Richard A. Dollinger (SMC 7T3) is a retired attorney and state court judge in Rochester, N.Y. He has been married to Dr. Marilyn Longo Dollinger, UofT ’74 for 48 years and has three adult children.
It started haphazardly. A few St. Michael’s College graduates from yesteryear were still keeping in touch, despite living in disparate parts of the continent: a retired Wall Street finance guy, a retired lawyer and advocate, a retired judge, a retired mediator and arts and museum promoter and a retired speech-language pathologist.
They shared a common past, more than 50 years ago. They had the time of their lives at St. Michael’s: hanging in Brennan Hall until the building monitor closed it, grabbing a brew at the Bay Bloor or the Chez-Moi or, if your grandmother sent you a birthday gift of “portable property,” a more expensive draft at The Bull & The Bear, singing on the steps of Loretto, lounging in a used chesterfield in an apartment near Yorkville, dragging on a cigarette or some other leafy substance near Rochdale, listening to guitars up and down Bloor Street playing all varieties of music, falling asleep in the too warm, too comfortable, too cozy Kelly Library.
So, while the years had passed and distance seemed to hinder further exchanges, technology made the present more attainable. During one of the occasional telephone conference calls, one of us said something never uttered by any professor during our time at St. Mike’s: “Let’s try a Zoom.”
Almost instantaneously, another of us replied: “Let’s form a book club on Zoom.” Idle banter about aging would be replaced with discussion of ideas, characters, themes, styles, plots – just like sitting in Professor O’Grady’s literature class in 1972.
The idea percolated. The next step: recruit some of the SMC folks we shared our time with at the College and see if they might join the club. We recruited: several barristers, more retired bankers, a carpenter, a political science pro, retired teachers – spouses and brothers-in-law of the above – some latecomers to Toronto and those who headed for other pastures before graduation.
The group Zoomed from Chicago, South Carolina, Ottawa, Howe Island in the St. Lawrence, northern Ontario (which had broadband challenges), New Jersey, Toronto, and Rochester.
Participation was top heavy with Westerners – graduates of American high schools who, back in the old days, did grade 13 at St. Mike’s. A bunch of those Americans stayed in Ontario, while some headed south after graduation.
Now, half a century later, we did what we often sought to escape while at St. Mike’s – commit to read a chosen book every two months and sit with our peers and discuss it. One of the members would choose the book and lead the discussion. We started with The Midnight Library by Matt Hague but soon plunged into even meatier books including Fight Night by Miriam Toews, the Canadian author whose focus on the experience of Mennonite women led to the movie Women Talking. Fight Night inspired the group.
We reviewed one book written by one of the participants which explored, among other topics, the concept of “point of view” in a novel. We examined a series of short stories written by one of our classmates, a retired advertising executive who led the discussion.
We ran through Demon Copperhead, the 21st- century echo of Dickens’s David Copperfield. We wolfed down Heartsong of Charging Elk, written by the Native American Renaissance novelist James Welch, that challenged our sense of cultural and racial identity.
We also read about recent Irish history in Fintan O’Toole’s book We Don’t Know Ourselves. We examined non-fiction as well, first on global challenges and upcoming on the issues involved in guns and violence.
The discussion and debate reprised dialogues and debates in Fisher and More Houses, in the Elmsley residences, in classes and during coffee klatches in Brennan Hall, or while sipping Mateus or 409 in unclaimed freight-adorned apartments.
In short, when on Zoom, we are back at SMC, reliving what we had treasured before we went our ways into the world. The lesson is the same 50 years later: better friends, challenged thinking in the face of new and different ideas, translating complex thoughts into understandable prose, translating fiction and non-fiction in new perspectives on problems new and old – that SMC education continues to work for us.
We have carried it with us, a book of inspired wisdom, given to us back then by SMC but even more appreciated now — in the age of Zoom.
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