Afternoon scenes from campus on the last weekend before the start of classes: a mother and her daughter walk arm-in-arm on the sidewalk by Ring Road, sharing one last heart-to-heart, one last long goodbye. Across the way, sprawled on the grass, a camera-toting dad gets a great close-up of a local rabbit before climbing in the car and heading home, leaving his son to his studies.

Bittersweet September. It’s one of those times every year when campus really becomes a place of family milestones. Convocation is like that. But while convocation symbolizes accomplishment, the start of the new school year brings with it something less certain, especially for new students, the majority of whom leave home to study here. It’s the start of the journey, not the finish, that contains the mystery and the sense that adventures are about to unfold.

Anxiety. Enthusiasm. Excitement. Minor fits of panic. They are all part of the back to school vibe that students bring to campus each and every September. Summer isn’t so quiet, with bands of young kids taking part university’s various summer camps. There are summer studies and conference delegates from around the world. But nothing compares to the first days of September.

Even if you are years removed from classroom, somehow the days between the waning summer and the first chills of autumn bring an urgency, a fresh charge of energy. It’s a time for new and renewed friendships and a new set of challenges for the mind.

“Day One,” our cover feature this time around, is a photo essay. Through the talents of six photographers we bring you back to campus to share the life of the university as it was on September 8—the first day of a new year of classes. We hope these portraits bring back memories of your own UVic Septembers, and the feeling that just about anything is possible once again.

—Mike McNeney