Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir by William B. Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

entire mark was based on one departmental exam, while the marks one received during the year from one’s own teachers mattered not at all. I loved this system. It was fair, it was clear, and the teachers were now on my side. They were my coaches, not my judges. Of course, that’s all changed now. My history teacher, the one who whacked me on the head because I didn’t have my textbook and taunted me for not being a Christian, gave me a 66 at Christmas. I scored 95 on the departmental exam. The chemistry teacher gave me the course syllabus. What a novel idea. Tell the student what he needs to know. I worked through the syllabus and scored another high first. The geometry teacher, and principal, who had belittled my proposed reforms when I ran for Head Boy and got forty votes to my opponent’s 350, had surmised I would be lucky to pass. Another first.
    So what was the lie? Grade 13 is really hard.
    Many students take it in two years and most never make it through at all. If you hope to pass in one year you will have to work very hard. Well, I took this to heart. I knew I could goof around in the earlier grades, but when I got to Grade 13 I would need to be disciplined and keep up with my work. And so I did. When we got our first marks back at Christmas I held my breath hoping that I had passed most of my courses. My jaw nearly fell off my face as the marks came in. The marks, except for history, were amazing. Not only was I passing, I was in scholarship range. Keep it up and I would win scholarships to university. I did and I did.
    Now if someone had told me Grade 13 was pretty easy . . .
    What was the second lie?
    It takes only three days to quit smoking. Well, if you believe that you will believe lots of weird things, like aliens abducting humans for example. More on that later.
    At any rate the three years of isolation in the wilds of rural Ontario would soon come to an end. There was light on the hill and I was approaching it. I could see it, fear it, and long for it. And in the fall of 1958, I entered it, the University of Toronto. I didn’t realize it as I entered the door of the Sir Daniel Wilson Residence, but I would soon enough. I was home.
    How did I know I was home? Besides the fact the university was home to Hart House Theatre and Robert Gill, who had directed me as a child and was still the resident director? One day as I was walking through the small foyer of our residence house, a voice called out from the common room, “Do you believe in God?” Surprised, I turned and hesitantly admitted that I didn’t. “Well, come on in!” The voice was that of second-year student John Woods, who would later be a philosophy professor at U of T and president of the University of Lethbridge. Soon I was in the company of older students whose brilliance and curiosity inspired me for life.
    It is astonishing for me to discover that now university residence is limited to first or sometimes second year students. Exposure to senior students in a residence setting was one of the highlights of my educational life.
    My life had turned a corner. I was in an intellectual and artistic home.



U of T and Summer Stock:
    Getting Started
    The Sir Daniel Wilson Residence at University College, one of the four arts colleges in 1955 making up the University of Toronto, was a modern yellow brick building on St. George Street at what was then the western edge of the campus, and was to be my home for the next four years. Prior to its opening in 1954, university college men lived in two residential houses. Of course, men and women were not in the same residences. After all, they had different needs and rules. The men needed maid service and were free to come and go at all hours. The women made their own beds in Whitney Hall and had an 11 p.m. curfew on weeknights. No one seemed to find these arrangements strange at the time.
    The college clung to other traditions perhaps not fully appreciated by the students. Dinner at Sir Dan was intended