Homecoming is, at its heart, all about the memories – the ones we make in the moment, and the ones we revisit from years past. For many, a trip to the Alumni Review’s Homecoming photo booth is now part of that tradition.
Introduced in 2023, it has quickly become a place for alumni to connect and capture the day. With professional photographer and Queen’s alumna Jana Chytilova, Sc’89, behind the lens, alumni step into the frame and receive a special keepsake a short time later: their photo on a custom cover of the Alumni Review, delivered right to their inbox.
Some of our alumni models wear tams. Some wear well-worn jackets. Some arrive for their close-ups in paint-splattered coveralls. The photo booth brings everyone together: long-lost housemates, couples, grandparents, babies, and dogs (and, if you’re lucky, you might even catch Boo Hoo striking a pose). For those on the sidelines, it’s just as entertaining to watch the fun unfold. Everyone’s there to capture a moment in time – and they do it in tricolour style.
But for one alumna, capturing that moment took on even greater significance after Homecoming.
Jennifer Stroebe, Sc’98, was happy to pose with her father, Rick Sterne, Sc’68, in 2023 (above) – she in her Engineering jacket and he in a Queen’s tartan scarf, embracing.
“Thank you so much for sending this photo cover! It turned out so great,” she wrote to us after receiving her Alumni Review cover. “Not only did I love my time at Queen’s, it was super special for me to share Homecoming weekend with my dad, who graduated from the same Queen’s program exactly 30 years earlier than me.”
Now, nearly two years later, she treasures the photo even more.
“This photo is extra special to me,” she explains. “Sadly, my dad passed away unexpectedly a few weeks after it was taken.”
Each photo tells a story – and for Jennifer, that story was about her dad, and the connection they shared with Queen’s, and each other.
“I am so grateful that we were able to travel and spend Homecoming together.”
