Alumni Outings and Convocation Planning

Our very first Alumni Road Trip was a terrific success last month. We stopped over in Bangor our first night and enjoyed a lovely dinner with our Maine alumni. Then we spent two nights in Bean Town and helped celebrate the St. Patrick's Day weekend. Getting together with our Boston alumni for a downhome ceilidh, complete with Cape Breton fiddler Glenn Graham, was a real treat. On the way home we celebrated the actual St. Patrick's Day in New Brunswick's very Irish City of St. John.

This fall we'll repeat the success with an Alumni Road Trip aboard the StFX bus to Celtic Colours in Cape Breton.

Campus is abuzz this week with pre-convocation activity. The grounds are being spruced up and final arrangements are being made for our 1000 new grads and their guests attending the May 4 ceremonies.

Usually spring convocation takes place on a cool, sometimes grey and drizzly day. So we were bracing ourselves for the worst sort of spring weather. Happily the forecast is smiling upon us. We're still four days away, but the prediction is for sun and warm temperatures both Saturday and Sunday! It's so much nicer when our new alumni can mingle with family, friends, faculty and staff outside of the Keating ceremony right after convocation and have keepsake photos taken.

Two other exciting events on the horizon are our Golden X Inn Roadshows taking place in Pictou County and Halifax May 30 & 31. If you're in the area, you won't want to miss the Golden X Inn experience in a different place closer to home. It's a great opportunity to get out and have fun with fellow alumni and enjoy Golden X Inn favourite, Signal Hill.

Hail and Health,

Helen

Alumni Road Trip Gathers Steam!

It's fun to try new things from time to time, and that's exactly what we're up to in Alumni House these days. We've been seeing that beautiful StFX bus sitting outside the Keating Centre when our varsity teams aren't using it, and wondered: 'Why don't we use that bus for an alumni adventure?'

Then when we heard the Boston Alumni Chapter was thinking about having a St. Patrick's Day ceilidh, our adventure started to take shape.

Tickets went on sale Monday and our bus is nearly half-full now. We're going to stop over one night in Bangor and have dinner with our Maine alumni. Then it's off to Bean Town where we'll enjoy a St. Patrick's Day ceilidh with our Boston alumni and take in the St. Patrick's Day parade. On Monday we'll head back to the Maritimes, staying overnight in Saint John and having an Irish supper with our Saint John alumni.

My colleague Maria Hartery '87 and I are very excited about co-hosting the trip.

This is a first for Alumni Affairs, but we're confident things will fall into place and we'll have lots of fun. I'm sure that bus will see many more alumni road trips. We're looking into maybe having an Alumni tour to Celtic Colours in Cape Breton next fall.

Happy trails,

Helen