I am a teacher in Woodbridge, Ontario. Shortly after the Maclean's magazine university rankings came out last year, I was telling my grade 11 class all about StFX, the tradition of the X-Ring and the meaning of a StFX University education. I passed my X-Ring around the classroom and while the students took turns trying it on, they asked me questions. I told them about the X-Ring ceremony, how students count down the days until they get their own ring, the rules for getting one, and how it has become so popular.

A female student raised her hand and said that her mother had found an X-Ring a few years ago and that she still had it sitting at home.

I explained to her and the class that people associated with the university know how much a lost ring means to the owner and will attempt to find that person to give it back. I showed them how someone could use the graduation date and the engraving on the inside to help locate the owner. I also talked about AlumniNews and how it has a section devoted to lost and found X-Rings. When I would be home for Christmas, I told them, I would go to the Alumni Office where people would most likely be able to find the rightful owner. The class thought this was pretty cool.

A couple of days later, the student brought the X-Ring in. It was from the 1976 graduating class, with the initials R.V.B., B.Sc.N inscribed on it. She said her mother had found it on the bus.

Having returned to Antigonish for Christmas, I walked into Alumni House and in ten minutes Noreen Nunn and another lady there were able to locate the owner using the 1976 yearbook and convocation ceremony program. A short phone call later, I was talking to Joseph Spee and discovered that he and his wife (formerly Ria Van Berkel '76) lived just a 15-minute drive away from me in Toronto. Ria, not in when I called, had lost her X-Ring while out for a walk in Bayview Village a few years ago.

When I got back to Toronto on January 4, I phoned the Spee family and made arrangements to meet later that day. We had a great conversation, finding out that I knew many of her relatives as she was also from Antigonish. We talked about the discovery of her lost ring and reminisced about X and Antigonish. Ria was very excited and thankful to the student and myself for caring so much to take the time to get her ring back to her.

During our conversation she said she had given up hope of finding it, yet she held onto a hope for divine intervention.. Through the interplay of events, this finally did happen.

Thank you to AlumniNews for other success stories of X-Rings being returned, so that myself and other X alumni know that people do take the time to locate each other.

- Brian MacIsaac '91

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