I was in my first year of the B.Sc. in Nursing course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and was living in Lower Mall residences for women. Having finished classes for the day I returned to my room in Hamber House to get my cafeteria card and head out to join the others for dinner.
I dumped my books on my bed and switched on my dark brown Bakelite plug-in radio which sat on the window ledge. It was then that I heard the announcement. I recall dropping down on to the bed utterly stunned! It was because he was such a highly respected figure, so charismatic, so much part of American... and indeed, Canadian, culture!
That's me in the middle (aged 19 years).
The residents of Hamber House at the end of the university year in 1964.
When asking a friend today where he was when Kennedy was shot... he couldn't remember "probably working in the lab [doing chemical experiments]". However he told me the following story:
He said that as a school boy he went to a school next to Edinburgh Castle. He recalled that on the day in 1952 when they announced the death of King George VI it was decided to have a 58 gun salute*.
Why 58?... because the King, born in 1895 and died February 6, 1952, was 58 years old. So once a minute for 58 minutes there was an almighty boom from the nearby cannon (presumably like the one above). He said that after about about 30 seconds you began to recover ... only to have to go through it again!
* Just as an open hand salute was used historically to demonstrate that no weapon was being held, a gun salute indicated the friendly intent of an empty ammunition chamber.
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