Nicholson Way: UNB woman with a way gets her own name on road

Most people get a farewell party and some cake when they retire, but an associate vice-president at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton got something a little more permanent.

Barbara Nicholson, an architect by trade, saw a roadway on the UNB campus named after her.

Nicholson Way is located in front of the Richard J. Currie Center and the new Kinesiology building — two buildings Nicholson worked on while at the university.

"It was just unbelievable," Nicholson said. "When you see your name on a street sign in front of two buildings that I'd spent the better part of my time at UNB working on, it was amazing."

Nicholson has been working at the university for almost 12 years. She started in 2007 as the associate vice-president of capital planning and property development, the same role she's retiring from now.

Nicholson has managed 8,000 acres of land owned by the university and more than 275,000 square metres of building infrastructure.

One of her favourite memories is about working on the Currie Center, her first project at UNB. She suggested hiring so a bucket truck so Richard Currie, the main benefactor; Eddy Campbell, the president of UNB, and the construction supervisor could get a good view of a conference room being named after Currie's wife.

"When that bucket was about halfway up, I looked up and I went, 'What have I done? I just put our chancellor, our president and the key construction superintendent in this bucket and if anything ever happened to them, that would be my legacy,'" she said.

Nicholson later learned that Campbell had a fear of heights, but that didn't stop him from deciding to name the roadway after her.

"She's been a tremendous asset to the university for many years now," said Campbell, the outgoing president of the university.

"The work she's done is absolutely exemplary and the manner in which she has gone about it has been a role model for all of us."

Even when the roadway's new name became official earlier this month, Nicholson was surprised it was named after her.

"When I look at other names on campus and I say wow, in years from now, people will say, 'Well, who is Nicholson?' And for me that translates to not just a gift, an honour, recognition for today, but for me it's really a legacy."

Campbell said most campus roads are named after former presidents of the university.

"I think it is somewhat extraordinary that we felt her contribution was so vast as to merit this kind of recognition," he said.

Nicholson had a "way of doing things" at the university, Campbell said, which is why the road is called Nicholson Way.

"We wanted to call it Barb Nicholson Way because we would like to remember her way of doing things and we would all like to emulate it," he said.

Nicholson also felt "Way" was the most appropriate.

"I liked the word 'way' rather than street because I associate the word way with a journey and, you know, people are on their way to the faculty of kinesiology or they're on their way to the Currie Center," she said.

"And you know, they're there hopefully to improve themselves or to learn something new or participate in physical activity that makes them feel good."

Nicholson recalled that when she and her team completed the Currie Center, they were planning to sit together at the first event ever being held in the building.

"I said, 'Yeah, I'll be over a little bit later, I just have a few things I want to do.' I knew in my heart I couldn't go with everybody else. And when I went in there and I sat by myself and I saw the ceremony going on in the performance gym ... I teared up.

"It was so personally rewarding to see that building being used the way we imagined it being used for four years and then it was a reality and it was one of those moments where I just said, 'We did it. We did it. Wow, look what we did.'"

Nicholson was the first person in her family to attend university and she hopes her relatives who attend UNB in the future will remember her.

"If they see that sign, they may say, 'Wow, that was my grandmother, my great grandmother or my great aunt and she came here. She worked hard and look what she accomplished.'"

Nicholson's last day at the university is June 30.