Three memories stand out from this amazing program: lugging the heavy camera and tripod on a city bus across town, editing into the wee hours of the morning for our final broadcast group project and misspelling a professor’s name in an internship application and getting immediately disqualified. I’ve made sure to never make that mistake again! – Kristina Partsinevelos (MJ ’13)

Some of my most vivid memories of journalism school involve lugging heavy camera equipment across the city all winter, but I guess that wasn’t the question. My best memories of journalism school all connect back to my classmates. Learning alongside (and from!) them made the experience as rewarding and fun as it was. – Ben Nicholson-Smith (MJ ’10)

I had made a bet with Wilf Kesterton that I would turn in an error-free Honours Research Project. He rather smugly announced that he had found two errors in my paper. He was wrong on one of them, but he was right that I referred to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders instead of Roughriders. I spelled it the way the Ottawa team did. Of course Wilf would know, being from Saskatchewan! So we called it even and bought each other a drink. – Nancy Verrall Warren (BJ ’81)

At ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ (1972-1976), I minored in economics – apparently one of the first journalism students to do so. I was headed for a career in business reporting, first as a summer intern after graduation at the Globe and Mail Report on Business, and then for a few sad Maclean-Hunter business magazines. But along the way, I developed an interest in medicine, and in 1982, began a lifelong career as a medical reporter. The pic below is a scan of the lyrics of “Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me A ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ BJ,” written in ~1975 by my classmate Rudy Luuko (and sung to the tune of “Mercedes Benz”).It contains some outdated references, like to This Week Times Two, a university newsletter that came out twice a week. – Terry Murray (BJ ’76)

Phyllis Wilson and Wilf Kesterton were legends and dynamic instructors.

Phyllis was a kindred spirit when it came to sports. She cancelled class so we could watch the Expos playoff game in Oct 1981. But, we had to write a story about the game. There were moans, but not from me. At least not until after the game was over. “It was Monday, Rick Monday…” was how my article started.

I’ll never forget Wilf’s lecture on slander, libel, community standards and SNAFU. And, that he let those of us who lived half a continent away write a take home exam at Christmas.

Thanks to Barbara Freeman and Radio News I often still reflect on adjectival pile-up. Barbara also provided a great overview of the name one might use depending on the network: Catherine Wolters, CBC News. Cathy Wolters, CTV News. Kate Wolters, NBC News.

We heard Elly’s presentiment statement during TV that people would watch a whole hour of weather. I still analyze TV news with his voice in my head about reporters on camera, length of stories and being visual.

There were innumerable journalism and life lessons in those 4 years. And so many people. Bylines and voices conjure memories. For example, I can’t hear Laura Lynch without remembering how we westerns extolled Old Dutch BBQ chips to disbelievers.

I remember being apprehensive about something called Telidon we heard about in first year. I’d read Ray Bradbury and Orwell, burning books and Big Brother. Technology has changed journalism: the demise of newspapers, a plethora of competing voices, misinformation and fake news. At the same time, social media has been a medium of reconnection.. J-School was one of my best life decisions. – Cathy Wolters (BJ ’84)

This would have to be working with Dan McHardie and others on a graduation dinner / dance for the B.Journ. and M.J. class of 2000. It hadn’t been done as far back as people could remember. We managed, for a relatively affordable cost of $50 per ticket, to organize a night at the Chateau Laurier, with a meal and DJ.

After getting past the idea stage, then the hard work began. The most-challenging and amusing part of which was digging through third- and fourth-year video tapes in the archives to edit a video we screened at the dinner. What made it so much fun was finding a clip of everyone in the graduating class– as you can imagine, not everyone took video-related classes, so some of our peers only had brief clips in the archive from third year. Staying too late in the edit suite one night, we couldn’t return the tapes we had checked out. Dan adroitly gave the tech flowers the next day to apologize.

The event was a highlight of the term and year, and as I understood from graduates in the subsequent years, became a recurring end-of-term j-prom. – Hugo Rodrigues (BJ ’00)

My favourite professors were Phyllis Wilson, who taught us print journalism, and Joan Topolski, who taught us television. There were no radio courses at the time. Professor Wilson was an exacting teacher. I remember getting an F on one of my assignments because I wasn’t careful enough to convert metres to feet, thereby missing the lede, which described a robber squeezing through a very narrow pipe during a successful break-in. But she was kind, and was always there in her office should you need to talk through your worries and concerns. She kept a box of Kleenex in her desk just for that purpose. Joan Topolski was also kind. She assigned me my first live television interview, in-house, with a broadcaster known as Anne Francis. At the time, Francis was the somewhat regal head of the federal Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW), which she chaired under her real name, Florence Bird. She was a real icon. However, I flubbed the pronunciation of her alma mater, Bryn Mawr, during our interview. In the interests of journalistic accuracy, she promptly and a somewhat sternly corrected me, which made my knees shake even more. The patient Joan saw it as a teaching moment. So, although there were very few women professors in the school, I only remember Phyllis and Joan as they were very important to me. They both let us all know that equality for women was a desirable goal. At the time, there were marginally more male journalism students than female ones, and very few women in hard news beats in the real world. Later, when I went on to teach radio in the journalism school, in 1980, Phyllis was still there, and was a very supportive colleague. We were both glad to see that the numbers of full-time female professors was finally beginning to increase. And I wrote a book about the media coverage of the RCSW. – Barbara Freeman (BJ ’69)

I wanted to give a big thank you to David Tait and a lesson he gave in my second year fundamentals of reporting class. The lesson was about the power of “simple” words (5 letters or less) to convey meaning. I still use the concept I learned in that lesson in my job today – as a developmental editor working in the insurance education sector. Thanks Dave! – Jocelyn Dickey (BJ ’00)

I came from Germany to ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in fall 1979 – with a scholarship but without permit to enter the Graduate School. I must admit, my English wasn’t perfect when I arrived. So, I started out as part-time student and with the help of my fellow students I felt quickly comfortable. A few months later I was officially welcomed to the Grad School thanks to Jay Weston and the then school director, Stuart Adam. Both were very dedicated and open-minded professors I warmly remember. I graduated in September 1980, one year after arrival. In my thesis I critically evaluated the role of the major news agencies in the global system. The irony is that I later ended up working for the leading German wire service for almost four decades. During the Clinton years I served for the agency as foreign correspondent in Washington DC. Something I probably wouldn’t have achieved without the valuable time in Ottawa. Thank you ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´! – Thomas Maier (MJ ’80)

I called Stu Adams in August of 1974 hoping I could get into the one-year program. He said “We’d take you, but it’s full. Want to do a two year instead?” I said ‘sure’…. and life changed. I think the 3rd year kids perceived me as a wise old man at 24.. Besides falling in love with Judy, I loved being on Joe Scanlon’s Emergency Crisis Research Unit (ECRU) where we’d fly to where there’d been a catastrophe of sorts, somewhere in the country (avalanches, gas explosions etc.). We’d find out who were the worst in starting rumours (small station radio jocks) that hampered emergency help. But the most fun at the end of Year One was being in a play at ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Sock ‘n’ Buskin theatre. The play was “Sunshine Sketches of a little town” by Stephen Leacock. I wasn’t the lead male… but by gawd I was good!

That’s me on the right side with the quizzical look on my face. Packed the house every night… and had a ball. On the right is me last year in a Vancouver Island tulip field. Yes, many fond memories during those Arts Tower years. – Robb Lucy (BJ ’76)