Susan (Kirkwood) Westwater, Artsci’86, Ed’88, had not laid eyes on 200 Collingwood before she and six housemates moved there in August 1983. But she’d heard about it.
“Our house was called SNAFU, and was well known among Queen’s students,” she says. “Everybody knew SNAFU. I think it had been named that years prior.”
SNAFU is a military acronym for the phrase “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up” (euphemistically rendered), which you’d think might give pause to prospective tenants. But the house had seven bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, and a living-room wall painted in Queen’s tricolour. What was not to love?
Also, it was on budget.
“In those days, rent was $175 each a month,” recalls Ms. Westwater.
As it turned out, 200 Collingwood’s unnerving nickname was utterly undeserved. “This house was the best part of being at Queen’s,” she says.
Ms. Westwater only knew one of her future housemates, Nadine Harding, Artsci’86, a high-school friend from Oakville, Ont., when she signed a lease the December before she moved in. But the seven women formed an enduring bond soon after arriving. That bond brought them all back to campus 30 years later, from as far away as Sydney, Australia, for Homecoming 2016. Of course, the visit included a pilgrimage to 200 Collingwood.
“It’s divided into units now,” says Ms. Westwater. Her daughter, a Queen’s undergrad, still gives her occasional updates on the home.
Built in the last year of the First World War, 200 Collingwood had housed only one family for most of its life, according to Kingston architectural historian Jennifer McKendry. Carolina Moore, the widow of original owner William Moore, lived there until her death in 1972, just 11 years before Ms. Westwater and her housemates moved in. It’s not clear when the acronym SNAFU was inscribed in the cement near the front door.
The house “was great: a large bedroom on the main floor off the kitchen, four bedrooms on the second floor, and two bedrooms up top – but only one and a half bathrooms,” recalls Ms. Westwater. “How seven girls could have one shower was amazing.”
“We ate dinner together every night and bought food together – all seven of us, which just doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “You had a night when you were in charge of cooking. It was basic [cuisine], a lot of pasta. Not the healthiest.”
The togetherness meant “your social life was all under the same roof,” says Ms. Westwater. “Thursday night was Alfie’s … Saturday morning was pre-football warm-up parties.” The housemates all joined in.
The campus defined them in other ways, says Ms. Westwater. “Virginia (Leighton, NSc’88) worked at the Quiet Pub, J.E. (Husband, Artsci’86) was a constable at Alfie’s, Nadine was a cheerleader. Everybody was involved in her own fashion in university life.”
After two years at 200 Collingwood, the housemates, who also included Tuula Hoop, Artsci’85, and Cindy Linkert, NSc’88, decided to go their own ways, says Ms. Westwater. “I think you mature, right? You get to your fourth year and you’re not so focused on the social part; you’re more serious, and I think that’s how we felt.”
But the kinship formed in those two years holds fast, she says. When one of their number, Kerry Lee Kalm, Artsci’86, died a few years ago, the girls from SNAFU gathered together again. “There’s still a connection,” Ms. Westwater says.
“The Queen’s [University District] is what makes Queen’s unique,” she says. “It was a very happy time in my life and [the house] was a big part of my being a student at Queen’s.”
Tell us about the University District house you lived in and the memories you made.
