I guess I am one of the people with the longest tenure with Fanshawe’s beloved student newspaper, Interrobang. I first worked for the publication that we affectionately referred to as “The Rag” in 1980 when I was in the Electronics Engineering Technician program.

I was hired to do paste-up work for the pages that had to be photographed for the printing press. We used wax on our text blocks that we printed out to position them on the page. The wax was so we could reposition them until we got the layout to work. I remember once the Editor told me to fill up a blank space, so I printed the words, “My Editor told me to fill this space—so I did” and inserted it in the hole. I guess that was my first foray into comedy and pushing boundaries. More on that later.

I eventually got assignments to do concert reviews, since I was trying to get into the Music Industry Arts (MIA) program. That was a great job; I was a broke student, receiving free concert tickets for writing a story about what I saw and heard. The biggest feather in my journalistic cap was an interview with Long John Baldry, a very famous blues musician, who discovered Rod Stewart and worked with Elton John to produce Stewart’s first albums.

In 1981, I started writing a humour column with a guy named “Meecher” (Ray Meechum). We wrote really juvenile, off-beat humour pieces that made people laugh. The next year, when I got into the MIA program, I convinced my locker partner Tom Barker (who went on to become country music star Thomas Wade with his band Wayward five years later) to co-write the column Off The Wall with me for the next two years.

With Tom, we upped the silliness and juvenile aspect of our comedy writing. For example, I got my then-girlfriend who was in Advertising Art to draw a picture of a bathroom stall. Tom and I then went to every bathroom in the College (after hours) and collected the best bathroom graffiti in the College and wrote what we found in different handwriting on our stall mock-up.

The FSU (our bosses) were not impressed; they warned us to tone it down.

Of course, we took that as a challenge, and a few weeks later I convinced my girlfriend Heather, to let me use one of her photos that she had recently taken for a study of nudes in one of her classes. One of the reasons I went out with her was because she was as twisted as I was. Her nude was a chicken with its feathers plucked and head chopped off in various Playboy-like poses.

We ran the copy for the Miss Nude Funshawe Contest underneath the risqué pictures of the chicken: “This is Miss Rhoda  Island-Red. Her hobbies include getting baked, getting fried, getting stuffed, getting laid and meeting nice cocks. Yes, you too can be our next Miss Nude Funshawe, simply send us one (1) nude photograph with the following information…”

After the column was published, we got an immediate Cease and Desist from the FSU and were unceremoniously fired. Out with a bang!

When I attended the MIA program for the second time in 2002, 20 years later, I immediately made my way to the Interrobang office looking for a part-time job. I guess I forgot to tell them about my last column 20 years earlier, and the FSU seemed to have forgotten the part about me being fired. They immediately re-hired me.

I revived Off The Wall and used that space to publish quirky and sometimes disturbing humour (including “Dead Baby Jokes” and the hate mail that followed, which I printed the next week). I also wrote two other columns; one sharing thrifty yet nutritious recipes and another talking about my experiences as a 45-year-old student in a school filled with people half my age.

I was paid $20 per column (x3), $60 per week, $240 per month, which paid my rent for three years!! Writing was paying my bills for the first time in my life. During my second stint with “The Rag” I did a expose piece, based on a little bird whispering in my ear (years later I freely admit it was Don Geppart, Engineering Professor for MIA). He told me that some of the extra lab fees that we paid to attend MIA (thousands of dollars per year) were being used to purchase dental chairs instead of supporting our recording studios with equipment and maintenance.

The story ended up with two very distinct outcomes: first we never saw the President of the College after that spring. I don’t know if he was fired or quit, he was just never seen again. The second outcome was that the College and the students of MIA entered into a contract—the first of its kind in North America. The gist of the contract is that our fees were now guaranteed to be used 100 per cent for our studios and equipment. If the College ever again used our fees for something inappropriate, we could demand our money back.

Twenty years later and almost 45 years after I first worked for the Interrowhatzit, I am starting to make advances in my songwriting and producing career, and John Said, my former Editor and now head of Publications at the FSU, arranged to have two stories about my recent successes and the tie-in to Fanshawe College published in the paper over the past two years.

Here is a link to hear some of my writing and music, if you would like to see how I turned out: knightsoftheroses.bandcamp.com.

I am of the opinion that Interrobang is at least partially responsible for the writer and activist I am today; I have a Disabled Rights Advocacy YouTube Channel called “Wheelchair Ninja” and many of my songs are modern-day protest songs about war, climate change, etc.

The Rag taught me the power of the pen. I will never forget. Thank you.