December 10, 2024 marks 34 years since I hopped into my Volkswagen Rabbit and made the 120 km life-changing trek from my basement suite in Burnaby to what was then the teeny-tiny Chilliwack campus of Fraser Valley College. Upon arrival, I thought to myself, “This is smaller than my junior high school.” I was about to start a big adventure of community engagement, professional development, and friendship building.

I was hired as a ‘marketing coordinator’ for a three-month posting, although the focus of my job was more communications than marketing. My job was to help secure university-college status for FVC, so that the little college could start offering third- and fourth-year programming and build its own degree programs. We succeeded! It’s now 408 months later and I’m still happy to be here.

Here’s a list of memorable moments:

1. Meeting two of my best friends on my first day of work, one of whom hugged me at first introduction and said: “We’ve been waiting for you!” They are still my dear friends all these years later.
   
   
2. Participating in an intense, dramatic, and by no means guaranteed campaign to secure university-college status for Fraser Valley College (and thus the ability to launch third- and fourth-year programming) in my first six months of work.
   
   
3. Moving into a spare room of an instructor’s house during my first weeks. (She also became a best friend. I have a lot of best friends.)
   
   
4. Working with students who became dear friends on the grassroots community campaign for university-college status.
   
   
5. Partying all night at my boss’s house after we secured university-college status in July 1991 and driving home down the country roads of Ryder Lake after thinking to myself: “This is going to be an interesting place to work. We have decades of university-building ahead of us.”
   
   
6. Helping our very first bachelor’s degree program planners articulate a vision and marketing plans for our first degrees.
   
   
7. Meeting students slightly younger than me in the first months of my career (and often being mistaken for a student) and then meeting them decades later and wondering who these old guys and gals are.
   
8. Witnessing extreme sorrow on the part of family members of a young graduate who was killed in an act of multi-victim domestic violence. Her uncles brought the entire convocation audience to tears when they accepted her posthumous degree.
   
9. Preparing historical stories from our first generation of faculty and staff for our 20^th anniversary (and our 40^th anniversary).
   
10. Being super-pregnant (like, nine months pregnant, for realz, as the kids say) at our 20^th anniversary open house but still working it (by sitting in a chair as a greeter).
    
11. Going into labour at work five days after said 20^th anniversary open house, after kickstarting the labour by walking my replacement all over, touring two campuses. Going to straight to hospital and having baby six hours later.
    
12. Having both my girls in the daycare on the Chilliwack campus. It closed when I was eight months pregnant with son Miles, so he was cared for by mums from the East Chilliwack community.
    
13. Working dozens of Convocations, missing only when nine months pregnant (twice) or recovering from surgery (once), giving birth on Convocation day (once), and having to juggle two kids’ birthdays with Convocation days for 20+ years.
    
14. Taking on editorship of Headlines, the Fraser Valley College newsletter, and improving its quality and storytelling style.
    
15. Writing our first editorial style guide and creating our first graphic standards guide.
    
16. Being the founding editor of Aluminations, our alumni newsletter, and Skookum, our university magazine.
    
17. Working on an intense, years-long lobbying campaign for regional university status, to help change UCFV to UFV (this campaign ran from 2000-2008).
    
18. Working on campaigns to secure the former Canadian Armed Forces base for a new Chilliwack campus for UCFV and to secure funding for what became the South Asian Studies Institute. These were also campaigns that went on for several years.
    
19. Shaping the future of UFV by sitting on more than 20 hiring committees.
    
20. Meeting Jean Scott, who was about to turn 90, and successfully nominating her for an honorary degree for her decades of social justice work. We became best buddies, a friendship that lasted until she died at 102 and three quarters.
    
21. Meeting and learning from Indigenous colleagues and friends, including the legendary Theresa Neel, the groundbreaking Shirley Hardman, and the brilliant (and great soccer player) Wenona Hall. All showed kindness and patience while sharing their culture with me.
    
22. Meeting and learning from South Asian colleagues and friends, including the generous Satwinder Bains and the feisty Sharanjit Sandhra.
    
23. Sitting my boss Kim Lawrence down in 2008 and introducing her to Facebook, saying “this is going to change everything.” Also introducing or advocating for UFV accounts for Flickr, Linked In, Twitter, Instagram.
    
24. Introducing UFV to digital photography.
    
25. Helping to choose the Top 40 alumni in 2014, interviewing them all “speed date” style at a winery (I drank water) and then spending a crazed weekend propped up with a bad ankle sprain writing their profiles. Catching up with many of those Top 40 a decade later as we prepare to honour our Remarkable 50 alumni.
    
26. Learning so much from so many faculty members from so many disciplines as a byproduct of writing stories about their work and research.
    
27. Working with multiple eras of colleagues in a portfolio that has had many names (Information Services, Community Relations, Marketing and Communications, University Relations, External, and Community Engagements), within which I always find cool and creative people to collaborate with, some for decades, many of whom also became dear friends. I like to say I have more eras at UFV than Taylor Swift does in her career.
    
28. Serving four presidents, four vice presidents, and four directors, and helping to orient them to UFV.
    
29. Meeting or at least being in same room as many leaders and celebrities, including Margaret Trudeau, Sheila Rogers, Sophie Schmidt, Bif Naked, Vicki Gabereau, Tantoo Cardinal, Esi Edugyan, Michelle Good, Gwynne Dyer, Stephen Lewis, John Herdman.
    
30. Connecting with those who lobbied for a college in the 1960s and early ’70s and recording that history. Including Catherine Marcellus of Mission and Doug Hamilton, FVC’s first board chair, who also happens to be my husband’s uncle.
    
31. Successfully nominating founding board chair Doug Hamilton for an honorary degree and seeing his whole extended family (my in-law family) in the front row cheering him on at Convocation when he received it just in time for his 89^th birthday.
    
32. Venturing to Seabird Island to interview Elizabeth Herrling in 2004, and to Cheam to interview Siyamiyateliyot Elizabeth Phillips in 2018, both for stories to acknowledge their honorary degrees. Then arranging for Siyamiyateliyot to be interviewed by CBC for The National on Convocation Day.
    
33. Bringing my passion for women’s soccer and the Fraser Valley together by successfully nominating longtime Canadian women’s national soccer team member and Abbotsford homegirl Sophie Schmidt for an honorary degree, and then helping to prep a very successful reception for her that brought a hundred youth soccer girls to campus.
    
34. Being seconded to work on our 50^th anniversary celebrations, including going through 7,000 newly digitized old photos and using my famous encyclopedic memory to identify people, places, and stories in them.
    
    That’s the story so far. It’s been a pleasure.

If you made it to the end, here’s a treat: 34 years in photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosedaleannie/albums/72157717221553891/with/50697775942