Theresa at Law School

Her interest in the law spurred by her time at the Legislature, Theresa entered law school, again at UVic, and began to make a huge impact there as she had done everywhere else previously.

The St. Patrick’s Day Theresa Corrupted Diligent Contracts Students

One fine Friday in March, an ill informed, and obviously not Irish, professor chose to schedule a make-up class for the middle of the afternoon of the 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. The appalled students realized immediately that this filled the sacred time set aside for consuming green beer. This once-yearly tradition, tracing back through real and conveniently imagined Anglophone roots as the single most important holiday, was not to be missed. As diligent law students, many of us had learned the importance of time management, and multi-tasking. The obvious (and only) solution to this conundrum was to find the requisite green beer in the two-hour wait between morning classes and this new and untimely make-up class. Realizing that this single opportunity needed to fill everyone’s annual quota of green beer, a particularly prudent student thought to bring a standard bottle of green food colouring.

After morning classes, a group of roughly 15 students filtered from the esteemed Begbie Building, as it then was, to the UVic Grad Lounge. Theresa, our protagonist, was amongst this group. Lunch and glasses of beer were ordered. As it turned out, the beer was its regular yellowish colour without a hint of Irish spirit. Theresa took to the task of converting the glasses of brew to their rightful emerald hue with her characteristic vigour. Not a glass was left untouched, neither a bowl of soup or a sandwich nor a cup of coffee. As the festivities progressed, Theresa’s enthusiasm for the task grew. She soon advocated not just a touch of green, but a significant, and often sloppily administered, dose of green.

As the hour of the poorly timed class drew near, those of us committed to the pursuit of higher knowledge (or at least those of us in the scheduled class) removed ourselves from the festivities and returned to the other side of campus. As we emerged into the daylight, we noticed that more than just our beer had turned green. Theresa, more then any of us, had managed to add a festive spirit to her tongue, her lips, and her fingertips. We all slunk into class, just sneaking in as the lecture began. It soon became obvious that Theresa’s green mouth, and slightly vivacious demeanor, would give her away. She left the room, ostensibly to attend to some pressing and personal need. Shortly thereafter, another and then a third of the green stained classmates quietly slipped from the room. At one point, as his friends left one by one and failed to return, a remaining student discreetly commented that class was beginning to feel like a bad horror movie. It was then that the last of us snuck out. There in the lounge, the green congregation was making only cursory and ineffective attempts to return to class, hinting that they really should be getting back soon. Finally Theresa correctly pointed out that not only was the class approaching the break, but surely those stained with green were ill-suited to learn contracts on a festive Friday afternoon. As other students, who had chosen not to share in this celebration of our cultural diversity, filtered out of the classroom, those marked with green tiptoed back to collect their bags and books before heading off to points unknown.

As we sauntered away from the law building on that fine spring afternoon with clear consciences and heads held high, we thanked Theresa for ensuring both an appropriate celebration of St. Paddy, and for guaranteeing us at least one memorable contracts class (no small feat).



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