UBC Alumni Affairs
Irene and I were both undergrads in Physics. Though we initially became acquainted during a summer work term in the Atlantic – she at UNB and I at MUN – it was in Grad School at UBC that love blossomed. She’d graduated a year ahead of me, coming to UBC in 1991. The following year, looking at schools in Canada suited to the particular branch of Physics that I wished to pursue, it came down to UBC, Waterloo and Alberta. Intending to investigate each school, I looked her up when it was time to check out UBC. She was kind enough to lend me a sleeping bag and her floor for the duration.
For some time, I denied her being at UBC had influenced my choice, but in later years I conceded there might have been the teensiest of influence there. The courtship involved many brave attempts to attend classes for the Scottish dance style in which she was so proficient, and many feeble attempts to be a meaningful member of the Physics softball team of which she was a part.
Thankfully, we had a common love of Monty Python and all things British Science Fiction to fall back upon, and both persistence and true love eventually won out.
Jeff and Irene, just married
The culmination of this courtship is a day that’s apparently fallen into legend in the Physics community circles. The graduate students had taken it upon themselves to organise weekly seminars, in which students would take turns presenting their research, as practice for our future careers. I playfully taunted her ahead of her presentation that I was going to prepare a mind-bending question to ask during her Q&A period.
She managed to get through the presentation without incident, despite my smirking face sitting front and centre in the theatre. I let a few questions go by, until the crowd’s curiosity was largely abated…
I then raised my hand: “I have a question.” Her expression clearly betrayed her thought of, “oh, no, here it comes.”
I began uncertainly, “it was one of those early slides, um… I can’t remember.” Getting out of my chair and circling to the front, I continued, “do you mind if I had a look?” She shrugged and I began shuffling through the transparencies on the desk next to her. Reaching the end of the pile, confounded, I declare, “no, that’s not it… Wait a minute, I remember now…”
In front of the full lecture theatre, I produced a ring, bent down on one knee, and finally asked my question, “will you marry me?”
Her face went crimson. She took the ring, and, if memory serves correctly, spent the next several minutes repeating, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” as she sized up the ring intently.
After a few moments, I gently reminded her, “you know, you haven’t actually answered my question yet.” In a tone that can only be described as indignation for me not having grasped the blindingly obvious, she replied, “well… yeah!” What followed was a flurry of congratulations and one or two observations of “well, Jeff, you must’ve been damn sure of the answer to be doing that!”
Applause notwithstanding, I have never seen a lecture theatre empty so quickly before or since, though I can only speculate that Galileo’s declaration that Sun and not the Earth was the centre of the Solar System might have had an equally unsettling effect on his audience.
We were later told by a co-worker of Irene’s, who was driving in as we walked back to residence, that she knew something must’ve been up. It seems that 20 minutes later, and visible to passing motorists, Irene’s face remained a brilliant red as she continued to clutch the ring box tightly to her chest.
The denouement of this story comes some years later. Irene was at an international conference when she ran into an attendee, I believe, from Montréal. Upon hearing Irene hailed from UBC, this person mentioned a story that had been circulating the discipline of a UBC grad student proposing to another grad student in the middle of a seminar, and inquired whether Irene knew if there was any truth to it.
We are now, apparently, infamous. Though it was very memorable and we look back on that day with great fondness, I did promise never to spring surprises of quite that magnitude on her, in such a public manner, ever again. That said, neither of our two sons have made any such promise.
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