As I strolled through the Victoria University campus on my first real day of law school, I was struck by the historical gravitas of the place. I was walking the halls that had housed the education of some of the greatest men and women in the Canadian legal and political landscape. Maybe I would share the same favourite study spot in Old Vic as Chief Justice-to-be Bora Laskin when she was a student. Or find John A. Tory’s name carved into a table at the Birge-Carnegie library (no doubt created while reading a particularly dry LPPE case). Maybe I would end up with the same locker as Paul Martin!
Then I bumped into a confused-looking arts student still wearing a lanyard and his neon-yellow frosh week t-shirt and remembered the truth.
I am a Transition Space Native.
I will never know what exactly the Pit was, or understand whatever it was that makes upper years all sigh loudly whenever anyone mentions the toilets in the old buildings. Something about them not flushing? No one really explained it to me. Oh well.
[Editor’s Note: There was once a place in the old buildings called “Friendship Cove”, and its destruction has produced a lament of such sorrow that a thousand articling students weeping for a thousand years cannot match. This simple 1L cannot possibly comprehend the surreal beauty and genuine fraternity of Friendship Cove – and the eternal mourning that follows its demise.]
During Orientation Week, I often heard upper years lamenting the loss of the old law school buildings to the ever-encroaching march of progress. Much of what I heard likened being housed in the old buildings to being back in high school. Seeing as I was an unabashed nerd throughout my formative years, though, the comparison is somewhat lost on me.
As I sit here writing this with my whopping one week of law school experience, it’s hard for me to really think badly of my new home. Instead of being hot, uncomfortable and stressed in one gorgeous old building, I’ve made my peace with being boiling, discomforted and mentally exhausted in another a few hundred meters away. And maybe I’m just saying this because I only graduated from Classics a few months ago, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to bolster the relationship between us law students and the arts undergrads here at U of T. After all, some of them are likely to become U of T Law students themselves once they realize the philosophy mines aren’t hiring like they used to.
Then again, they’ll probably get to move right in to the brand new building. Lucky bastards.
I guess I should be thankful that I’ll at get to spend my 3L year in the new building, though. After all, construction projects always finish on time, right?
