Sex biscuits, baguette, food for thought.
It's fun to reconnect with an old friend. It reignites the memory. This week I had dinner with Jane. She's now a big-wig policy wonk federal public servant, but I still like to think of her as the playfully sardonic vixen who occupied the private suite in the Hotel St. Georges. In 1987 we met in Nice, France, together with 140 other Canadian students at the inaugural year of L'Université canadienne en France (UCF). The residences of the private estate school overlooking the Med were not ready for our arrival, so we were crammed into two-star hotels downtown. It was the best thing that could have happened to us. The campus was isolated on a hilltop, but we were in the heart of the seedy Riviera scene, just three blocks from the year-round topless beach. At nineteen, I thought I was in heaven -- until I saw what senior November bathers looked like topless. My PEI sensitivities were assaulted, to say the least. Let's just say those ladies tucked in more than their shirts when they got up to leave that beach.

UCF was my second year of university, and my first real year of life as an adult. I had no money, a bike built for a 6'4" man (way too big) as transportation, and no idea what I was doing. Now that fourteen years has passed, I am willing to admit two things about that year: I used to steal chocolate croissants from the hotel kitchen for breakfast, and I had a huge crush on my English Rhetoric professor, Barbara Kraus. The croissants were easy, but I knew Barb was much too old for me -- at 26, she commanded good writing and lots of experience. I gave her what I could. UCF was an interesting cross-section of Canada -- students were selected to represent all provinces (I bore the sole responsibility of representing PEI). The wine flowed freely, all day. We travelled on forged rail passes across Europe, sleeping in train stations and stoned under overturned boats on the docks of Amsterdam. I published the student newspaper, La Baguette, which we pieced together into the wee hours with old typewriters, glue sticks, and more wine. The student body, a microcosm of Canadian society, intermingled in unprecedented ways. Vive le Canada uni! We laughed, we cried, we ate cheap pâté.

Jane and I discovered each other early in the year. I liked her cutting sarcasm, and her self-deprecating analysis. I think she wondered how I managed on the Riviera with only one change of clothes. Her private suite was my refuge in our crampt hotel. It was all innocent, except for the 2kg bags of vanilla wafers printed with sinful sayings: "Pas ce soir", "Plus fort", etc. Jane taught me the meaning of the word maudlin, and indulged me in it. She listened and was gentle with me as I shed the PEI worldview, and I let her throw sex biscuits at me with impunity. It was great.

We lost touch in the 90s. But I kinda always knew where she was and, as it turns out, she was keeping tabs on me too. Over the past two years, we have both faced some terrible things in our lives, so this week it was time to get maudlin again, if only for a minute. I think we were both also happy to discover that the essential ingredients of friendship, first sampled in the belly of the South of France, remain a delight.