I drove up to the campus from London with Mom and Dad, and it was a very stressful journey. Dad was cloaked in his customary silence, and Mom's sombre demeanour indicated that she was quite upset that her little girl was leaving home. Earlier that afternoon, I'd heard her crying in her room and couldn't help feeling sorry for her. Now she'd really be alone. The two of us had overcome our animosity toward one another and had achieved some measure of peace and harmony and now I would no longer be living with her.

In all likelihood, I'd fall in love at school, get married and start a family of my own. Well, she still had Jim, and now that he'd settled down somewhat and abandoned many of his "jungle buddies", the kid was actually becoming an ally to her as her marriage to our father quickly unravelled in the fall of 1974.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I spotted the university campus. It looked as though it could have been square in the middle of Siberia and the drab, monotonous starkness made me shudder inwardly. I discovered later that York University had been designed and constructed in 1965, in grim preparation for student riots which were igniting American campuses and threatened to creep northward.

One of the buildings had been erected as an actual fortress with a high stone wall, which could be manned with heavily-armed guards, guns ostensibly aimed at disruptive students. It was slate-grey, ominous and loomed out of the flat, barren surroundings, standing like some hideous relic of the Medieval era. This was where I was to spend the next four years of my life?

I turned to look at Mom, but she was busy trying to figure out ourbearings. "You're in Founders Residence. Let's see if there's someone we can ask for directions."

I returned my gaze to the desolate campus wasteland, with one building that cast tall, ebony smoke-stacks into the overcast sky and giving it the appearance of an industrial town.

There weren't many buildings in 1974. I've heard that the university is absolutely massive now, two decades later, but I haven't seen it since 1978. They were spaced far apart and were all decidedly unattractive. Western's campus, in comparison, was paradise-on-earth, with its stately, beige-brick edifices and lush, fertile grounds. I secretly wondered if I'd made a big mistake opting for this shuddering wilderness. I ruminated with bitter irony that York was predominantly Jewish, which made the striking similarity to a concentration camp utterly obscene.

I quickly forgot about the campus' ugliness upon reaching Founders Residence. It was a rather attractive brick building with a courtyard containing trees, believe it or not, and the rooms' windows cranked open sideways to take in the pleasant view. It looked like something out of Percy Bysshe Shelley's times and I knew I could tolerate the rest of the place if my living quarters were this capable of supporting life.

After helping me to unpack, Mom and Dad left, somewhat reluctantly. I felt a sharp jab of homesickness as I hugged my Mother tightly and promised to phone collect every Sunday night. Dad mumbled, "Good luck", but I could see that he was secretly proud of me for making it this far, after so much trouble in the past several years. I took comfort in the knowledge that I'd be home for Thanksgiving, only five weeks away.

After they'd left, I looked around at my living quarters and wondered how I could make them even more comfortable and familiar. It was a double room, for I'd decided that, in my freshman year, I would be more easily integrated into the residence society if I had a roommate.

Our beds were standard institutional singles and we each had a desk, large bookshelves, a heavy wooden chair and a plastic- cushioned, lounging type seat. There were fluorescent lights above the desks and a garish overhead one, which didn't do the room any justice. In short, it was a very typical dormitory room; nice, but in drastic need of some creative decorating.

I wondered about my roommate. She'd obviously already arrived, because there were two duffel bags, a large knapsack, countless cardboard boxes of clothes and an acoustic guitar strewn about. The guitar caught my attention and I pictured a hippie type, free spirited musician, with peasant blouses, sandals and love beads, looking frail, ivory-toned, with long, wavy hair.

So much for assumptions: Just then, a rather chubby, plain- looking girl entered, with shoulder-length flaxen hair and an open, ingratiating smile. She was dressed in ordinary jeans and a decidedly unhippie-like sweater. "Hi, I'm Wanda. Nice to meet you."

"Hi, my name's Jane. I guess you're stuck with me for the semester. I like your guitar."

"Thanks. My boyfriend Ike gave it to me. I don't play that great or anything, but it helps me relax. God, I miss that guy already. He's going to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. We've never been apart like this before."

Poor Wanda. She cried every night for weeks,and there wasn't much I could say or do to cheer her up. But I liked her. She was honest, affectionate and turned out to be a damned hard worker.

Since we were both English majors, we spent a great deal of time talking about our courses, and discussing our favourite authors, books, etc. Both of us enjoyed writing as well, and though we weren't certain what we would end up doing after graduation, we knew that some type of writing would be involved. I was thinking about doing my graduate work at Carlton University in Ottawa in journalism.

I'd kept a diary for the past three years and had brought it with me. It chronicalled my experiences with anorexia nervosa, drugs and my dismay over our family problems. I held onto this document for three more years, then got rid of it in 1977. It was just too painful a reminder of terrible times in my life, and thought that if I threw it out, I was denouncing the past and assuring myself that it would never repeat itself.

I met a fascinating assortment of kids during those first weeks at Founders, people to whom I was to grow extremely close over the next few years. Felicity was a gregarious, buxom blonde with a rabid Mickey Mouse fetish. She had a Mickey Mouse phone, comforter, pillow, sheets, stuffed animals, mouse ears, Mickey Mouse sweatshirts, notepads, pens, pencils, and everything imaginable. Walking into her room was tantamount to landing in a Disney Never-never Land of rodent adulation.

I was impressed that anyone would be so totally devoted to a cartoon character. Felicity was admittedly at York to study for her "MRS": That is, to find a prospective husband and then get the hell out. She ultimately succeeded, by the way, after meeting an affable, good-natured boy at our college pub and instantly beginning a whirlwind courtship.

Sylvia was younger, at seventeen, but had the maturity and poise of someone twenty or more. She was slightly pudgy, with large breasts, and hated the way they turned her into some plastic sex object. Sylvia was pretty, intelligent and well-bred and had a caustic wit and drop-dead sarcasm that drove the guys nuts. We got along very well from the start and I was impressed that she had spent her childhood in Kenya.

Brad looked a bit like Dustin Hoffman and had a quirky, semi- innocent quality about him. He was embodied with a great deal of common sense and had a streak of compassion a mile long. Gill and I both became instantly infatuated with his little-boy-lost sensuality.

Devon was the "resident clown", a goofy, Nutty Professor-esque kid with slightly buck teeth, geeky glasses and a haircut that belonged in some radical-cum-chic underground movie. I liked Devon for his brash humour and unconventional personality traits, but never grew particularly close to him. He was too off-the-wall and therefore somewhat intimidating.

Kenny was a kind-hearted, mild-mannered "gosh-darn-golly" guy who could have been played by Ron Howard and who many girls befriended for his honesty and intelligence. However they didn't become romantically linked to him because they thought he was too tame and milk-fed.

Sidney was dubbed "Founders' Queer" for obvious reasons. I despised the way people ridiculed this tall, sleekly svelte young man with a gorgeous mane of light brown hair and these voluptuously full lips. But Sidney was much more than just a pretty face; he was the quintessential modern scholastic tragic anti-hero, persecuted, yet bravely rising above the scorn and hatred by implementing his quiet, innate belief that "people are basically not all that bad a trip". I really liked this guy and so did Laura, and it wouldn't be long before the three of us bonded fast and hard, buffeting one another against the pain that would visit all of us.

And of course, I can't forget the famous team of Patrick and Adam. These two complete polar opposites were tossed together as roommates and the result was nothing short of comic genius. Patrick was a sheltered, virginal, desperately shy boy, who looked like Beaver Cleaver with his chubby, cherubic face and klutzy mannerisms.

Adam was the arrogant, egotistical son of a television newscaster who wanted to follow in Daddy's footsteps. He reminded me of Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. He thought he was God's gift to the female population and set about trying to bed each and every girl of Founders A House. You can imagine the inane results of pairing up these tow. Pat was positively repulsed by Adam's vulgarity and blatant sexism and Adam thought Patrick to be a hopeless, hapless mama's boy.

Mark was one of the many Jewish students at Founders, and was an extremely intense, studious and self-sufficient young man who knew, at nineteen, that he was capable of dealing with a serious marital relationship. He had wed Reva when he started university so the two of them lived in the married students' residence. Mark would become very important to me later on.

I left the two most significant members of Founders, as far as my life was concerned anyway, to the end of these descriptions, because they had the most effect on me; one beneficially and the other, quite detrimentally. Courtney was a study in vast complexity, mixed with a liberal dash of unabashed charisma and I never encountered anyone like her before. She was tiny, with short-cropped, very blonde hair, gigantic blue eyes that bored right into your cerebral cortex and a substantial, animated mouth that was rarely still.

She'd had a difficult time growing up, the product of strict, authoritarian parents with a hard set of rules and no margin for human error. Alice left home at fourteen, and was "adopted" by a loving landlady who made sure she attended school. It became necessary for her to get a job at sixteen, so she became a competent waitress at a restaurant called the Crock and Block.

This serious, single-minded survivor knew at an early age that she wanted to study psychology at university and earned every penny of the tuition herself. She depended upon no-one and was a person unto herself, shunning close, personal ties and preferring to appear strong and independent. However, there remained within Courtney that lost little girl who'd felt essentially unloved by her parents and who had been sexually abused by her eleven-year-old cousin at age five. Loneliness and depression would overtake her at times as she grew older and she realized that if she was to achieve a measure of happiness, it would be entirely up to her.

She began her studies at York in September of 1973 and had a difficult time in residence. She was unable to develop emotional relationships with the other students and lost herself in her studies. Courtney distinguished herself by becoming a fiercely diligent student and demonstrating a substantial amount of dignity.

When I met her, she was entering her sophmore year and was twenty-one years old, at least two years older than the rest of us. Some of the residents disliked her at first as she referred to us as "kids" and they took great offense to that.

"She thinks she's so damned superior", one girl snorted after Courtney breezed out of the common room one evening. "I'm no kid, for crying out loud."

I really liked her, for she had a certain worldliness and was stamped with the vestiges of experience, unlike most of us who'd always lived at home and were fresh out of high school. Not only that, but she was kindhearted, offering to buy me a coffee that first day and asking if I wanted to listen to her Leonard Cohen records.

This girl's room was a sight to behold. It was nearly completely camouflaged with a wide variety of lush, green plants, such as split-leaf philodendrons, spider plants and some species I'd never seen before. She had strung a large, heavy fish net across the ceiling and had antique lanterns hung everywhere. Posters on the wall ran the gamut from studiously arty to inspirational poetry by Kahlil Gibran. I was utterly diminished when I set foot in this junglescape.

That was Courtney: Creative ambition and very unique. What she lacked in social grace and the finer points of etiquette, she made up for with aplomb.

Courtney had been arduously pursued during her freshman year by a flamboyant male student who resided in Founders' co-ed dormitory. His name was Simon and he was something to behold. Simon had rebelled ferociously against the shaggy-headed, hippie threads of the times by cutting his dark hair very short and dressing exclusively in tailored business suits and black "pickle-stabbers".

This ultra-conservative mien was offset, however, by his manic consumption of alcohol and exceedingly extroverted personality. He was French-Canadian, and when intoxicated, would speak in a quasi-Francophone dialect, throwing expletives like "Tabarnac" around to show that he was truly bilingual.

He had a crude sense of humour and made the most aggravating sexist comments and jokes that I'd ever been privy to. My first reaction upon meeting him was "what an asshole."

Simon had evidently fallen hopelessly in love with the then long-haired Courtney, admiring her freshness and introverted shyness, but she thwarted all of his awkward advances. Still, the two of them would sit for hours, night after night in her elaborate bedroom, discussing philosophy, life's meaning, the ravages and pitfalls of life in the 1070's, and the future.

For it seemed that Simon possessed an alter ego to balance out the drunken clown with the obscene leer and penchant for dirty jokes: He was also extraordinarily compassionate, with a heart of gold, a boy who desperately needed to help people and guide them through life's battlegrounds. In his own way, Simon was every bit as complex and enigmatic as Courtney.

But the romance never blossomed. Courtney found it difficult to maintain relationships of any kind and though she genuinely liked Simon and appreciated his kindness, she recoiled at the notion of "going with" him.

So that was the Founders gang of 1974, at least the students I encountered during "frosh week", a five-day initiation program into the finer social points of being a properly decadent university student. I enjoyed the festivities, even our exposure to a strip club (upon Simon's suggestion) and by the time classes began, I knew that I was really going to like my stay in the Ivory Towers of Toronto.

* * * * * * * *
Academically speaking, my freshman year at York proved to be exciting and challenging, although I was not terribly enamoured with my Natural Sciences course (which involved the anatomy of the steam engine) I loved my English and Humanities ones. The latter was entitled "Illusion and Reality" and dealt with these properties in intricate detail.

We studied everything from R.D. Laing's "Sanity, Madness and the Family" to "The Tales of Hoffman", Offenbach's famous opera. Films were shown to us, like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and we learned all about epistemology and the philosophies of Descartes and Sartre.

With Professor Schneider and tutorial leader Bob MacMillan (who looked like a young but ravaged Albert Einstein, complete with droopy mustache) we delved into the fascinating theories of Carl Jung and seriously questioned what constituted an illusion and what proved that something was indeed real.

I loved thinking in such a uniquely abstract way and excelled in this course, spurred on by the contagious enthusiasm of MacMillan and the quiet intensity of Mr. Schneider.

My sociology selection was entitled "Women and Society" and explored the past and present roles of women, placing a large emphasis on the Women's Liberation Movement, which was in high gear at the time. One of our professors was Esther Greenglass, a renowned writer and speaker for women's issues. I was excited to be among such fertile, ground-breaking minds.

I also took Canadian literature and Romantic literature, and embraced them for exposing me to the works of Leonard Cohen and William Blake. Academe was expanding my mind in ways that I'd never dreamt possible and certainly more effectively than drugs ever had.

Our residence had parties nearly every weekend, involving the copious consumption of alcohol, dancing and talking for hours about music, sex, relationships and politics. We were revelling in the heady feeling of being away from home for the first time and "cutting loose". I dated quite a lot, but didn't particularly want a serious relationship. I was too busy having fun.

When I went home at Thanksgiving, I was happily stunned to find that Jim was now treating me with affection and respect. I guess he admired the fact that I was living alone in the Big City, where nights sprang to life in a wild, splashy circus of wonderment and I was no longer the pathetic loser. I felt the tremendous strain between our parents then, as if something was about to explode in a spectacular, fiery airburst and this was the silent countdown to Armageddon. I was relieved when it was time to return to York.

I met a wholesome-looking, pleasant-natured boy named Ben before Christmas, who was a Seneca College student. We began a fairly intensive relationship. I didn't fall in love with him, for I deemed Ben to be far too boring. He fell all over me and mooned those big, brown eyes of his at me constantly. I liked a little more friction, some sense of a challenge. Ben was simply too damned easy and convenient.

Mom adored him, though. He came home with me one weekend, bringing flowers for her and candy for me. "He's wonderful!" she enthused, hoping that she'd have him for a son-in-law someday. She still speaks wistfully of him to this day, twenty-one years later.

After Christmas, things started to fray a little around the edges. Eager to excel in my studies, but desirous of a healthy, energetic social life, I began to become extremely fatigued. I allowed myself only five hours of sleep a night and this semi- deprivation began to take its toll after a few weeks.

One afternoon, as I practically nodded off in my sociology lecture, a girl I knew casually, named Amber, leaned over and smiled, saying softly, "I used to have that problem, falling asleep in class all the time."

I looked at her. She was a pleasant-looking girl with thick, long hair parted squarely in the middle and a sly, ironic grin. I sat up straighter, somewhat taken aback that my sleepiness was that obvious. "Yeah?"

Amber put her hand over her mouth and whispered, "I get these pills from my doctor. They're great. I can stay up all night and never get tired.

I looked scornfully at her. "What? You mean Speed? I don't do that shit anymore."

Amber shook her head vehemently. "No, no, not beans. It's called Ritalin. They give it to hyperactive kids to settle them down, but it has the opposite effect on a normal person. They're perfectly safe and legal. Wanna try one?" I was suspicious but desperate. She procured a bottle and took out a little blue pill. "Swallow it with your coffee. Takes about twenty minutes to work."

Foolishly, I took her advice and within twenty-five minutes or so, I felt a jolt of adrenaline as my nervous system switched on to auxiliary power. As the lecture ended, I felt suddenly confident that I could get through the next class at full capacity. "Hey, thanks", I remarked gratefully. "So do I just go to a doctor and ask for this Ritalin?"

"Yup. I can get mine to take you on if you'd like. He's really cool."