Roger Fry BSC(Agr)’51 and Lois Fry

It was the winter of 1949/50. I was a gauche Aggi undergrad, with few if any social graces, from Central BC; she a beautiful blond primary teacher from the Kerrisdale area of Vancouver, daughter of one of my profs, socially accomplished and popular with all of her set.

We met at the Annual Aggi Barn Dance at the White Rose dance hall on Broadway. I had been persuaded by a chum to go and went without a date, not thinking that dances in the city did not operate on the same system as the community dance back home, where boys chose a girl for each dance from those sitting across the hall.

She was there because her mother had carefully arranged to have a headache so that she would not have to go with her husband who was to represent the faculty; and because her sister, remembering their mother’s skill at dodging such events, had equally carefully arranged to have a date. My future wife, Lois, busy with her active social life and unaware of all this careful planning, had drawn the short straw and had to accompany her father to the dance.

Long before the supper dance, I had worn out my welcome with the few couples I knew and was reduced to sitting out most dances. Knowing the couple that was organizing the evening, I asked if I could be any help.

“Well you might go and dance with Dr. Wood’s daughter,” was the reply.
“I think she is pretty tired of dancing with faculty members.” So I asked, she accepted, and we had every dance to the end of the evening. She shared her box lunch with me and we talked about anything and everything. She had a wonderful sense of humor and a delightful laugh and I thought myself the luckiest guy there.

She passed up a ride home with her father to let me take her home and we continued talking and laughing as we walked, she in her dancing shoes, the several blocks along Broadway to Granville, then south on Granville to 16th Ave before the bus came. By the time I’d walked her from the bus stop to her home on 57th Ave I’d missed the last bus, had to take the Inter Urban and probably had to walk from the university gates to Acadia Camp.

In 1953, after a zig-zag courtship; (“She’d never want to marry me!” “What, marry him!”) we found ourselves in West Point Grey United Church saying “I do” to each other and 57 years after that Aggi Barn Dance we still marvel at how long it took us to see the obvious. She still has that sense of humour, that delightful laugh, and many friends; and I still think I was the luckiest guy at that dance.