Back when Ban Righ Hall was the newest building on campus, and the rolls of living Queen’s graduates numbered about 145,000 fewer than today, when William Lyon Mackenzie King was prime minister, and former prime minister Sir Robert Borden was Queen’s Chancellor, they called it Reunion. Truth be
told, it was often referred to as the Old Boys’ Reunion even though, by then, Queen’s had been graduating women for more than 40 years.
Within 10 years of its 1926 inaugural celebration, the name had changed to Alumni Weekend, a name that would later fall away before creeping back into use in the 1980s for a spell. But, at its heart, and in the hearts of Queen’s alumni, it has always been what it first came to be called in the 1950s, a homecoming. And the heart of Homecoming has always been the Homecoming game, and the hoopla that attends the day.
It is a day made of tradition and memory. Some traditions have changed; fall convocation, once a focal point of Homecoming, has outgrown the day, and genteel afternoon-tea dances hosted by Levana, the erstwhile campus women’s association, are now the dimmest of sepia-toned reminiscences. But there has always been the game, the parade, the Bands, the Oil Thigh. And there has always been that renewed sense of pride, belonging, and perhaps above all, gratitude.
Sometimes, Homecoming has been overshadowed by bigger events: a world war, a global pandemic. Consider this touching vignette, written for the Queen’s Journal by Chris Redmond, Artsci’71, following Homecoming game day, Oct. 17, 1970, about students unwinding in Victoria Hall at the end of a long, satisfying day: “One o’clock on Homecoming victory night, flushed from the semi-formal, sunburnt from sideline cheering, and then the chime of a transistor’s news report hits into the din of floor parties and the ether of lonesome common rooms. We are number one, but in Quebec, in this our same glorious country, murderers are loose.”
The murder of Pierre Laporte, just days after the Journal had devoted most of one edition to the FLQ Crisis, will always cast a pall on the memory of the 1970 Homecoming. But the larger point is that Homecoming has touched and been touched by 100 years of history, the history of Queen’s, of Canada, of the world. This is the theme of the timeline that follows: one day whose essential elements endure, marked by a century of unfolding events and changing perspectives.
To create this day in the life of Homecoming, we have scoured old records and solicited alumni memories. The times listed for the scenarios below are sometimes approximations, based on the recorded times of events on the particular day recalled. For clarity, we have used the full name of George Richardson Memorial Stadium to identify the stadium in its original location, near present-day Tindall Field. When referring to its present location on West Campus, we use the more common Richardson Stadium.
7 a.m., Courtyard, Grant Hall
Oct. 20, 2018
The sky above the limestone tower of Theological Hall is just starting to show pink as the last of more than 18,000 names is projected on the north wall of Grant Hall. It is the 31st night of Queen’s participation in The World Remembers: a century of memories commemorating more than a million lives lost around the world in the last year of the First World War. The names of the dead will continue to be projected on campus each night between 8 p.m. and daybreak until Nov. 11. For Queen’s, the commemoration is personal: 187 alumni and students died in the war, among them Capt. George Taylor Richardson, Sc’1909, a name that has always been linked to Homecoming. Every single Homecoming game has been played at a memorial stadium bearing his name, as will the game against the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees later this day.
9:30 a.m., student quarter
Oct. 20, 2018
Patricia Dennis, NSc’88, knows that members of her 30th reunion class are already gathering at the Cataraqui Building, where the School of Nursing is hosting its annual reunion brunch. But she can’t help feeling that the impromptu reunion-weekend student breakfast party she and a few of her classmates, clad in their Nursing’88 jackets, have stumbled upon has more of the spirit of Homecoming than anything on the official agenda. “We were treated like a Queen’s alumnus should be treated,” she will later recall. “The students bowed to us and couldn’t give us enough attention … We sang their songs, danced with them … We were a little late [for the brunch], but the memories are unforgettable.”
10:30 a.m., Grant Hall
Nov. 13, 1926
Newly elected president Robert Oliver Sweezey, Arts’08, presides over what is, in essence, the first meeting of the General Alumni Association (now the Queen’s University Alumni Association), following a unanimous vote by most of the 850 Queen’s grads and former students attending Queen’s first official alumni reunion. “We are building for future generations,” he would later write.
11:15 a.m., Johnson Street
Sept. 27, 2008
Sharon Nagle, BEd’88, and her one-time Queen’s housemates are killing time before a keenly anticipated Homecoming game against the Western Mustangs. They’re taking pictures of each other on the porch of the Johnson Street home they had shared 22 years before, when the door suddenly opens. The alumnae are welcomed inside by the home’s current tenants, second-year engineering students. “We ended up sitting around the kitchen table with the boys,” Ms. Nagle later recalled in a story in the Queen’s Journal, “sharing stories about what Queen’s was like 20 years ago. We completely forgot about the football game.” It was, she said, “a very sweet memory of coming home.”
11:30 a.m., Grant Hall
Oct. 20, 1945
Little more than a year after appearing on the cover of Time magazine for his role as commander of the 1st Canadian Army in the liberation of Europe, Gen. Harry Crerar addresses the fall convocation during the first alumni reunion since 1939. The war has touched Queen’s deeply: 164 students and alumni have been killed in action, and Queen’s now has a School of Nursing, thanks in part to wartime needs. Gen. Crerar speaks of the need to avoid such conflagrations in the future. “Just as a doctor investigates both the prevention and cure of disease,” he tells graduates, “so a soldier should study the prevention of war.” Gen. Crerar will perform the ceremonial kickoff at the Homecoming game against Varsity that afternoon.
12:15 p.m., Richardson Stadium
Oct. 24, 2015
As Taylor MacPherson, ConEd’15, approaches the stadium, she knows she is not well. Inside the foam and fabric shroud that, on the outside, looks like a smiling tartan-clad bear named Boo Hoo, she is light-headed, sweating profusely, and definitely not smiling. On an unseasonably warm fall day, after a longer than usual Homecoming parade from Grant Hall at the head of the Queen’s Bands, and despite sipping constantly from the camel pack of water on her back, she is feeling the early signs of heatstroke. The Bands march inside a side entrance none too soon for Ms. MacPherson, who tears off the oversized bear head, breathes deeply, and promptly upchucks. Almost a century before, at the first Homecoming game, Boo Hoo had been a real bear, raising muted concerns about animal welfare. At least, Ms. MacPherson might have noted, the bear didn’t have to wear a fur coat.
12:25 p.m., George Richardson, Memorial Stadium
Oct. 18, 1969
Barely two months removed from his home in Kerala, India, Raja Mathew, MSc’72, had been delighted to learn that a football game was a big part of the Homecoming weekend he had heard so much about. “I come from that part of the world, actually the rest of world, where football is what you call soccer here,” he recalls. But now, he stares down at the field in bewilderment. It is divided by a chalked grid, its goals have no netting, and the goalposts extend several metres above the crossbar. The players who stormed the field moments before look alien: helmeted, padded, and wearing tight knickerbockers. He and two other Indian students he recently met on campus exchange glances. The only thing that makes sense to these fledgling Gaels is the Oil Thigh, which they happily sing and dance whenever it inexplicably breaks out in the noisy crowd. Queen’s eventually defeats U of T 24–17, but Mr. Mathew is not sure how. “We sat for three hours totally confused,” Mr. Mathew will later say. “Of course, we love football now, but that day is etched in our memory forever.”
12:35 p.m., Richardson Stadium
Oct. 17, 2025
Donald Mallory, Sc’54, and Fred Siemonsen, Sc’54, make their way gingerly to their seats atop the west-side stands, brightly decked out in their vintage golden silk engineering jackets. More than 70 years ago, they wore them constantly, on and off campus; now the jackets will be their uniform for the Tricolour Guard Parade at halftime. Mr. Mallory understands why applied science students eventually opted for leather jackets – silk won’t stand up to experiments in a metallurgy lab – but he’s not sure why they don’t see them more often. When he was a young engineer working in Chilliwack, B.C., with a girlfriend in Vancouver, his Queen’s jacket was his ticket to romance. “I would hitchhike down with my jacket on, and Queen’s guys would pull over without me even putting my thumb out.”
1 p.m., Grant Hall – and online everywhere
Oct. 17, 2020
Drum Major Harry Wright stands decidedly alone outside Grant Hall in full regalia: Royal Stewart tartan, gleaming white spats, domed mace, towering black bearskin … and matching surgical face mask. Recorded on a cellphone and webcast to alumni around the world, Drum Major Wright is kicking off Queen’s virtual reunion in the middle of a pandemic. “We may not all be together this year, but fear not,” says the drum major, “because today’s festivities are jam-packed with celebrations to connect us from around the world.” From her home on Gabriola Island. B.C., CBC’s Shelagh Rogers, Artsci’77, co-hosts the event, with QUAA President Rico Garcia, Artsci’13, who logs in from Toronto. The event includes socially distanced performances of the Oil Thigh submitted by alumni around the globe, a tribute to the Tricolour Guard, and a performance by Gord Sinclair, Artsci’86, of the Tragically Hip, three years after the death of Hip frontman Gord Downie.
1:05 p.m., Richardson Stadium
Oct. 29, 2015
Professor Emeritus Art McDonald, DSc’17, stands midfield, considering such variables as mass, velocity, acceleration, and torque as well as the aerodynamics of a prolate spheroid (a.k.a. “pigskin”). Prof. McDonald is about to perform the ceremonial kickoff at the Homecoming game against the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks just three weeks after an early-morning call from Stockholm informing him he was the co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics. After a quarter-century relationship with Queen’s, the esteemed astrophysicist knows the place of Homecoming in the university’s traditions.
2:10 p.m., George Richardson, Memorial Stadium
Oct. 18, 1947
Alfred Pierce, “Alfie” to generations of Queen’s students, steps onto the field to a roar of approval. He’s resplendent in a royal blue cutaway jacket, red trousers, and braided and plumed Shako cap. At 73, the once-athletic Mr. Pierce is diminished by age, but stands proud and upright on the Queen’s football field that has been his home, in a way, for 57 years. At 15 years old, young, Black, and navigating an uncertain future, he had been adopted by the rugby team as an equipment manager, masseur, and “mascot.” His history with Queen’s since has been complicated and, in retrospect, troubled. He boards in spartan quarters beneath the stadium in summer and in the boiler room of Jock Harty Arena in the winter and earns $10 a week as a night watchman. He is both beloved and patronized on campus. However difficult his life, his appearance on the field before each home game, a tradition decades old, is likely the highlight of his association with Queen’s. Fans stand and bellow a familiar invocation: “What’s the matter with Alfie? He’s all right.” Mr. Pierce accepts the adulation and leads the throng in a mighty “Cha Gheill!” This will be one of Mr. Pierce’s last Homecoming games; he will suffer a stroke in 1948 and succumb to another in 1951.
2:30 p.m., George Richardson, Memorial Stadium
Oct. 13, 1956
Ralph and Petey have timed things just right. The cheerleaders are already on the field, the highland dancers are close on their heels, and you can hear the skirl of the bagpipes just outside the gate. The pair of sophomores clutch their canes, hold onto their top hats, and slip over the side of the stands and onto the field, looking just about as incongruous as you can at a college football game. Ralph Lundberg, BSc’59, MSc’61, and Bob “Petey” Peterson, Sc’59, would look more at home at the opera or on the set of a Fred Astaire movie: black tailcoats, white ties, patent-leather shoes, white gloves, and carnations in their lapels. When their unheralded appearance draws a roar from the stands, they perform an exaggerated strut, leading the Bands on their circuit of the stadium. This was Ralph and Petey's fourth year as unofficial mascots in the years just after the last of five bears named Boo Hoo was retired for humanitarian reasons.
3:30 p.m., George Richardson, Memorial Stadium
Oct. 25, 1958
Ken Platt, BSc’33, MSc’34, is in the stands surrounded by dozens of his 25th reunion classmates. All are armed with yellow umbrellas and have been primed to stand, open their bumbershoots, and wave them in the air every time Queen’s scores against Varsity. The classmates have just one opportunity to celebrate in the first half, after a field goal, and none at all in the second. But at the half, Mr. Platt and his class, not to be denied, descend from the stands, raise their umbrellas along with a class banner, and march around the field. The game won’t be remembered for the 32–3 drubbing the Gaels endure, but for the seed that will eventually blossom as the annual Homecoming game parade of the Tricolour Guard.
3:50 p.m., Richardson Stadium
Oct. 21, 1989
It’s raining and just two degrees. With 14 seconds left in the game against McGill, and the Gaels up 28–0, offensive tackle Sam Stankovic, Artsci’91, is on the bench, watching the Gaels’ defensive squad nail down an inevitable victory against an arch rival. The student stands have emptied and Queen’s fans, the bulk of the 4,500 in attendance, are barely restraining themselves on the sidelines, thundering the Oil Thigh at the volume of jet engines. They manage to contain themselves for one more play, but with three seconds left on the clock, they storm the field, swarm their team, and the refs call the game. Sam and the team are swept out with the crowd, sharing its pride for a remarkable team. The Gaels would go undefeated in their division this year and make it to the national semifinal game.
8 p.m., New Gymnasium (later PEC)
Oct. 17, 1931
Bruno Parent’s 12-piece orchestra is playing and alumni are foxtrotting around the floor, which, all agree, is one of the best dance surfaces in Kingston. There was some concern about its condition for the annual Alumni Reunion dance; flagrant disregard of smoking restrictions at the Freshman Dance earlier in the year had left the new floor scarred by cigarette burns. Two years into the Great Depression, it wasn’t clear that a notoriously frugal administration would fix the problem, but the Athletic Board had sprung for resurfacing at the last minute, and now the floor is pristine. “There was a prevalent atmosphere of bountiful goodwill and fellowship,” the Queen’s Journal would write. “One can only conjecture the memories and thoughts which this mingling of the past and present is bound to arouse.”
8:15 p.m., Ban Righ Hall
Oct. 18, 2025
After the cocktails, after the dinner, and after Principal Patrick Deane speaks of Queen’s future and the alumni role in informing the university’s Bicentennial Vision, Chancellor Shelagh Rogers, Artsci’77, talks about the power of stories. In particular, she wants to talk about the stories – the memories – of Queen’s grads, like those attending this annual Tricolour Guard Reception and Dinner. Our stories, she says, “not only connect our lives to Queen’s, but they also connect us all to one another in very important ways … As we gather here tonight, I hope you will all let your stories flow – freely, joyfully, and proudly. They are the tricolour thread that stitches us all together.”
Midnight
Oct. 15, 1988
More than 5,000 students and alumni are amassed on University Avenue when Jim Cuddy, Artsci’83, LLD’15, and his Blue Rodeo bandmates step out on stage for one of the largest Homecoming parties in Queen’s history. Organized by the Alma Mater Society as an alternative to street parties, the event will be later praised for its organization and decorum. For Mr. Cuddy, any trip back to Queen’s is a homecoming. It is where his parents attended university, where he learned to love learning and literature, where he perfected his guitar chops, and, significantly, where he had his first date (breakfast at Morrison’s Restaurant) with his future wife, actress Rena Polley, Artsci’78. (Years later, their son, Sam Polley, Artsci’14, would meet his wife Tori Chippindale, Artsci’15, at Queen's, too.)
Afterword
“I’m feeling more than I thought I would.”
Katharine McLean (nee Baker), NSc'95, hadn’t planned on attending her 30th class reunion last fall; frankly, she didn’t see the point. She was eventually worn down by the entreaties of classmates and hasn’t regretted it.
“It was pretty cool to see all the alumni come back into town and just kind of getting caught up in all the traditions, and even if you don’t intend to, you can’t help but be part of it, because it’s just pretty magnetic.”
During halftime at the 2025 Homecoming game, a number of alumni from the Queen’s Bands gather above the south-side stands, appraising the performance of the current iteration of the brass band and admiring each other’s children. Declan McKinley is 15 months old, which, according to his father, Conor, Artsci’10, a former Bands trumpet player and brass director, means he’ll graduate from Queen’s in 2046.
Conor met his wife, then Moira McIntyre, Artsci’11, in Bands, and they came back to Queen’s to get married at the Isabel Bader Centre in 2016. Queen’s isn’t part of their past; it’s part of who they are.
In a stroller nearby is Saibh, Sc’47, daughter of Taylor MacPherson, ConEd’15, and Steven Bruch, Sc’15. The baby’s class citation isn’t merely aspirational; she is already sporting Queen’s Engineering Golden Party Armour with a Sc’47 patch. Her GPA was knitted by her mom, who also made a toddler-sized version for her older daughter, Adelaide, Sc’45.
Ms. MacPherson and Mr. Bruch were in the Bands together, which means football, and Homecoming in particular, looms large in their Queen’s experience. “It’s wrapped up in this, in the football game, in the Oil Thigh that we’d do for the touchdowns, in the parade to the stadium, and just waking up to those bagpipes on Saturday mornings,” she said.
Ms. MacPherson and Mr. Bruch will be celebrating their 30th class reunion the same year their daughter, Adelaide, graduates, if all goes as planned. And when the 125th anniversary of Homecoming rolls around in 2051, Taylor, Steven and their daughters will all be alumni, all steeped in the traditions that make the day more than just an excuse to catch up with old friends. It’s more like a confirmation, a rededication, a chance to shout again: Cha Geill!
Come home for the celebration of a century: Register for Homecoming 100.
