When my world was male

The making of a Master of the Universe

When one gets to a certain age there is an inevitable slide into the dark world of aggrandizing one’s youth, repeating the same stories, and tut-tutting about the “young people of today”. Sadly, I have stepped onto that slide and resemble the object of Pam Ayres’ poem.

It is called “becoming a geezer” and rather than push back at my degrading tendencies I have learned to “embrace my truth”. Think I am boring and narcissistic? Sucks to be you!

As I thought of this recently, I was swept back to memories of a simpler time when men were men, and the best men were engineering students. It is true. Everyone in the 1970’s knew that engineers rule the world. That was before it was widely recognized that all Masters of the Universe are engineers. I am not making the argument; I am just stating the fact.

If engineering students were the Grasshoppers of these Masters, then who were the arts students? Listen to my story and I will tell you.

It was the goal of the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) at my alma mater to expose the fatuities of the lesser mortals who coexisted on the university campus by filling their lives with misery of a kind which revealed how stupid they were. Again… not arguing, just reporting.

Every two years prior to either the Christmas or final exams, the engineers would produce a randomly organized exam schedule and post it around campus about a week before the official exam schedule was posted. It was always printed on pink paper, and it always omitted engineering course exams. Clusters and clumps of students would form to record when their exams were being held and there would be cries of lamentation often accompanied by tears. And it always generated a lineup of distressed and angry students at the Registrar’s office asking, through their tears, how the university could reasonably expect them to write four exams at the same time in different buildings.

It was unfailingly funny, and one could only shake one’s head and say incredulously,

“Man, they fell for it again!”

But this was just a warm-up.

It so transpired one year that the university fathers bought and distributed several objets d’art around the university campus. I suppose the purpose was to elevate the minds of the young heathens who populated the campus. A lot of money had been paid for the concrete monstrosities and even the arts students found it difficult to articulate how these boat anchors lifted their spirits to a higher realm of existence.

The object in the picture above was not included in the campus art but I wanted you to get the picture. My apologies to the creator of this but… well now you know what I mean.

Feeling the righteous indignation of having their tuition used in such frivolous and wholly useless ways, the EUS started a write-in campaign to the local newspaper demanding the heads of those who had wasted the money. When the EUS writers were defamed as Neanderthals by the art students who wrote to defend the purchase decision, the engineers upped the rhetoric by demanding the removal of the art and the redeposit of their money in the university coffers.

The back and forth of the write-in conversation became more vitriolic and aggressive on all sides as time went on. Then an explosive demand was issued. A senior official of the EUS wrote that the university had until a stated date to remove the objets d’art or the engineers would do the job for them. It is worth pointing out that the term “objets d’art” was used by all non-engineering writers. The engineers used the term “concrete trash” if I recall correctly.

On the appointed day, a team of burly engineers dressed in full engineering regalia and armed with sledgehammers spread out over the campus and proceeded to smash the objets d’art. The screams were both loud and immediate.

“Engineers off campus!”

Fortunately, this was in the days before cell phones, and no one thought to bring along a camera so the delinquent engineers could not be identified but the episode made it to Vancouver’s daily newspapers. Clearly these boorish students needed to be charged with willful vandalism. It was demanded that the city police start an immediate investigation. The engineers had clearly gone too far this time. This was no puerile prank. This was destruction of expensive public property.

Except it wasn’t. You see the engineers had constructed their own “objets d’art” and distributed them around campus before the letter writing campaign had begun. Their cheap concrete and wire mesh creations looked as artistic as the expensive stuff and only the engineers were the wiser. When they destroyed the “art” it was their art that they destroyed.

The great artistic emperor was shown to be fully disrobed when the EUS finally came clean and explained what they had done. The Neanderthals had elevated themselves to the top rank of artistic endeavour by the professions of the very people who decried their presence. The whole affair was very funny, and it took about two years before the smugness of the arts students returned. And that is why we engineers are Masters of the Universe.

Perhaps the funniest engineering prank involved the destruction of the 9 o’clock cannon in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Every day at 9 pm the cannon would fire and everyone in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia would know what time it was. What they did with that information was for each person to determine. The Great 9 o’clock Cannon Stunt took place before my time, but an older friend was intimately involved and shared the details.

The cannon was iconic to the city and the city fathers wisely recognized that the aggravating booming of the cannon would incite certain unruly parties to remove the source of their annoyance. Therefore, the cannon was electronically wired against tampering and removal. Alarms would go off and police would appear from nowhere if anyone was so bold as to even sit on the barrel.

Have I explained that engineering students are understudies - Grasshoppers - to Masters of the Universe? Somehow one of the students innocently discovered the wiring diagram for the cannon presumably discarded on a sidewalk or something. With this information, a plan was conceived to safely cut the wires without setting off the alarm. If the alarm was triggered, there was an escape plan for the small crew of demolition experts. My friend was the leader of the getaway team.

Once accomplished the cannon was unbolted and sequestered in a safe location - like some student’s garage. Care had to be taken, of course, to prevent the student’s father from coming into the house and demanding,

“How the hell did that cannon come to be in my garage?!?”

Fortunately, hiding a cannon, I was told by my interlocutor, is not that hard to accomplish.

The next morning, the City of Vancouver was all abuzz. Where is the 9 o’clock cannon? In this prank, the engineers had skipped the university newspaper stage and went straight to the big Kahuna - the two city newspapers. “Livid” is a word that might describe the tone of the articles. The status of the cannon remained a mystery for a week until the EUS (without giving any names) confessed to the theft in a letter to the editor and demanded a ransom for its return.

Big words like “preposterous” and “irreplaceable” and “unconscionable” started to show up in the editorials and letters section. Once again, the university fathers were instructed to remove the engineering faculty from campus and put the miscreants in a cow pasture somewhere. The hunt for the guilty began in earnest but names were impossible to come by as the Grasshoppers tightened their circle.

Meanwhile the ransom amount was increased, the apoplexy of the mayor was more noticeable, and the police really did start an investigation. The cannon had to be moved each night to a new location. Following years of experience, the leaders of the EUS knew the right moment to deliver the coup de grace.

“This is our last communication. Pay the ransom which will be donated to a local charity, or the cannon will be destroyed.”

The screams of frustration were probably heard in Toronto. How do you incarcerate a thousand engineering students and what might they do to the jail if you did? On the appointed day, the ransom unpaid, the 9 o’clock cannon was pushed over the embankment at Wreck Beach, a two-hundred-foot-high headland on Vancouver’s west side. The event was filmed, and the film was sent to the local television stations. Slowly at first and then picking up speed, the cannon launched itself into the air about fifteen feet from the top and then slowly somersaulted its way to the beach below. RIP 9 o’clock cannon. The city fell into hushed disbelief. Now the police were fully engaged.

In the American Civil War, the Southern army was perennially under-armed in comparison to their Northern assailants. For this reason, the Southern generals had to be more creative in the manner in which they established their defensive lines. One of their tactics, which always worked no matter how many times they used it, was known as the Quaker gun. The first Quaker gun was used by George Washington in the Revolutionary War, and had been used a few times in Europe, but it really came into its own during the Civil War. A Quaker gun was a trimmed log painted gunpowder black and mounted on a fake carriage.

The engineers had built a Quaker gun, and it was this that slowly arced its way to destruction through the television screens of so many Vancouver homes on the evening news.

Today the real gun again sits in its appointed place booming its greeting every day at 9 pm. Note the stone and wire mesh enclosure.

According to Wikipedia, a ransom was finally paid to the BC Children’s Hospital, and, more impressively, the entry states that the cannon was painted engineering red in 2008. Well done to those students!

Now you know how Masters of the Universe are trained. When I entered engineering school two years after the Great 9 o’clock Cannon Stunt, the event was already folkloric and when one of the students who had participated walked by in the hall the whispers would start,

“He was part of The Prank!”

You didn’t even have to define the prank. People just knew.

Man, those were awesome days…