Rick Hancox

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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Rick Hancox - 00:00
My name is Richard Hancox, better known as Rick Hancox. I was a student at
Prince of Wales, the one year it was a university—academic year 1968,
1969—the two years before that, I was at Saint Dunstan's University, and
I completed my BA in English in 1970, which was the first graduating course
of UPEI, so I went to three universities—Saint Dunstan's, Prince of Wales
and UPEI.

Slide - Discoveries - 00:40 
I had originally started university at Mount Allison, in pre-med and after
a couple of years of flunking science—you can't be a doctor if you can't
pass chemistry—and I finally took off for a year, I didn't think I was
university material, and then Saint Dunstan's saved me, and said 'Look,
we'll take you here on probation, until Christmas' and now I was majoring
in English, and this is when I really, finally, settled into academia, and
actually studied—and actually went to classes, didn't sell my books—and
I was in Frank Ledwell’s creative writing course for a whole year, I had
teachers like Adrian Arsenault—these are both priests, and it was the
first Catholic university experience I’ve had. These were like very
influential people to me—I discovered the arts, discovered writing, and
discovered painting, and discovered theater—and this went on, and then
finally when Prince of Wales announced that it was becoming an university,
I learned that the English department of the new Prince of Wales was going
to be hosting a film course, and I had become interested in film through
well movies that I'd seen, and reading about it and so, I transferred to
the English department at Prince of Wales and now, I was introduced to a
whole bunch of other fabulous professors, in the English department—John
Smith who taught me modern poetry, George Friend, who I took two courses
from; modern drama and theater production, and ultimately, George [Semsul]?
who taught the film course, and George [Semsul]?, after Prince of
Wales...—several of the professors at Prince of Wales didn't want to have
any part of the new university. They loved Prince of Wales, they loved it's
mandate...—so when UPEI was formed, they went elsewhere. George Friend
went elsewhere, George [Semsul]? went elsewhere, John Smith stayed on, he'd
been a Dean of Arts at UPEI. But, I followed George [Semsul]? to New York,
we went down with him after Prince of Wales, and worked in the New York
film industry, for a year before I came back to finish off at UPEI.
Eventually, George [Semsul]? taught at Ohio University, where I wound up
doing my master of Fine Arts degree, and George became my thesis advisor at
Ohio University, where I eventually graduated in 1973. But it all started,
you know, at UPEI.

Slide - The film society - 03:58 
I remember it as being a very exciting and progressive time. It was
clear—whatever the, some of the old Prince of Wales professors
thought—that the students were all behind the merger. And so that first
year of UPEI—the academic year of '69 and '70—had kids from Prince of
Wales; people from Saint Dunstan's, and we all got along—like a house on
fire; it brought the best of both institutions together. And I remember
that year, the first year of UPEI, I started the UPEI film society, and
Cathy Gallant—who is now Cathy Edward—we both did, we worked together
to start that. The student union of UPEI was really helpful, really
supportive, to the point where, somehow, we got the money to bring in
films—now mind you a lot of them were in it for the NFB and they were
free—but we had a budget, to the point where students weren't charged, it
was free. We would have screenings every week and there were experimental
films, documentaries, foreign films, and it was really supported by the
students, and because there were no more film courses, because George had
gone back, UPEI no longer offered any—and they still haven't—film
courses. I was kind of left now—and a lot of us were kind of left—in
the lurch, we've already had film from George. We wanted to continue doing
something, so we formed the film society; we also had a what was called the
UPEI film workshop, and that was something were we worked with Super 8
film—some 16—and students who were younger, who had not had the
advantage of taking the film course from George [Semsul]? at Prince of
Wales, could at least get from us—as a kind of a club—workshops, and
mentoring and to help them informally—it was like a film club, film
production club. And that was very well supported and successful too.

Slide - Becoming a Teacher - 06:32 
My experiences with being taught by brilliant people at UPEI—you know
whose names I've mentioned and there were more too—really got me
interested in more than just the subjects that I was studying, but in the
professors themselves and their lives and their lifestyles, and their
devotion, their research profiles, and I decided in my last year at UPEI
that I was gonna— I wanted to be, do that, I wanted to be a teacher
myself and be a professor where I could both teach and remain in a learning
environment, and continue to produce art. Hence, I pursued the master of
Fine Arts degree, which is a terminal degree, it's three years—it's
longer than an MA—so it's the equivalent of a PhD in terms of art
practice. So I knew with that degree I would qualify to apply for teaching
jobs at University. In the summer, you know, I would work in the film
industry but I always wanted to make my own films, I always wanted to be
involved in the teaching of the subject, especially with the influence of
an English background. Because, nowadays most film departments in
Canada—there weren't any back then, by the way, no film departments,
that's why film was usually taught within another department, like
English—so, that's the main influence. I did my Master of Fine Arts
degree; first I started in New York University and after a year there I
transferred to Ohio University—I found New York was incredibly
stimulating but I couldn't get any work done, there was just so much going
on—and Athens, Ohio, where the M of A program emphasized more the things
I was interested, in which was documentary and experimental filmmaking,
where I eventually—and George had just got a job there—and so that's
where I wound up.

Slide - War Bride Graduate - 08:58 
I guess it was in the 70’s, my mother decided that she'd like to get a
degree too, and she was in her 40s, and she went to UPEI and did a degree
in English, and she had some of the same professors that I did, and so that
was-it was wonderful, and she was very proud and I'm proud of her to have
gotten that degree, her BA. She was a war bride, she was only 19 years old
when she met and married my father and came to Canada, so that kind of
interrupted—as it did for my father 'cause he was on the war
overseas—kind of, university years and privileges that my
generation—and I'm talking about the baby boomers—had.

Slide - Final Thoughts — 09:57 
It was a very lively campus, there was something going on
artistically—I'm not even talking about athletics now, I mean what a
fantastic hockey team...—and because of the size of UPEI, everybody knew
each other—it's like Charlottetown itself, you know in PEI, you're going
up along on the street, and then say "Hi Gordon" and y'know, you just
recognize people—so, even though the artsy crowd and the jock crowd
didn't necessarily hang out together, we all knew each other. We all knew
each other's names, and we would all generally support each other on a
friendly basis. So a sense of community, I would say, that was really
strong. The other thing I have to say, which was really fabulous—is that
and this is at the undergraduate level, this doesn't usually, if at all,
happens on the graduate level—we would party with our teachers, okay? So,
people like Adrian Arsenault, you know he'd buy a bottle or we'd bring some
bottles and we would have poetry readings at his apartment over on Euston
Street, so there'd be like, Frank Terschan, Tom Gallant; there'd be Jim
Hornby, there'd be Frank Terschan, and we would have these poetry reading
parties, and we’d maybe toke a,  have a few tokes of something, and we
would actually write our own poetry and read it, and George [Semsul]?, he
was renting a farm, across the bridge there—across the river—and he'd
regularly have parties of his students, and everybody would go to these
parties. And so it was—this is also—everybody was on a first name basis
so this is another reason why you could really identify with the profs, and
their families, and their kids, and their lives and why it seemed like such
a natural thing for me to become a teacher myself, it became much harder to
do things like have student parties in a place like Montreal it’s just so
big, there’s so many distractions, people have other things to do but you
know PEI was a small enough place that there wasn’t a lot of other things
going on and it just-especially in the winter so it was really a very
supportive environment, I would say, as well people really supported and
encouraged each other and I think because of that a lot of us gained the
confidence to go to places like New York or Montreal or Toronto and dare to
kind of say “Look I’m here, I’m an artist, I’m a writer, I can do
stuff too!” it’s only because we got the confidence from a place like
UPEI, I think to do that.