The new housemates were ecstatic; 185 University was 10 minutes from class, a hop, skip, and a jump from erstwhile student-quarter landmark Freddie’s Grocery, and a few doors down from the John Deutsch University Centre, where two of the housemates worked in the Quiet Pub (now Queen’s Pub). 

According to Dr. McDougall, the way the housing lottery system worked meant the housemates were guaranteed a lease for two years. “And then if you were well behaved and good tenants, you could ask to have it for a third year, and then you were considered a senior house.” The housemates definitely wanted that third year.

Being tenants of a senior house, Dr. McDougall explains, meant they had possession of the communal vacuum cleaner, shared with nearby university-owned houses. That must have made life easier for housemate Christine Chapman (let’s call her “Mom”), who, as Dr. McDougall recalls, “would routinely be cleaning up after us, and vacuuming …. She was really good.”

If “Mom” did most of the cleaning, the cooking was all hands on deck. The housemates made a point of eating together every night around their small dining table, sharing their days, commiserating over heartbreaks, soothing academic anxieties, growing ever dearer.

“Everybody had a night to cook,” says Liz Greenaway, “and then somebody else did the dishes that night. And if you cooked on Sunday, you could invite a guest if you wanted to.”

These days, the housemates are scattered across three provinces. “It is a testament to this bond that 35 years after graduating, we are still in touch,” says Ms. Greenaway.

“People go through divorce, or the loss of a parent, or, you know, challenges with their kids, and this is a group of people you could call, reach out to any time of day or night, and they’d be there for you,” says Dr. Stevens.

Somewhere in each of the former roommates’ homes is a shared touchstone, a water-colour by Kingston artist Rod Watson. It depicts 185 University, the bricks and mortar that begat a sisterhood all those decades ago.