It’s August 1997, and my parents are dropping me off at the house that I’m boarding at for (the plan was the next two years, it turns in to the next couple of months) In just a couple of days, I’m to start my two year course in Radio Broadcasting at New Brunswick Community College in Woodstock NB.
Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself, I’m Chris Doyle. At the time I was an 18 year old leaving home for the first time. I grew up in Miramichi, a place in northeastern New Brunswick that’s famous for it’s fishing and hunting. For the first 9 years of my life went to school just across the road at Nelson Elementary and then just rural school. Then it was on to high school, about 15 minutes away, At James M. Hill Memorial High School.
It was the kind of a place where everyone kind of knew everyone else, but the social ladder was in place. You were a prep, a jock, a geek or a nothing. I guess I was a little of all, known and liked by most, just not invited to the party on Saturday night.
That’s not to say that I didn’t have fun in High School, I had a blast. I had my group of friends, that I would meet every morning either by the library where we’d stand till it was time to go to classes, or at the lockers, where we’d walk around and drop people off at their homerooms.
You know when you spend all your time with someone, call them all the time and you’re never seen one without the other but your not “going out”? Well, that’s what I had in High School, from halfway in 9th grade to halfway through the 12th. Everyone thought that we’d be married right out of high school. It didn’t happen like that, and it was a scandal when we “Broke up”, but it gave me my fifteen minutes in the sun during that time when most teenagers don’t think that it will ever come.
See, most of the girls I knew saw me first as the “friend”, that led to a situation that most high school boys would be begging for, him and 7 girls everywhere. But it was a curse, as anyone who would be interested in you would automatically think you were “with” one of the girls that was in your circle of friends. Not to say I didn’t have dates in high school, just not as often as some high school movies lead you to believe you should.
After the “Break-up”, I had my “boyz”, but there was something different too. That year, the Grade nines started at high school and I knew a few of them. I started moving away from the old group to this new group that I was being accepted into, full of younger people, and was having more fun then I ever had. These are the people that I’m closest to to this day.
Graduation was coming up, and I had to decide what I wanted to do, I was 17, and didn’t think I was ready to go out on my own yet. So, I enrolled in another year at James M. Hill on a lower class schedule.
Grad came and went, Prom a bit of a disappointment with one more party with the old gang at Safe Grad the night of graduation. That was the last time that the original “Gang” was together.
On June 30, I went to the waterfront to watch the Canada Day Fireworks, planning on meeting with a buddy of mine and his girlfriend as I played the role of the third wheel. When I showed up there was no sign of them, but I see Gail, a friend of mine for years and Jessica, two people from the younger group that I had fallen in with near the end of the year. I thought “this will be all right till the rest of the gang shows up” They never did, and because of it, a relationship began that lasts to now, as Jessica and I have become almost joined at the hip since that night.
During my extra year, I applied and was accepted in to the New Brunswick Community College in Woodstock, about a 4-hour drive away. It a small town in the middle of the bible belt, with (as we quickly found out) one bar, a couple of pubs and not much else.
I guess that leads us back to where we started. After dropping me off, getting my stuff in to my room and taking a walk around the town, My parents left for Miramichi, leaving me to ponder the fact that for the first time, I wasn’t living at home.
I woke up on Sunday morning, and did the first thing that I did every morning, turn on CNN and with that, I learn that my first day in Woodstock would forever be remembered as the day that Princess Diana died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel.
After watching the coverage for a while, I decided to go take a shower and take a walk downtown. When I was there, I saw that the parish priest was my former priest at my home parish. I decided to go to church. After the service in this grand old church, I told Father Sullivan that I would be back. I never darkened the doorstep of that church in the rest of my time in Woodstock.
This is some background on where I came from when I started on the journey with the friends I made and the times I had with them. This book to me is more then a collection of stories of drunk people doing stupid things (Although a lot of it will be and I hope you enjoy them). It’s a story of people who were thrown together who may not have ever met otherwise, and with their different upbringings and experiences, grew into the closest group that you may ever see.
Chris Doyle
Aug 29/02
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