When I was 8 my family moved from Kelowna BC to the married
residence at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby BC, which is just outside
Vancouver – about 350km west of Kelowna, which is in the interior of BC. The
married residence was called Louis Riel House – a large multi-level concrete
slab apartment building that was built into the hillside. I had never seen a
building like this before where I could be on the 3rd floor at the
top of the hill where this was the ground floor, or I could be on the first
floor at the bottom of the hill, and it would still be the ground floor. We
lived on the top floor – the 8th floor. It was a great place to make
fiends as there were other children in virtually every single apartment in the
building. I had made friends with three boys in my first few months there: Alex
who lived on the fourth floor, Adam who lived on the third and Ruben who lived
on the 5th.
Alex and Adam were both troublemaker types. Alex was the son
of a single mother and when I first met him he was a bit of a bully towards me,
but over time he softened up and we actually were able to play together. Adam
and I were in the same class, and he was the sort of kid who was always pushing
the envelope. I remember one time in
music class when Mrs. Earle had us singing songs and Adam was changing the
lyrics into sexual or bathroom phrases and singing those instead. He was caught
of course, when Mrs. Earle abruptly stopped the music and singing mid song and
Adam didn’t notice and kept singing. He didn’t actually get into trouble for it
but was given a very stern talking to.
Ruben was more my type – mild mannered and easy going. We spent the
most time together out of the three.
As I have alluded to in other stories, the main thing to do
around campus was explore. Apart from the university campus itself, which was
absolutely humongous from the perception of 9 year old boys, the entire
university was surrounded by forest on Burnaby Mountain. These woods were
almost completely unspoiled. There were some trails to explore, which led to
old overgrown playgrounds in more than one area. One of our favourite
activities was scrounging construction debris and building tree forts in the
woods, which we managed to do more than once.
Despite this, there were times, especially in winter, where
we ran out of things to do to amuse ourselves. Now I should mention at this
point that the roof of Louis Riel House was fully accessible to anybody and
could be reached by a series of external concrete stairwells on the sides of
the building. I highly doubt now that it is accessible, as I cannot imagine the
university being willing to risk liability for people going over the edge of
the building. But like I said, my childhood represented a different time. The
roof was an awesome place – flat, and covered with wooden decking and railings
around the side. The view from the roof was incredible and we often liked to go
and run around the roof playing tag or hide and seek, as the HVAC vents and
intake vents provided lots of hiding spots. Other times, we liked to just look
out and see the view or look down, as at the highest point; the roof was a good
80-90 feet up, which was insanely high to us.
One winter afternoon the four of us were playing on the
lawns in the snow when we started rolling a small snow ball in the snow. Much
to our amazement, it began to grow. The more we rolled, the larger it got,
until we eventually had a snow boulder larger than the base of any snowman we’d
seen and that was taller than we were.
After we’d made it we were stumped about what to do with it. Then
suddenly Alex gets a mischievous smile and says “let’s take it up to the roof
and drop it off”. The other three of us
were like “naaah. How would we ever get it up there? This thing must weigh a
ton.” But Alex did not let it go so easily. He told us to try and lift it with
all four of us trying. Surprisingly, the four of us were able to lift this
giant snow boulder – not high off the ground, but certainly enough to get it up
the stairs on the outside of the building. So we carefully rolled it over to
the stairwell, making it even larger in the process. When we got there we
lifted it with all our strength and began to carry it up the stairs.
Fortunately for us there was a landing and a corridor on each floor that led to
the other side of the building where the stairs continued, so that with each
floor we were able to rest and recoup our strength as we rolled the snowball
along the corridor. Eventually with much effort, we got it up to the roof on
the 9th floor.
We rolled it over to the edge near the front of the
building. We looked down. There were two walkways that led up to the entrance
to the building and both appeared to be empty, though we could not be
completely sure in the case of the walkway to the right, as there was a large
hill at the front of the building to the right of the entrance that hid most of
this walkway. We waited a few minutes. Still nobody. Alex then motioned us to life the snowball,
which we did. Then it was one-two-three- heave!, we tipped it over the edge and
just as we did so a bald bespectacled man emerged from the right walkway. We
yelled out and he stopped and looked up. Just as he did so the snow boulder hit
the ground and exploded, sending snow outward at what must have been a 10 foot
radius. It had landed to the left of the entrance to the building. He angrily
shouted: “Hey! That wasn’t cool!”. But other than that he did nothing except
enter the building.
To this day I am surprised that he didn’t come after us,
given the immense danger that we had placed him and anybody else who came
toward the building in. Of course at 9 we were too young to understand the
concept of momentum and therefore had no idea that we actually could have
killed someone that day. This would not be the only time I would nearly kill
someone. The next time will form the basis for another story: The Cutting
Board.
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