At first glance, it might seem hard to make a connection between a pair of engaged university
undergraduates and a retired couple living in Ottawa.
They may be generations apart, but Cara Walker and Jason Stapley, both Sci ’07, and Bert Barry, Sci
’56 and Pat Duke, Arts ’57, can thank Queen’s University for being the place where they made a lifelong connection.
They aren’t the only couples who have Queen’s in common. Kristen Read, centre representative in the office of advancement, said there are 8,000 married couples who are Queen’s alumni. And an article in the September/October 1996 issue of the Queen’s Alumni Review reported that 31 per cent of Queen’s alumni are married to Queen’s alumni.
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Although Barry and Duke fell in love at Queen’s, they didn’t wed until last year— more than 50 years
and two divorces later. The two first met in Barry’s hometown of Iroquois Falls, where Duke was visiting a friend the summer before going away to university.
“When we first met, she told me she was planning on going to the University of Toronto or Queen’s the next year,” Barry, 76, recalled. “A year later, there was a ‘Who’s Where’ book that came out at Queen’s, and she was in it.” The two dated throughout their time together at the University.
Of course, Barry and Duke, 75, didn’t have the modern luxuries of nightly phone calls or easy air travel. For them, summers apart meant a lot of letters—and uncertainty. “The first year after we met, I
took her address and I think she took mine as well,” Barry said. “She wanted a pair of Queen’s
earrings, which I got her, and she sent me a care package.” Without the instant communication and Facebook relationship status couples have today, Barry said he could never be sure he was “number one” with Duke while they were seeing each other. “I’ve since learned that I was number one during the two years we’d been dating,” he said. Though they dated for two years at Queen’s, the two split up
after Duke went on exchange to Laval University. “She didn’t realize I was in love with her. We broke up, went our separate ways,” he said. “She went to Laval, met a med student, and got married. I went to Imperial College in England for three years and I got married there.” Both went on to start families
with their former spouses. Barry had three daughters, Duke, two sons and a daughter. Still, Barry said he thought about Pat throughout the years.
The two started exchanging friendly Christmas cards after he tracked her down in 1981.
In 1992, after Duke’s marriage had ended, the two realized they were meant to be together.
“I got a Christmas card from her with a letter saying her husband had left her,” Barry said. “We met, sat one evening and had a long chat in her living room and both realized that we should be getting together. “We eventually did, though it took some time for my marriage to get sorted out, the divorce, that sort of thing,” he said. Soon after, the two took their first trip alone together—they came
back to Kingston. “I had to go to Kingston to do some work at Queen’s, and she was traveling in Vermont, so she came and met me,” Barry said. “At this time, we were fairly well cemented, and we knew we were destined to be together again.” The couple said they have a soft spot for Kingston. It is, after all, the city where they fell in love. “I was the one she invited to the Levana formal [held by the Levana Society of female Queen’s students, which merged with ASUS in 1967] and the arts formal. And I invited her to the science formal,” Barry recalls. “When we came back to visit, we went to Adelaide Hall, where she lived in first year, and hecked out all the new places like Chez Piggy.”
The pair have lived together in Ottawa since 1995, and were married last October. “There was an announcement in the Queen’s Alumni Review, and when I came back for my reunion last year, everyone mentioned it to me,” Barry said. “Apparently, it was quite the news.”
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Unlike Barry and Duke, Cara Walker, 21, and her fiancé, Jason Stapley, 22, have no plans to let 50 years go by before they walk down the aisle. The two plan to wed in Kingston on May 20. They started dating in first year, after Stapley caught Walker’s eye in a chemistry tutorial. “I sat behind him and thought he looked really cute,” she said. “I think I found an excuse to tap him on the shoulder, so that he’d notice me.” Things got serious quickly, and Walker said the two decided they were an official couple on March 2. Stapley saw things a little differently.
“Well, she made it official,” he said with a laugh. Since then, the two said they’ve enjoyed their time as a couple at Queen’s. “We love going to Cambodiana or Phnom Phen,” Stapley said. “We go on a lot of adventures together, so we’ve gone to Fort Henry, or long walks around the city.”
Years after Barry and Duke, Walker and Stapley enjoyed the Queen’s science formal this past November.
“The formal was so much fun,” Walker said. “It was a wonderful night, Jason and I went from room to room, talking and reminiscing with our friends.” Walker said she and Stapley have shared a number of special moments in Kingston. “We had our first kiss at the gazebo on the water near King Street,” she said. “So we took a lot of our wedding announcement photos there.”
Like so many young couples, the two have faced the challenge of long distance love. When Walker was offered a summer job in Snow Lake, Man., after her third year, Stapley said they racked up impressive phone bills. “We talked a lot on the phone, that’s for sure,” he said. “I flew out to visit her once, drove eight hours from Winnipeg, and the airline lost my bags. “Still, it was worth it.”
Stapley proposed in August of 2006 at the Kingston airport. “I had wanted to propose sometime in the summer, but she was working in Snow Lake, Manitoba,” he said. “So, I waited until she got back and went to the airport in a tuxedo with roses. It was a cheesy, airport proposal.”
Since then, the two have been balancing school, work and planning a wedding on a student budget.
Although they set aside $15,000 to cover the special day, Stapley said he is relieved to be under
budget so far.
“Most of the money is loans, and some of it is coming from our parents,” he said. “The whole process is definitely stressful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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While the foursome have years between them, both couples said they have their sights set on bright futures. After they graduate this spring, Walker and Stapley will move to North Bay, where Walker already has a job lined up in environmental engineering. The two said they plan to have kids—soon.
“We’re definitely having kids, in four years,” Walker said.
“Four years-ish,” added Stapley with a grin. “We can’t say for sure where we’ll be by then.” Barry and Duke also have kids in mind—grandkids, that is. “We’ve talked about our past, and thinking back if I had to live my life over again from 1955, would I have made changes? I would say no, I would have done things exactly the same way,” Barry said. “The reason is our children and grandchildren. I’ve got two wonderful little grandchildren and if I had done something differently, that would be wishing them out of existence.” With both couples looking forward to the years ahead, Barry had some trusted advice for any student searching for love. “Whether you should go out and meet a bunch of people before you decide who’s the right one, I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that it’s never too late.”
—With files from Katherine Laidlaw
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