The Americans Land at the Foot of Moss Street and Invade Canada
Urquhart would often muse about the day the Americans would land at the foot of Moss Street, and march up to capture Government House.
My Grade 11 socials and Grade 12 history teacher, Mr. Urquhart (pronounced "Ur-kit" although we all said "Ur-kart" taught students in the honours classes many things. Like how to use Hansard. We all walked over to the UVic library from Mount Doug, "all ducks in a row, quack quack quack," he said.
Urquart was unmarried and in his late fifties or early sixties. He had been born in California, but had read history at UBC ("I remember one exam where it was obvious some poor fellow had revised all the wrong things, you heard a sigh, a flutter of exam papers, and stomping out of the examination hall"). He had been in the US Army at one point ("I was 19 and, by god, in the best shape of my life"), but by the time he was at Mount Doug he was a reserve colonel with the PPCLI, which were still stationed at the Bay Street Armoury.
It was an enjoyable couple of years during a typically dystopian 80s high school experience that seriously resembled the movie 'Heathers.' There were even murders the year after I graduated.
Anyway, Urquhart would often muse about the day the Americans would land at the foot of Moss Street, and march up to capture Government House. A fantasy at the time, but 2025 seems to be stranger than fiction.
