Guest Blogger: College

Usually I'm not a fan of 'Cape Breton-isms.' For the most part they paint us as some of the more so dimwitted Canadians. Phrases such as “How she goin' bi'?” have always portrayed the idea that we are uneducated, behind the times, and – one of the worst things a location can be – quaint. Oddly, despite my feelings toward these 'isms' I do have a favorite. Equally odd is the fact that it shows all of those stereotypes that I cannot disagree with enough. That ism can be seen in the following example:

Taxi-driver - Where are we headed?
Me - The college.
Taxi-driver - Okay.

Cape Breton University to almost every Cape Bretoner I have ever run into is simply referred to as “the college” including those who are too young to even start thinking about their lives after high-school, those who live out of Cape Breton, those who have never attended CBU, and even those who have pursued post-secondary education at different institutions. I have met countless examples of each of these groups, and they all refer to CBU as “the college.” But, that stands to reason – it IS the college in their hometown.

Only it isn't.

Cape Breton University is, as the third word in the name would indicate, a university. Before it was a university it was a university-college (UCCB). Before it was a university-college it was a college – the College of Cape Breton (if you look around the college even now you can see the old logo from CCB – it's orange and green and looks like a weird box). However, that has not been the case since 1974. That was well before many of the people who call it “the college” were born – myself included. While it may not be a college anymore, I can see the idea – it WAS the only college in the hometown, so it makes sense to call it “THE college.”

Only it isn't.

There have been and still are a number of colleges – actual colleges with the word “college” in the name and everything – around Cape Breton. There's McKenzie College and Breton Beauty College. Cape Breton Business College has been around since 1958. The Canadian Coast Guard College has been around since 1965, and it has never changed the name, never once saying it was anything but a college. None of these schools, as far as I know, are EVER referred to as “the college.” I used to live about three blocks from the Coast Guard College. I went swimming there, used the gym, played in the woods right next to it, and went on various tours of the buildings seeing all the classrooms and everything that made it a college. This did not change the fact that whenever “the college” was talked about, I knew it was in reference to the big building between Sydney and Glace Bay that I had only ever been to once as a child. The Gaelic College – celebrating everything Cape Breton – was founded in 1938 – 13 years before the school that would become “the college” was.

There's even a college with the same driveway as CBU! Nova Scotia Community College, Marconi Campus, has the exact same directions from pretty much any given point however when I am getting a ride to CBU, I am always asked “Which entrance to the college are you going to?” I'll say “the main one.” After turning onto University Blvd. (notice it's not called College Cres. – a dead giveaway that it's not a college) they never turn right to take me to the NSCC; we turn left and go to the university.

So, why do we call a building that is not a college not just “a college” but “the college” - as if it were the definitive college. Maybe we're behind the times with the name. Maybe we're uneducated about the other institutions around Cape Breton. Maybe we're just quaint.

James F.W. Thompson