Like many UBC students, Robert Morton, a fifth year in the Land and Food Systems faculty, spent his Saturday afternoon in The Boulevard working on various end-of-the-year papers and projects. Judging by his look of concentration, he appears serious and fixated on his studies—that is, until one begins to engage with him in conversation. His expression turns from earnest to warm and welcoming, and he now appears eager and intrigued. Little would anyone know that this man is the one who jumpstarted UBC’s infamous, ultimate event calendar, TheCalendar.ca. Here’s how it all got started, and how he’s leaving The Calendar UBC in good hands so he can focus on broadening TheCalendar.ca’s scope.
The seeds of inspiration for The Calendar were planted while Morton was in Bulgaria, after backpacking for several months across Southeast Asia, Eastern and Western Europe.
“I was in the middle of Bulgaria on my 19th birthday with my best friend,” he recalls, “But we had no idea what to do, so we asked the woman at the hostel for some suggestions. She went on this Bulgarian nightlife website and told us about several events happening that night. We took her word for it, and went out to one of the events. We had our photos taken, we were given a card, and three days later we checked and there were photos on the website. I thought it was such a cool idea.”
With that in mind, Morton began his studies at UBC and was heavily involved in first year residence life. Through that experience, he noticed, firstly, as a student, there wasn’t much notification of events happening around campus unless someone knew of the events sponsoring club or organizer or his roommate or friend was involved in the event. That ultimately led students to believe that UBC was a boring campus, when in reality there were plenty of events going on. As an organizer, he found it hard to schedule events because they would evidently clash with another event from a different organizer or club. He realized something had to be done.
“It was hard to keep track and spread the information to as many students as possible,” he says. “That’s really when the idea [of The Calendar] came and I was thinking ‘Wow, how cool to take the experience I had in Bulgaria, and flip that for our university.’”
After buying the domain name at the end of his second year, Morton worked tirelessly on his project, building the website over the summer and launching it at the beginning of this third year. Thankfully he had marketing experience from organizing many concerts for his punk pop band in high school, and was able to successfully put The Calendar UBC’s mark on campus.
The structure of The Calendar is simple: Morton and his team find out and aggregate all the events that are taking place on campus into a database that is accessible by all UBC students, and then document the events through photography. But obviously, it has taken a lot of hard work to get to where The Calendar is today.
Through collaboration with other clubs, such as the Ski and Board Club and documenting events on campus over the years, UBC now has several events such as the Undie Run, the Harlem Shake and Bike Rave that have become traditions – thanks in part to The Calendar. Some events have also become massive; like the 2,000 person snowball fight this past March, and only continue to grow.
The 4th Annual Undie Run. Photo credits here
Morton associates the success of the events to documentation. He says that the documentation is the most important aspect, as it’s “fun for the people who went, and shows the people who didn’t go that the organizers really put effort into the event and everyone who attended had a great time. It also inspires people to plan more events.”
After working on The Calendar with very limited help for much of his first and second year, The Calendar’s recognition brought along more people interested in working for and developing it. This year alone there were 35 people on Morton’s team, and there is already more interest for next year.
“There will be three new directors next year,” he says. “We will also have nine coordinators. We’re divvying up all the responsibilities so everyone has a specific portfolio. It was easy for me to take on all aspects of The Calendar since it was my whole life and my baby, but for other people who are just starting it can’t consume their whole life. We want people to have a small, specific piece, nail it, and then The Calendar will run pretty smoothly from there.”
Unfortunately, Morton’s days running the The Calendar are coming to an end. He will officially graduate in November with a B.Sc. in Global Resource Systems and a minor in Commerce. But his passion for The Calendar is undeniable: his main work has been building The Calendar UBC and collaborating with other clubs to create a tight knit community on campus; he says he only does school when he has to. He lights up as he talks about the bright future ahead for both The Calendar and The Calendar UBC. Just because he is hiring himself out of the directing role for The Calendar UBC doesn’t mean he won’t continue working with it.
“I would love for this to be my job,” he says. “I want to work on TheCalendar.ca as a whole. We already have The Calendar UBC, and what makes it unique is that we only focus on UBC related events; we want to continue adding branches to TheCalendar.ca for other universities to specifically relate it to their campus, and also one for Vancouver to focus on Vancouver-based events.”
For The Calendar UBC, Morton sees events becoming bigger and bigger each year, focusing on four total events a year, with the hope that they will have over 500+ people attending. For The Calendar, the possibilities are truly endless.
Morton’s leadership, determination and focus have driven The Calendar to the top, and it has given him stature that will be immortalized in UBC history. He is a prominent social entrepreneur of his generation, and truly emphasized creating a community with his work, which many students would equate to a memorable university experience. There seems to be only more success on Morton’s horizon—let’s see where it takes him.
Check out upcoming events on TheCalendar.ca and its Facebook page!