by Martha Tancock
Trent Communications

Barbara Hulcoop, accounting assistant in the Financial Services Office, holds the Hulcoop Cup, created in her honor by the Trent International Program for the support she has given international students over the years. It will be awarded annually to a first-year Canadian or international Trent student for outstanding contributions to international activities at Trent and/or in Peterborough.

Every year, Trent's accounting assistant Barbara Hulcoop and her husband Skip invite Trent's international students to their Cavan home to decorate their Christmas tree. Skip picks them up in his motorhome at the downtown bus station and drives them out to their five-acre patch for a day of Canadian winter fun -- sledding and skating, carolling, chili and hot chocolate. Over the years, international students have remembered the hospitality -- given at a time of year when they are most alone and homesick, so far from their own families -- with a steady flow of postcards and Christmas cards. They don't forget the Hulcoops.

        Nor do the Hulcoops forget them. One year, gathered around the piano, they heard Silent Night in seven languages. "That's something special," says Barbara.

        For the past 14 years, they have welcomed from 12 to 50 students for the occasion. Last year, 35 turned up. "I was expecting 14!" The students get a glimpse of a Christmas celebration in Canada and the Hulcoops a broader embrace of the world. "We did it for many selfish reasons," says Barbara. "There's more to life than just Cavan!" Inviting the students "broadened everything for us." Their two children (daughter Lesley is a sociology professor at Trent) grew up making friends from around the world, right in their own back yard.

        The year Jack Matthews (see Nind Scholarships, page 4) founded the Trent International Program he asked Barbara to attend the first orientation to explain money matters to the incoming international students. She would tell them how they would receive their Canadian International Development Agency grants, what they would have to buy to survive the Canadian winter, how they should budget and what they could expect to spend. She has done the same every year, driving to the retreat north of Toronto and camping with her husband.

        That's not the half of it. During the year, her door is always open to any international Trent student. "We're a place they can come if they need a refuge periodically to unwind. They can come and sit down to a quiet meal and a room overnight and some TLC." Last summer, she found Indonesian student Eddy Henry a job helping Barbara's mother cope with her husband, who has Alzheimer's Disease, while the family waited for his transfer to a nursing home.

        One year, Barbara sent condolences to the parents of a student who had died after returning home to Peterborough in England. His parents came to plant a memorial tree at Trent and stayed with the Hulcoops for a week.

        Barbara also snaps convocation photos as international students parade across the bridge and onto the Bata Library podium -- mementoes they can take home.

        The Trent International Program has recognized the Hulcoops' support to international students. On Nov. 21, attending the banquet celebrating the Trent International Program's 15th anniversary, it came "as a surprise and a shock" when TIP director David Morrison unveiled the Hulcoop Cup. It will go every year to a first-year Trent student for outstanding contributions to international activities at Trent and/or in the Peterborough community.

        This year, the tree-decorating party at the Hulcoops' happens Dec. 7. It might be the last. Barbara retires in May. And she's not sure where she will be next year. "If Skip and I ever had the money and could travel the world, we would have a lot of fun visiting the friends we've made."