Jackets

Away from campus, jackets became a walking advertisement of someone’s connection to Queen’s. On campus, every Homecoming became a fashion show of bygone classes sporting their heritage jackets. Over time, students embellished their jackets with personalizing details.

As jackets grew more popular, rituals emerged: the university crest was affixed as a rite of passage at the end of the first year as “a pass crest.” Each class designed its year crest. Queen’s students wore their jackets with pride.

Engineering students took the jacket culture to new heights. First-year students were banned from wearing their jackets until they completed their first-term exams. Before that day arrived, they were forbidden to even touch the sacred leather. Ever inventive, they collected their new jackets and kicked them home along the streets. Exams over, the annual “jacket slam,” a day-long pummeling of the jackets into instant antiques, followed on the sidewalk outside Clark Hall. Finally, a coat of gentian dye (rumoured to honour the engineers who perished on the R.M.S. Titanic) rounded out the tradition. This dye has since been replaced by another product due to health concerns.