My first year at university was very exciting. I was away from home for the first time, I felt I was on my way to a career in music, and I was making new friends everywhere I turned. I had chosen the University of Windsor because Windsor was far enough away from Toronto that it would be inconvenient for my folks to make a weekend visit, but close enough to Toronto that they wouldn’t feel insulted that I had chosen to study out of town. I also went to Windsor, because Michael had attended there the previous year, although by the time I arrived, he had transferred to McMaster University in Hamilton.

Michael’s friends, Gary and Barb, were still in Windsor and, for a small price each week, they fed me and made sure that I was okay and, I suppose, behaving myself. I had known them both for a number of years. Gary and I used to play together in a little folk duo called “Brillow and the Pillow". I was Brillow - referring to my frizzy hair which resembled steel wool; Gary was Pillow - he was a large fellow with a generous waistline. The irony that those names could now be reversed is not altogether lost on me! We’d get together all the time to play folk music and the occasional song which I had written, and sometimes we’d even rent a small hall and put on a more elaborate performance for paying guests. It was a great time in my life.

We once rented the basement of a local Community Centre and gave one of our public performances. I had recently started to sing with Jean – an attractive girl with a beautiful voice. Jean and I called ourselves “Folkus". Jean and I played a number of local coffee shops and did the occasional gig at a bar, but despite our hard work, Folkus never really got too far off the ground. Folk music was on the downturn and there just wasn’t much interest in paying people to sing the sort of stuff to which fewer and fewer people were listening.

Late in 1979, Jean, Gary and I put together a gala concert. We posted flyers all over the neighborhood inviting one and all to attend. Of course, our parents and friends came, but there was also one waif of a girl who sat quietly near the front and seemed quite pleased with everything that was going on. During one of our short breaks, I went over and asked her how she had heard about the concert and whether she enjoyed the music. She said her name was Jane and that she really enjoyed folk music. I thought she was about 15 years old, but she turned out to be 20 and I didn’t hesitate to ask her out. I met her dad, who worked at DeHaviland Air Force Base, not too far from Mackenzie. I guess he was pretty comfortable having me over to their house because he never said anything to the contrary, and I got the feeling that I was probably a step up in the world in respect of Jane’s previous dates. Anyway, we didn’t date more than a few weeks!