My last White Christmas

It's snowing in Chilliwack today. A rare White Christmas. Got me thinking about the last one, in 2008, and how much has changed since then.

As with many people, Christmas for me involves much tradition and routine. For most of the past few decades, Christmas Eve was spent with my husband’s family, Christmas Day at home with my parents visiting, Boxing Day with my family. Thus, although Christmas was always pleasant, it wasn't always particularly memorable. The days and years blended together in a warm ball of vague and repetitive rituals.

But a few years ago, in 2008, the weather interfered with those routine plans. A howling snowstorm prevented us getting into the city or our relatives coming here. My elderly friend Jean, whose family usually came out from Langley to get her for Christmas, was similarly trapped.

So we braved Yale Road into Chilliwack from our country home, and drove her out to our house for a visit. As often happens on Christmas Eve, some local friends came a wassailing, singing songs in exchange for cookies and wine. As often happened when my extremely elderly friend met handsome men, she proceeded to flirt shamelessly with one of the visiting husbands.

She stayed for dinner. We had prepared a prime rib for my husband’s family, but instead shared it with my nonagenarian friend (she was 96 at the time). One thing she appreciated even more than handsome men was good food. She was effusive in her appreciation for the feast we laid out.

I’m not a churchgoer, but my friends attend the local Rosedale United Church in the small village near my home. When I asked my elderly friend if she would like to attend the Christmas Eve ceremony, she was very enthusiastic.

Daryl drove us in the snowy blizzard, and Jean, Emma (10 at the time), and I sought shelter from the storm in the sanctuary of the little 100-year-old church, where my friends and their congregation were having their candlelight Christmas Eve service and singalong. Along with friends, men, and food, my elderly friend was passionate about music and singing, so she was very pleased to be joining the small congregation in song by candlelight as the snow fell outside and blanketed the Christmas Eve night in a pillowy silence. It moved me too, to see two of my friends Pam and Katie, mother and daughter, singing a duet of In the Bleak Midwinter.

All in all, it was a magical experience reminiscent of a Little House on the Prairie Christmas and my friend Jean and I both thought it was a welcome variation from the many routine Christmas Eves. 

Jean, my elderly friend, passed away in February at the age of 102. My mother-in-law, who we usually spent Christmas Eve with, has passed since this snowy Christmas happened too. We are making new traditions.

25 years feels like it went in a flash! My career (so far) at FVC/UCFV/UFV

On a grey December morning 25 years ago — Dec 10, 1990 to be precise — I left my basement suite and my boyfriend in Burnaby and drove the 90 km (!!!) out to the Chilliwack campus of Fraser Valley College to begin a three-month contract as marketing coordinator within what was then called the Information Services department.

The college was in the midst of a campaign to become a degree-granting university college like Malaspina, Okanagan, and Cariboo had become two years earlier, and my new boss Bob Warick had secured funding to hire me to help with the lobbying effort. In a way, it was a “build your own job” challenge.

If we were successful in becoming a university college, there would be enough growth and expansion to justify keeping me on. I’m still here!

The three months turned into seven months of intense lobbying, copywriting, news release issuing, rally organizing, and general cause promoting. All without the benefit of email, the Internet, or social media, none of which had been invented and/or were in wide use yet. Old fashioned print ads, radio talk show spots, news releases, community rallies, posters, pamphlets, and flyers were our arsenal. Some key students really took the reins and fired up the community in support.

It was a heady time, with a change in government happening as the NDP seemed poised to oust the Social Credit party provincially. The community campaign that we helped to foster succeeded, and the politicians felt the heat. Our local MLAs were mostly Socreds, and managed in the dying days of their mandate to secure the sought-after university college status and FVC turned into UCFV. The announcement was made on July 3, 1991, roughly seven months after I started what was supposed to be a three-month stint. 

Jubilation ensued, and then the busy task of planning and launching degree programs began. We all took to the job with enthusiasm and a real sense of collegiality and collaboration. There was the excitement of starting something new combined with the soul-searching and introspection that comes with growth and change. There was a determination not to abandon or forget our community roots, or to leave the applied, upgrading, and trades programs behind as we launched into degree programming.

Faculty, staff, administrators, and students sat on planning and hiring committees together. We held a planning conference called A Question of Balance. “We” truly were a cohesive “we”. Many dozens of new employees joined UCFV every September for several years. New buildings were approved at a fairly rapid pace. The change to university-college status, which lasted for 17 years, resulted in major growth and development at UFV and set the stage for our eventual successful campaign for university status. None of this was achieved easily.

My term contract turned into a fulltime job, and I imported the boyfriend, who eventually became the husband. We left the basement life behind for a treehouse-style cottage amidst the cedars on Little Mountain in Chilliwack, which led to us being eco-activists lobbying for the creation of trails and natural parks. This was when Chilliwack Councillor Sam Waddington, who ably leads the nature and wilderness cause locally today, was still a toddler. We knew him then! Ours was a message that much of the community was not yet ready to receive, but some were very happy to hear it.

Then we moved to a cottage in the country and started our family. Once baby number three arrived we felt the need to expand — his bedroom was a Harry Potteresque cupboard for three years — and we supersized our house in an ambitious renovation. Two dogs and ten cats later, here we happily remain.

Fast forward 25 years — slightly more than half my life — and I’m in roughly the same department (renamed to Community Relations, then Community Relations and Development, then Community Relations again, then Marketing and Communications, and then University Relations), in a similar job (renamed to media and publications coordinator and then media and communications manager). I’m on my fourth-and-a-half boss (had one acting one for a couple of stints). I’m proud to say I hand-picked two of them! I’ve served three presidents.

My department has gone from 4.5 members to more than 25 at full complement (now including alumni and advancement, web team, recruiters, graphic designers, and other specialties that didn’t exist in 1990). The university has more than tripled in size.

But let’s go back to that December morning when I drove my Volkswagen Rabbit (25 years later we still have a VW) through the grey Fraser Valley and pulled up to the “old motel” building on the Chilliwack campus on Yale Road. I got lost along the way because I took the Yale Road exit out by Greendale, figuring that that would be close to the campus because… Yale Road. Of course now I know that Yale Road is one of B.C.’s oldest roads, with remnants extending from New Westminster to Yale. But I digress. Don’t get me started on trying to figure out Five Corners, or how Yale Road mysteriously turns into Vedder Road.

I had been interviewed at the Abbotsford campus (by the legendary Barry Bompas among others, who jokingly advocated for hiring me because I would bring the average age down) and didn’t even see the Chilliwack one before I took the job. I received the job offer the moment I arrived home in Burnaby. No weeks-long reference checking or second interviews back then! Just: Hire that gal! The Abbotsford campus at that time was smaller than my high school, and the Chilliwack campus, consisting of the “old motel” and the Ag building, was smaller than my junior high.

As I entered the “motel” and smelled the must and mould and felt the echoing floorboards of a “temporary” building under my feet and the rain drops dripping into my office, I wondered what I’d got myself into. I was assured that this Building A was only temporary, only designed to last five years, and that we’d be moving to a new building soon. I ended up planning my new office in that imaginary new building three times before we moved across town, twice on the old campus and once for the new one at Canada Education Park 22 years after I started. The “temporary” building was in use for 37 years in total. It was called the motel because the plan was to convert it to a motel after our brief tenancy, but that never happened.

As I’ve said, it was a grey day, and the clouds didn’t clear for several days. Once they did, I discovered what a beautiful, mountain-ringed, blue sky paradise I’d brought myself to.

I was taken in sight unseen as a basement tenant by a kindly chemistry instructor and her daughter, who became good friends of mine, and my love affair with the friendly and welcoming community of Chilliwack began. I met friends in the first few months who ended up being dear lifelong companions. Most of them were at least 20 years older than me (there weren’t many FVC employees under 40 then) and were a little bit maternal in their outlook toward me. That was okay — I needed all the mothering I could get as I launched into adult life. 

The front desk receptionist was a little gruff to me when I presented myself, but today she is a grandmother figure to my children known for her effusiveness and joie de vivre. A colleague in marketing who was described by my boss as a “bit of a hippie” greeted me with a deep hug and said “we’ve been waiting for you!” She eventually served as birth coach for two of my children. That chemistry instructor? I helped her make a match with the continuing education coordinator and they’ve been a couple for 20 years! I also ended up match-making a mature student who led the university-college lobbying campaign with my high school friend and today they are happily married have two kids together.

Now most of these friends are now in their 60s and 70s and we start our dinner parties early so they can get home to bed. I am older than some of them were when I met them. We’ve added many friends along the way as we met people through our kids and our activities, but these folks remain the core of our concentric circles of wonderful friends.

We had a small but jubilant celebration at my boss’s house in the hills of Ryder Lake on the night we received university-college status. It ended up being a sleepover for all involved (I staked out Grandpa’s guestroom in the basement early).

“This is going to be a very interesting place to work,” I thought to myself as I drove down the winding country roads to the flats of Chilliwack early the next morning

There were new programs to promote, a university-college culture to foster, students and employees to recruit, buildings to open, and stories galore to tell, as I took on the mission of sharing the ongoing narrative of what had been FVC and would ultimately become UFV with our communities.

As I became an official chronicler of the university-college and eventually the university, I listened carefully to my elders, absorbing their tales of what it had been like to work and study here in the college’s first decade and a half, of what their experiences in helping to create a college from scratch, a special college known for its “get it done” attitude.

For the record (and now for some lists):

Of course nobody works alone. So when I say “I” there was usually some “we” involved. But a gal deserves a little credit...

Things I pioneered and/or advocated and/or worked on collaboratively within the marketing and communications function at FVC/UCFV/UFV:

• Editorial style guide based on CP style, slightly modified for academic culture
• Professional copy editing of academic calendar and continuing education booklet
• Use of fax machine to send news releases instead of hand delivery by courier (!!!)
• Professional desktop publishing program (we used the very clunky Ventura when I arrived, eventually succeeded in getting us Quark Xpress before we moved on to InDesign)
• Adobe Creative Suite (I said we could do our own ads better if we only had Photoshop and Illustrator!)
• Graphic standards manual (had to lay it out myself using the very clunky Ventura)
• Use of email to distribute news releases and other material once it was extended to all employees instead of just senior admin
• First UCFV website (started planning what was called a ‘gopher’ — google it — and it grew from there)
• Use of scanner for photography
• Digital photography
• Online version of employee newsletter
• Flickr photo management social media
• Facebook (I remember showing it to Kim Lawrence in 2006 and watching her jaw drop)
• Twitter (I first tweeted back in 2007)
• In-house graphic designer
• In-house photographer

 Things I named and/or founded (in collaboration with colleagues) 

• Aluminations alumni newsletter
• UFV Today enews
• Skookum magazine
• Several slogans. My favourite was Get There with UCFV.

Programs I helped market and launch, in collaboration with departmental clients

• Bachelor of Arts
• BA in Criminal Justice
• Bachelor of Business Administration
• BBA Aviation
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of CIS
• Bachelor of Social Work
• BA in Adult Ed
• Bachelor of Science in Nursing
• Bachelor of Kinesiology (and all previous kinesiology programs)
• Bachelor of Global Studies
• Various Agriculture credentials.

Programs I helped rebrand and re-launch

• Office Careers to Applied Business Technology
• Graphic Design to Graphic and Digital Design (after a 10-year hiatus)

Initiatives I helped market and launch, again in collaboration with clients:

• Summer semester
• UFV Online
• Choose Chilliwack campaign
• Can Learn initiative (Now you can learn anywhere!)
• Aboriginal Resource Centre
• Institutional Learning Objectives
• Indigenizing the Academy

Major campaigns I poured heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into
(some of which took years to come to fruition)

• University College campaign
• Future Now fundraising campaign (1994 to 1997)
• Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies fundraising campaign (2003 to 2005)
• Securing Canada Forces Base land for Chilliwack campus campaign (2003 to 2007)
• University campaign (2000 to 2008)
• Launch of the “new U” (2008 to present)
• 40th anniversary campaign (and 20th, and 25th... we basically ignored 30th and 35th) 

Buildings and facilities whose launch I promoted and publicized

• Health Sciences Centre, Chilliwack (on the same day I found my birth mother… but that’s a whole other story) — 1992
• Building E, Abbotsford (bet you didn’t know there was a Building E! It’s the wing with the Roadrunner café in it, eventually absorbed into Building A, which itself used to be known as Building B) — 1991
• Peter Jones Learning Commons, Abbotsford (aka the library or Building G) — 1995
• Building D and E, Chilliwack, including new theatre (at least it was new back in 1995)
• New childcare centres in Abbotsford and Chilliwack (opened in mid-90s, closed in 2003 when I was eight months pregnant – darn the timing on that! Abby one is now U-House)
• Mission campus at Heritage Park Centre — 1996
• Building D, Abbotsford (that maze is almost 20 years old and I still get lost in it) — 1997
• Envision Athletic Centre, Abbotsford (two phases) — 2002 and 2006
• Baker House, Abbotsford — 2006
• Trades and Technology Centre at Canada Education Park — 2008
• Chilliwack campus at Canada Education Park — 2012
• Agriculture Centre of Excellence — 2014
• Student Union Building, Abbotsford — 2015
• Several versions of the Hope Centre — various years.

Union benefits we enjoy today that were suggested by me

• Special leave days for when you're not sick, but your dependant is
• Maternity leave top up by the employer
• Bonus days off on your milestone anniversary years
• Free tuition for dependants if course is not full.  

Then there were ALL those Convocations, guest lectures, president and chancellor installations, honorary degree recipients, and countless profiles and special publications. All a pleasure to work on.

As the main internal communications person for the entire 25 years I’ve done countless new employee profiles. I’ve seen new people come, contribute to the growth of UFV for 20 years and retire, all while I’m still thinking of them as one of the “new” people. I’ve seen people start as clerks and technicians and end up in senior administration.

I’ve suffered along with the rest of us with several rounds of budget cuts and the layoffs and bumping that come with them, although was lucky to never be touched directly. I’ve celebrated the growth years when dozens of new folks joined us at once.

I’ve run birth announcements and then watched the kids grow up and become our students, including my own daughter! I’ve seen students become alumni and count several among my friends. I have sat on more than 20 hiring committees including some key ones for my University Relations colleagues (you’re welcome).

I’ve run more obituaries than I care to count, including four in the past year and two in the past month. (Oops, can’t help counting.)

I’ve worked with more than 40 different colleagues in my own department over the years. The retirement dinners are becoming surreal to me as so many layers of FVC/UCFV/UFV employees gather in one place and time. I’ve aged in place and watched in amazement as my colleagues aged along with me. I’ve had my own family crises of serious ongoing illness and death, and dear colleagues and friends who comforted me in these tough times.

In short, I think I found the perfect match for a long and satisfying career and the perfect home for me and my family. Along with all my colleagues, I have helped build a university from scratch, while retaining our community roots. I’m glad to be here and will continue to be so.

 






 



 

 



Thanks to all for a fun first 25!

Pioneer girls of the BC soccer world

This is the speech I gave at the induction ceremony for three Blue Mountain girls soccer teams into the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame: 

The Blue Mountain Royals celebrating being named Outstanding Team at the 1982 Sun Cup of Soccer Champions. This photo sits on my bookshelf in my office and it inspired me to gather my memories, make my soccer video detailing the early days of girls' soccer in BC, and nominate the three Blue Mountain teams for the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame.

Hello everyone!

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Anne Russell and I was a proud member of the Blue Mountain Royals soccer team from 1975 to 1984. I still consider myself a Royal today and enjoyed a great reunion with my fellow players, our coach Dean McInnes, and several of the team parents on Sunday.

I am also a friend and admirer of the two other Blue Mountain teams being honoured tonight. We played the Devils on an exhibition basis many times and then in league play during their final U-18 year. We looked up to the Rangers as the senior team in our club.

Forty years ago, I was, to quote Cyndi Lauper, just a girl who wanted to have fun. I loved kicking the soccer ball around in the backyard with my four brothers, and would take it out to the fields at Lord Baden Powell elementary, just behind my house, and kick it against the backstop of the ball diamond. When I got a little older, I would illegally climb the fence into the school courtyard and kick it against the wall there. You just couldn’t stop me!

I would go to my brothers’ games, and watch from the sidelines as they played, and wonder why I couldn’t play on a team too! I was told that girls didn’t play soccer, that there were no organized teams. I didn’t know then that the English Football Association had banned the growing sport of women’s soccer in the 1920s – a ban that was not lifted until the 1970s and that spilled over into Canada in the chilling effect that it had on the development of the women’s game.

Then, in 1975, I heard that my friend Kerry Rupert WAS playing on a team, and that girls soccer had started up. I eagerly informed that my parents that there WAS a team and I wanted to join it! Thus I became a Blue Mountain Royal! Thanks Kerry! 

I was overjoyed to be playing with my new friends on a real team and travelling to Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, and Burnaby to take on other teams. We’d also play against the other Coquitlam clubs: Bel Air and Cape Horn. Along with the Blue Mountain club, they were the precursors to today’s Coquitlam Metro Ford Soccer Club. In the first game I remember playing as a nine-year-old we took on the Port Moody Sparks, and were bowled over by a tiny dynamo forward named Tina Pavan, who would join our team in her teens.

For the next few years we developed our soccer skills and grew as a team. Under the guidance of coaches Dean McInnes and Peter Van Hulsen, we learned the finer points of the game and became very successful in the win-loss margin. But we also learned to play with character, to always be good sports, and to treat our opponents with respect. Jim Gray and Cam Barnetson were working similar miracles with the Devils and the Rangers.

We were also proving that girls COULD play soccer. One year, we travelled to Pitt Meadows for the Hammond Days festival to put on a demonstration of the game before there was any organized soccer in Pitt Meadows or Maple Ridge. A decade later, current national team goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc would start her youth soccer career in a Maple Ridge club. 

 In 1973, there were only three girls soccer clubs across British Columbia. By 1980, there were 317 teams. In 2002, there were more than 307,000 women and girls playing nationally.

So by the early 1980s, girls were playing the game, and playing it well. There was even a championship tournament for girls started in the late 1970s that the Devils and Rangers qualified for. 

But the pinnacle of amateur sport… the Sun Tournament of Soccer Champions …  sponsored by the Vancouver Sun newspaper, eluded us.

Soccer was B.C.’s most high-profile amateur sport from the 1950s through the 1980s and beyond.

Boys who got to play in this elite Sun Cup tournament, which pitted the two best teams in the coastal region against each other, played in Swangard Stadium — a real stadium! They were marched in by bagpipes in a parade of champions, had their games covered by real newspaper and TV reporters, and the Sun Soccer Boy and his runner up were featured in the Vancouver Sun.

But for the first few years of organized girls soccer in B.C., girls were not allowed to play in the Sun Cup.

Then, in 1981, more enlightened minds prevailed. It was the girls’ turn to play at Swangard, with a parade, bagpipes, an announcer calling out their names, an allstar team, and a Sun Soccer Girl and Runner Up being featured on the front page of the Vancouver Sun sports section.

In a happy coincidence that highlights what a hotbed of soccer Coquitlam was, three teams from the Blue Mountain Club — teams that are being honoured tonight — The Royals, The Devils, and The Rangers — qualified for the inaugural Sun Cup for Girls.

Those same three teams emerged victorious in the top three age groups at the first Sun Cup, which also served as the provincial championship at that time.

The Sun Soccer Girl was Jane Norman of the Blue Mountain Rangers. Soccer Girl Runner Up was Karen Daws of the Blue Mountain Royals.

Fully half the allstar team was from Blue Mountain. And the Rangers were named Outstanding Team of the tournament.

Girls soccer had truly arrived and Coquitlam’s Blue Mountain club was leading the way!

It was a moment of immense pride for our teams, our families, and our community.

One local sports writer, the late Norm Wright, said it was seeing our team play that convinced him that girls and soccer belonged together. In fact I think it was that speedy little forward Tina Pavan who convinced him.

My team, the Royals, returned to the Sun Cup in 1982, winning again. We went on to be Western Canadian champions and placed second in Canada. One of our members, Brenda Yamamoto, was named Sun Soccer Girl Runner Up and others were allstars.

It was a thrill, but nothing matched the thrill of that first Sun Cup when Coquitlam girls proved that we deserved the same respect on the turf as the boys did.

There were direct connections between our pioneer soccer community and the early days of the national team. Someone we played against regularly, Geri Donnelly of the Port Moody Flames, went on to join Canada’s first rag-tag version of a women’s national team in 1986. She scored Canada’s first and second goals ever. I played on a summer team with her that same year. Local Coquitlam girl Cathy Ross was also an early national team member.

Someone who played with us as a Royal in our last two years – Linda Petrasch (now Linda Milani), also played for the national team for a couple of the early years.  Both of these women were honored as national team alumni at a recent ceremony before a World Cup game.

Some key national team members reaped the benefits of a vibrant girls’ soccer scene in BC that we helped to create. 

Christine Sinclair, Canada’s current captain, wouldn’t be born until a couple of years after that first Sun Cup, but she went on to play in its successor, the Coastal Cup, in her formative years. My brother- and sister-in-law coached against her when she was a young teen and remember her as a phenomenon even then.  

Other current and former national team members, including Abbotsford’s Sophie Schmidt, got their start in the girl’s soccer system that we pioneers helped to build.

In my lifetime I have witnessed huge growth of girls soccer, the start of rep teams, elite teams, school teams, university teams, and the launch of the women’s national team.

So yes, I will be extremely proud when I join 50,000 other fans to watch Canada against Switzerland in BC Place on Sunday and when that same venue hosts the World Cup final on July 5. When I was at the U.S. game on Tuesday I thought back to those early international soccer exchanges we had with Seattle teams and reflected that I never imagined it would come to this.

But I am most proud of the equity achieved in Canadian soccer: unlike when I was a little girl watching my brothers from the sidelines: my daughters and my son have the same opportunities to play, ref, and coach with our club, the Chilliwack FC. And they take advantage of it.

And there’s another legacy: lots of women playing through their 30s, 40s, 50s or until their knees give out, whichever comes first. Yes, I’m still playing recreational soccer at age 49. I’m no superstar and probably wouldn’t even make the rep team if I was playing as a girl today, but I play in a recreational league my friends and I organized for women over 30. I scored six goals this season! We now have 12 teams and more than 160 players coming out two nights a week in Chilliwack. We are all enjoying the personal empowerment, bonding, commitment to fitness and community building that comes with that. 

I want to give a huge shout out to my coaches when I was a girl – Dean McInnes and the late Peter Van Hulsen gave us the skills to play soccer, but also emphasized sportsmanship, integrity, and camaraderie. And we girls were bonded for life as a result. I know that Jim Gray and Cam Barnetson instilled similar values with their teams.

We learned a lot from winning, but also from our occasional big losses. Ironically, we ended the youth careers of our older rivals, the Devils, in playoff action in 1983, and then were eliminated ourselves by the younger Willingdon Dirty Dozen a year later in 1984. Character-building experiences all!

I just want to take a moment to recognize that not all the legends of the Blue Mountain Club of the 1980s could join us tonight. We’ve lost some good ones along the way, including Rangers coach Cam Barnetson, Royals assistant coach Peter Van Hulsen, parents from various teams, and the first Sun Soccer Girl, the late and great Jane Norman.

I made a soccer video detailing the history of all this as an assignment for university course in digital storytelling that I took. As I approach a half century in age and watch some of my friends pass away, it hits home that nobody can tell your story as well as you can, so if you want to make sure your story is told, then make sure you tell it. The video now has more than 1,400 views on Youtube. It’s called Pioneer Girls of the BC Soccer World if you want to look it up.

I am so honoured to be here tonight being recognized with the rest of you. Forty years later, girls still just wanna have fun. And they are!

Thank you to the Coquitlam Sports Hall of Fame for this wonderful recognition. Thank you, Royals, Devils, and Rangers, for paving the way for the soccer girls of today. And thank you to the adults of the previous generation for having the foresight to let the little girls join their brothers on the pitch and play!