We did love our apartment. It was a brand new building, the St. Margaret's Apartment on Fern Street. It was a large one bedroom and den for $105 a month. Wow, gold shag carpets (we had to rake it) and harvest gold appliances! And it had a pool and a pool table room. I swam everyday 70 lengths. It was smaller than the pool here, more the size of our small pools at Canyon Sands. Again, I was usually on my own when I used it. Funnily enough, Elaine lived there as well for a while and she used the pool regularly too. I guess we swam at different times. I usually swam after returning home from school and before dinner. And Derek and Mary lived there as well. We all will never forget the famous dinner we had at our place and we all got plastered drinking Rob Roys!
Our apartment was on the ground floor and didn't have a balcony. One August day soon after we moved in we were really warm in the apartment and decided to go down to the ocean around Beaconhill Park. We couldn't believe how cold it was! In Vancouver, we often went down to Spanish Banks in the late evening for a swim and it was balmy. A different climate in Victoria. And then we learned that the ocean was too cold to swim in...a real blow to people who love ocean swimming. And you'd think in a place where you can't swim in the ocean there would be lots of outdoor pools...not even one public one. The only one was the Racquet Club, which we joined, and had many wonderful times playing tennis, swimming, and having drinks in the bar.
We really missed the cheap ethnic restaurants but the Dingle House had wonderful prime rib but it was pricey. And one of the best steaks I've ever had was at the McPherson Restaurant. We were sad to see it close but then Antonio's (a real French restaurant although he was Italian) came and he published these wonderful sounding menus and the food was fabulous and quite reasonable considering everything. And some of the best rack of lamb I've ever had. By this time Chef Anthony was around....great Italian food and quite reasonable. And the Oak Bay Hotel Snug became a favourite haunt. And we learned that the Colony Hotel bar served $1.49 T-Bone steak on Sundays. We were amazed that there were initially no bars or restaurants that took advantage of the wonderful ocean views. Then the Laurel Point Inn came along and the Parrot House.
Shoreline was a tough school at the time. Lots of social problems...low income, broken families. I was 24 years old and almost the only one on staff under 50 and the principal was very ineffective. He would hide in his office and read his bible most of the time. Since I was the "young one" I got put upon to sponsor the Yearbook and coach sports teams. In January, I was combing the Help Wanted ads and was ready to quit. What kept me going was planning our first trip to Europe in the summer of 1972. That was the beginning of our wonderful European travel.
