By Alex Rake (The Cascade) – Email
Here’s a strong opinion for you: the gazebos on the Abbotsford campus don’t get enough love. Every day, students walk past them, thinking “Oh, a gazebo.” Do they not deserve more? They are fortresses against the rain, protectors of the smokers, little architectural wonders that ask for nothing in return but that you stand beneath them.
And did you know that there was more than one of them?
The first gazebo you all know well. It sits beside the path connecting the library to the cafeteria. It is the stopping point between knowledge and food, the two things that keep a student living. It’s also where the people are — but who are they? Mysterious strangers, holding mysterious conversations, smoking mysterious cigarettes. But the mystery isn’t exclusive; it is your world, too, and you may join them.
There is also the gazebo in the middle of the Devil’s Triangle formed by the library, U-House, and the athletics centre. How rarely this one is given the time of day! Perhaps it is cursed; I once heard a couple arguing beneath it. One of them was shouting, the other holding back tears, and many students passed the scene pretending to look away. I wonder if they’re okay. I wonder if the negative energy of this gazebo would be alleviated if we all just paid it more attention.
Finally, the gazebo tucked away beside Baker House is the most wonderful gazebo of all. By day, security uses it as a hang out. They talk about their wives. They talk about the big game. They laugh, they cry, they do their jobs. The gazebo is their world.
But by night, it becomes a haven for those students with particularly mysterious cigarettes. They too laugh. They too cry. Will they and security ever meet? Will their two worlds ever collide under the wooden canopy?
We need to explore our university. We need to tell its stories. We see these gazebos every day, but do we ever appreciate how wonderful and strange they are? So many beautiful stories unfold beneath them, and they are our stories. Fuck apathy in a world like this.
