Turpin, Nicole (interview)
Dublin Core
Title
Turpin, Nicole (interview)
Description
Testimonial about The University of Ottawa in the 1970s, including the counter-culture movement and second-wave feminism
Date
2023-10-21
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Interviewer
Lafrance, Elizabeth
Interviewee
Turpin, Nicole
Location
Ottawa, Ontario (Via Teams)
Transcription
Elizabeth Lafrance
Um, so I'm Elizabeth Lafrance interviewing. Nicole Turpin, about the Life on campus project in the 70s.
0:0:12.980 --> 0:0:13.700 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:0:17.750 --> 0:0:20.560 Elizabeth Lafrance And so one of the main themes that we're trying to like, Um, delve into is the impact of popular culture, and so the main question for this part that we're trying to like get into is cultural historians have argued that television, Hollywood, popular music, and a consumer culture around automobiles created a more integrated North American popular culture. Ottawa was a bilingual institution, and we want to better understand how anglophones and francophones are related. Together.
0:0:52.680 --> 0:1:3.950 Elizabeth Lafrance They were less at electronics in Canadian society during the 1970s. How was your leisure time structured or what did you? What did you do with students do for fun and then 1970s?
0:1:5.580 --> 0:1:8.790 Nicole I guess the biggest piece was we spent time together.
0:1:10.230 --> 0:1:14.940 Nicole There was definitely a separation between the Francophones and the Anglophones.
0:1:16.360 --> 0:1:17.300 Nicole In first year.
0:1:18.60 --> 0:1:23.300 Nicole It was more because there was a lot of francophones that were coming from outside of Ottawa.
0:1:24.50 --> 0:1:26.590 Nicole And did not speak a lot of English.
0:1:27.940 --> 0:1:44.670 Nicole So there really was a big separation. I was actually in the middle because I came from Ottawa. I was completely bilingual and in sports because I had a fixed and kinesiology courses.
0:1:45.330 --> 0:2:1.190 Nicole All sports, all the competitive sports, was mixed together. So there was a social circle that was created that didn't exist on campus part from sports. That's the sports part.
0:2:2.390 --> 0:2:2.570 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:2:2.370 --> 0:2:8.690 Nicole So for there, that's what. That's where we hung around more and more with both Anglophone and Francophone.
0:2:11.910 --> 0:2:14.60 Elizabeth Lafrance So did you not have a problem like?
0:2:14.750 --> 0:2:21.150 Elizabeth Lafrance Between each, like anglophone or francophone, where you completely in the middle? Or did you find yourself going to like one side?
0:2:22.140 --> 0:2:26.410 Nicole Being a Franco Ontarian is very different than a quebecker.
0:2:27.360 --> 0:2:32.640 Nicole And because I've lived all my life in a bilingual environment, most of my life.
0:2:52.680 --> 0:2:53.280 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:2:33.400 --> 0:3:3.690 Nicole I was used to it and all of my friends that went to university with me from Ottawa, we would switch back and forth in French and English without even thinking about it. As soon as there was an anglophone in the group, we would switch all the English for that person because the anglophone never even had thought of thinking or talking in French. But the francophones we were all used to it. So that's how we worked.
0:3:4.890 --> 0:3:5.260 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:3:6.780 --> 0:3:12.340 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, what were the most popular hangout spots on and off of campus?
0:3:13.310 --> 0:3:13.690 Nicole Again.
0:3:13.770 --> 0:3:15.420 Nicole The first year was pretty quiet.
0:3:16.240 --> 0:3:39.300 Nicole Residence was always a popular place and there was a room, a big room, a meeting room, and there was, I can't remember if there was alcohol on campus or not. I have no memory of that. But it was a big there. there was a lot of music and a lot of dancing, and there was always. You always started there as a group.
0:3:42.740 --> 0:3:43.360 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:3:40.580 --> 0:3:48.780 Nicole But we were underage at that time, so it there was a lot less alcohol in those first years.
0:3:50.80 --> 0:4:4.370 Nicole It's yet to be 21, so it was just kind of like in and out. And yes, there was alcohol everywhere, but it wasn't, you know, in a lot of places. We just aren't allowed to go. We couldn't get in. We looked too young. So that's thing.
0:4:6.720 --> 0:4:13.700 Elizabeth Lafrance And when you like, we're graduating. Was it more like focused on alcohol? Like, whenever you'd hang out?
0:4:14.890 --> 0:4:16.110 Nicole It depended on the group.
0:4:17.200 --> 0:4:22.950 Nicole We, I hung around very much with the Sports Group, with the athletes.
0:4:23.650 --> 0:4:43.960 Nicole So most people was mostly alcohol, but I, I knew some people who were completely into drugs as whatever you wanted was there on campus and some some people got really deep into it and even some of my friends that I knew and kind of stayed away from that.
0:4:45.20 --> 0:4:48.330 Nicole But there was anything you wanted on campus.
0:4:49.360 --> 0:4:49.950 Nicole Really was.
0:4:52.320 --> 0:4:56.840 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, did you attend any live music events during your university years?
0:4:57.180 --> 0:5:4.780 Nicole Oh my God. All the time dancing really was something everybody did. Like you went somewhere and you dance.
0:5:14.120 --> 0:5:14.530 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:5:5.410 --> 0:5:26.930 Nicole For hours and hours and hours. And you, you. You did it like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know you did it here every night and 1st year was quieter again. And I lived at home for the first year. So I, you know, of course, my parents were still controlling a little bit more. And I lived in Aylmer in that point. So it was far.
0:5:27.640 --> 0:5:49.960 Nicole And so that was made a difference in first year. It was a lot quieter after that. I moved into an apartment in Sandy Hill. So that changed everything. I was living on my own with a couple of girlfriends, and life was a lot busier socially. There was always a party going on any night. There was always something for you.
0:5:51.180 --> 0:5:59.30 Nicole On campus, around campus, the bars around the campus down in-in-the in the market, were always open.
0:6:0.10 --> 0:6:4.790 Nicole And so yeah, depending on what you need to do that night, there was always something.
0:6:7.980 --> 0:6:20.230 Elizabeth Lafrance UOttawa was a bilingual institution. How linguistically integrated was it during the 1970s. Did the Francophones and anglophones enrol in the same university courses and participate in the same clubs?
0:6:20.620 --> 0:6:22.580 Nicole OK, so in those days.
0:6:23.420 --> 0:6:29.280 Nicole Thou shall not cross that line. The courses were only in French and only in English.
0:6:30.10 --> 0:6:32.370 Nicole I was actually the first student.
0:6:33.750 --> 0:6:48.260 Nicole That thought that and I ended up sitting in the Dean's office and arguing the point. Why should I not be allowed to go into the French course? Or the English course, depending on which teacher or what time?
0:6:49.650 --> 0:6:54.360 Nicole Work better for me. But you had to be bilingual to do that.
0:6:55.330 --> 0:7:0.350 Nicole And I've got they let me do it. And it was not.
0:7:1.110 --> 0:7:7.260 Nicole It was extremely rare where the courses were together at all. It really was two schools.
0:7:7.920 --> 0:7:10.280 Nicole On one French side and one English side.
0:7:10.880 --> 0:7:18.730 Nicole We did, however, socialize a lot together. As we got older and got to know each other.
0:7:20.380 --> 0:7:30.860 Nicole But to start, it was very much the English type and very much the French type to the point when not where you started or when I was there, we had to do a language test.
0:7:32.310 --> 0:7:32.480 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:7:32.190 --> 0:7:33.470 Nicole Or second language test.
0:7:34.200 --> 0:7:39.470 Nicole And most people, the second language was much lower.
0:7:40.80 --> 0:7:45.740 Nicole So you would take whatever level, but you were mandated to take a second language course.
0:7:47.190 --> 0:7:53.400 Nicole I was a keener and being who I was and how I was, I came from a French private school. We were really very, very bilingual. I ended up taking the French sides French and the English sides English of Anthology of English verse, which was horrible. But that's how bilingual I was.
0:8:12.590 --> 0:8:12.980 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:8:12.430 --> 0:8:19.880 Nicole But there was a lot of francophones who could, and anglophones who did not speak a word of the other language or barely.
0:8:21.150 --> 0:8:21.510 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:8:22.460 --> 0:8:27.420 Elizabeth Lafrance Um did Anglophones and francophones date each other during the 1970s.
0:8:27.470 --> 0:8:29.710 Nicole Ohhhhh the French girls are popular.
0:8:31.630 --> 0:8:39.830 Nicole There's no question about that. And very quickly everybody started dating and we mixed very quickly.
0:8:41.120 --> 0:9:1.410 Nicole We were all very close to both the groups, especially in in the groupings, because again, as I said, the sports were worked integrated. So we-we-we got to know each other a lot. It was not like that for a lot of other places. But in our department it really was mixed.
0:9:4.760 --> 0:9:7.750 Elizabeth Lafrance So how did, like, you being a part of sport change your experince?
0:9:8.850 --> 0:9:15.80 Elizabeth Lafrance Taking sports, like, change how you ,like, experienced university.
0:9:16.230 --> 0:9:19.480 Nicole The sports how did it change? Where am I?
0:9:20.980 --> 0:9:21.740 Nicole Uh.
0:9:21.350 --> 0:9:23.300 Elizabeth Lafrance No, that was like that's all the script but.
0:9:23.230 --> 0:9:26.600 Nicole Oh, it's not the- OK, how did I integrate?
0:9:27.580 --> 0:9:35.850 Elizabeth Lafrance Or like how did you been a part of like sports clubs instead of change how, like your social life like was?
0:9:36.130 --> 0:9:39.330 Nicole It was very different because I was so fluent.
0:9:40.910 --> 0:9:48.630 Nicole So whatever sport I wanted to go into, it gravitated different sports gravitated different culture like different groupings, whether it was francophones for certain sports, like volleyball, it was francophone.
0:9:58.130 --> 0:10:0.510 Nicole And basketball was anglophone.
0:10:1.190 --> 0:10:24.490 Nicole That was their sports. And so again, I got to do both, but most of the others didn't. But because we were started getting to know each other so much in those sports, and there were others that everybody joined in and you would hear both languages running at the same time. And on the- in the same sentence.
0:10:25.680 --> 0:10:31.210 Nicole As people got more and more integrated into each other, wanting to be social with each other.
0:10:32.140 --> 0:10:37.190 Nicole And so that-that created a much more cultural group.
0:10:39.90 --> 0:10:39.820 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:10:41.260 --> 0:10:53.850 Elizabeth Lafrance We used the term party culture to refer to the social activities outside the classroom. How would you describe the part the party culture on the University of Ottawa campus during the 1970s?
0:10:54.740 --> 0:10:56.110 Nicole I have. It was wild.
0:10:57.170 --> 0:10:59.790 Nicole It was. You have to realize that.
0:11:0.510 --> 0:11:17.380 Nicole We had been wild. I was coming from private boarding school girls, private school for five years. No, four years. Sorry, that was crazy all of a sudden, it- and you were away from home. Most of half the groupings were in residence.
0:11:18.70 --> 0:11:18.600 Nicole Um.
0:11:19.260 --> 0:11:19.590 Nicole Yeah.
0:11:20.460 --> 0:11:22.810 Nicole There was a a lot of-
0:11:23.710 --> 0:11:28.660 Nicole Every night girls and boys, there were some heavy partying in those days.
0:11:30.170 --> 0:11:42.180 Nicole And depending on how important your-your class and your report card or your marks was it, it changed. I mean there was this big crazy time and then everybody kind of.
0:11:42.890 --> 0:11:47.620 Nicole Who bought a bit realized. Oh, wait a SEC. We actually have to go to classes and we actually have to.
0:11:48.230 --> 0:11:55.700 Nicole Graduate. So there was this ebb and flow, but it was it really was, wild. Anything, everything.
0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:2.520 Nicole And at the same time, it was the first generation of women who we went on the pill.
0:12:3.870 --> 0:12:4.300 Nicole That.
0:12:4.50 --> 0:12:4.400 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:12:9.200 --> 0:12:10.10 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:12:12.230 --> 0:12:14.700 Elizabeth Lafrance What did the student body think about the?
0:12:15.870 --> 0:12:16.190 Nicole Review.
0:12:15.780 --> 0:12:16.510 Elizabeth Lafrance Vietnam War.
0:12:17.90 --> 0:12:17.530 Nicole Nothing.
0:12:18.350 --> 0:12:19.470 Nicole It didn't exist.
0:12:20.290 --> 0:12:30.240 Nicole You know what did it? Did it? It was barely mentioned. No interest was what was, though hugely was the FLQ and what that is.
0:12:32.850 --> 0:12:33.50 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:12:31.730 --> 0:12:33.780 Nicole So that tends to back.
0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:35.910 Nicole When we went into.
0:12:38.300 --> 0:12:45.560 Nicole The FLQ took some English people and ended up they wanted to separate the-the-the province.
0:12:46.730 --> 0:12:53.500 Nicole It was. It was violent. There's someone that was killed. You'll have to research that part. The FLQ.
0:12:54.170 --> 0:12:57.780 Nicole That we talked about all the time because.
0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:4.30 Nicole In grade12 and 13, when it happened, that's when I was in it.
0:13:4.690 --> 0:13:5.580 Nicole We had.
0:13:6.330 --> 0:13:28.670 Nicole Um students in our school that their parents were cabinet ministers and representatives, and we actually had RCMP on campus in our schools for weeks and months so that no one would be kidnapped or that there was no Violence.
0:13:29.370 --> 0:13:34.80 Nicole But we lived through the FLQ, but Vietnam nothing. Not a word.
0:13:34.970 --> 0:13:38.0 Nicole I have no memory of everybody talking about that part.
0:13:39.260 --> 0:13:40.190 Nicole It was more the FLQ.
0:13:39.780 --> 0:13:40.260 Elizabeth Lafrance So.
0:13:49.660 --> 0:13:52.820 Nicole It it it warranted a lot of discussions.
0:13:53.510 --> 0:14:9.30 Nicole It talked about the French identity, Canadian identity, how to integrate French and English. So we we had a lot of discussions with the Francophones and Anglophones talking about identity.
0:14:9.810 --> 0:14:11.740 Nicole That we did a lot of discussions about.
0:14:12.540 --> 0:14:16.390 Nicole Um, but not nothing about the Vietnam War.
0:14:17.100 --> 0:14:20.60 Nicole Not with that English French dynamic.
0:14:21.80 --> 0:14:21.620 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:36.840 Elizabeth Lafrance Rock'n'roll artists in that 1960s had promoted various forms of protests. Did your, did your parents think of rock'n'roll as rebellious or just a form of popular music?
0:14:38.430 --> 0:14:41.120 Nicole I was the eldest of seven kids.
0:14:41.980 --> 0:14:47.550 Nicole And and so I was the first one that walked out the door kind of thing and started.
0:14:49.380 --> 0:14:50.640 Nicole But they were very.
0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:56.850 Nicole Confident about me as a person and I wasn't into drugs.
0:14:57.550 --> 0:14:58.660 Nicole So they kind of.
0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:9.270 Nicole I mean, they'd comment about it. I can remember my boyfriend at the time. His parents were appalled because he had started letting his hair grow, and that was like.
0:15:10.60 --> 0:15:14.30 Nicole A huge challenge to parents was the boys having long hair.
0:15:15.0 --> 0:15:25.940 Nicole When you think about it now it's hilarious. But in those days the boys hair was long and getting longer. That was absolutely the rock influence.
0:15:26.930 --> 0:15:32.400 Nicole Not the big drug thing because like we skirted it, we didn't really get into it.
0:15:33.670 --> 0:15:39.410 Nicole Our parents weren't as worried, but I know other parents were. They were definitely worried about it.
0:15:41.830 --> 0:15:44.510 Elizabeth Lafrance So would you say that your parents were like, strict?
0:15:45.630 --> 0:15:45.920 Nicole I'm.
0:15:50.890 --> 0:15:51.150 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:15:47.610 --> 0:15:52.40 Nicole You have to remember when we're talking about, you know, expectations for children.
0:15:53.80 --> 0:16:4.880 Nicole Pretty clear, but then I moved out so I only stayed a year with my parents and then I-I was gone after that they they had no say over me, really. I mean, I didn't.
0:16:6.160 --> 0:16:11.220 Nicole I didn't change my behavior. I still saw them regularly. I still, you know, went over and.
0:16:12.380 --> 0:16:19.880 Nicole Got fed as often as I could because I lived in the same city. I mean, I lived close. My parents were in in Alymer at that point, so.
0:16:20.570 --> 0:16:22.270 Nicole It it wasn't as obvious.
0:16:27.660 --> 0:16:27.920 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:16:22.950 --> 0:16:38.400 Nicole What did i do that they didn't have a clue what I was doing, really, you know? But they had my younger brother and sisters, they were already into it too. So they were concerned. But I think they trusted us to make good choices at the time.
0:16:41.150 --> 0:16:53.130 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, some youth culture voices in the 1970s promoted taking recreational drugs. To what extent where recreational drugs available on campus during the 1970s.
0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:55.190 Nicole Anything you wanted, you.
0:16:56.530 --> 0:17:9.370 Nicole I know that I didn't. My sister got into heavy like, i’ll let you know, acid and everything she was into absolutely everything. And she could get it anyway she wanted.
0:17:10.250 --> 0:17:11.830 Nicole It really was there.
0:17:12.810 --> 0:17:21.380 Nicole But again, I didn't so, but I knew it was. And me and my husband always talked about. He was stoned during his university. He has no memory of.
0:17:22.130 --> 0:17:29.90 Nicole Most of the University of the social, so it depended on what you were doing at the time. But yes, it was there. Absolutely.
0:17:34.460 --> 0:17:36.60 Elizabeth Lafrance During the 1970s.
0:17:36.980 --> 0:17:51.780 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, and you don't have to answer this question, but during 1970s speak about tripping and taking psychedelics to reach a higher state of consciousness. To what extent did students on campus use hallucinogens?
0:17:52.260 --> 0:17:56.360 Nicole I knew they were, but because I wasn't in it, I don't know.
0:17:58.340 --> 0:17:59.360 Nicole I mean, I heard about it.
0:18:0.0 --> 0:18:5.330 Nicole People talk about it, but I didn't do any of it, so I was afraid of drugs actually most.
0:18:5.990 --> 0:18:13.170 Nicole Really was? I just didn't trust people. Just little Baggies walking around saying here, you know, I just didn't trust it.
0:18:14.130 --> 0:18:14.470 Nicole So.
0:18:15.540 --> 0:18:18.370 Elizabeth Lafrance But you were like around that kind of like culture.
0:18:18.150 --> 0:18:24.210 Nicole Yes, sometimes I was, yeah. Depending on the party, there was always somebody that had a bad a baggie of something.
0:18:25.820 --> 0:18:27.0 Nicole And you could always get it.
0:18:27.670 --> 0:18:28.180 Nicole But.
0:18:29.270 --> 0:18:30.880 Nicole Our group was pretty.
0:18:31.890 --> 0:18:34.530 Nicole Quiet compared for the for drugs anyway.
0:18:35.950 --> 0:18:43.490 Nicole So we just kind of stayed away from it and there was groups that that's all they did, they were always stoned in class and out of class.
0:18:44.260 --> 0:18:45.120 Nicole They they were.
0:18:45.840 --> 0:19:1.200 Nicole Fine, because I did take quite a lot of our classes outside of the Phys Ed department. Right? You still have sociology. You still had language. You still have other classes where we were mixed with other departments, and there was always somebody that was so gone.
0:19:1.830 --> 0:19:2.530 Nicole Sat there and.
0:19:4.940 --> 0:19:5.170 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:19:4.350 --> 0:19:5.750 Nicole Don't know why they were there, really.
0:19:11.360 --> 0:19:11.530 Nicole Yeah.
0:19:9.190 --> 0:19:13.140 Elizabeth Lafrance So this is like the second section, the female experience.
0:19:14.630 --> 0:19:14.910 Elizabeth Lafrance Uh.
0:19:14.10 --> 0:19:16.960 Nicole You don't have to read the whole question if you don't want to.
0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.500 Elizabeth Lafrance I'll probably do it for like the transcript.
0:19:20.530 --> 0:19:22.0 Nicole OK, it helps.
0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.730 Elizabeth Lafrance Um cultural historians have written a lot about.
0:19:27.470 --> 0:19:44.800 Elizabeth Lafrance What they call second wave feminism guy as per of the culture, cultural movement, women during the early 1970s sought to breakdown gender barriers. What does this argument resonate with your experience on the University of Ottawa campus during the early 70s?
0:19:49.430 --> 0:19:54.920 Nicole The biggest change in our world, and it was massive really.
0:19:56.390 --> 0:20:0.640 Nicole All of a sudden, all you need to do was take the pill, you didn't get Pregnant.
0:20:1.480 --> 0:20:7.10 Nicole And that completely changed their lives as a group of women and.
0:20:7.920 --> 0:20:9.890 Nicole Most of my friends, we were all in the pit.
0:20:11.780 --> 0:20:16.350 Nicole And in those days, those pills could have worked on a horse.
0:20:17.260 --> 0:20:22.90 Nicole And not getting pregnant. It was so, so strong it was.
0:20:23.270 --> 0:20:31.810 Nicole Crazy the level of of hormones that they gave us in those initial wave of pills, but we took them.
0:20:32.740 --> 0:20:34.410 Nicole And so.
0:20:35.260 --> 0:20:42.910 Nicole We didn't hear as much about, you know, the horrible life of being pregnant because.
0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.90 Nicole Pretty well. Everybody was on the pill that wanted to.
0:20:48.290 --> 0:20:49.250 Nicole And you could get it.
0:20:50.330 --> 0:20:59.370 Nicole On or off campus somewhere close, so all the people in residence are the women in residence would go and get, you know, get on the pill.
0:21:2.180 --> 0:21:10.130 Elizabeth Lafrance In your own words, did feminism signify in Canada during the early 1970s, or what did? Sorry.
0:21:10.580 --> 0:21:19.840 Nicole Well, apart from the pill, equal rights all of a sudden, yes, we did a lot of talking as women about how.
0:21:22.490 --> 0:21:30.530 Nicole Our parents were our our mothers were being encased in this expectation and that we didn't wanna be the same.
0:21:31.530 --> 0:21:38.10 Nicole We wanted to have more choices. We wanted more things and we realized very quickly that.
0:21:39.870 --> 0:21:49.410 Nicole It was the man that was running this world and and we weren’t. We were. There was a lot of discussion. There was some really good discussions about.
0:21:50.40 --> 0:22:19.990 Nicole Representation about government being only men, you know, corporations being led by men we were. We were definitely incensed about that. And it that messaging was definitely coming from the states. It we were hearing it. We were seeing it, there was campus groupings of women that and I remember sitting a couple of them I went, you know, once in a while I'd sit in on on some of those groups you. Cassie was really important that we we understand.
0:22:20.70 --> 0:22:21.750 Nicole Why and how to change that?
0:22:22.410 --> 0:22:36.760 Nicole But University had the social culture and the and the intellectual culture that we were more even equal because you could talk and you could challenge it there.
0:22:37.670 --> 0:22:40.570 Nicole But it was very different when we went out into the real world.
0:22:42.170 --> 0:22:46.80 Nicole That environment that university gave, gave us the opportunity.
0:22:46.730 --> 0:22:47.770 Nicole To question ourselves.
0:22:48.550 --> 0:22:51.0 Nicole But it's only when we got into the real world that.
0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:53.70 Nicole We realized wait a SEC.
0:22:54.40 --> 0:22:55.530 Nicole Still not doing it right.
0:23:4.280 --> 0:23:4.720 Nicole Yes.
0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:5.190 Elizabeth Lafrance So were you a part of like those conversations that was happening in university about, like, feminism and, like, equal rights?
0:23:6.260 --> 0:23:12.830 Nicole Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Often we. Like I said, we would join some of the groups and, and have these discussions.
0:23:13.710 --> 0:23:36.530 Nicole Think we thought we with the universities you can create a group anytime you wanted to and you could, you know, have a meeting and use a a room. So yes, I-I did was I one to March? No, because I felt quite comfortable where I was in my world. But yes we did. I did sit in on quite a lot of the discussions at that time.
0:23:39.60 --> 0:23:39.570 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:23:41.130 --> 0:23:53.680 Elizabeth Lafrance Gender distinctions were more pronounced in the 1970s than today. How did being a woman result in different treatment and expectations in classrooms or at social events compared to the male students?
0:23:54.510 --> 0:23:59.600 Nicole So the most interesting thing that happened to us when we when I started.
0:24:0.420 --> 0:24:1.950 Nicole The first year.
0:24:3.250 --> 0:24:24.580 Nicole All our classes. OK, so we were the things that we were specializing in teaching physical education, right. It was a course that brought you teaching Phys Ed in schools. OK, so at the first my first year, all my courses in sports were separate.
0:24:25.420 --> 0:24:26.130 Nicole From the boys.
0:24:27.50 --> 0:24:37.100 Nicole So we learned the female courses like dance and all of the sports, even basketball. It was all the girls together.
0:24:38.330 --> 0:24:47.300 Nicole The next year we were there, UOttawa, the Department of Phys Ed, decided that they could not keep doing this.
0:24:48.230 --> 0:25:4.230 Nicole Because when a teachers got into the real world of teaching, they got caught or they got, they were told they had to teach a class of boys or a class of girls, and they didn't have any background in it.
0:25:4.900 --> 0:25:13.370 Nicole So that second year and forever after that, all the teaching of sports was mixed.
0:25:14.230 --> 0:25:25.600 Nicole So, and it was hilarious. I can still see this. One of the guys. And I knew him quite well. He was huge. He was like 280 and he was on the provincial wrestling team.
0:25:27.90 --> 0:25:35.360 Nicole And he comes to me and says, OK, here it is. You're gonna teach me how to teach dance. And I'm gonna teach you how to how to teach wrestling.
0:25:36.160 --> 0:25:43.880 Nicole I'm nearly got killed with him because he was so huge, but that's how much we had to change all of a sudden.
0:25:44.650 --> 0:25:54.380 Nicole How we were looking at-at all of the introduction of teaching, because we have to learn the other sports.
0:25:55.280 --> 0:26:9.330 Nicole And that was a huge hardship, and the teachers had a hard time with you because here you come in with a group of women and go, OK, what do we do with them? Like, how am I gonna teach wrestling to girls who never in their lives wrestle?
0:26:10.210 --> 0:26:10.830 Nicole That was.
0:26:10.780 --> 0:26:11.50 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:26:11.520 --> 0:26:16.180 Nicole A big piece, but absolutely shifted how we looked at everything.
0:26:17.30 --> 0:26:20.860 Nicole And because of that my first job.
0:26:21.980 --> 0:26:28.60 Nicole I was able to teach. I had three girls classes, but I had two boys classes.
0:26:28.680 --> 0:26:32.370 Nicole And they hired me because I had had that preparation.
0:26:33.890 --> 0:26:34.880 Nicole But it did make a difference.
0:26:35.730 --> 0:26:36.60 Nicole Yeah.
0:26:37.750 --> 0:26:45.460 Elizabeth Lafrance And the 1970s were there, UOttawa programs, departments or clubs where women were less present and accepted?
0:26:46.30 --> 0:26:46.230 Nicole Absoluteely.
0:26:46.340 --> 0:26:46.840 Nicole Remotely.
0:26:47.540 --> 0:26:52.0 Nicole Everywhere there were certain things that you could see that you know, the women just weren't there.
0:26:52.660 --> 0:26:55.710 Nicole Um, there was there was a.
0:26:56.490 --> 0:27:4.870 Nicole Pick up hockey was the one of the first ones, and again, because women didn't play hockey in those days.
0:27:6.140 --> 0:27:11.890 Nicole And I remember going to the rink and that's just one example going to the rink and saying I’d love to play hockey.
0:27:12.660 --> 0:27:16.670 Nicole I can skate. Why can't I learn to play hockey? I got killed.
0:27:18.140 --> 0:27:31.300 Nicole And if we should pick up hockey, but I because the guys knew me, I they taught me how to do it. But Oh God, there was so many things where it was still the women on one side and the minimum. There's no question about it.
0:27:32.60 --> 0:27:43.900 Nicole And the man introduced, you know, wanting to go on the on the women's side too, it was as much one side as the other, but slowly, by the end of my five years.
0:27:44.740 --> 0:27:47.350 Nicole It it was integrated a lot more.
0:27:48.10 --> 0:27:49.820 Nicole Space compared to when I started.
0:27:50.640 --> 0:27:51.230 Nicole Absolutely.
0:27:53.430 --> 0:27:57.640 Elizabeth Lafrance Did you yourself face challenges, like when you wanted to like?
0:27:58.430 --> 0:28:1.520 Elizabeth Lafrance Go into a space that was not as like female dominated.
0:28:3.190 --> 0:28:4.880 Nicole Yes, absolutely.
0:28:5.680 --> 0:28:9.230 Nicole Um and some women were more.
0:28:10.250 --> 0:28:13.460 Nicole Comfortable and being in that world.
0:28:14.630 --> 0:28:29.900 Nicole And I was, um, it really depended on how you-you looked at things. Some of the women weren't comfortable at all. I was skiing instructor, downhill ski instructor, and I ran.
0:28:31.0 --> 0:28:33.730 Nicole The Speed School Children's school. At camp fortune.
0:28:35.210 --> 0:28:48.180 Nicole All the way through university on the weekends, I was in charge of all the kids programs and we're talking 2000 kids a weekend. It was a massive ski school and I ran that.
0:28:48.800 --> 0:28:50.670 Nicole So I was with the guys all the time.
0:28:52.30 --> 0:29:3.840 Nicole And I was the only woman that ran these programs. The others were all male, so I was more comfortable. But I knew a lot of women who would never have stepped up.
0:29:5.130 --> 0:29:15.970 Nicole But again, by the end of my five years there, it was more accepted. It was more natural to have a women coming into sports that.
0:29:16.640 --> 0:29:17.840 Nicole You know, wouldn't have.
0:29:18.500 --> 0:29:25.430 Nicole Now, but even then, I- my daughter, who played boys, competitive hockey.
0:29:26.320 --> 0:29:36.310 Nicole Did have her challenges? So I could I can still see. It's not completely there. It never will be. I don't think. But we've come a long way.
0:29:39.280 --> 0:29:44.790 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, so I'm going to move on to the another theme that ideology and generation on differences.
0:29:46.490 --> 0:30:6.920 Elizabeth Lafrance Historians have written a lot about what they call the counterculture revolution, meaning that your generation rebelled against the values of your parents, generation. To what extent did people in your social circle see themselves as needing to mobilize or a more just or just adjust society and better world?
0:30:8.590 --> 0:30:17.580 Nicole So there's a lot of. So we talked a lot about language and female and male. The one I think that.
0:30:18.750 --> 0:30:23.170 Nicole Really, we started to understand more as we got into you like.
0:30:24.770 --> 0:30:29.890 Nicole Old in more older grades of the university was more multicultural.
0:30:31.100 --> 0:30:31.850 Nicole It was all white.
0:30:32.730 --> 0:30:35.230 Nicole And if there were so few black.
0:30:35.890 --> 0:30:37.620 Nicole Kids in the school.
0:30:38.520 --> 0:30:50.290 Nicole And that's the one that we all all of a sudden started questioning saying, why is it like that? Like what is it with, you know, all of a sudden there was there was these discussions about.
0:30:51.440 --> 0:30:55.710 Nicole That hadn't existed before. My world was completely white.
0:30:57.280 --> 0:31:7.10 Nicole And all of a sudden we were starting to say, well, why aren't they here or there we-we would talk to them and and they would be starting to say.
0:31:8.210 --> 0:31:9.650 Nicole But why is it like that?
0:31:9.990 --> 0:31:13.250 Nicole Um, so yeah, we-we did start.
0:31:13.920 --> 0:31:26.620 Nicole Talking about why and how you know, also again still the male female challenges of being represented to everywhere. So we you were pushing the envelope.
0:31:28.220 --> 0:31:31.890 Nicole In our days, quite a lot more than when we started.
0:31:33.510 --> 0:31:43.110 Nicole There was a lot more of why not and why can't we do this and let's let's go and find out or let's get involved more.
0:31:44.300 --> 0:31:51.940 Nicole Which a lot of women didn't at the beginning and we had a greater voice of challenging that that piece.
0:31:53.80 --> 0:31:55.260 Nicole But the multicultural piece does.
0:31:56.270 --> 0:32:1.540 Nicole I really eye opener at the beginning started talking to the few.
0:32:2.680 --> 0:32:3.980 Nicole Black kids that were with us.
0:32:5.290 --> 0:32:8.110 Nicole And it was really eye opening back for sure.
0:32:10.650 --> 0:32:18.90 Elizabeth Lafrance To what extent did your generation believe that your parents, and their notions about gender, family and dating, were outdated?
0:32:20.490 --> 0:32:21.160 Nicole OK.
0:32:24.290 --> 0:32:28.780 Nicole Yes, it it was because of the pill. The pill changed our lives.
0:32:29.540 --> 0:32:30.870 Nicole Because before that.
0:32:31.650 --> 0:32:32.40 Nicole If.
0:32:35.950 --> 0:32:40.80 Nicole And all of a sudden that was all gone. You could do whatever you wanted to.
0:32:40.770 --> 0:32:42.460 Nicole Where as our parents.
0:32:43.630 --> 0:32:47.0 Nicole You know, they they really believed in in being, you know.
0:32:48.370 --> 0:32:49.740 Nicole More individual.
0:32:50.380 --> 0:32:51.30 Nicole Um.
0:32:53.180 --> 0:32:58.140 Nicole I could see that that was definitely a challenge.
0:32:59.240 --> 0:33:0.650 Nicole Equal pay for equal work.
0:33:1.650 --> 0:33:7.930 Nicole Um, I think that was one that we started hearing a lot now in education, it was equal.
0:33:8.910 --> 0:33:18.150 Nicole But the jobs were not equal and we were hearing that already because we would have, we would go into schools and do practicals.
0:33:19.140 --> 0:33:23.690 Nicole And so we were in the schools and it was very obvious that.
0:33:24.620 --> 0:33:28.270 Nicole The senior administration, principals and vice principals were all male.
0:33:29.910 --> 0:33:31.140 Nicole There were no female.
0:33:32.10 --> 0:33:36.460 Nicole That we saw. So we realized even then that.
0:33:37.210 --> 0:33:43.250 Nicole Wait a SEC, why is there not. And-and 80% of teachers are female, but yet?
0:33:44.400 --> 0:33:53.780 Nicole You know, it was like 90% male in administration and and and also in the teaching environment we didn't have a lot of female teachers.
0:33:55.120 --> 0:33:58.420 Nicole So, and the ones we did really did help us.
0:33:59.210 --> 0:34:2.680 Nicole To voice our-our concerns, but there's no question.
0:34:3.850 --> 0:34:6.370 Nicole We were second guessing ourselves for that one for sure.
0:34:9.860 --> 0:34:12.670 Elizabeth Lafrance Talking about to the 1970s.
0:34:14.780 --> 0:34:21.160 Elizabeth Lafrance What aspect of Canadian to society did you see as most out of whack and in needing of fixing?
0:34:21.960 --> 0:34:24.170 Nicole Again, same thing. It really was.
0:34:25.480 --> 0:34:27.330 Nicole OK, great. equal work.
0:34:28.460 --> 0:34:37.30 Nicole We- it was very obvious about that. We thought we could change the world. You do when you're at university because you're talking with other people that agree with you.
0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:42.830 Nicole And so it's only when you get into the work world that.
0:34:43.710 --> 0:34:46.310 Nicole Things don't change as quickly as you want it to.
0:34:47.350 --> 0:34:51.180 Nicole So the environment you live in through your university years.
0:34:51.880 --> 0:34:54.120 Nicole Are your most open.
0:34:55.260 --> 0:34:58.840 Nicole In terms of questioning the why and how.
0:35:0.160 --> 0:35:4.550 Nicole But it's only when you get into the work world that you realize, oh.
0:35:5.260 --> 0:35:6.120 Nicole It's not as simple as that.
0:35:7.710 --> 0:35:10.120 Nicole But in theory it sounded great that university.
0:35:11.120 --> 0:35:12.680 Nicole That was a huge right there.
0:35:14.240 --> 0:35:17.120 Nicole And and it needed fixing. There's no question about that.
0:35:19.370 --> 0:35:20.140 Nicole That’s the difference.
0:35:19.850 --> 0:35:20.380 Elizabeth Lafrance I'm.
0:35:24.900 --> 0:35:30.690 Elizabeth Lafrance What were the principle forms of injustice in Canadian society during the 1970s?
0:35:32.130 --> 0:35:36.950 Nicole Again, women being able to work outside of home.
0:35:37.700 --> 0:35:41.610 Nicole And I was still in that generation where you stayed at home with your kids.
0:35:42.810 --> 0:35:43.680 Nicole Um.
0:35:45.890 --> 0:36:2.190 Nicole And most women I knew were talking about being home with kids, you know, and share your kids and racism again, same thing. There was a lot of injustices in-in, in the black community.
0:36:2.940 --> 0:36:5.870 Nicole And we were just starting to be aware.
0:36:7.510 --> 0:36:9.410 Nicole So there was definitely.
0:36:10.520 --> 0:36:11.330 Nicole For that too.
0:36:15.240 --> 0:36:23.480 Elizabeth Lafrance Did you feel that any political system was democratic, fair and responsive to citizens needs?
0:36:24.430 --> 0:36:28.890 Nicole They were responsible, responsive to the white male.
0:36:30.600 --> 0:36:31.260 Nicole No one else.
0:36:32.40 --> 0:36:33.850 Nicole It was all about the white male.
0:36:35.360 --> 0:36:36.420 Nicole Everything was.
0:36:37.360 --> 0:36:44.900 Nicole Control directed. There's no question that we were not equal and not and we still are not represented.
0:36:45.760 --> 0:36:49.130 Nicole So you can imagine back then how much, how little there was.
0:36:49.900 --> 0:37:2.930 Nicole And we were we were talking about it a lot more or aware of it here. That first generation that said, hang on here. You know, why is it that? But it took a lot of.
0:37:4.100 --> 0:37:8.840 Nicole Thinking of looking ahead to want to be one of those women that broke the seal?
0:37:10.110 --> 0:37:12.820 Nicole And that was that. It took a while for that to happen.
0:37:13.620 --> 0:37:13.820 Nicole Here.
0:37:16.400 --> 0:37:16.930 Elizabeth Lafrance And.
0:37:17.920 --> 0:37:25.80 Elizabeth Lafrance So this is also talking on how cultural historians have argued that introduction to the birth control pill.
0:37:26.120 --> 0:37:28.70 Elizabeth Lafrance Legalization of abortion and dissemination.
0:37:28.550 --> 0:37:40.540 Elizabeth Lafrance Of the manifestation of the free love ideology changed general gender relations and dating practices, in the early 1970s, do you agree with this statement?
0:37:41.10 --> 0:37:48.790 Nicole Absolutely. It was massive. It really was. It was huge. It changed the whole lives up for us as a woman.
0:37:49.780 --> 0:37:53.570 Nicole And you could decide when you wanted to be a mother.
0:37:55.340 --> 0:37:56.0 Nicole Didn't before.
0:37:56.650 --> 0:38:0.370 Nicole There was an expectation when I remember my mom telling me that that.
0:38:1.490 --> 0:38:8.570 Nicole These would come around and they’d be pregnant by now. Again like there was a huge push, whereas the pill changed back.
0:38:9.540 --> 0:38:12.370 Nicole You wanted to work for another five years and not get pregnant.
0:38:13.500 --> 0:38:13.820 Nicole Yes.
0:38:14.660 --> 0:38:18.750 Nicole And you had control over your life much, much more than our parents did.
0:38:22.500 --> 0:38:26.660 Elizabeth Lafrance What did dating look like? At UOttawa in the 1970s?
0:38:29.220 --> 0:38:29.420 Nicole I.
0:38:30.160 --> 0:38:31.310 Nicole It was pretty crazy.
0:38:32.430 --> 0:38:36.760 Nicole It really was that first generation of.
0:38:37.500 --> 0:38:38.950 Nicole Whenever we want because.
0:38:39.630 --> 0:38:40.660 Nicole I can't get pregnant.
0:38:42.210 --> 0:38:43.750 Nicole So it was.
0:38:44.620 --> 0:38:47.480 Nicole Some of it was bad. Some of it was over the top.
0:38:48.290 --> 0:38:51.0 Nicole Some women got badly.
0:38:53.520 --> 0:38:54.100 Nicole Abused.
0:38:55.90 --> 0:38:57.940 Nicole Because of that, and we.
0:38:58.810 --> 0:39:1.610 Nicole We didn't know any better to say.
0:39:4.210 --> 0:39:6.660 Nicole It's saying when we said no.
0:39:7.310 --> 0:39:9.480 Nicole It means no those days.
0:39:10.560 --> 0:39:15.250 Nicole You-you had to be strong as an individual woman to say no.
0:39:15.980 --> 0:39:20.120 Nicole And then I heard through the Grapevine often.
0:39:21.190 --> 0:39:33.200 Nicole Me push the limits and women have been raped and and we would talk about it, but we never did anything about it. You didn't go to the police, didn't go to senior staff about it. You just.
0:39:34.660 --> 0:39:36.660 Nicole Model of the person that had lived through it.
0:39:38.20 --> 0:39:38.580 Nicole It was.
0:39:39.680 --> 0:39:40.940 Nicole Yeah, it was bad.
0:39:41.740 --> 0:39:47.920 Nicole Um, you got smart as the group of women, and so if you didn't want to be.
0:39:48.940 --> 0:39:51.430 Nicole You you moved in groups a lot.
0:39:52.980 --> 0:39:55.390 Nicole As women, we still do, don't you?
0:39:56.180 --> 0:39:56.660 Nicole You know.
0:39:56.520 --> 0:39:56.910 Elizabeth Lafrance Yes.
0:39:57.340 --> 0:40:0.250 Nicole Yeah. So you learn to be smart.
0:40:1.810 --> 0:40:3.920 Nicole And I think that's what we learned.
0:40:4.750 --> 0:40:8.940 Nicole About that part, just because you were on the pill did not mean you were safe, yes.
0:40:9.690 --> 0:40:13.400 Nicole That's the people I think that they're very quickly.
0:40:14.200 --> 0:40:14.600 Nicole Um.
0:40:15.330 --> 0:40:16.590 Nicole And saying no.
0:40:18.640 --> 0:40:29.750 Nicole With something that we learned has a group of women like talking to each other and and saying, wait a SEC. You know, I don't want to go out with this guy and they're saying, well, why do we have to kind of thing?
0:40:30.500 --> 0:40:30.820 Nicole Yes.
0:40:31.930 --> 0:40:32.230 Nicole Negative.
0:40:33.470 --> 0:40:36.960 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, how did your generation look at family and marriage?
0:40:38.430 --> 0:40:38.890 Nicole Ah.
0:40:40.240 --> 0:40:40.680 Nicole I think.
0:40:42.60 --> 0:40:48.280 Nicole We still work very, very much living the same as our parents in terms of expectations.
0:40:49.180 --> 0:40:51.520 Nicole Finding a family wanting to be married.
0:40:52.240 --> 0:40:58.450 Nicole But we took longer to do it. We waited longer because we had that luxury.
0:40:59.360 --> 0:41:1.40 Nicole Of not getting pregnant.
0:41:2.40 --> 0:41:6.710 Nicole He had the time to make the decisions later.
0:41:7.440 --> 0:41:8.170 Nicole Then our parents.
0:41:8.930 --> 0:41:12.30 Nicole My mom was pregnant by 21.
0:41:12.690 --> 0:41:16.400 Nicole Married. You know, in the suit she's married. She was pregnant.
0:41:17.500 --> 0:41:18.110 Nicole Whereas.
0:41:18.870 --> 0:41:33.130 Nicole I had that luxury of saying, well, you know what I-I wanna work. I wanna work more and take my time making those decisions and maybe finding the right guy. And so we had that luxury.
0:41:41.800 --> 0:41:42.550 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:41:43.360 --> 0:41:44.150 Elizabeth Lafrance And so.
0:41:45.20 --> 0:41:46.620 Elizabeth Lafrance You’ve read the questions, right?
0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:47.140 Nicole Yeah.
0:41:49.430 --> 0:41:49.780 Nicole Yeah.
0:41:48.40 --> 0:41:50.980 Elizabeth Lafrance Do you want to answer like, the final question?
0:41:51.930 --> 0:41:52.990 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:41:55.290 --> 0:42:6.110 Elizabeth Lafrance Many universities today have been forced to police sexual harassment. To what extent did university authorities monitor mixers and social events to keep women safe?
0:42:6.810 --> 0:42:7.920 Nicole Absolutely nothing.
0:42:9.600 --> 0:42:17.380 Nicole There was always a security guard there, but he was as dangerous as the kids and the boys.
0:42:18.130 --> 0:42:21.730 Nicole And that's why we were really hung out as groups.
0:42:22.870 --> 0:42:29.100 Nicole So women, unless you were with your boyfriend, you know that was wrong. You know, more of a relationship.
0:42:30.70 --> 0:42:40.430 Nicole That security was half the time. It was one of the older guys that was paid to be that. It would have put a jacket on and he'd be a security guy.
0:42:41.100 --> 0:42:51.650 Nicole Or an older man. And no, you did not go and tell those guys that something happened to you. It was never talked that way unless.
0:42:53.250 --> 0:43:3.420 Nicole Unless the woman was beaten up and you had called, you had to call an ambulance. That was a different story, and even then it was it was not sexually.
0:43:5.630 --> 0:43:9.850 Nicole I'm saying so it we didn’t talk about that part very much- she didn't.
0:43:10.870 --> 0:43:16.530 Nicole I never experienced anyone around me that happened. I heard it through the Grapevine.
0:43:17.210 --> 0:43:17.800 Nicole Um.
0:43:18.900 --> 0:43:21.270 Nicole But no, there was. Nicole You really had to think on your feet. You had to be smart.
0:43:30.350 --> 0:43:31.740 Nicole And you learned that.
0:43:32.410 --> 0:43:39.910 Nicole Being the women burned, what was safer to do so that you wouldn't? You wouldn't get in that situation.
0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:41.320 Nicole And.
0:43:42.490 --> 0:43:53.430 Nicole I was lucky and my group lucky, so I guess it depended on you know, the type of relationship you have with the guys and how you did each other.
0:43:54.60 --> 0:43:57.350 Nicole But I heard that line I would hear about.
0:43:58.210 --> 0:43:58.460 Nicole Or.
0:43:59.680 --> 0:44:3.890 Nicole Absolutely. Especially the first two years and it was always senior guys.
0:44:4.780 --> 0:44:5.740 Nicole You know that would be.
0:44:7.220 --> 0:44:10.700 Nicole Going on at after the- the younger ones who had just arrived.
0:44:12.130 --> 0:44:13.620 Nicole And that- that made a big difference.
0:44:16.810 --> 0:44:30.940 Elizabeth Lafrance Our generation is interested in a free love movement. What was the perception of premarital sex on the University of Ottawa campus in 1970s? Was it viewed negatively, accepted or even encouraged?
0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:36.810 Nicole It was encouraged. I was fun. It really was. I mean, we were that first generation.
0:44:37.550 --> 0:44:39.190 Nicole That all of a sudden?
0:44:40.160 --> 0:44:43.170 Nicole You you didn't have to worry about it. So you.
0:44:44.240 --> 0:44:45.10 Nicole You had fun.
0:44:46.310 --> 0:44:48.260 Nicole It was definitely expected.
0:44:48.920 --> 0:45:3.980 Nicole And yet there was still a lot of girls who didn't want to go on the pill and did not really, you know, save themselves for the- the guy. And that was fine too. But most of us.
0:45:5.10 --> 0:45:8.760 Nicole Um, you just live the way you want to.
0:45:10.170 --> 0:45:11.950 Nicole It was pretty wild, that's for sure.
0:45:15.530 --> 0:45:21.460 Elizabeth Lafrance Did members of your parents generation worry about pre marital sex?
0:45:22.30 --> 0:45:24.710 Nicole Ohm. My God, my mother was so petrified for me to get pregnant.
0:45:25.410 --> 0:45:52.490 Nicole And she didn't find out I was on the pill till much later. Didn't ask her permission to. I didn't dare talk about that. And it's only years later. And by then my sister, who's not much older and much younger than I was. And I'm the one who told her, alright, you're gonna do something. You better go get it and we could. We could go into a clinic. We could go into. It was right on campus.
0:45:53.850 --> 0:45:56.80 Nicole That part you could find.
0:45:56.270 --> 0:46:0.980 Nicole Um prescription for- for the pill, that's for sure.
0:46:2.130 --> 0:46:3.120 Nicole It was.
0:46:5.350 --> 0:46:30.950 Nicole It would. You just could find it. I- I went to my family doctor and by then I was one. And the other thing too. We were we were older because we had grade 13. Right. So we were one year older. So by the time we finished and I had to have a 5 year degree. So we were there for quite a while. So we were a lot older.
0:46:31.990 --> 0:46:33.570 Nicole So that made a difference too.
0:46:34.660 --> 0:46:40.720 Nicole But the decisions were easier to get to, and the- the bill was easy to get too, for sure.
0:46:41.440 --> 0:46:41.950 Nicole Um.
0:46:42.850 --> 0:46:45.80 Nicole And I think that changed. How.
0:46:46.610 --> 0:46:47.220 Nicole We lived.
0:46:51.100 --> 0:46:52.80 Elizabeth Lafrance So it's all my questions.
0:46:53.10 --> 0:46:56.590 Elizabeth Lafrance I'm going to stop the recording and.
0:46:59.10 --> 0:46:59.680 Elizabeth Lafrance transcription now.
0:0:12.980 --> 0:0:13.700 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:0:17.750 --> 0:0:20.560 Elizabeth Lafrance And so one of the main themes that we're trying to like, Um, delve into is the impact of popular culture, and so the main question for this part that we're trying to like get into is cultural historians have argued that television, Hollywood, popular music, and a consumer culture around automobiles created a more integrated North American popular culture. Ottawa was a bilingual institution, and we want to better understand how anglophones and francophones are related. Together.
0:0:52.680 --> 0:1:3.950 Elizabeth Lafrance They were less at electronics in Canadian society during the 1970s. How was your leisure time structured or what did you? What did you do with students do for fun and then 1970s?
0:1:5.580 --> 0:1:8.790 Nicole I guess the biggest piece was we spent time together.
0:1:10.230 --> 0:1:14.940 Nicole There was definitely a separation between the Francophones and the Anglophones.
0:1:16.360 --> 0:1:17.300 Nicole In first year.
0:1:18.60 --> 0:1:23.300 Nicole It was more because there was a lot of francophones that were coming from outside of Ottawa.
0:1:24.50 --> 0:1:26.590 Nicole And did not speak a lot of English.
0:1:27.940 --> 0:1:44.670 Nicole So there really was a big separation. I was actually in the middle because I came from Ottawa. I was completely bilingual and in sports because I had a fixed and kinesiology courses.
0:1:45.330 --> 0:2:1.190 Nicole All sports, all the competitive sports, was mixed together. So there was a social circle that was created that didn't exist on campus part from sports. That's the sports part.
0:2:2.390 --> 0:2:2.570 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:2:2.370 --> 0:2:8.690 Nicole So for there, that's what. That's where we hung around more and more with both Anglophone and Francophone.
0:2:11.910 --> 0:2:14.60 Elizabeth Lafrance So did you not have a problem like?
0:2:14.750 --> 0:2:21.150 Elizabeth Lafrance Between each, like anglophone or francophone, where you completely in the middle? Or did you find yourself going to like one side?
0:2:22.140 --> 0:2:26.410 Nicole Being a Franco Ontarian is very different than a quebecker.
0:2:27.360 --> 0:2:32.640 Nicole And because I've lived all my life in a bilingual environment, most of my life.
0:2:52.680 --> 0:2:53.280 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:2:33.400 --> 0:3:3.690 Nicole I was used to it and all of my friends that went to university with me from Ottawa, we would switch back and forth in French and English without even thinking about it. As soon as there was an anglophone in the group, we would switch all the English for that person because the anglophone never even had thought of thinking or talking in French. But the francophones we were all used to it. So that's how we worked.
0:3:4.890 --> 0:3:5.260 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:3:6.780 --> 0:3:12.340 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, what were the most popular hangout spots on and off of campus?
0:3:13.310 --> 0:3:13.690 Nicole Again.
0:3:13.770 --> 0:3:15.420 Nicole The first year was pretty quiet.
0:3:16.240 --> 0:3:39.300 Nicole Residence was always a popular place and there was a room, a big room, a meeting room, and there was, I can't remember if there was alcohol on campus or not. I have no memory of that. But it was a big there. there was a lot of music and a lot of dancing, and there was always. You always started there as a group.
0:3:42.740 --> 0:3:43.360 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:3:40.580 --> 0:3:48.780 Nicole But we were underage at that time, so it there was a lot less alcohol in those first years.
0:3:50.80 --> 0:4:4.370 Nicole It's yet to be 21, so it was just kind of like in and out. And yes, there was alcohol everywhere, but it wasn't, you know, in a lot of places. We just aren't allowed to go. We couldn't get in. We looked too young. So that's thing.
0:4:6.720 --> 0:4:13.700 Elizabeth Lafrance And when you like, we're graduating. Was it more like focused on alcohol? Like, whenever you'd hang out?
0:4:14.890 --> 0:4:16.110 Nicole It depended on the group.
0:4:17.200 --> 0:4:22.950 Nicole We, I hung around very much with the Sports Group, with the athletes.
0:4:23.650 --> 0:4:43.960 Nicole So most people was mostly alcohol, but I, I knew some people who were completely into drugs as whatever you wanted was there on campus and some some people got really deep into it and even some of my friends that I knew and kind of stayed away from that.
0:4:45.20 --> 0:4:48.330 Nicole But there was anything you wanted on campus.
0:4:49.360 --> 0:4:49.950 Nicole Really was.
0:4:52.320 --> 0:4:56.840 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, did you attend any live music events during your university years?
0:4:57.180 --> 0:5:4.780 Nicole Oh my God. All the time dancing really was something everybody did. Like you went somewhere and you dance.
0:5:14.120 --> 0:5:14.530 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:5:5.410 --> 0:5:26.930 Nicole For hours and hours and hours. And you, you. You did it like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know you did it here every night and 1st year was quieter again. And I lived at home for the first year. So I, you know, of course, my parents were still controlling a little bit more. And I lived in Aylmer in that point. So it was far.
0:5:27.640 --> 0:5:49.960 Nicole And so that was made a difference in first year. It was a lot quieter after that. I moved into an apartment in Sandy Hill. So that changed everything. I was living on my own with a couple of girlfriends, and life was a lot busier socially. There was always a party going on any night. There was always something for you.
0:5:51.180 --> 0:5:59.30 Nicole On campus, around campus, the bars around the campus down in-in-the in the market, were always open.
0:6:0.10 --> 0:6:4.790 Nicole And so yeah, depending on what you need to do that night, there was always something.
0:6:7.980 --> 0:6:20.230 Elizabeth Lafrance UOttawa was a bilingual institution. How linguistically integrated was it during the 1970s. Did the Francophones and anglophones enrol in the same university courses and participate in the same clubs?
0:6:20.620 --> 0:6:22.580 Nicole OK, so in those days.
0:6:23.420 --> 0:6:29.280 Nicole Thou shall not cross that line. The courses were only in French and only in English.
0:6:30.10 --> 0:6:32.370 Nicole I was actually the first student.
0:6:33.750 --> 0:6:48.260 Nicole That thought that and I ended up sitting in the Dean's office and arguing the point. Why should I not be allowed to go into the French course? Or the English course, depending on which teacher or what time?
0:6:49.650 --> 0:6:54.360 Nicole Work better for me. But you had to be bilingual to do that.
0:6:55.330 --> 0:7:0.350 Nicole And I've got they let me do it. And it was not.
0:7:1.110 --> 0:7:7.260 Nicole It was extremely rare where the courses were together at all. It really was two schools.
0:7:7.920 --> 0:7:10.280 Nicole On one French side and one English side.
0:7:10.880 --> 0:7:18.730 Nicole We did, however, socialize a lot together. As we got older and got to know each other.
0:7:20.380 --> 0:7:30.860 Nicole But to start, it was very much the English type and very much the French type to the point when not where you started or when I was there, we had to do a language test.
0:7:32.310 --> 0:7:32.480 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:7:32.190 --> 0:7:33.470 Nicole Or second language test.
0:7:34.200 --> 0:7:39.470 Nicole And most people, the second language was much lower.
0:7:40.80 --> 0:7:45.740 Nicole So you would take whatever level, but you were mandated to take a second language course.
0:7:47.190 --> 0:7:53.400 Nicole I was a keener and being who I was and how I was, I came from a French private school. We were really very, very bilingual. I ended up taking the French sides French and the English sides English of Anthology of English verse, which was horrible. But that's how bilingual I was.
0:8:12.590 --> 0:8:12.980 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:8:12.430 --> 0:8:19.880 Nicole But there was a lot of francophones who could, and anglophones who did not speak a word of the other language or barely.
0:8:21.150 --> 0:8:21.510 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:8:22.460 --> 0:8:27.420 Elizabeth Lafrance Um did Anglophones and francophones date each other during the 1970s.
0:8:27.470 --> 0:8:29.710 Nicole Ohhhhh the French girls are popular.
0:8:31.630 --> 0:8:39.830 Nicole There's no question about that. And very quickly everybody started dating and we mixed very quickly.
0:8:41.120 --> 0:9:1.410 Nicole We were all very close to both the groups, especially in in the groupings, because again, as I said, the sports were worked integrated. So we-we-we got to know each other a lot. It was not like that for a lot of other places. But in our department it really was mixed.
0:9:4.760 --> 0:9:7.750 Elizabeth Lafrance So how did, like, you being a part of sport change your experince?
0:9:8.850 --> 0:9:15.80 Elizabeth Lafrance Taking sports, like, change how you ,like, experienced university.
0:9:16.230 --> 0:9:19.480 Nicole The sports how did it change? Where am I?
0:9:20.980 --> 0:9:21.740 Nicole Uh.
0:9:21.350 --> 0:9:23.300 Elizabeth Lafrance No, that was like that's all the script but.
0:9:23.230 --> 0:9:26.600 Nicole Oh, it's not the- OK, how did I integrate?
0:9:27.580 --> 0:9:35.850 Elizabeth Lafrance Or like how did you been a part of like sports clubs instead of change how, like your social life like was?
0:9:36.130 --> 0:9:39.330 Nicole It was very different because I was so fluent.
0:9:40.910 --> 0:9:48.630 Nicole So whatever sport I wanted to go into, it gravitated different sports gravitated different culture like different groupings, whether it was francophones for certain sports, like volleyball, it was francophone.
0:9:58.130 --> 0:10:0.510 Nicole And basketball was anglophone.
0:10:1.190 --> 0:10:24.490 Nicole That was their sports. And so again, I got to do both, but most of the others didn't. But because we were started getting to know each other so much in those sports, and there were others that everybody joined in and you would hear both languages running at the same time. And on the- in the same sentence.
0:10:25.680 --> 0:10:31.210 Nicole As people got more and more integrated into each other, wanting to be social with each other.
0:10:32.140 --> 0:10:37.190 Nicole And so that-that created a much more cultural group.
0:10:39.90 --> 0:10:39.820 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:10:41.260 --> 0:10:53.850 Elizabeth Lafrance We used the term party culture to refer to the social activities outside the classroom. How would you describe the part the party culture on the University of Ottawa campus during the 1970s?
0:10:54.740 --> 0:10:56.110 Nicole I have. It was wild.
0:10:57.170 --> 0:10:59.790 Nicole It was. You have to realize that.
0:11:0.510 --> 0:11:17.380 Nicole We had been wild. I was coming from private boarding school girls, private school for five years. No, four years. Sorry, that was crazy all of a sudden, it- and you were away from home. Most of half the groupings were in residence.
0:11:18.70 --> 0:11:18.600 Nicole Um.
0:11:19.260 --> 0:11:19.590 Nicole Yeah.
0:11:20.460 --> 0:11:22.810 Nicole There was a a lot of-
0:11:23.710 --> 0:11:28.660 Nicole Every night girls and boys, there were some heavy partying in those days.
0:11:30.170 --> 0:11:42.180 Nicole And depending on how important your-your class and your report card or your marks was it, it changed. I mean there was this big crazy time and then everybody kind of.
0:11:42.890 --> 0:11:47.620 Nicole Who bought a bit realized. Oh, wait a SEC. We actually have to go to classes and we actually have to.
0:11:48.230 --> 0:11:55.700 Nicole Graduate. So there was this ebb and flow, but it was it really was, wild. Anything, everything.
0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:2.520 Nicole And at the same time, it was the first generation of women who we went on the pill.
0:12:3.870 --> 0:12:4.300 Nicole That.
0:12:4.50 --> 0:12:4.400 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:12:9.200 --> 0:12:10.10 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:12:12.230 --> 0:12:14.700 Elizabeth Lafrance What did the student body think about the?
0:12:15.870 --> 0:12:16.190 Nicole Review.
0:12:15.780 --> 0:12:16.510 Elizabeth Lafrance Vietnam War.
0:12:17.90 --> 0:12:17.530 Nicole Nothing.
0:12:18.350 --> 0:12:19.470 Nicole It didn't exist.
0:12:20.290 --> 0:12:30.240 Nicole You know what did it? Did it? It was barely mentioned. No interest was what was, though hugely was the FLQ and what that is.
0:12:32.850 --> 0:12:33.50 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:12:31.730 --> 0:12:33.780 Nicole So that tends to back.
0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:35.910 Nicole When we went into.
0:12:38.300 --> 0:12:45.560 Nicole The FLQ took some English people and ended up they wanted to separate the-the-the province.
0:12:46.730 --> 0:12:53.500 Nicole It was. It was violent. There's someone that was killed. You'll have to research that part. The FLQ.
0:12:54.170 --> 0:12:57.780 Nicole That we talked about all the time because.
0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:4.30 Nicole In grade12 and 13, when it happened, that's when I was in it.
0:13:4.690 --> 0:13:5.580 Nicole We had.
0:13:6.330 --> 0:13:28.670 Nicole Um students in our school that their parents were cabinet ministers and representatives, and we actually had RCMP on campus in our schools for weeks and months so that no one would be kidnapped or that there was no Violence.
0:13:29.370 --> 0:13:34.80 Nicole But we lived through the FLQ, but Vietnam nothing. Not a word.
0:13:34.970 --> 0:13:38.0 Nicole I have no memory of everybody talking about that part.
0:13:39.260 --> 0:13:40.190 Nicole It was more the FLQ.
0:13:39.780 --> 0:13:40.260 Elizabeth Lafrance So.
0:13:49.660 --> 0:13:52.820 Nicole It it it warranted a lot of discussions.
0:13:53.510 --> 0:14:9.30 Nicole It talked about the French identity, Canadian identity, how to integrate French and English. So we we had a lot of discussions with the Francophones and Anglophones talking about identity.
0:14:9.810 --> 0:14:11.740 Nicole That we did a lot of discussions about.
0:14:12.540 --> 0:14:16.390 Nicole Um, but not nothing about the Vietnam War.
0:14:17.100 --> 0:14:20.60 Nicole Not with that English French dynamic.
0:14:21.80 --> 0:14:21.620 Elizabeth Lafrance Hmm.
0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:36.840 Elizabeth Lafrance Rock'n'roll artists in that 1960s had promoted various forms of protests. Did your, did your parents think of rock'n'roll as rebellious or just a form of popular music?
0:14:38.430 --> 0:14:41.120 Nicole I was the eldest of seven kids.
0:14:41.980 --> 0:14:47.550 Nicole And and so I was the first one that walked out the door kind of thing and started.
0:14:49.380 --> 0:14:50.640 Nicole But they were very.
0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:56.850 Nicole Confident about me as a person and I wasn't into drugs.
0:14:57.550 --> 0:14:58.660 Nicole So they kind of.
0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:9.270 Nicole I mean, they'd comment about it. I can remember my boyfriend at the time. His parents were appalled because he had started letting his hair grow, and that was like.
0:15:10.60 --> 0:15:14.30 Nicole A huge challenge to parents was the boys having long hair.
0:15:15.0 --> 0:15:25.940 Nicole When you think about it now it's hilarious. But in those days the boys hair was long and getting longer. That was absolutely the rock influence.
0:15:26.930 --> 0:15:32.400 Nicole Not the big drug thing because like we skirted it, we didn't really get into it.
0:15:33.670 --> 0:15:39.410 Nicole Our parents weren't as worried, but I know other parents were. They were definitely worried about it.
0:15:41.830 --> 0:15:44.510 Elizabeth Lafrance So would you say that your parents were like, strict?
0:15:45.630 --> 0:15:45.920 Nicole I'm.
0:15:50.890 --> 0:15:51.150 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:15:47.610 --> 0:15:52.40 Nicole You have to remember when we're talking about, you know, expectations for children.
0:15:53.80 --> 0:16:4.880 Nicole Pretty clear, but then I moved out so I only stayed a year with my parents and then I-I was gone after that they they had no say over me, really. I mean, I didn't.
0:16:6.160 --> 0:16:11.220 Nicole I didn't change my behavior. I still saw them regularly. I still, you know, went over and.
0:16:12.380 --> 0:16:19.880 Nicole Got fed as often as I could because I lived in the same city. I mean, I lived close. My parents were in in Alymer at that point, so.
0:16:20.570 --> 0:16:22.270 Nicole It it wasn't as obvious.
0:16:27.660 --> 0:16:27.920 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:16:22.950 --> 0:16:38.400 Nicole What did i do that they didn't have a clue what I was doing, really, you know? But they had my younger brother and sisters, they were already into it too. So they were concerned. But I think they trusted us to make good choices at the time.
0:16:41.150 --> 0:16:53.130 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, some youth culture voices in the 1970s promoted taking recreational drugs. To what extent where recreational drugs available on campus during the 1970s.
0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:55.190 Nicole Anything you wanted, you.
0:16:56.530 --> 0:17:9.370 Nicole I know that I didn't. My sister got into heavy like, i’ll let you know, acid and everything she was into absolutely everything. And she could get it anyway she wanted.
0:17:10.250 --> 0:17:11.830 Nicole It really was there.
0:17:12.810 --> 0:17:21.380 Nicole But again, I didn't so, but I knew it was. And me and my husband always talked about. He was stoned during his university. He has no memory of.
0:17:22.130 --> 0:17:29.90 Nicole Most of the University of the social, so it depended on what you were doing at the time. But yes, it was there. Absolutely.
0:17:34.460 --> 0:17:36.60 Elizabeth Lafrance During the 1970s.
0:17:36.980 --> 0:17:51.780 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, and you don't have to answer this question, but during 1970s speak about tripping and taking psychedelics to reach a higher state of consciousness. To what extent did students on campus use hallucinogens?
0:17:52.260 --> 0:17:56.360 Nicole I knew they were, but because I wasn't in it, I don't know.
0:17:58.340 --> 0:17:59.360 Nicole I mean, I heard about it.
0:18:0.0 --> 0:18:5.330 Nicole People talk about it, but I didn't do any of it, so I was afraid of drugs actually most.
0:18:5.990 --> 0:18:13.170 Nicole Really was? I just didn't trust people. Just little Baggies walking around saying here, you know, I just didn't trust it.
0:18:14.130 --> 0:18:14.470 Nicole So.
0:18:15.540 --> 0:18:18.370 Elizabeth Lafrance But you were like around that kind of like culture.
0:18:18.150 --> 0:18:24.210 Nicole Yes, sometimes I was, yeah. Depending on the party, there was always somebody that had a bad a baggie of something.
0:18:25.820 --> 0:18:27.0 Nicole And you could always get it.
0:18:27.670 --> 0:18:28.180 Nicole But.
0:18:29.270 --> 0:18:30.880 Nicole Our group was pretty.
0:18:31.890 --> 0:18:34.530 Nicole Quiet compared for the for drugs anyway.
0:18:35.950 --> 0:18:43.490 Nicole So we just kind of stayed away from it and there was groups that that's all they did, they were always stoned in class and out of class.
0:18:44.260 --> 0:18:45.120 Nicole They they were.
0:18:45.840 --> 0:19:1.200 Nicole Fine, because I did take quite a lot of our classes outside of the Phys Ed department. Right? You still have sociology. You still had language. You still have other classes where we were mixed with other departments, and there was always somebody that was so gone.
0:19:1.830 --> 0:19:2.530 Nicole Sat there and.
0:19:4.940 --> 0:19:5.170 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:19:4.350 --> 0:19:5.750 Nicole Don't know why they were there, really.
0:19:11.360 --> 0:19:11.530 Nicole Yeah.
0:19:9.190 --> 0:19:13.140 Elizabeth Lafrance So this is like the second section, the female experience.
0:19:14.630 --> 0:19:14.910 Elizabeth Lafrance Uh.
0:19:14.10 --> 0:19:16.960 Nicole You don't have to read the whole question if you don't want to.
0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.500 Elizabeth Lafrance I'll probably do it for like the transcript.
0:19:20.530 --> 0:19:22.0 Nicole OK, it helps.
0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.730 Elizabeth Lafrance Um cultural historians have written a lot about.
0:19:27.470 --> 0:19:44.800 Elizabeth Lafrance What they call second wave feminism guy as per of the culture, cultural movement, women during the early 1970s sought to breakdown gender barriers. What does this argument resonate with your experience on the University of Ottawa campus during the early 70s?
0:19:49.430 --> 0:19:54.920 Nicole The biggest change in our world, and it was massive really.
0:19:56.390 --> 0:20:0.640 Nicole All of a sudden, all you need to do was take the pill, you didn't get Pregnant.
0:20:1.480 --> 0:20:7.10 Nicole And that completely changed their lives as a group of women and.
0:20:7.920 --> 0:20:9.890 Nicole Most of my friends, we were all in the pit.
0:20:11.780 --> 0:20:16.350 Nicole And in those days, those pills could have worked on a horse.
0:20:17.260 --> 0:20:22.90 Nicole And not getting pregnant. It was so, so strong it was.
0:20:23.270 --> 0:20:31.810 Nicole Crazy the level of of hormones that they gave us in those initial wave of pills, but we took them.
0:20:32.740 --> 0:20:34.410 Nicole And so.
0:20:35.260 --> 0:20:42.910 Nicole We didn't hear as much about, you know, the horrible life of being pregnant because.
0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.90 Nicole Pretty well. Everybody was on the pill that wanted to.
0:20:48.290 --> 0:20:49.250 Nicole And you could get it.
0:20:50.330 --> 0:20:59.370 Nicole On or off campus somewhere close, so all the people in residence are the women in residence would go and get, you know, get on the pill.
0:21:2.180 --> 0:21:10.130 Elizabeth Lafrance In your own words, did feminism signify in Canada during the early 1970s, or what did? Sorry.
0:21:10.580 --> 0:21:19.840 Nicole Well, apart from the pill, equal rights all of a sudden, yes, we did a lot of talking as women about how.
0:21:22.490 --> 0:21:30.530 Nicole Our parents were our our mothers were being encased in this expectation and that we didn't wanna be the same.
0:21:31.530 --> 0:21:38.10 Nicole We wanted to have more choices. We wanted more things and we realized very quickly that.
0:21:39.870 --> 0:21:49.410 Nicole It was the man that was running this world and and we weren’t. We were. There was a lot of discussion. There was some really good discussions about.
0:21:50.40 --> 0:22:19.990 Nicole Representation about government being only men, you know, corporations being led by men we were. We were definitely incensed about that. And it that messaging was definitely coming from the states. It we were hearing it. We were seeing it, there was campus groupings of women that and I remember sitting a couple of them I went, you know, once in a while I'd sit in on on some of those groups you. Cassie was really important that we we understand.
0:22:20.70 --> 0:22:21.750 Nicole Why and how to change that?
0:22:22.410 --> 0:22:36.760 Nicole But University had the social culture and the and the intellectual culture that we were more even equal because you could talk and you could challenge it there.
0:22:37.670 --> 0:22:40.570 Nicole But it was very different when we went out into the real world.
0:22:42.170 --> 0:22:46.80 Nicole That environment that university gave, gave us the opportunity.
0:22:46.730 --> 0:22:47.770 Nicole To question ourselves.
0:22:48.550 --> 0:22:51.0 Nicole But it's only when we got into the real world that.
0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:53.70 Nicole We realized wait a SEC.
0:22:54.40 --> 0:22:55.530 Nicole Still not doing it right.
0:23:4.280 --> 0:23:4.720 Nicole Yes.
0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:5.190 Elizabeth Lafrance So were you a part of like those conversations that was happening in university about, like, feminism and, like, equal rights?
0:23:6.260 --> 0:23:12.830 Nicole Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Often we. Like I said, we would join some of the groups and, and have these discussions.
0:23:13.710 --> 0:23:36.530 Nicole Think we thought we with the universities you can create a group anytime you wanted to and you could, you know, have a meeting and use a a room. So yes, I-I did was I one to March? No, because I felt quite comfortable where I was in my world. But yes we did. I did sit in on quite a lot of the discussions at that time.
0:23:39.60 --> 0:23:39.570 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:23:41.130 --> 0:23:53.680 Elizabeth Lafrance Gender distinctions were more pronounced in the 1970s than today. How did being a woman result in different treatment and expectations in classrooms or at social events compared to the male students?
0:23:54.510 --> 0:23:59.600 Nicole So the most interesting thing that happened to us when we when I started.
0:24:0.420 --> 0:24:1.950 Nicole The first year.
0:24:3.250 --> 0:24:24.580 Nicole All our classes. OK, so we were the things that we were specializing in teaching physical education, right. It was a course that brought you teaching Phys Ed in schools. OK, so at the first my first year, all my courses in sports were separate.
0:24:25.420 --> 0:24:26.130 Nicole From the boys.
0:24:27.50 --> 0:24:37.100 Nicole So we learned the female courses like dance and all of the sports, even basketball. It was all the girls together.
0:24:38.330 --> 0:24:47.300 Nicole The next year we were there, UOttawa, the Department of Phys Ed, decided that they could not keep doing this.
0:24:48.230 --> 0:25:4.230 Nicole Because when a teachers got into the real world of teaching, they got caught or they got, they were told they had to teach a class of boys or a class of girls, and they didn't have any background in it.
0:25:4.900 --> 0:25:13.370 Nicole So that second year and forever after that, all the teaching of sports was mixed.
0:25:14.230 --> 0:25:25.600 Nicole So, and it was hilarious. I can still see this. One of the guys. And I knew him quite well. He was huge. He was like 280 and he was on the provincial wrestling team.
0:25:27.90 --> 0:25:35.360 Nicole And he comes to me and says, OK, here it is. You're gonna teach me how to teach dance. And I'm gonna teach you how to how to teach wrestling.
0:25:36.160 --> 0:25:43.880 Nicole I'm nearly got killed with him because he was so huge, but that's how much we had to change all of a sudden.
0:25:44.650 --> 0:25:54.380 Nicole How we were looking at-at all of the introduction of teaching, because we have to learn the other sports.
0:25:55.280 --> 0:26:9.330 Nicole And that was a huge hardship, and the teachers had a hard time with you because here you come in with a group of women and go, OK, what do we do with them? Like, how am I gonna teach wrestling to girls who never in their lives wrestle?
0:26:10.210 --> 0:26:10.830 Nicole That was.
0:26:10.780 --> 0:26:11.50 Elizabeth Lafrance Yeah.
0:26:11.520 --> 0:26:16.180 Nicole A big piece, but absolutely shifted how we looked at everything.
0:26:17.30 --> 0:26:20.860 Nicole And because of that my first job.
0:26:21.980 --> 0:26:28.60 Nicole I was able to teach. I had three girls classes, but I had two boys classes.
0:26:28.680 --> 0:26:32.370 Nicole And they hired me because I had had that preparation.
0:26:33.890 --> 0:26:34.880 Nicole But it did make a difference.
0:26:35.730 --> 0:26:36.60 Nicole Yeah.
0:26:37.750 --> 0:26:45.460 Elizabeth Lafrance And the 1970s were there, UOttawa programs, departments or clubs where women were less present and accepted?
0:26:46.30 --> 0:26:46.230 Nicole Absoluteely.
0:26:46.340 --> 0:26:46.840 Nicole Remotely.
0:26:47.540 --> 0:26:52.0 Nicole Everywhere there were certain things that you could see that you know, the women just weren't there.
0:26:52.660 --> 0:26:55.710 Nicole Um, there was there was a.
0:26:56.490 --> 0:27:4.870 Nicole Pick up hockey was the one of the first ones, and again, because women didn't play hockey in those days.
0:27:6.140 --> 0:27:11.890 Nicole And I remember going to the rink and that's just one example going to the rink and saying I’d love to play hockey.
0:27:12.660 --> 0:27:16.670 Nicole I can skate. Why can't I learn to play hockey? I got killed.
0:27:18.140 --> 0:27:31.300 Nicole And if we should pick up hockey, but I because the guys knew me, I they taught me how to do it. But Oh God, there was so many things where it was still the women on one side and the minimum. There's no question about it.
0:27:32.60 --> 0:27:43.900 Nicole And the man introduced, you know, wanting to go on the on the women's side too, it was as much one side as the other, but slowly, by the end of my five years.
0:27:44.740 --> 0:27:47.350 Nicole It it was integrated a lot more.
0:27:48.10 --> 0:27:49.820 Nicole Space compared to when I started.
0:27:50.640 --> 0:27:51.230 Nicole Absolutely.
0:27:53.430 --> 0:27:57.640 Elizabeth Lafrance Did you yourself face challenges, like when you wanted to like?
0:27:58.430 --> 0:28:1.520 Elizabeth Lafrance Go into a space that was not as like female dominated.
0:28:3.190 --> 0:28:4.880 Nicole Yes, absolutely.
0:28:5.680 --> 0:28:9.230 Nicole Um and some women were more.
0:28:10.250 --> 0:28:13.460 Nicole Comfortable and being in that world.
0:28:14.630 --> 0:28:29.900 Nicole And I was, um, it really depended on how you-you looked at things. Some of the women weren't comfortable at all. I was skiing instructor, downhill ski instructor, and I ran.
0:28:31.0 --> 0:28:33.730 Nicole The Speed School Children's school. At camp fortune.
0:28:35.210 --> 0:28:48.180 Nicole All the way through university on the weekends, I was in charge of all the kids programs and we're talking 2000 kids a weekend. It was a massive ski school and I ran that.
0:28:48.800 --> 0:28:50.670 Nicole So I was with the guys all the time.
0:28:52.30 --> 0:29:3.840 Nicole And I was the only woman that ran these programs. The others were all male, so I was more comfortable. But I knew a lot of women who would never have stepped up.
0:29:5.130 --> 0:29:15.970 Nicole But again, by the end of my five years there, it was more accepted. It was more natural to have a women coming into sports that.
0:29:16.640 --> 0:29:17.840 Nicole You know, wouldn't have.
0:29:18.500 --> 0:29:25.430 Nicole Now, but even then, I- my daughter, who played boys, competitive hockey.
0:29:26.320 --> 0:29:36.310 Nicole Did have her challenges? So I could I can still see. It's not completely there. It never will be. I don't think. But we've come a long way.
0:29:39.280 --> 0:29:44.790 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, so I'm going to move on to the another theme that ideology and generation on differences.
0:29:46.490 --> 0:30:6.920 Elizabeth Lafrance Historians have written a lot about what they call the counterculture revolution, meaning that your generation rebelled against the values of your parents, generation. To what extent did people in your social circle see themselves as needing to mobilize or a more just or just adjust society and better world?
0:30:8.590 --> 0:30:17.580 Nicole So there's a lot of. So we talked a lot about language and female and male. The one I think that.
0:30:18.750 --> 0:30:23.170 Nicole Really, we started to understand more as we got into you like.
0:30:24.770 --> 0:30:29.890 Nicole Old in more older grades of the university was more multicultural.
0:30:31.100 --> 0:30:31.850 Nicole It was all white.
0:30:32.730 --> 0:30:35.230 Nicole And if there were so few black.
0:30:35.890 --> 0:30:37.620 Nicole Kids in the school.
0:30:38.520 --> 0:30:50.290 Nicole And that's the one that we all all of a sudden started questioning saying, why is it like that? Like what is it with, you know, all of a sudden there was there was these discussions about.
0:30:51.440 --> 0:30:55.710 Nicole That hadn't existed before. My world was completely white.
0:30:57.280 --> 0:31:7.10 Nicole And all of a sudden we were starting to say, well, why aren't they here or there we-we would talk to them and and they would be starting to say.
0:31:8.210 --> 0:31:9.650 Nicole But why is it like that?
0:31:9.990 --> 0:31:13.250 Nicole Um, so yeah, we-we did start.
0:31:13.920 --> 0:31:26.620 Nicole Talking about why and how you know, also again still the male female challenges of being represented to everywhere. So we you were pushing the envelope.
0:31:28.220 --> 0:31:31.890 Nicole In our days, quite a lot more than when we started.
0:31:33.510 --> 0:31:43.110 Nicole There was a lot more of why not and why can't we do this and let's let's go and find out or let's get involved more.
0:31:44.300 --> 0:31:51.940 Nicole Which a lot of women didn't at the beginning and we had a greater voice of challenging that that piece.
0:31:53.80 --> 0:31:55.260 Nicole But the multicultural piece does.
0:31:56.270 --> 0:32:1.540 Nicole I really eye opener at the beginning started talking to the few.
0:32:2.680 --> 0:32:3.980 Nicole Black kids that were with us.
0:32:5.290 --> 0:32:8.110 Nicole And it was really eye opening back for sure.
0:32:10.650 --> 0:32:18.90 Elizabeth Lafrance To what extent did your generation believe that your parents, and their notions about gender, family and dating, were outdated?
0:32:20.490 --> 0:32:21.160 Nicole OK.
0:32:24.290 --> 0:32:28.780 Nicole Yes, it it was because of the pill. The pill changed our lives.
0:32:29.540 --> 0:32:30.870 Nicole Because before that.
0:32:31.650 --> 0:32:32.40 Nicole If.
0:32:35.950 --> 0:32:40.80 Nicole And all of a sudden that was all gone. You could do whatever you wanted to.
0:32:40.770 --> 0:32:42.460 Nicole Where as our parents.
0:32:43.630 --> 0:32:47.0 Nicole You know, they they really believed in in being, you know.
0:32:48.370 --> 0:32:49.740 Nicole More individual.
0:32:50.380 --> 0:32:51.30 Nicole Um.
0:32:53.180 --> 0:32:58.140 Nicole I could see that that was definitely a challenge.
0:32:59.240 --> 0:33:0.650 Nicole Equal pay for equal work.
0:33:1.650 --> 0:33:7.930 Nicole Um, I think that was one that we started hearing a lot now in education, it was equal.
0:33:8.910 --> 0:33:18.150 Nicole But the jobs were not equal and we were hearing that already because we would have, we would go into schools and do practicals.
0:33:19.140 --> 0:33:23.690 Nicole And so we were in the schools and it was very obvious that.
0:33:24.620 --> 0:33:28.270 Nicole The senior administration, principals and vice principals were all male.
0:33:29.910 --> 0:33:31.140 Nicole There were no female.
0:33:32.10 --> 0:33:36.460 Nicole That we saw. So we realized even then that.
0:33:37.210 --> 0:33:43.250 Nicole Wait a SEC, why is there not. And-and 80% of teachers are female, but yet?
0:33:44.400 --> 0:33:53.780 Nicole You know, it was like 90% male in administration and and and also in the teaching environment we didn't have a lot of female teachers.
0:33:55.120 --> 0:33:58.420 Nicole So, and the ones we did really did help us.
0:33:59.210 --> 0:34:2.680 Nicole To voice our-our concerns, but there's no question.
0:34:3.850 --> 0:34:6.370 Nicole We were second guessing ourselves for that one for sure.
0:34:9.860 --> 0:34:12.670 Elizabeth Lafrance Talking about to the 1970s.
0:34:14.780 --> 0:34:21.160 Elizabeth Lafrance What aspect of Canadian to society did you see as most out of whack and in needing of fixing?
0:34:21.960 --> 0:34:24.170 Nicole Again, same thing. It really was.
0:34:25.480 --> 0:34:27.330 Nicole OK, great. equal work.
0:34:28.460 --> 0:34:37.30 Nicole We- it was very obvious about that. We thought we could change the world. You do when you're at university because you're talking with other people that agree with you.
0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:42.830 Nicole And so it's only when you get into the work world that.
0:34:43.710 --> 0:34:46.310 Nicole Things don't change as quickly as you want it to.
0:34:47.350 --> 0:34:51.180 Nicole So the environment you live in through your university years.
0:34:51.880 --> 0:34:54.120 Nicole Are your most open.
0:34:55.260 --> 0:34:58.840 Nicole In terms of questioning the why and how.
0:35:0.160 --> 0:35:4.550 Nicole But it's only when you get into the work world that you realize, oh.
0:35:5.260 --> 0:35:6.120 Nicole It's not as simple as that.
0:35:7.710 --> 0:35:10.120 Nicole But in theory it sounded great that university.
0:35:11.120 --> 0:35:12.680 Nicole That was a huge right there.
0:35:14.240 --> 0:35:17.120 Nicole And and it needed fixing. There's no question about that.
0:35:19.370 --> 0:35:20.140 Nicole That’s the difference.
0:35:19.850 --> 0:35:20.380 Elizabeth Lafrance I'm.
0:35:24.900 --> 0:35:30.690 Elizabeth Lafrance What were the principle forms of injustice in Canadian society during the 1970s?
0:35:32.130 --> 0:35:36.950 Nicole Again, women being able to work outside of home.
0:35:37.700 --> 0:35:41.610 Nicole And I was still in that generation where you stayed at home with your kids.
0:35:42.810 --> 0:35:43.680 Nicole Um.
0:35:45.890 --> 0:36:2.190 Nicole And most women I knew were talking about being home with kids, you know, and share your kids and racism again, same thing. There was a lot of injustices in-in, in the black community.
0:36:2.940 --> 0:36:5.870 Nicole And we were just starting to be aware.
0:36:7.510 --> 0:36:9.410 Nicole So there was definitely.
0:36:10.520 --> 0:36:11.330 Nicole For that too.
0:36:15.240 --> 0:36:23.480 Elizabeth Lafrance Did you feel that any political system was democratic, fair and responsive to citizens needs?
0:36:24.430 --> 0:36:28.890 Nicole They were responsible, responsive to the white male.
0:36:30.600 --> 0:36:31.260 Nicole No one else.
0:36:32.40 --> 0:36:33.850 Nicole It was all about the white male.
0:36:35.360 --> 0:36:36.420 Nicole Everything was.
0:36:37.360 --> 0:36:44.900 Nicole Control directed. There's no question that we were not equal and not and we still are not represented.
0:36:45.760 --> 0:36:49.130 Nicole So you can imagine back then how much, how little there was.
0:36:49.900 --> 0:37:2.930 Nicole And we were we were talking about it a lot more or aware of it here. That first generation that said, hang on here. You know, why is it that? But it took a lot of.
0:37:4.100 --> 0:37:8.840 Nicole Thinking of looking ahead to want to be one of those women that broke the seal?
0:37:10.110 --> 0:37:12.820 Nicole And that was that. It took a while for that to happen.
0:37:13.620 --> 0:37:13.820 Nicole Here.
0:37:16.400 --> 0:37:16.930 Elizabeth Lafrance And.
0:37:17.920 --> 0:37:25.80 Elizabeth Lafrance So this is also talking on how cultural historians have argued that introduction to the birth control pill.
0:37:26.120 --> 0:37:28.70 Elizabeth Lafrance Legalization of abortion and dissemination.
0:37:28.550 --> 0:37:40.540 Elizabeth Lafrance Of the manifestation of the free love ideology changed general gender relations and dating practices, in the early 1970s, do you agree with this statement?
0:37:41.10 --> 0:37:48.790 Nicole Absolutely. It was massive. It really was. It was huge. It changed the whole lives up for us as a woman.
0:37:49.780 --> 0:37:53.570 Nicole And you could decide when you wanted to be a mother.
0:37:55.340 --> 0:37:56.0 Nicole Didn't before.
0:37:56.650 --> 0:38:0.370 Nicole There was an expectation when I remember my mom telling me that that.
0:38:1.490 --> 0:38:8.570 Nicole These would come around and they’d be pregnant by now. Again like there was a huge push, whereas the pill changed back.
0:38:9.540 --> 0:38:12.370 Nicole You wanted to work for another five years and not get pregnant.
0:38:13.500 --> 0:38:13.820 Nicole Yes.
0:38:14.660 --> 0:38:18.750 Nicole And you had control over your life much, much more than our parents did.
0:38:22.500 --> 0:38:26.660 Elizabeth Lafrance What did dating look like? At UOttawa in the 1970s?
0:38:29.220 --> 0:38:29.420 Nicole I.
0:38:30.160 --> 0:38:31.310 Nicole It was pretty crazy.
0:38:32.430 --> 0:38:36.760 Nicole It really was that first generation of.
0:38:37.500 --> 0:38:38.950 Nicole Whenever we want because.
0:38:39.630 --> 0:38:40.660 Nicole I can't get pregnant.
0:38:42.210 --> 0:38:43.750 Nicole So it was.
0:38:44.620 --> 0:38:47.480 Nicole Some of it was bad. Some of it was over the top.
0:38:48.290 --> 0:38:51.0 Nicole Some women got badly.
0:38:53.520 --> 0:38:54.100 Nicole Abused.
0:38:55.90 --> 0:38:57.940 Nicole Because of that, and we.
0:38:58.810 --> 0:39:1.610 Nicole We didn't know any better to say.
0:39:4.210 --> 0:39:6.660 Nicole It's saying when we said no.
0:39:7.310 --> 0:39:9.480 Nicole It means no those days.
0:39:10.560 --> 0:39:15.250 Nicole You-you had to be strong as an individual woman to say no.
0:39:15.980 --> 0:39:20.120 Nicole And then I heard through the Grapevine often.
0:39:21.190 --> 0:39:33.200 Nicole Me push the limits and women have been raped and and we would talk about it, but we never did anything about it. You didn't go to the police, didn't go to senior staff about it. You just.
0:39:34.660 --> 0:39:36.660 Nicole Model of the person that had lived through it.
0:39:38.20 --> 0:39:38.580 Nicole It was.
0:39:39.680 --> 0:39:40.940 Nicole Yeah, it was bad.
0:39:41.740 --> 0:39:47.920 Nicole Um, you got smart as the group of women, and so if you didn't want to be.
0:39:48.940 --> 0:39:51.430 Nicole You you moved in groups a lot.
0:39:52.980 --> 0:39:55.390 Nicole As women, we still do, don't you?
0:39:56.180 --> 0:39:56.660 Nicole You know.
0:39:56.520 --> 0:39:56.910 Elizabeth Lafrance Yes.
0:39:57.340 --> 0:40:0.250 Nicole Yeah. So you learn to be smart.
0:40:1.810 --> 0:40:3.920 Nicole And I think that's what we learned.
0:40:4.750 --> 0:40:8.940 Nicole About that part, just because you were on the pill did not mean you were safe, yes.
0:40:9.690 --> 0:40:13.400 Nicole That's the people I think that they're very quickly.
0:40:14.200 --> 0:40:14.600 Nicole Um.
0:40:15.330 --> 0:40:16.590 Nicole And saying no.
0:40:18.640 --> 0:40:29.750 Nicole With something that we learned has a group of women like talking to each other and and saying, wait a SEC. You know, I don't want to go out with this guy and they're saying, well, why do we have to kind of thing?
0:40:30.500 --> 0:40:30.820 Nicole Yes.
0:40:31.930 --> 0:40:32.230 Nicole Negative.
0:40:33.470 --> 0:40:36.960 Elizabeth Lafrance Um, how did your generation look at family and marriage?
0:40:38.430 --> 0:40:38.890 Nicole Ah.
0:40:40.240 --> 0:40:40.680 Nicole I think.
0:40:42.60 --> 0:40:48.280 Nicole We still work very, very much living the same as our parents in terms of expectations.
0:40:49.180 --> 0:40:51.520 Nicole Finding a family wanting to be married.
0:40:52.240 --> 0:40:58.450 Nicole But we took longer to do it. We waited longer because we had that luxury.
0:40:59.360 --> 0:41:1.40 Nicole Of not getting pregnant.
0:41:2.40 --> 0:41:6.710 Nicole He had the time to make the decisions later.
0:41:7.440 --> 0:41:8.170 Nicole Then our parents.
0:41:8.930 --> 0:41:12.30 Nicole My mom was pregnant by 21.
0:41:12.690 --> 0:41:16.400 Nicole Married. You know, in the suit she's married. She was pregnant.
0:41:17.500 --> 0:41:18.110 Nicole Whereas.
0:41:18.870 --> 0:41:33.130 Nicole I had that luxury of saying, well, you know what I-I wanna work. I wanna work more and take my time making those decisions and maybe finding the right guy. And so we had that luxury.
0:41:41.800 --> 0:41:42.550 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:41:43.360 --> 0:41:44.150 Elizabeth Lafrance And so.
0:41:45.20 --> 0:41:46.620 Elizabeth Lafrance You’ve read the questions, right?
0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:47.140 Nicole Yeah.
0:41:49.430 --> 0:41:49.780 Nicole Yeah.
0:41:48.40 --> 0:41:50.980 Elizabeth Lafrance Do you want to answer like, the final question?
0:41:51.930 --> 0:41:52.990 Elizabeth Lafrance Um.
0:41:55.290 --> 0:42:6.110 Elizabeth Lafrance Many universities today have been forced to police sexual harassment. To what extent did university authorities monitor mixers and social events to keep women safe?
0:42:6.810 --> 0:42:7.920 Nicole Absolutely nothing.
0:42:9.600 --> 0:42:17.380 Nicole There was always a security guard there, but he was as dangerous as the kids and the boys.
0:42:18.130 --> 0:42:21.730 Nicole And that's why we were really hung out as groups.
0:42:22.870 --> 0:42:29.100 Nicole So women, unless you were with your boyfriend, you know that was wrong. You know, more of a relationship.
0:42:30.70 --> 0:42:40.430 Nicole That security was half the time. It was one of the older guys that was paid to be that. It would have put a jacket on and he'd be a security guy.
0:42:41.100 --> 0:42:51.650 Nicole Or an older man. And no, you did not go and tell those guys that something happened to you. It was never talked that way unless.
0:42:53.250 --> 0:43:3.420 Nicole Unless the woman was beaten up and you had called, you had to call an ambulance. That was a different story, and even then it was it was not sexually.
0:43:5.630 --> 0:43:9.850 Nicole I'm saying so it we didn’t talk about that part very much- she didn't.
0:43:10.870 --> 0:43:16.530 Nicole I never experienced anyone around me that happened. I heard it through the Grapevine.
0:43:17.210 --> 0:43:17.800 Nicole Um.
0:43:18.900 --> 0:43:21.270 Nicole But no, there was. Nicole You really had to think on your feet. You had to be smart.
0:43:30.350 --> 0:43:31.740 Nicole And you learned that.
0:43:32.410 --> 0:43:39.910 Nicole Being the women burned, what was safer to do so that you wouldn't? You wouldn't get in that situation.
0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:41.320 Nicole And.
0:43:42.490 --> 0:43:53.430 Nicole I was lucky and my group lucky, so I guess it depended on you know, the type of relationship you have with the guys and how you did each other.
0:43:54.60 --> 0:43:57.350 Nicole But I heard that line I would hear about.
0:43:58.210 --> 0:43:58.460 Nicole Or.
0:43:59.680 --> 0:44:3.890 Nicole Absolutely. Especially the first two years and it was always senior guys.
0:44:4.780 --> 0:44:5.740 Nicole You know that would be.
0:44:7.220 --> 0:44:10.700 Nicole Going on at after the- the younger ones who had just arrived.
0:44:12.130 --> 0:44:13.620 Nicole And that- that made a big difference.
0:44:16.810 --> 0:44:30.940 Elizabeth Lafrance Our generation is interested in a free love movement. What was the perception of premarital sex on the University of Ottawa campus in 1970s? Was it viewed negatively, accepted or even encouraged?
0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:36.810 Nicole It was encouraged. I was fun. It really was. I mean, we were that first generation.
0:44:37.550 --> 0:44:39.190 Nicole That all of a sudden?
0:44:40.160 --> 0:44:43.170 Nicole You you didn't have to worry about it. So you.
0:44:44.240 --> 0:44:45.10 Nicole You had fun.
0:44:46.310 --> 0:44:48.260 Nicole It was definitely expected.
0:44:48.920 --> 0:45:3.980 Nicole And yet there was still a lot of girls who didn't want to go on the pill and did not really, you know, save themselves for the- the guy. And that was fine too. But most of us.
0:45:5.10 --> 0:45:8.760 Nicole Um, you just live the way you want to.
0:45:10.170 --> 0:45:11.950 Nicole It was pretty wild, that's for sure.
0:45:15.530 --> 0:45:21.460 Elizabeth Lafrance Did members of your parents generation worry about pre marital sex?
0:45:22.30 --> 0:45:24.710 Nicole Ohm. My God, my mother was so petrified for me to get pregnant.
0:45:25.410 --> 0:45:52.490 Nicole And she didn't find out I was on the pill till much later. Didn't ask her permission to. I didn't dare talk about that. And it's only years later. And by then my sister, who's not much older and much younger than I was. And I'm the one who told her, alright, you're gonna do something. You better go get it and we could. We could go into a clinic. We could go into. It was right on campus.
0:45:53.850 --> 0:45:56.80 Nicole That part you could find.
0:45:56.270 --> 0:46:0.980 Nicole Um prescription for- for the pill, that's for sure.
0:46:2.130 --> 0:46:3.120 Nicole It was.
0:46:5.350 --> 0:46:30.950 Nicole It would. You just could find it. I- I went to my family doctor and by then I was one. And the other thing too. We were we were older because we had grade 13. Right. So we were one year older. So by the time we finished and I had to have a 5 year degree. So we were there for quite a while. So we were a lot older.
0:46:31.990 --> 0:46:33.570 Nicole So that made a difference too.
0:46:34.660 --> 0:46:40.720 Nicole But the decisions were easier to get to, and the- the bill was easy to get too, for sure.
0:46:41.440 --> 0:46:41.950 Nicole Um.
0:46:42.850 --> 0:46:45.80 Nicole And I think that changed. How.
0:46:46.610 --> 0:46:47.220 Nicole We lived.
0:46:51.100 --> 0:46:52.80 Elizabeth Lafrance So it's all my questions.
0:46:53.10 --> 0:46:56.590 Elizabeth Lafrance I'm going to stop the recording and.
0:46:59.10 --> 0:46:59.680 Elizabeth Lafrance transcription now.
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MP4, 47 minutes, 13 seconds
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Citation
“Turpin, Nicole (interview),” Life on Campus, accessed December 22, 2024, http://omeka.uottawa.ca/lifeoncampus/items/show/55.