There were nights on the campus of St. Michaels University School in the late 1990s, after classes were over and the boarding houses had settled, when a small group of musician-houseparents would find a space to play. The sessions happened in the music portables behind the gym, in the chapel, wherever there was space. Colleagues and friends, sharing a love of music, and, though none of them knew it yet, laying the foundation for a debut album that would arrive decades later.
More than two decades later, those sessions have a name. Door d'Or, French for "golden door," takes its name from the jam space where the band reunited, its golden door becoming a symbol of shelter, friendship, and renewal. The Victoria-based band releases their debut full-length album, The Exquisite Dream, on May 1. Recorded with Juno Award-winning producer Colin Stewart, the record blends atmospheric guitars, post-punk textures, and melodic tension into what the band describes as an optimistic vision of the future.
The SMUS connections don't stop with the musicians. The album's artwork and graphic design were created by Chris Bateman '94, Head of Visual Art at SMUS, who also contributed as a musician on the record.
The band was established by Mat Geddes '93, Mike Ison, and drummer Darin Steinkey, three friends who were all part of the school's boarding community and drawn together by a series of synchronistic events in the late 1990s. Steinkey arrived in 1999 after the group had been searching for a drummer. Music brought him to the community first; a role as houseparent followed. That turned out to matter in ways he couldn't have anticipated.
"I met my wife through the band,” said Steinkey. “I met a lot of my friends that still work here through this place. We're just amazingly grateful for it."
For Geddes, who arrived at SMUS as a student in 1981, became a houseparent in 1999, and has taught mathematics here since 2001, the school has been a constant through nearly every chapter of his life. He lived on campus as a houseparent for over two decades, and it was in those boarding rhythms, duties done and instruments in hand, that the earliest version of Door d'Or took shape. The chapel, where they recorded their first songs in the summer of 1999, became a kind of unofficial studio.
"Interacting musically builds deep human connection," Geddes said. "Friendship, trust, empathy. We still draw on those formative years."
A Quiet Campus Fills with Music
Life, as it does, scattered them. The band went quiet for years.
Then came 2020. With SMUS staff living and working on campus during the pandemic, Geddes and Steinkey found themselves in the same place again, and the music followed naturally. The chapel sessions resumed, as did the Guitar Club, a group of SMUS staff who had been meeting for over 15 years, gathering annually and keeping the musical connection alive through the quieter years.
"There was a lot of joy to be in the same room together," Geddes said. What they rediscovered was that time had done something to the music. The chemistry was still there, but it had deepened. These were people who had now lived decades of full lives, raised families, navigated loss and change, watched the world grow louder and more fractured. "Those formative years had aged well into a more mature sound."
The band expanded. Ry Clayton joined on lead guitar. Evan Fryer, also a SMUS faculty member and former houseparent, added keys. And then came Owen Sandquist-Sherman '25, a former student whose connection to the band stretched back to camping trips with SMUS families and guitar around the fire. Ison, one of the founding three, contributed bass to six of the album's ten tracks, while Owen, who stepped in for live performances after graduating, recorded the remaining songs.
The world the band is making music in looks quite different from the one where they first picked up their instruments. Life has grown louder and more complicated, and the band has thought carefully about what they want to contribute to it.
"We would prefer to be optimistic," Steinkey said. "There's already enough negativity."
That deliberate optimism extends to the album itself. Darin describes The Exquisite Dream as a "100-kilometre album," recorded at The Hive Creative Labs on the Saanich Peninsula with Colin Stewart, mastered in Seattle by Steve Turnidge, and pressed at Wrecking Crew Studios in Sidney, Western Canada’s only bespoke vinyl pressing plant. The band chose to press on bio vinyl, a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based records made from renewable materials including used cooking oil and plant residues, producing up to 90% lower CO₂ emissions than traditional vinyl.
"The bio vinyl really led to the aesthetic of the album in general," Steinkey said. "We've all got our opinions and environmentalism is one of them. When we ran into the bio vinyl, it just made sense."
Coming Home
On May 2, Door d'Or takes the stage at the Christine Duke Theatre during Alumni Weekend, bringing all of it home to the community that shaped nearly everything about who they are.
For Geddes, there is only one way to describe what the whole arc of it means.
"For me the entire experience is a full circle moment. It fills me with a deep sense of gratitude and joy."
