Blast from the Past

(Note well: racy photos follow. Sensitive eyes may wish to seek protection.)

Occasionally the job of sifting through my dad's belongings yields memories that are not heavy with grief or the sobriety of lost eras. Sometimes what appears is just funny.

Take these photos for example, from my first year at McGill University (1994-95). At the insistence of the gal who moved in across the hall from my dorm room, I joined the rowing team (the McGill Crew) as a novice. Here's what resulted.

In this photo we're hauling kiester (or at least it felt like it, being novices; but we might have been going about three miles an hour for all I know) in an 8-man boat. I'm in 6-seat, the furthest on the left. The coxswain (almost always a tiny woman) is probably saying nasty things about our mothers to keep us motivated:

In this one we're setting a 4-man boat in the water. Behind you can see the buildings that accompany the Montreal Olympic Rowing Basin, afforded to the city of Montreal by the 1976 Olympics. We were blessed to be the only crew in eastern Canada with an actual basin, free from the normal currents and tides of rivers and lakes:

Of course if you're going to row, especially as a first-year, you've got to be able to look cool while standing on the dock:

Alas, however cool one looks in repose on the dock, there's no hiding the atrocity of one's legs on the way out to the pier:

I can't finish with that. Here's a shot of half our crew (we almost always rowed in an 8) trying out a 4.

Ahh, university life. When the world was just one big oyster waiting to be opened, and we didn't care what we looked like in spandex shorts.

~emrys