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In the fall of 1977, during her first semester at Queen’s, Julie Epplett, Artsci’81, faced a hard moment of truth: she didn’t like her major.

It was difficult to admit since she had always told herself – and her family – that Queen’s commerce was her chosen path. But she was deeply unhappy, and by Christmas had resolved to drop out of university. 

“I just was very, very upset that I was going to disappoint my father, that this was not working out for me,” remembers Ms. Epplett, now 67.

Queen’s was an engrafted part of Ms. Epplett’s DNA. Her father, John, Sc’58, was a proud Queen’s engineering alumnus, while her grandfather, Dr. William A. “Doc” Campbell, MD’24, captained the Grey Cup-winning Gaels football team in 1923. Her great-grandfather, Arthur Lewis Clark, was the third dean of applied science at Queen’s; Clark Hall is named in his honour. 

Not surprisingly, it took Ms. Epplett some time to screw up the courage to tell her father of her decision to abandon the family’s alma mater.

“I had to break this horrible news to my dad, and I just knew it was going to break his heart,” she says.

The news cast a pall over the family’s Christmas Eve celebrations. 

The next day, her father called his old high-school friend, Duncan Sinclair, PhD’63, LLD’00, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The two had bonded while attending Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI). Mr. Epplett asked Dean Sinclair if he could talk some sense into his daughter. 

So it was that Ms. Epplett slouched with her father over to Dean Sinclair’s house on Christmas Day 1977. Since the living room was still crowded with the chaos of Christmas morning, Dean Sinclair invited her to the basement to talk. (This same basement would later serve as the incubator for the Tragically Hip. Dean Sinclair’s son, Gord, was a founding member of the band; Hip guitarist Rob Baker lived across the street.)  

When Ms. Epplett’s father started down the stairs, too, Dean Sinclair told his old friend to wait in the living room. This was a conversation between dean and student. 

After listening to Ms. Epplett describe her unhappiness and her desire to drop out, Dean Sinclair asked her if there were any courses she did enjoy at Queen’s. Ms. Epplett said she loved psychology and ethics – courses that were not part of her major.

Dean Sinclair considered that fact then offered the simple, straightforward advice that would change the course of Ms. Epplett’s life.

“Don’t quit school,” he told her in no uncertain terms. “Just find something else you want to study here.” 

Ms. Epplett said she had been tied for so long to the idea of pursuing a commerce degree that it had never occurred to her there was another way forward. 

Dean Sinclair told her the Queen’s experience is larger than any one classroom or any one subject. He related a story about how he drove past a fully lit Douglas Library one Friday evening and marvelled at all the students still inside bent to their books. Dean Sinclair told her he wanted to stop in and tell them, “It’s OK to go out on a Friday night. You don’t have to spend all of your time studying.”

Ms. Epplett drew a simple lesson from his story: “The message that I got is, ‘Your time here is about more than just the books.’”

She left Dean Sinclair’s house with a new sense of purpose: to explore all that Queen’s had to offer.

“I was very, very relieved,” remembers Ms. Epplett. “I think I was probably still a little concerned about what my dad would think. But deep down, I knew my dad would be happy to have me at Queen’s. I think, behind the scenes, my mum was probably very happy for me, too, that I was able to pursue higher education more on my own terms than anybody else's.”

Freed to explore, Ms. Epplett cast a broad net. She became involved in the residential council at Jean Royce Hall. She studied art history, film, literature, religion, ethics, and psychology, and was moved by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that described his experience in Nazi concentration camps – and what it taught him about finding purpose even in the face of tragedy. 

She was compelled by lectures from author Robertson Davies and visiting professor David Suzuki, an environmental activist and geneticist. 

“The thoughts and ideas filled me, really satisfied me,” Ms. Epplett remembers. “I was just learning, just filling my soul with all this wonderful literature and history and, I think, becoming a more well-rounded student of the world.”

Still, Ms. Epplett had to decide on a new direction for her career. She had taken an unusual path to Queen’s: Her father’s job as a civil engineer had sent the family around the world, with stops in New York, Missouri, and Saudi Arabia, among other places. Ms. Epplett spent her final year of high school in Switzerland. 

Her vagabond upbringing instilled in her a passion for travel, and she decided to fashion a career around it. Ms. Epplett landed a job in a travel agency at Kingston’s Frontenac Mall while still at Queen’s.

The position would mark the beginning of a long and eclectic career in the travel, hotel, and hospitality industries. 

She worked at several travel agencies in Toronto before moving to Sydney, Australia, and then Kuwait. In her spare time, she indulged her other principal passion: dance. She performed in musical theatre during her four years in Kuwait. 

“Travel and dance have been the through lines of my life,” she says. 

After returning to Toronto, she worked at the Four Seasons Hotel, the Sutton Place Hotel, the Korean Travel Board, and as a travel agent specializing in high-end trips that companies used to reward their best employees. The job took her to exotic locales around the world. 

At one of them, a scuba-diving mecca in Borneo, she befriended a New York woman who would later introduce her to West Coast Swing, a modern form of swing dancing. Ms. Epplett fell in love with it and ultimately launched a West Coast Swing dance school in Toronto. She calls the business her “side hustle.” 

Ms. Epplett continues to teach dance while also working as a site selection consultant for a large U.S. travel firm.

“It has been a wonderful life,” she says. “I’m doing work I never could have imagined – all because I followed my bliss.”

Ms. Epplett is immensely grateful for the happiness and fulfilment that career has brought her – and she traces it all back to that fateful conversation on Christmas Day 1977. For years, she tried to get in touch with Dean Sinclair to thank him for his kindness and wisdom.

Unable to track him down on the internet, she approached the Alumni Review last year in an attempt to find an address for Dean Sinclair so she could write him. The Review proposed an in-person reunion between student and dean. 

Ms. Epplett was thrilled at the chance to reconnect.

“I just want to thank him for taking time to accept us into his home, and offering me his advice, but making it my decision,” she says. “I didn’t feel pressured into anything – nothing was imposed on me – and it gave me the opportunity to discover what Queen’s could give me. It was this wonderful opportunity to just learn, and to find myself.”

In late January, the two met in Summerhill, where Ms. Epplett expressed her teary-eyed appreciation to Dean Sinclair for what she called the “life-changing moment” in his basement.   

“It never occurred to me that I could change course and actually just take whatever I want,” she told him. “I kind of had tunnel vision.”

Dean Sinclair is 92 and lives in a retirement home in Kingston. He doesn’t often get a chance these days to meet with Queen’s students so was pleased to hear about his impact on Ms. Epplett’s life – even if he couldn’t recall the specifics of their encounter.  

But Dean Sinclair says he would offer indecisive young students similar advice today. 

“I would say, ‘I have no idea what you want to do, but you have to explore enough openings to begin to know what you want to do, and what you’re really interested in,’” he says. 

The advent of artificial intelligence, he adds, should not dissuade students from pursuing a general education before deciding on a specific career path. He firmly believes in the importance of a broad-based education. 

“If you’re educated, you can do anything,” he says, “because you’ll know how subsequently to get trained or to train yourself.”

Dean Sinclair’s own career traced a circuitous route. As a young man, he was determined to follow in the footsteps of his father, Dr. Robert Sinclair, BA’24, a distinguished scientist recruited from the United States to become the founding head of biochemistry at Queen’s.

But a series of personal opportunities led him in different directions. He received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the Ontario Veterinary College, a master’s in science from the University of Toronto, then a doctorate in physiology from Queen’s. He joined the Queen’s faculty in 1966 after two years of post-doctoral medical research at St. John’s College, Cambridge, then moved into administration as the university’s Dean of Arts and Science from 1974 to 1983. 

He was subsequently appointed to three vice-principalships, then served as Dean of Medicine, the first non-medical doctor to hold the position.

After he retired from Queen’s in 1996, Dean Sinclair chaired the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission, which overhauled the province’s troubled health-care system. He was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada for his many contributions to health care. 

“There are all kinds of opportunities out there,” Dean Sinclair says in reflecting on his career. “Missing an opportunity is not only sad, but it’s a terrible waste.”

The dean’s reunion with Ms. Epplett also produced an unexpected connection between the two. Dean Sinclair revealed he had reason to be thankful for the actions of Ms. Epplett’s late grandfather, Mr. Max Epplett, a mathematics and music teacher at Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI). 

“He rescued me from having to go to Korea,” the dean told Ms. Epplett. 

Born in Rochester, N.Y., Dean Sinclair received his draft notice from Monroe County, N.Y., while a senior high-school student at KCVI. The draft notice could have sent him to the Korean War but for the fact that Dean Sinclair had already sworn allegiance to a foreign Crown – the Canadian monarch – as a reserve member of the Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment, a famed infantry regiment based in Kingston. 

Dean Sinclair had joined the reserve at Mr. Epplett’s urging since it allowed him to be a paid member of the regimental band. That invitation, he says, saved him from being drafted to serve with U.S. forces in Korea.

Dean Sinclair and Ms. Epplett hugged as they parted company.

“Enjoy life,” he told her. 

“I do,” she assured him. “I do.”

One day after the extraordinary reunion, Ms. Epplett sent an email to the Alumni Review. 

“I hardly know how to express my gratitude,” she began. “I will never forget looking into Dean Sinclair’s eyes and being able to tell him, ‘It’s so great to see you again’ and ‘thank you.’”

It was gratifying, she says, to be able to convey to him the impact he had on the course of her life. 

So, what advice would Ms. Epplett give now to young students who find themselves less than compelled by their own chosen field of study? 

“You have to find what interests you and find out what fills your soul,” she says. “It’s not a frivolous thing to find out what you want, what is good for you, and what makes you happy. If it feels right, just continue on and follow the branches. You don’t know where they’re going to lead, but that’s OK.”