Tim Chaisson

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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Tim Chaisson - 0:00
Hey my name is Tim Chaisson, and I’m a recent graduate of UPEI in the
Psychology Department. 


Slide - Music at the Wave - 0:13
I started when I was eighteen at UPEI so I have all those, you know, fresh
memories of being like, you know, first time moving to a big city and
meeting all these new people, and I would say one of the things that stands
out to me the most in the early years of UPEI would be playing music and
meeting other musicians and being at the Wave. I hosted Open Mic for a
really really long time. A lot of the time was with my cousin Elmer Deagle
and I think that was a big expansion as far as music goes, because you know
I grew up in Souris, and listened to lots of music with my family and
whoever was performing around but I think at Open Mic especially it was
like all these different musicians from UPEI were coming in and you were
getting to hear all these songs that you’ve never heard before and it was
kind of pre-, you know, everyone listening to everything on the internet
and being able to be exposed to all that. So, yeah, I’d say that was
probably my biggest, like, memories of I guess the extracurricular part of
being at UPEI. It was super cool, just being at Open Mic every Thursday
night for I don’t know how many years, but it was a few years that every
Thursday night, I was there so that’s what stands out the most, I would
say. 


Slide - Hanging Out at UPEI - 1:36
I actually took a year off after SRHS and I taught music and I taught
fiddle and guitar at home, and all my cousins basically were at - most of
my cousins and my brother was at UPEI at the time and I remember that
winter being like, always coming in and hanging out and seeing this culture
of learning and it just kind of hit me - I didn’t realize in high school,
it was like I didn’t - I guess I was maybe too young to know, but having
a year to really ponder and think about it made me come back that next year
and be really into it and into learning. So yeah, all of my, yeah a lot of
family - Andrew Chaisson, my first cousin and my best friend, we lived
together all through university and he did psychology as well, so it was,
we had a lot of great times together and still do, but I mean at UPEI, we
pondered about those times.


Slide - Returning to UPEI - 2:37
Speaking of family, I know my mom in particular was really kind of like,
“Oh, when are you gonna finish your degree? When are you gonna finish
your degree?” And I was like, “I’m gonna do it someday for sure.
It’s gonna happen,” because I was so close for so many years. And yeah,
she was pretty happy whenever I finished my Psychology degree. And I think
of my degree as you know, maybe or maybe not I’ll continue in this field,
but I never regret anything that I, you know, I studied at UPEI because
it’s all, it was all so practical for me and learning, yeah, that side of
the, you know, being human was, yeah, it helped me through a lot for sure.



Slide - Life as a Mature Student - 3:22
But yeah, I felt older. I felt really old, I was like, I’m the guy in the
class that, yeah, that’s about ten years older than everybody, but it was
neat and it was really, also really cool to like, socialize with the
younger - I don’t want to say kids, but the younger students that are in
the class and how mature they all felt, like, just chatting with them and
the conversations in the class were, yeah, big questions and big, big
picture. But yeah, a different experience, I would say, coming back a
little bit older, but special in its own way.


Slide - UPEI’s Influence on Song Writing - 4:00
Cause I studied history for the first two years, I was pretty heavy into
the history department and I was also getting into writing songs a lot then
and I found a lot of inspiration between history and english classes and
you know, sociology and psychology there was always something, like, on my
brain I guess you could say. And you’re learning so much and so with
songwriting especially it was a great way to, yeah like just kind of be
exposed to different topics and - I really dug into a lot of the Acadian
history of our area and I think learning about that too was later turned
into like songwriting and also connecting with other Acadians around the
world and just playing different festivals around the world and meeting
others that are - we share the same ancestry and same music and, yeah, so
that was also really neat too, being able to kind of dig up all the
archives that you guys have in here and kind of, yeah, just diving in and
reading everything, so, that was cool too. And also just like your whole
becoming an adult, as a way of like writing and meeting new people and new
relationships and yeah, so those years are very influential, I think for
anybody, but especially if you’re at UPEI it was, yeah, definitely
influential upon music, which is what I do as a full-time career now.


Slide - Concerts in Class - 5:29
There’s a lot of, a lot of professors that really stick out. I would say
one just in particular is David Varis and he’s - I did a bunch of
sociology classes with him and also some Aboriginal Studies classes, and in
particular just - other than being a really great person, he I remember he
allowed me to - instead of writing papers, he allowed me to, like, put on a
concert for the class, and I did it like, twice, I think. And also Kyle
Drake was in one of my classes and he was, he played in a band called The
Meds at the time so we kind of performed for the class and it was a unique
way to, you know, experience - and it did tie into the class and the
material, but yeah I saw David not that long ago and he’s been out to
some of my shows and it’s - yeah, he’s one person that sticks out, as
far as someone who really has that influence and impact upon you, like,
“Oh, yeah, okay, this is - this is cool. It’s not so like, cut and
dry.” It’s like, things can breathe and the class can breathe and
it’s, you know, great conversations.


Slide - Living Off Campus - 6:43
Living like in Brown’s Court and then on Queen Street just behind, and
like I said, with a lot of my cousins, we had a lot of great ceilidhs and
square dances like in our house and everyone would get together and play
tunes and, yeah, I do miss those times where everyone would just get
together so easily. It was like, “Oh, do you want to come over, and
we’ll play music all night, and, you know, walk around the
neighborhood?” It was just, yeah, so, so many fond memories of that and I
actually wrote a tune - I think I wrote it when I was about like nineteen,
after a ceilidh that we had and it was at 7A, Brown’s Court and I called
it “The Ceilidh at 7A”, and it’s been recorded by a couple of people
like Vishtèn and another fiddler from Cape Breton. And it was just this
epic night that was during the ECMAs when they were on PEI and actually, a
cousin of mine met his wife at that party. I would say, like, some of the
students that I met that became friends while I was at UPEI - we would
invite them over too and they’d be like, “Is this what you guys do?
Like, dance square sets and play fiddle tunes?” And it was like, yeah,
this is kind of what we grew up doing and to bring that to other people was
always super fun. Yeah. 


Slide - Students, Food, Community! - 8:04
I also remember too, like, Trevor had just gotten back from Europe - he was
on a trip - and it was all about like late suppers and coming together and
everyone sitting together at the dinner table. So we were on Queen Street,
I think it was like second year of university, and every Tuesday night, all
of us - we split it up - there was five of us that lived in the house, and
every Tuesday night for the whole year, we would have supper at like eight
o’clock at night or nine o’clock at night, and two people would or
three people would cook everything and clean everything up so the other two
were like, or three, were like, treated to like this beautiful supper.
Like, we really, like, dug in and made all these awesome meals. And that
was also a pretty special thing that I - you know, I hadn’t traveled much
at that point - I was like, “This is crazy!” but it was so fun. Like,
we actually got together, we talked about, like, everything, and it was
like a real, like, event that we had in our home.


Slide - Finding Love at UPEI - 9:03
One of the very first - the first year that I came to UPEI, I remember we
subleted our house at Brown’s Court, and I sublet it to a group of girls
from Charlottetown, and one of their friends, who I met, just happens to be
my wife today. And we would bump into each other all the time at UPEI and
she was studying - she was a dietician - and, yeah. It’s just funny, just
walking by Samuel’s - she used to manage that and do all the, all the
food for that and it - yeah, I just remember seeing her and being, “Oh,
she’s really cute and really nice and…”, and, yeah, and then a few
years later it’s, yeah, now we’re married and have a little baby boy.


Slide - Final Thoughts - 9:44
I think we - we travel all over the world all the time, and we talk about
PEI a lot, and we - yeah, I think if, like, just speaking about PEI and how
beautiful it is and just the way of life here and how kind of close-knit
and the sense of community that we have on PEI is - and even with UPEI, you
know, meeting someone from away that’s come to UPEI. Just that sense of
community is important. Like, I know that’s kind of broad to say, but it
really is, like, when you feel like you belong to something and you feel
accepted and everyone feels - yeah, it’s like, inclusive in that way that
everyone can be here, be comfortable and feel like they’re a part of
something and learning and like the bigger picture that you take out into
the world. ‘Cause UPEI, or university, those years are very, very
important to everybody but it’s also kind of a small blip in what you can
bring to the rest of, to the rest of your life and the rest of the world,
so, yeah, that small little sense of - no, big sense of small community, I
guess is what I’m trying to say, is that there’s a lot of heart there.
If we can all bring that to the rest of the world and, that’s great.