Life at Oxford

An enchanting ramble around town

Russ Goodman, Craig May, and Mark Schaan, Canadian Scholars from the Class of 2002, groove it up at Rhodes Ball.

It's funny to me that I can still draw a map of Oxford in my mind. Having lived in Winnipeg, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Hamburg, London, Boston, Oxford, and Ottawa, I think Oxford is the only one of my homes that I can sketch in its completeness. I think the reason is that each one of those lanes, passageways, and streets is a repository of memories of my incredible four years in the city that is like no other.

In a conversation I once had with writer Graeme Gibson, the well-travelled scribe indicated to me that he had only ever been to two cities in the world that to him felt ‘other-worldly'. One was Kabul, Afghanistan, and the other was Oxford.

It was that magical otherworldliness that beguiled me and still manages to enchant my memory. For it was on Holywell Street that my Anglo life started, tucked into the quads and cloisters of New College. It was there that the angelic voices of the boy's choir showed me a new kind of stillness, where I learned collegiality in common rooms and in seminars filled not out of obligation but out of a real desire for learning. It was a place with port and snuff and gowns and dinners that stretched late into the night.

It was on Turl Street that I discovered the variety that could exist in the simple sandwich. I learned about long ‘study' lunches that were more chatter than research, with lattes that seemed bottomless and Ben's cookies that we believed were baked by angels. It was also here that I found scarves and cufflinks and umbrellas in patterns that have spanned decades.

It was on Radcliffe Square that I found a library like no other. It was hibernating in these stalls that I dutifully ordered up books, coming by a tiny train that has stretched below the city for over a century. It was there that spawned ideas, dreamed visions of new worlds, and connected with my subject in a way that only this silence and time could have allowed.

It was on Merton Lane that I found friends for life, at bops and in Hall, and cavorting at the end of exams. Sipping champagne and throwing glitter we celebrated milestones for beginnings and ends. We had picnic lunches on greens tucked alongside meadows, and played croquet at dusk and at dawn.

It was on Folly Bridge that we saw swans and boats, yelled cheers for coxes and strokes, all from a lovely vantage point that included Pimm's and crisps. Where we got sunburns in Trinity, and found comfort with a hot toddy in Hilary.

It was on Parks Road that we found a House that was our home. Where the world came together to read and laugh, to engage and argue, to eat and dance, and to honour a tradition that envisioned a world that could be better and sought to make it so.

It was on Little Clarendon that I found my first neighborhood, with the best of cheeses, ice creams, wines, and deli. It was a locale with far too many late nights over cocktails, and fantastic early mornings with the full English. It was also kitty corner to the square that hosted supervisors that inspired, seminars that opened windows in the mind to panoramas never before imagined.

This map is as complete in my mind as if I was still there. And the intersection of each of those streets points to the indelible memories of Oxford I carry with me. Otherworldly? Unbelievably. No other city could have so inspired, so enchanted, and so enriched than that dream landscape of spires that lies mapped in my mind and memory.