TheEditor

2022 Year in Review

Over the course of the almost twenty years I've maintained this personal website I've often done a review of the previous year highlighting some of the major things that have happened and looking forward to the next year. Most often it seems like I am always hoping that the next year will be better. My site motto is the "good, the bad and the ugly" and it appears that the bad and the ugly usually win out.

2022 was mostly about my health. As we grow older our health becomes more and more important. The ravages of age can be cruel. For me as I’ve gotten older I have sensed my own mortality more as I draw closer to the ages of my parents. My Dad died in my arms when he was eighty-one and my Mum, who had advanced Alzheimer’s, died at eighty-four, so that’s not a long time from now even if I make it that far. I am also diabetic and a smoker so that’s two strikes against me already. A couple of months ago I was shooting video of a band down at the Caribbean Festival, holding my phone up over the heads of the crowd, when I suddenly felt like I was going to fall down. I wasn’t dizzy or faint, just lost my balance. I stumbled back to grab onto the building, then managed to get to my bus home with the help of the auxiliary police. After that I spent hours and hours in the Emergency Department getting all kinds of tests, including a CT scan, all of which came back negative. A doctor at a local clinic gave me an urgent referral to a neurologist; however, there are none in Belleville and the closest one is in Kingston and I have no idea how to get there. I’ve been waiting weeks for the call, but I’m told it could be months. Thankfully it has gotten better. I'm still a little shaky in the shower but I'm not banging into the walls of my apartment. I've even managed to dance again.

There are two related issues with this condition. First, and clearly the most critical, is not knowing what is causing this loss of balance. As usual too much analysis can be paralysis. Back when the CT scan was scheduled I researched why you get one of your head and the results were not great. Everything from a brain tumor to aneurysm or a stroke. Scary stuff! Thankfully the results of the scan showed nothing abnormal, but being referred to a neurologist was just as scary. My research points to vestibular balance disorders because it can be a result of diabetes and one of the symptoms is tinnitus which I suffer from. Obviously self diagnosis is dangerous so I won't know until I actually get to see the neurologist.

The other major issue with this situation is with my kids. Not to be overly dramatic but if whatever this is turns out to be fatal I didn't want my kids to find out I was gone from some random Facebook post. I felt they had the right to know about my condition. As I have lamented many times over the years my kids all abandoned me for reasons I have never known. My wonderful daughter, Heather, has not connected with me in almost thirty years now. My son, Chris, connected with me back in London, Ontario is 2009, but blocked me on Facebook soon after. My other son, Andy, from another mother, hasn't blocked me but has chosen not to have anything to do with me. As far a grandkids go I just recently learned that my daughter had another son back in 2019 but nobody told me. Heather now has three kids who don't know anything about me. Chris has three daughters, only one of which I had contact with. When I lived in Mexico she messaged me on Facebook, saying she was so upset that her parents didn't let her make her own decision about me. We chatted back and forth for a while and then she was coming to Mexico for a friend's wedding and she would let me know where and when. Then suddenly she blocked me too with no reasons why. It's all so very confusing.

I tried to let my kids know. My cousin in Toronto doesn't have any contact with my kids and didn't want to get involved anyway. Friends, like Annie in Mexico, had her daughter message Mackenzie to contact me, but her mother sent me an angry message telling me to stop having anyone message her daughter. At one point Andrew's mother, Pat, had put Chris and Heather in touch with him and they met each other, so I was hoping that he might let them know about my situation, but I asked Pat if it was okay if I told Andrew and she blew up at me and told me not to contact Andrew, so there went that idea. I had made arrangements with my Executor to access my Facebook account and have someone do a post that I was gone, but we had a stupid fight about something he completely misunderstood so I don't know if he's going to be my Executor or not. After the fight he said he was going to return all the paperwork to me but he hasn't done that yet, so I don't know if I have anyone to look after things or not. It's all such a mess and so stressful.

Besides the health issue my life over the last year has not been great.

Without question this has been the most boring year of my life. Being stuck back in the most boring city I’ve ever lived in is bad enough, but even compared to my previous years here this is by far the worst ever. Before I made yet another fateful decision and moved to Mexico for two years my life here wasn’t all that bad. Although I lived in various group homes and never had a place to call my own, I did have friends and did a lot. With my friend, JC, at the group home on Forin, we went down to Kingston several weekends, and went over to Wolfe island. We went to Sandbanks to swim. We had a most interesting day visiting the monarch butterfly exhibit. We also went out to dinner a few times and went to the show. When I returned to Belleville in 2019 he had moved to Winnipeg. Although I ended up in Forin again, nobody had a car so we never went anywhere.

Someone who was a good friend was Doral. She took me to the Legion in Trenton many Saturdays for their dances with great bands. I also helped her at her trailer several times. She also took us to volunteer at the Elvis Festival in Tweed, which was a fun weekend. She and our friend, Kate, also went to the Monday brunches at the casino before they shutdown for COVID. I also helped Doral with a flea market event at the Trenton Legion. We danced at all the various music events at the Belleville Legion and the concerts at the Lions pavilion on Wednesdays and Sundays. When I returned in 2019 of course the world went into lockdown when the virus hit so there were no dances or events to go to. Now that things have slowly recovered Doral has written me out of her life. I saw her at the Canada Day event at Zwick park and asked her about going to the dances in Trenton again but she said she was too busy selling her clothes at various festivals and jamborees to go. She’s never called about going to the casino either.

Someone who has helped me more than anyone in my life is Bob Cottrell, the President of All-Together Housing, the charity who ran the group homes I stayed in over the years. When I went to Mexico he let me store all my storage bins in the basement at Forin and when I came back to apply for residency in Mexico he brought all the bins to the hotel for us to sell everything, and this despite having a heart attack the day he was to meet us. After I was forced back from Mexico he managed to get me into Forin again and even paid an invalid collection from the housing corporation in London, Ontario so that I could qualify for more permanent housing, without which I’d be on the streets now. After I moved out to my own apartment he basically wrote me out of his life. I had spent hours on a major shipping container apartment project and asked to meet him to go over it and see how we could get funding and approvals for it, but he never responded. A couple of months ago I was in a very rough state of depression and I wrote him a very pleading email for help from the mental health folks here, but, again, he didn’t respond. Then I had a major issue with someone who’s been my best buddy and I asked Bob to speak to him, and he said he would, but that was months ago now and he’s done nothing.

Probably the biggest challenge this year has been what happened with my best buddy, Rob. After I moved out of Forin we lost touch for almost a year and I had no clue why. Then one day while I was out front of the building having a smoke he comes walking up and starts chatting as though nothing had ever happened. He told me he finally got his own apartment just around the corner from me so he came to see me. I was thrilled that we connected again and we went for coffee at Tim’s several times. When I faced this new health issue that could end my life I realized that I needed someone to deal with selling and donating my stuff. Bob Cottrell was my Executor and I knew he wasn’t going to handle things anymore, so I asked Rob if he would be my Executor and he agreed. We spent the next couple of weeks getting my new will updated and signed, having him meet my landlady, and going over all the things to do with my websites and so on. I was so relieved that everything would be handled by someone I could trust.

Then Rob asked me if the doctor at the Bayview Clinic would fill out his paperwork for ODSP so he could get more money. I was visiting the clinic to get my referral to the neurologist so I asked Dr. Maraghi if he would complete Rob’s paperwork and he agreed. Rob asked me to go with him to introduce him to Dr. Maraghi and I agreed because I said I was going to ask Dr. Maraghi if he got my medical records from the hospital. When we met at the clinic I went in with Rob, introduced him and asked Dr. Maraghi if he got my records and he said to check with the front office. No sooner had I gone outside than Rob came out very pissed at me. He said after I left the doctor Dr. Maraghi had throw his paperwork back at him and said the appointment was over because I had used the time. Rob hurled insults at me, finally telling me to f*ck off and that he was going to drop off all the paperwork we had signed for my will. He told me to lose his number and never call him again. I was really upset at what had happened.

When I got home, still very upset, I realized that the fault here was Dr. Maraghi. Why would he treat Rob with such disrespect simply because I took thirty seconds to ask him a question? I sat down and wrote a three page letter detailing what had happened and asking him to be professional and call Rob to come back in again and complete his paperwork as he should done the first time. When I met Rob again to give him back some money he had loaned me I gave him a copy of the letter so he would know why the clinic was calling him. To my considerable surprise he called me later to tell me he had shown my letter to a police officer because somewhere in the letter he got that I was threatening him. I read the letter again and for the life of me couldn’t see where he got this. As he was yelling at me he did mention that the clinic had in fact called him to come in again, but he had gotten his paperwork completed somewhere else. It didn’t matter. The friendship was over. Although at this point, weeks later, he still hasn’t returned my will I doubt he will handle things if I drop dead.

A recurring issue this year has been not being able to get a ride anywhere from anyone, including my offers to give gas money. I have not gone to a single Wednesday or Sunday Lion’s concert at Zwick because no buses go there. The buses in this town stop running Saturday nights and early on Sundays and not at all on holidays so that’s not an option. For every single event I have posted an offer of gas money on Facebook but not a soul has responded. If I still drove I would offer anyone a ride and not ask for gas money because I’m going there anyway. Belleville must be the most unfriendly town anywhere.

Maybe also related to the whole “friends” thing is what happened with a neighbor here in the building, Dave. He had previously lived in the apartment I now live in and we had chatted when we saw each other. One day he asked me if I was interested in playing shuffleboard at the Legion. Although I had not played in years I said I would try so he told me to meet him in front of the building and we would go together in his car. I enjoyed it and joined the league. After a couple of weeks we went to the local fish and chip shop for dinner and I paid to thank him for the rides to the Legion. He also took me out to the reserve to get my smokes, for which he wanted twenty dollars so I paid him. Every week we went to Tim’s on the way and I always paid. Then one week I was waiting for him in the lobby but he didn’t come, so I called him to ask when we were going. He said he had already left and when I asked him why he said because I never gave him any money for gas! He had never asked me for gas money to go to the same place he was already going. I guess he forgot about the expensive dinner I had paid for and the Tim’s every week. We have barely spoken ever since. I have heard that he’s spread the story about me not giving him gas money to other tenants. He sees me taking the bus every week and drives to the Legion himself but never offers me a ride or says anything to me. A nice lady at the shuffleboard, Nancee, often offers me a ride home and won’t accept gas money.

A few other people affected my life this year. Jassmin is someone I met on Facebook. Back in 2021 we met for dinner at Signal Brewing, went to the cheap Tuesday movies at Cineplex a few times, biking along the lake twice, and planned to go to a beach somewhere. So much that I bought a lawn chair, a cooler and a backpack, but we never ended up going. This year I emailed her before every Tuesday asking her what movie she’d like to see, but she was always “too busy”. She never once asked me to go biking and nothing about going to a beach.

Back in 2020 I also met Sornia at the Trenton Legion. When I got up the courage to ask her to dance it was just incredible. She was one of the best dance partners I ever had in my life. People who saw us dance would ask us how long we had been married. In my dreams! I really liked her and hoped for more, to at least get to dance with her, but she never once responded to my message on Facebook about upcoming dances and she posted videos from various dances she had gone to, so clearly not interested in even dancing with me, let alone anything more.

Yet another disappointment was with my dear and oldest friend, Linda, who I have always called Lenny. We were the best of friends during the fourteen years I lived in the Okanagan and we had many adventures together. She is the one who phoned me from Turkey on my birthday many years ago. This year, out of the blue, she called me and we talked for hours, mostly about memories and where friends were now. One very upsetting thing she told me was that someone who had been a very close friend, Bianca, had told her never to lend me money. When Lenny asked her why she said she had leant me seventeen thousand dollars when I lived in Panama and I had never paid her back! This shocked the heck out of me because it was a total lie! It’s a very long story but Bianca had pressured me about investing in my website business in Ecuador. I had registered domain names for several cities and was building the first site, WelcomeToBoquete, as the model for other sites. I had just hired a local Panamanian girl to work with me as a reporter and sales person and she got an exclusive interview with the mayor. I was also making inroads with a large grocery chain, Romeros, and several banks to advertise on all my sites. After much discussion, most of which was me warning Bianca that it was a very risky investment which could either pay off huge or she could lose it all, I finally agreed to sell her ten percent of the company for two thousand dollars. When I was forced to return to Canada the business fell apart, obviously, and just as I had warned her. It was never a loan and certainly not seventeen thousand dollars. I have no idea where this amount came from or why she would lie that it was a loan. I would never have borrowed any money from her or anyone else.

The one and only constant friendship I had throughout the year was with Annie in Mexico. We chatted on Messenger almost every day as we have since I returned to Canada in November 2019. She has always wanted me to come back to Mexico but I would again lose the GIS pension after six months so we would have to figure out how to survive. At one point she even offered to marry me so I could stay in Mexico, but then there were issues with her husband's pension which she would lose if we got married. Annie is that person in your life that whenever something really good or really bad happens they are the first person you want to tell. She is literally the only friend I have in the world.

Another not so great part of the year was getting scammed by girls on Facebook. Two in particular were really bad. Okay, I'm stupid to fall for them but I'm just too trusting. With both of them we had chatted for hours and hours and they both said they wanted to visit me, and making offers hard to refuse. Both were gorgeous if the photos they sent were really them. The first, Mary Hannah, lived in Toronto. She said she would borrow a car from her friend and come and stay with me for a "few days". It was too tempting and by this time I trusted her. She wanted thirty-five dollars for gas but I told her that would not get her to Belleville, so I offered her fifty but told you that was all I could afford so she would need to get herself home. She agreed. She was going to shower and head off to see me. About an hour later she texted me that she was stranded at a gas station, out of gas, apparently because the car was not good on gas. Not wanting to see her stranded I sent her more money. About an hour later she again texts me that she's in Belleville but out of gas. I ask her where she is and she gives me an address where there is no gas station. I tell her to give my number to the gas station attendant and tell him to call me to get my credit card for gas, but she says he refuses to do that. I tell her that the address she gave me is around the corner from me so walk over, but she doesn't want to leave her car there overnight. Now realizing that she's still at home I refuse to send any more money. She responds with pleas that it's not safe for her to sleep in her car. Just more and more lies. I tell her we're so done.

Lesson learned? No. Next a friend of a friend contacts me on Facebook and we chat for hours. Sandra Scott is in Ottawa and wants to come and visit me. Of course she sends photos to encourage me and makes offers too good to refuse. At first she says she's going to take an Uber to me, which is insane because it would cost hundreds of dollars. Then she's going to borrow a car and needs gas money, of course. Do I yet again fall for it? Well, first I go back to the friend I've known for months and ask her if this Sandra can be trusted and she says she really wants to visit me and she can be trusted. I send Sandra fifty dollars. She cashes the gift card and disappears on me. A day or so later she comes back and messages me that she's so sorry. She had a "medical emergency", her period, and needed pads and medications. Again she promises to come, but by now I am very suspicious so I go back to my friend, who tells me that Sandra had messaged her saying how sorry she was about what happened and how much she still wants to meet me. I fall for it and send her another fifty dollars. She says she's on her way. I had given her my address and asked if she knew how to get here and she said the car had GPS so she would find me. A few hours later she texts me that she can't find me. I ask where she is and she gives me a street about a block away from me. I give her directions. Far too long later she gives me a different street, further away. She adds that the car has broken down but there's a guy who will give her a ride for fifty bucks. I tell her that's ridiculous to come a couple of blocks and I will send her a cab. I ask her to give me a specific house address where she is. Her response is her phone is dying so hurry up and send the fifty bucks because the guys are looking scary. Instead I call a cab telling them it's urgent and we go to the street where she said she was. Of course there's no car and no guys. All lies. Add another twenty bucks for the cab to my losses.

Naturally I go back to the friend who had told me to trust Sandra and she says she is so pissed off that she scammed me. She says Sandra is very sorry and will pay me back. Yeah, right. I am so angry I tell Sandra that I am going to file a report with the RCMP Fraud Centre is she doesn't pay me back within twenty-four hours. She not only doesn't respond she isn't even bright enough to delete our chat which clearly shows she scammed me. I copy the chat and submit it along with her supposed photos to the fraud centre, although I doubt they will do anything. I also do a post on Facebook with her photos warning people not to fall for her scam.

Since this happened several other girls who have friended me also asked for money. Not to visit me, but for photos and videos, but I've told them that I have been scammed badly before and I will never ever send money to anybody again. Some have said that it's not fair to not trust them because of what happened with someone else, which may be true, but I'm firm on not doing it again. Period.

Yes, as per usual, I hope 2023 is better. A lot better. Just surviving another year would be a bonus.

by TheEditor

Why do people do this?

There's no shortage of internet scams and frauds, and the police or the RCMP Fraud Centre seem powerless to stop them, but how can people be so cruel to do this to innocent victims? Yeah, I was dumb enough to fall for it, but there's a lot of history on this.

I could literally write a book on some of the strange experiences I've had with various girls who I've met on Facebook Messenger, Google Chat and WhatsApp. There was Thana, who said she was trapped in Afghanistan with her nine year old son. Her husband, a soldier, had been killed and left her with millions of dollars in a bank account in Turkey that she couldn't access without physically going to the branch, but she couldn't leave the country. Over a long and complicated process I was to contact the bank and tell them that Thana wanted to come to Canada to marry me and I needed access to her money to fund her and her son's trip. At one point I had to give my bank information for the bank in Turkey to deposit one million dollars, something I was very nervous to do, but she convinced me that she loved me and really wanted to be with me, so I gave my bank information to her "bank manager". Within minutes she had cleaned out my account. I reported this to my bank and luckily they reversed the charges and reported all the transactions as fraud. Of course she denied ever doing this, but that was the last time I heard from her.

Then there was Adrianna Grace. Again she chatted with me over several weeks, eventually saying how much she loved me and wanted to be with me. She said she really wanted to video chat with me but she needed a new phone. She said she lived north of London, Ontario so I spent an hour online with cell phone carriers seeing what kind of deal I could get for her. Then in one of our many chats she said she wasn't feeling well because she was starving. I said I had a fifty dollar gift card from one of the grocery stores and could send it to her if she gave me her address, which she did and off went the card.

Days later, after I asked her if she got the gift card okay, I guess in a rare moment of honesty, she told me she didn't live where she said she did, in fact, she didn't even live in Canada! She was somewhere in the States. I asked her why she had me spend all the time with Canadian cell phone carriers, and who got the gift card? She was sorry and her friend enjoyed the gift card. Never heard from her again.

Then there was Mary Hannah, although I doubt that was her real name. She friended me on Facebook then we started chatting on Google Chat, and for hours and hours. She was one of those girls who wanted to sell her sexy videos and I offered to help. Like many of the women who sell their videos she also shared one of her naked, playing with her pussy. I suggested that this is not what men really want so over the course of many hours I wrote a script for her telling her exactly what to do and what to show. She loved the concept and said she would record the video and send it to me "right away". Hours later of course she came back saying she had done the video but needed money for her internet to upload it to me. I sent her the twenty bucks she asked for, but, naturally, got no video. She said she lived in Toronto and wanted to come and visit me in Belleville, but she needed money for gas and asked for twenty or thirty dollars. With the current price of gas I said that would not even get her here, let along back home, but she said she had gas in her car and just needed more. I sent her the money and she said she was on her way. An hour or so later she messages me telling me she is out of gas and if I send her some more money she will be here soon. I ask her to tell me exactly where she is but she can't tell me, probably because she's still at home. Later she tells me she's here in Belleville but stuck at a gas station because she needs more gas. I ask what gas station she's at and she gives me an address where there is no gas station, of course. Then she sends a bunch of messages saying she will be forced to sleep in her car if I don't send more money for gas. I tell her to get the gas station attendant to phone me, but she says he refuses to call. I tell her leave her car and get a cab to my place but she says the driver won't take her unless she gives him twenty dollars. I tell her to have the cab driver phone me, but she says the driver doesn't have a phone. I tell her that every cab driver has a phone for dispatch. Finally she says she's not coming and going back home. I ask how she'll do that if she has no gas? End of story. Nothing but lies. She was never here.

The final straw was the worst. A long term friend on Google Chat, Sarah Logan, told me her friend, Sandra Scott, who was "like a sister", wanted to meet me. She put us in touch on Chat and we started chatting. Over the course of the next few hours she said she really wanted to meet me. She sent several very attractive photos to tease me. She just needed "gas money" to come, of course. I explained that I had just been ripped off by someone else who wanted to visit me, so I wasn't going to fall for that again. Over several hours it got so bad that she said she was booking an Uber to come and needed a hundred dollars. She promised to spend several days with me if I would just help her out. I asked if I sent her a hundred dollars to get her how was she going to get home? I was clear that I had no more money to give her, but she said she would borrow money from a friend to get back home. The story was getting more and more fishy, but I really wanted her to come and stay for a few days. The minute I finally sent her the money she disappeared.

I went back to Sarah and told her what her "friend" had done to me. She was livid and said she would contact Sandra. She came back saying she was furious with Sandra and that she would return my money. The next day Sandra came back on chat to say she was really sorry, but she had a "medical emergency" and needed ninety dollars for meds. She insisted that she would pay me back, but I didn't believe her and ended our chat.

Oh, but there's more to the story!

Several days later Sarah contacted me again to say that Sandra was so disappointed that she hadn't come to spend some time with me. Despite what had happened she insisted that Sandra could be trusted, saying that if I sent "gas money" to Sandra again, and she didn't come, Sarah would pay me back. At one point I was chatting with both of them, arguing back and forth about sending her the money. I told Sandra to come and the minute she showed up I would get her the gift card for a hundred bucks. No deal because she needed "gas money" to come. Over the next few hours she made all kinds of juicy offers to sleep with me, which only made me more suspicious, but throughout this chat with Sandra there's Sarah telling me it would be the best thing I could ever do because there could be more with Sandra. She could be the girlfriend of my dreams and stay with me. I broke down and sent the money. Sandra said she was on her way. At least this time she didn't disappear on me after she got my money.

About two hours later I get another message saying she's run out of gas. She even includes a map showing where she is and that she's thirty-six minutes away. She says she needs thirty dollars but I send her fifty because we're going to use her car for the next few days that she's here with me, doing all the things we talked about. About an hour later she messages me telling me where she is, but she can't find me. The street name she gave was about a block away so I give her directions and tell her she's five minutes away. Awhile later I get another message saying that her car has broken down and she's on a street miles from where she just was. She says there's a guy there who will bring her to me for fifty bucks and to send it right away because her phone is dying. I tell her there's no way I'm going to pay some guy fifty bucks when she's only minutes away from me. She replies that there's a bunch of "bad guys" there and she's in danger. Her phone dies, so I call a cab and we wander the street she said she was on, but there's no car broken down and no her. I got back home and suddenly her phone is magically charged and she attacks me saying she is going to need to get a motel now and she "hates me".  I guess she hates me for realizing that she is still in Ottawa and not here.

I've had enough. I email Sandra telling her that I have our chat records. I've contacted Google who say they have her IP address and will release it to the police. I have her Google Chat information and will get her account suspended with Google. I have spoken with Amazon and they will suspend her account for "suspicious activity". I will file a report with the RCMP Fraud centre within twenty-four hours if she doesn't return the money she extorted from me. I will also publicly expose her on Facebook to warn others about her. No response from her. I file the report and here's the post.

Be warned!

by TheEditor

Well, this might be my last post. I hope not.

It has been a very tough few weeks which has left me with a lot of worry, escalated stress, depression and a new sense of my own mortality. If this ends up being my last post I feel the need to explain, not for my family who abandoned me years ago for reasons I have never understood, but for any of the friends I have made over the years in many places who just might care.

Around the first of July I had nearly fallen in the shower a few times and I found myself bumping into my apartment walls when walking around. I wasn't so much as dizzy, just losing my balance for some unknown reason. When this didn't go away I emailed by nurse, Carolyn, at the Diabetic Education Centre here in Belleville and she asked me about my ears, knowing that I had a wax buildup in my right ear that I had been trying to clear for weeks. I had gone to the Emergency Department over a year ago for the same thing and the nurse had cleared a tiny bullet of wax, which she said was very hard to clear. Like thousands of other people here I don't have a family doctor so my nurse said to go to Emergency again. Emergency Departments are in chaos across the country because of the virus and staff shortages, so I knew the wait time could be brutal, but off I went.

After about two hours getting booked in and waiting I got into the department where a nurse took about a minute to look in my ears and tell me they were clear. She followed with a bunch of tests checking my reflexes and vision, then told me to put on the gown and wait for the doctor. He eventually came and asked me a bunch of questions, then ordered a chest X-Ray and blood work. He also checked my heart. Several hours later he came back and said the tests were all negative but he was ordering a CT Scan. His words scared the crap out of me because he said "light stroke".

They called me the next day to schedule my CT scan for Thursday morning at 11:15 so off I went in plenty of time on the buses. Unfortunately the bus driver failed to mention that I was on the wrong bus when I told her where I was going, so I was late for my appointment. I didn't have to go through the lengthy triage booking again so they sent me down to Imaging. I barely got my bum in the chair when they called my name. It was my first CT scan, and of my head, so it can seem a little scary but it was fine. When it was over I asked the technician how I would get the results and he said Emergency would have them within an hour, but when I went back and saw the triage nurse she said she had no idea why he would say that and they MAY have the results today. She agreed that I might wait all day. I told her I had a funeral to go to at 1:00 o'clock so could I come back and she agreed.

Although the funeral for Steve Martin was nice, there were probably two hundred people there celebrating his life over many decades being a musician, I had to wonder if anyone would show up for my funeral? Certainly none of my family, who had abandoned me years ago for reasons I never understood, wouldn't care and I have few people I would call friends here. It's academic anyway because I have no money for a funeral so the City will just dump my body to be cremated and take money from my last pensions to partly pay for it. Even my mother was obviously there when I came into this world but I go out alone.

When I returned to Emergency to get my scan results I waited five hours and was going to miss my last bus home so I told the nurse and she said to come back the next day. When I came back there was no triage nurse but I saw a sign on the wall to pick up the phone if there was no nurse on duty. When she answered she said they weren't taking anymore patients today! What? This is the Emergency Department ad they're not taking anymore patients? Seriously? I told her that I had waited five hours the day before but no results and she agreed to come down and book me in. No sooner had I seen her than she said it would be a "very, very long wait". I noticed at least twenty patients in the waiting room and every chair filled down the hall.

After I got my coffee at Tim's I had a thought. I went to the Diabetic Education Centre to see if I could get the results sent to Dr. Jamil, my diabetes doctor. After a lengthy conversation with Laura she said that Dr. Jamil was on holidays but he would be coming in to sign prescriptions so would make sure he got my results and would contact me. I was to call Medical Records to request the results be sent to him, which I did. The next day I got an email from someone else at the Diabetic Education Centre, this one in Trenton, telling me that Laura was new and didn't know what she was talking about. This lady asked me for authorization to release my medical records, which I gave her, and she came ack later telling me that my scan was "clean", whatever that meant. She did give me an appointment to see Dr. Jamil, my first ever, the following week.

The following Monday Dr. Jamil did some tests and asked a bunch of questions and then said it was nothing to do with my diabetes. I was to go to a clinic and get a referral to a neurologist. Scary stuff! I went to the Bayview Medical Clinic and got a referral from Dr. Maraghi, although he said I would need to go to Kingston and I have no clue how to get there.

If this is, in fact, my last goodbye I have a few things to say.

First, and foremost, is the horrible situation with my kids and grandkids. Although I have covered this in other posts, I feel the need to express my thoughts if my kids or grandkids ever wanted to know about me. My darling daughter, Heather, has not spoken to me or contacted me in almost thirty years now. My last contact with my son, Christopher, was way back in 2009 in London, Ontario. For a brief few months my granddaughter, Mackenzie, chatted with me on Facebook Messenger. In her first message she was very upset that her parents had not let her make her own decision about me. We had a number of back and forth messages, the last of which she said she was coming to Mexico for a friend's wedding and she would let me know where and when because she wanted to meet me. I was thrilled to say the least.

Then I heard nothing back from her and she stopped replying to my messages. Then one day I saw her photo on Facebook of her at the wedding in Puerto Villarta! I had no clue why she didn't let me know about it. After sending her a message asking what happened she didn't respond and simply blocked me! I was left so confused and hurt. In desperation to learn why she had blocked me I posted a message on Father's Day, the toughest day for me, asking people to try to get a message to her to contact me. What I got was a horrible message from her mother to "stop all the bullshit" and that "I was not her grandfather"! Another knife to the heart!

Danielle was the only grandchild I had ever met. That was when I had driven across the country in the dead of winter to see Heather, but they had hidden her away from me when I arrived. I spent three weeks with Chris and his then partner, Tina, waiting to see Heather, and I held Danielle in my arms. She was just a baby. Years later I added a photo of Chris' three girls to my Facebook page and immediately got a terse message from Danielle to remove the photo or she would report me. Then a few months ago I mentioned Mackenzie in a post and Danielle again blew up at me and told me to remove it. She added that I was to stop trying to get ahold of anyone in the family or anyone I ever knew.

The last time I ever saw Heather was back in 1993 when I went out west to be with my mother who had cancer and had been given less than a five percent chance of surviving for more than six months. My parents, brother and sister had moved out west in 1970 and we had seen each other very rarely over the years. I wanted to spend whatever time she had left with my mother so it was clear that I had to go. Heather knew that my marriage had failed long ago and she agreed that I should go to be with my mother. I had no plan for what I would do after my mother passed but I knew my Dad would still need support so it was all up in the air when I left. Heather and I did discuss her coming out again on vacation as her and Chris had done before and had a ball. That was when Heather broke my heart telling me to stay because she said I had never been happier. I couldn't stand the thought of leaving her so I came back to Brampton, only to waste a few more years.

As my mother hung on, not in any pain and her usual happy self I made the fateful decision to listen to my daughter and move out west. I had finally had the courage to leave the marriage so I drove down with my parents and sold the house and everything in it that my ex didn't want. The last day we were together in the house my ex spent some thirteen hours admitting that she had been a terrible wife , that everything was her fault, and that she knew how hard I had tried, but it was far too late for any apology. Despite her admission, for all the twenty-three years we were married she had always agreed that if we split it would be fifty/fifty, as the law called for, but as soon as I left suddenly she wanted everything "for our daughter" supposedly. Yeah, right! Throughout our marriage I had grown the original one hundred dollars I bought our first house with to over a hundred grand after renovating eight homes, not one of which she had ever lifted a singer to help. Not only did I work sixty hours a week, but I got to come home and cook and clean and renovate while she sat at her mother's talking every night, not coming home until late. My kids grew up more at their grandmother's house than ours. When I left all I got was my final cheque from my last client. She got every dime and bought a house! Thanks!

After I moved in with my parents in what was then Westbank they were going to Yuma, Arizona for the winter as they had done for years, so my Dad said I could rent their place as they had also done many times. I had no clue what I was going to do for work so it sounded like a good plan. I still had my custom van that I had not been paying for so I knew it was only a matter of time until they came and got it. I had no money to keep up the payments so I had no choice.  Sure enough they came late one night and repossessed it.

I had managed to find work, although at a much lower rate than I had been making in Ontario, and I had joined the Courtplex and made friends, two of which became my best friends, Laura and Linda, who I called Lenny for some unknown reason. Laura has written me off long ago after believing all the lies my brother and sister told her, even though I wrote a long post giving her the facts. Lenny has remained a good friend and we even talked on the phone a while ago. Over the course of the next fourteen years I spent in the Okanagan I met many, many friends and had a ball. Karla (my pretend wife), Larry and Darlene, Susan, Sue, Brian and Linda, Brian Wall and Doris, Don and Karen, Crystal Mogdan, Jackie, Tracy, Wade Silver, Mike Nixon, Ron and Suzanne, Bianca and numerous dance partners at the Corral, like Heather, Pat and Nola.  I had boats, snowmobiles, dirt bikes and I played racquetball frequently, downhill skied, cross country skied, waterskied, ran a hiking club and a rollerblading group, danced my butt off three nights a week at the OK Corral and went snowmobiling around Kelowna and in Revelstoke. Family and friends spent many a wonderful day at my parent's place. Life was good, but, I missed my kids!

Shortly after I arrived in Westbank I came home one day and my Dad said Heather had called and asked if I would come to her convocation for school. She said she would let me know when. I was thrilled. At that point I still had the van so I was prepared to drive down. She called and we had a very brief chat but we set a day for me to come. Unfortunately it was going to be in the dead of winter so I wasn't crazy about the drive but she was worth it. I went through the States again but ran into a lot of very bad weather. In Montana they were closing the road behind me. I think it was in North Dakota that I had pulled into a rest stop that was packed with rigs, but when I woke up I couldn't see my watch because it was iced over. When I turned the radio on it was minus fifty-five degrees! Not only that but I was the only one in the rest stop! The truck groaned when I tried to start it and I believed I was going to freeze to death out there alone. Thankfully it finally started and took about half an hour to get any heat, but I survived! Then in northern Michigan I hit a brutal snowstorm. I was the first vehicle on the highway and had no clue where the road was. Soon there were several cars behind me crawling along and I thought they no doubt hated me. Then I remembered where the two lane road widened to four lanes so I gingerly moved over to let all the cars pass, but they all dropped in behind me and no one passed! Now I was thinking they were saying that I was doing a good job and they were sticking with me. lol

When I finally got to Brampton Heather was nowhere to be found. No message at her apartment. Not at her school in Mayfield. I then learned from Chris that my ex and her new husband (my long term friend, Gary Ellis) had hidden her away and would not let me see her! I just did this horrendous drive because Heather asked me to come down, and now they were not going to let me see her? She was my daughter and I had every legal right to see her. After three weeks of waiting I drove home, crying all the way. My heart was broken.

Over the years I spent in the Okanagan many friends, usually girlfriends from time to time, all could never understand why Heather had abandoned me. Quite often I could sense that they thought something had happened between us like child molesting, but I assured them that nothing had ever happened between Heather and I other than a wonderful father daughter relationship. I had sent Heather a very detailed letter but got no response. I had sent her a cheque for Christmas because I didn't know what to get her, but it had never been cashed. Girlfriends sent letters to her but never got a response. One of them said her mother had probably destroyed the letters so she never got them, but that was illegal so I couldn't believe that my ex would do that. Then my Dad called her from Yuma and spoke to her now step brother and told him to get Heather to call them collect, but she never called. When my Dad told me this my reaction was that he could have been calling to let her know that I had died, but she didn't care enough to phone!

As far as I have been able to learn, which is hard because Heather has blocked me on Facebook, she is still in Burlington and has a son and daughter, neither one of whom probably know they even have a grandfather. Just like my kids and other grandkids who I thought would contact me when they were older, like Mackenzie did, I know Heather's kids won't because I'll be gone before that happens.

With Chris I could write a book about our lives. We sure had our struggles over the years. Back in 2009 he contacted me to let me know that he was going to be working in London, Ontario on the weekend and wanted to meet. Again I was thrilled! I waited all night the first night he was in town but heard nothing from him. Then we were going to go for a beer the next night, but, again, I didn't hear from him. Then he called and asked if I could meet him for lunch. I raced over and we got a whole forty-five minutes at Timmies. Not much time to catch up. We left it that he was going to setup a meeting with his three daughters, but months went by and I had heard nothing. I called his number and some girl answered saying she had bought Chris' phone. He also blocked me on Facebook with no explanation why. At one point someone said they heard that he was living in his car but no one knew anything more about him. Another knife to the heart.

Nothing in this goodbye is as important as my kids and grandkids. I have never given up hope that we would reconnect before I died. Even if they didn't want to have a relationship with me I just desperately wanted to know why they abandoned me. Many people have told me about all the lies that have been told about me. I don't know why anyone would lie. My friend told me that someone who had been my friend for fourteen years told her not to lend money to me if I asked. Why? She said she had lent me seventeen thousand dollars and I had not paid her back! What? I never borrowed a dime off her or anyone else, so why would she make all this up? I had never done anything to hurt her or deserve this! My idiot brother and my equally idiotic sister had lied through the teeth to my friend Laura about how I had handled my mother's estate, not one word of which was true! Did my sister bother to say that she got twenty grand from me before my mother even died and refused to sign the promissory note I asked for; that she used my mother's pension money to pay her own mortgage, or that she had yanked our mother out of the care facility I took eight months to get her into, and that killed her? No, of course not. My brother was just as bad, and was the curse of my life, from when he got me to sign a loan for his motorcycle in Brampton for his job, and then took off out west leaving me with the payments, to calling me at one in the morning to tell me customs at the airport were waiting for him to shit because he had swallowed cocaine packets. He was facing ten years in prison for trafficking but I got him a lawyer and he got six months in Milton. How did he repay me? He refused to pay my lawyer. I did. Then out west he offered to sell the daycare I had helped him buy by signing the mortgage to my then girlfriend, Tracy, as long as I was no longer involved. It ended the best relationship I ever had. Then he demanded ten grand from me when he was in Thailand apparently from guys who would kill him if they didn't get the money. I sent it, although I wish I hadn't. Good riddance!

As I said earlier, I've made many friends over the years in many places, from childhood friends from Perth Avenue Public School in Toronto, to Churchville Public School, where I met my first love, Roxanne Rollings, to Streetsville Secondary School, where I joined my first band, The Tempests, with Don Thurston, David Kirk and Chris Hayes, and I would play drums for various groups for many years, the last of which was the house band at the old Club Bluenote in Toronto, with Paul (Zack) Marshall, Alan McQuillan and Nolan Yearwood, all of which I have tried to find on Facebook, but failed. Today, pretty well alone, my two friends, Rob McCann and Annie Vita, have been treasured friends. Rob was an immense help when I first moved to my current apartment and has stuck with me through thick and thin. Annie, my dear friend in Guadalajara, has chatted with me pretty well every day since I came back to Belleville. She even offered to marry me so I could stay in Mexico, but there were too many issues with that. Whenever anything happens, good or bad, Annie is the first person I want to tell. She has been supportive and encouraging throughout this latest ordeal with my health. A true friend.

During my long tortuous marriage we actually had very few friends. Because my ex got pregnant at fifteen and married at sixteen she did keep in touch with some of her high school friends, like Dale Evans and Lynn but she rarely saw them. Most of our friends were the parents of kids in all the hockey teams Chris was a member of over ten years. We all went to numerous tournaments and booked rooms at a local hotel. Too many parents to remember. Larry and Anne McNichol, Jason's parents. Bill and Gerry Peters, Kevin's parents. All good and fun people. After Chris was signed by the Streetsville Derbys but quit hockey we realized that we really had no friends outside of hockey.

Although during my varied career I had some forty different jobs and self employment ventures I would not consider any of those I met to be friends in the usual sense. Rarely, if ever, did I stay in touch with any of the people or clients I worked with. Other than my first job working at the Toronto-Dominion bank where I stayed for just over two years I was never at any job very long. In my whole life I only got fired once but that resulted in a wrongful dismissal suit that I won. The longest career was my computer consulting which lasted sixteen years, installing computers, networks, cabling, furniture and often getting into areas of consulting that had nothing to do with computers. Almost thirty years ago now I got into building websites and still do that today. I did that in the countries I visited trying to find a lower cost of living. Panama, then Ecuador and, lastly, Mexico.

When I think back over my often disastrous travels I made a lot of friends in every country. In Panama I had a girlfriend, Magaly, who I adored and I felt very bad when I was forced to leave and return to Canada. If not for what they pulled I would have considered Verushka and Amilkar to be friends. Both of them spent many months at the house I was renovating and we had a lot of dinners together. At one point Verushka said her family was being evicted and had nowhere to live, for two weeks, she said, so I let them move into the penthouse of the house. Two months later after not giving me a dime in rent and having me spend hundreds of dollars in food for their large family - mother, two sisters, two kids, two dogs and three parrots, I had to change the locks on them to get them to leave. After the police showed up to monitor their move I learned they had stolen everything from the penthouse, even the light bulbs and the batteries from the TV remote! When Amilkar learned that I was going back to Canada he stole at least a thousand dollars of my tools! Some friends.

With Ecuador I was only there for less than a year primarily because the government screwed up my pensions and left me without a dime. I also got ripped off by someone handling my residency application to the tune of three hundred and fifty dollars US. She also kept my passport and forced me to go through hell at the Canadian Embassy in Quito to be able to fly home. I did meet some great folks at the usual Expat hangout, aptly named The Bar, where I also met my future wife, Patricia. We had a brief but torrid affair and the plan was for me to come back and marry her, but after a few months trying to stay in touch by video it became clear she was just looking for money. That all ended badly. One girl I loved and thought she was going to work for me was Phoenix Bess. She was gorgeous and smart and we talked for hours but nothing came of it.

Mexico was where I spent the most time in another country. Two years, first in Ajijic, then in Riberas del Pilar, and finally in Chelem. Someone I considered a good friend partly because we met before I came and he checked out my potential apartment for me, then we spent a lot of time together after I came, was Francis Dryden. He and his wife, Anastasia, took me to several local bars and introduced me to a lot of their friends. I met many musicians in local bands, among them Jonathan Guzman, the son of my future fiancée. Bill and Violeta who first introduced me to Elba that fateful night. I thought the driver who drove me around for most of my two years in Lakeside was my friend, but he ended up stealing half my stuff when he moved me. No friend of mine. Until I got dumped by a simple text message I had planned to marry Elba and live out my life in Mexico. I even thought my kids might come to visit. Silly me.

Like most people I have certainly made my fair share of mistakes in my life. With the benefit of hindsight I can look back and realize what I did wrong or where I should have made a different decision. Every decision, including not making one, has consequences. In the extreme I could look back on my failed marriage and say if only I had worn a condom me ex would not have gotten pregnant, but would that mean we would not have gotten married? For me it was love at first sight so I don't know what would have changed. Young as she was I believed my ex loved me and would have married me later. At least she wouldn't have started off hating me for getting her pregnant and making my life hell because of it. Who knows? What I do know is that Chris, Heather and all their kids wouldn't be here so despite my current troubles with all of them I wouldn't have changed that by wearing a condom.

I could go back even earlier to when my parents decided to move out west in 1970. They had vacationed the previous year and were going to move out then but couldn't sell the house. I had met and married my ex in 1969 so there was no way we were going with them. For many years after I tried to get my ex to visit and think about it, but she said there was nothing in BC but mountains, she was born in Brampton, she was going to live in Brampton, and going to die in Brampton. End of story.

One the biggest mistakes I made in my life was being the patsy for a business deal where no one lost a penny and nothing illegal was really ever done. The tragedy was that I could not afford a lawyer so I ended up with the dumbest Legal Aid lawyer ever. He blew the whole trial, refusing to ask the questions I wrote out for him, especially of the President of American Hoist, a simple question if the company lost any money, to which the answer was NO and I would have been acquitted. Simple. After the trial and conviction even the Crown Attorney outside the courtroom told me that I should never have been charged, let alone convicted. I spent three months of weekends in the detention centre, eventually going out on work details like peeling potatoes and cleaning. The saddest part was that I now had a criminal record which has haunted me for the rest of my life. I lost jobs. I was refused entry to the US. I spent years and years trying to get a pardon but the government changed the whole parole program and I had to wait ten years before I could apply again. I take it to my grave, although I won't actually ever have a grave.

So, if this is in fact my last post, to my family, especially my kids, and to all the friends I've met in my life please know that I always tried. I never ever hurt anyone. I have always been referred to as the proverbial "nice guy", the kiss of death for women. I have never retired. I have always worked hard trying to make a better life for myself. I wish that I had not ended up in Belleville, the last place on earth I ever thought I would live. I still would rather be in Mexico but that has always meant being far away from my kids if they ever changed their minds about me. My dear friend, Rob, has agreed to be my executor to donate my things and deal with my body, my death certificate, my pensions and keeping this website up for one year, just in case my kids or grandkids ever want to know about me. At some point I hope people will remember good things about me and dispel all the lies that have been told about me. I go obviously with the huge regret not knowing why my kids abandoned me. The regret of my too short life.

Goodbye!

by TheEditor

The year in review

As I have done many times over the years I start the new year by reviewing the previous year, good and bad. 2022 started off very badly when I lost this website and it took many, many wasted hours online with my hosting company to finally get it working again and that was only today.

The best things that happened last year was that I finally got my own apartment. It took a lot to get my own place setup properly, but I got a lot of help from the local St. Vincent de Paul with some furniture, a couch donated, very cheap end tables and a coffee table, and help from someone who was my friend, Rob, helping me install blinds and putting together my night tables for my bedroom. Having lived in a group home I needed a lot of things for my kitchen, like dishes and cutlery, but I got a lot on sale. I brought my desk and computer with me so I was able to continue working despite the fact that I still didn't earn a dime.

Last year was mainly about friends and my health, both of which weren't great.

On friends a lot happened to shake my belief that I was your proverbial "nice guy". My very good friend, Rob, who I lived with at the group home, and who helped me a lot with my apartment, plus we hung out going for coffee and so on, suddenly dropped me. In our last conversation he sounded really upset and said he would call me back, but that was months ago. If he was upset at me for something I have no clue what it was. I have tried to follow up with the President of the housing corporation where we lived and with some of the staff of the management charity but no one will tell me anything. I just wished that he would tell me what happened so that we could talk about it.

On Messenger I met a nice lady, Jassmin, and we chatted a bit. She asked me if I wanted to go dancing at an event at Signal Brewing and I said sure, of course. We met for dinner and she was very honest telling me that she had a boyfriend, which was fine. We did have an issue. Totally my fault. I should have clarified that we were splitting the bill but I ended up paying like a hundred and twenty dollars, which I sure could not afford. I wasn't sure whether to say anything to her after but I think honesty is the best policy so I told her how I felt. She apologized, said she totally understood and that we would share the cost in future. I was relieved.  Shortly after we went to the show together. I paid for the tickets instead of giving her gas money as I would normally do. She said she would like to go to the cheap night whenever there was something we both wanted to see, but we never went again. We did go bike riding along the bay and, although she was in much better shape than I was, I thought we had a good time. I have responded to her Facebook posts several times and messaged her, but she hasn't responded in months now. I don't know why. I might have sort of flirted with her a couple of times, which she may not have liked, so this could be the reason.

A lady friend I met while I was still in Mexico, Annie, stayed in touch on Messenger almost every day since I came back to Canada. When I told her how much I missed Mexico and how I wished that I could come back she said to come and stay with her, originally on vacation, but then she said she would marry me so I could stay in Mexico. At first I thought she was joking but it got more and more serious. She said she had talked to her two daughters and her mother about me and they all agreed that it was a good idea. I was very nervous because there was so much that could go wrong. I would be giving my notice on my hard to find geared to income apartment here in Belleville, something I would never get again if Mexico fell apart. Things have really changed drastically for residency in Mexico now and I would never qualify if we didn't get married. I gave it a lot of thought though.

Annie was renting out her house and moving to a small apartment so I wasn't sure about that idea. After she sent me photos of some of her furniture I made a bad joke and asked if her grandmother missed her furniture because it was so old. She blew up at me and sent me the most hurtful message I've ever had in my life. She said that she understood why my family wanted nothing to do with me and told me she never wanted to talk to me again, and to forget Mexico. It really hurt on so many levels. The remark about my family was a knife in my heart and losing the dream of returning to Mexico made it all the worse.

Next would be my health, which has never been worse. I knew that I was not in good shape and when I moved across the street from the YMCA, one with a pool, I figured I would join and get on some sort of program to improve my fitness level. I was most interested in the pool because I could swim without having any issues with my peripheral neuropathy in my feet. Just before I intended to join my right shoulder started acting up again. Back in 2017 I had been diagnosed with a bone chip. I had a shot of cortisone but it didn't work so surgery was going to be scheduled. That was six months out and I was going to Mexico so it got cancelled. After I came back to Canada the surgeon wanted another referral and my family doctor had lost his license. It's virtually impossible to find a family doctor in this town now. I did manage to get another x-ray and ultrasound and now it turns out I have bursitis, not a bone chip. A clinic doctor is going to put me on some meds so hopefully that helps because I am in constant pain.

My eyes have also been an issue. Despite getting new glasses, which helped, I now suffer from constant burning in my eyes, apparently because of a loss of oil because of ageing. I have to use drops every day and apply a warm compress to try to stimulate more oil. Apparently according to my optometrist I don't blink enough either. Who knew?

The bottom line in all of this is I've never felt so darned old. For most of my life I was in pretty decent shape. When I lived out west I was very active. I played racquetball several times a week. I roller bladed. I downhill skied, water skied and cross country skied. I danced three nights a week. I ran a hiking club. I dirt-biked and snowmobiled. I was always doing something. That life is gone. Even after coming back to Belleville I hoped to go dancing every week like I did before, but the virus has shut that down. Compared to other places I've lived in my life there's not a lot to do in Belleville anyway, but the virus has ended everything.

As it seems I've ended every year in review the ongoing issue is with my kids. It's now been an incredible twenty-eight years since I spoke to my daughter, Heather, and more than ten years since I spoke to my son, Chris. The worst part in all of this is I still have no clue why they cut me off. I have always tried to contact them, as have many friends, over the years. I contacted my other son, Andrew (from another mother), and asked if he would try to contact my kids to get them to reach out to me, but that has failed as well. Andrew knows both Heather and Chris and said he would try. My worst fear, especially with the virus, which could kill me, is that I will go to my grave never knowing what happened with my kids. I miss them every single day and it makes my heart ache.

At this point who knows what my future will hold? I can only hope that 2022 is a whole lot better than 2021.

by TheEditor

My varied work life

My very first "job" was plowing fields for our neighbor, Ernie Brocklebank for fifty cents an hour. I learned to drive a tractor and it was gruelling work, but it was nice to earn my own money. I might have been about fourteen at the time.

My next job was part-time because I was still taking school for half a day. I delivered newspaper bundles off the back of a truck around what was Cooksville at the tome, now part of Mississauga. I forget how much I was paid, but I do remember one fateful day. It was raining and the step at the back of the truck was very slippery. As we rounded a curve I fell off and slid several feet on the road. Luckily is was wet so I didn't get major road burn. I do remember that the driver was terrified that he had killed me.

After quitting grade thirteen I got my first full-time real job working for what was the Toronto-Dominion Bank, where my mother worked in Streetsville. She thought it was a good way to start a career. I had always wanted to be an architect but, of course, there was no money to send me to university back then. I started at the branch in Cooksville at a whopping fifty bucks a week. I had one suit that I wore every day. I had also started playing in a local band during this time and at one point we were the house band at the old Club Bluenote at Yonge and Gerrard in Toronto. We played the after hours floor show backing up major entertainers who played regular gigs at major places then came over to the club after their shows. We started at one and played 'til around four in the morning Thursday, Friday and Saturdays. After the show Thursdays I would drive home, grab an hour of sleep, take a shower and go off to work at the bank. I was so dead tired that I was always worried that I would give someone too much money or make stupid mistakes. I was on what the bank called their advanced administration officer three-year course, but I finished it in nine months and ended up being transferred to nine different branches in just over two years. I was working at the Keele and Wilson branch when we were robbed by the infamous Montreal gang. At my last branch at Jane and Steeles I was the Administration Officer at only nineteen years old, with everyone at the branch working for me. When my manager went on three weeks vacation there was supposed to be another manager coming in to cover for him, but the day he was to come I got word that he had died! They had no one else to cover so they asked me if I could handle it until they found someone. What choice did I have? I called the staff together and asked for their help and they were all amazing. Over the three I wrote over a quarter of a million dollars worth of loans, which today would be multiple millions, with a default rate of zero. I often looked back and wondered what those poor people meeting with a nineteen year old thought about our meetings, especially those that I turned down.

Another kind of major issue was the day I heard a customer arguing with my head teller. I intervened to see what the problem was and learned that he had bought five thousand dollars worth of traveller's cheques the week before planning on going on holidays, but that had been cancelled and he wanted to return the cheques. Anyone dealing with traveller's cheques knows that there is one rate for buying and a lower rate for selling, and this guy wasn't happy about that. It turned out that he was a very rich customer with a lot of money in our bank and he very loudly threatened to pull his accounts if I didn't give him back what he paid for the cheques. I told him that it was the same policy at all banks and for every customer so it did not matter how rich he was. He said he would call our Head Office and stormed out of the bank. My staff who had been listening to this whole discussion virtually applauded me for standing my ground, but I hoped I wouldn't get fired for it. The next day I got a call from the Vice President of the bank who asked me for my side of the story. When I finished he congratulated me on not giving in to the customer and said he had told the customer he could leave. I was very relieved.

Shortly after this experience a customer met with me and asked me how much I was making. When I told him fifty dollars a week he offered me ninety dollars to work for him as his accountant. With a young family to support I couldn't turn down the idea of making almost double, plus back then working for the bank was considered more of a calling so I knew that I was never going to make any real money. I gave my notice. But after only a couple of days working for this new guy he started asking me to do things that I knew were wrong, like writi8ng off his new home stereo as office equipment. I wasn't any kind of chartered accountant but I knew if this guy got audited and charged I would be implicated so I quit.

Things got a little hairy after quitting. I remember living on Main Street in Brampton and Gary and Brenda lived upstairs. One night we put dinner together and all we had was some potatoes and onions and some cereal. I don't even remember how I found the job but I worked for Dominion Glass. One day they asked me to go down to the end of the recycle line and break milk jugs that were too big to go down the chute. That was bad enough but near the end of my shift the foreman came and asked me if I would work another shift because no one would do what I was doing. I guess no one else was as stupid as I was. I survived but went home more dead tired than I had ever been. After only a few shifts they went on strike so we couldn't go to work. At one point the company said they would secretly hide us in rail cars to get in to work, but I wanted no part of that. I remember having quite a fight to get unemployment because they said I was on strike which I was not. Somehow we survived.

Next I landed the longest normal job I ever had in my life, working as the Production Scheduler for Emco Plastics in Brampton. I started with training at Emco Limited in London, Ontario, a place I would return to many years later. I worked at Emco from August 1971 until June 1976. A highlight of my time there was designing and implementing a whole new visual production scheduling system which worked very well and solved a lot of problems. The Manufacturing Manager, Morris Cook, was very pleased with me and that would soon be good for me. Earl Lince was the General Manager. Doug Bryant was their Engineer. Frank Cook, Morris' brother, was the Shipping Manager. Partly getting a little bored with my job and realizing that there was no future for me I started looking for another job and found a similar job as a Production Scheduler at Able Plastics. It was owned and run by a older couple who I soon learned spent the day fighting. I barely lasted six months before I couldn't take it anymore. I was then interviewed by Hilti Canada to be their Customer Service Manager. The reason I got the job was because of the wonderful reference I got from Morris Cook. When I went to thank him he said he knew he would miss me when I first left but agreed that I had no future with Emco.

Hilti turned out to be a mix of great things and nightmares. I completely reorganized what had been a clerical function to be an integral part of the sales team of four Area Managers and twenty-six sales reps. The bad part was that our office was at the back of the main Hilti building and Head Office was at the front. Every time there was any meetings with them, usually run by a Tony Leckie, the worst manager I've ever known, it was a disaster. He was like your worst school teacher, always talking down to people and screaming at them. At one point he came up behind one of the Area Managers, Jim Young, who he thought wasn't paying enough attention and he slapped his ruler down on the table, jumping Jim out of his skin. Shortly after that Jim left the company and he called me to tell me to follow him out the door. I had lasted just shy of two years with Hilti but, again, I started looking around. That's when I found what was probably the most secure job of all. Customer Service manager at Indal Products.

Indal was great. My six staff joined me in my enthusiasm for being a bigger part of the sales function. They were a great group of people. Heather, Marie, Dave, Frank, Doug, even Jon. We all worked hard and ended most days by going up the street for a beer. I had a lot of history with this company, most importantly the support from Jon LeHoup when things went bad for me. One of our customers, Ciro Guchiardi, the President of Extrudex Aluminum, approached me one day and asked me to be the General Manager of another company he owned, Dural Patio Doors. Being somewhat secure in my job at Indal and really enjoying working there I was hesitant to leave, but I sensed a big opportunity. Ciro said the division had lost a hundred thousand dollars but he hoped that I could turn it around. I wrote the most generous employment contract ever with bonuses for increasing sales of both the patio door and sealed glass units, reducing costs and increasing profits. I still remember the lunch we had to sign the contract when Ciro said he doubted he would ever pay me any bonuses but he hoped that he was wrong.

I threw myself in the job. Shortly after I started a bunch of computer equipment showed up. When I called the company to ask when they were going to install everything they said Ciro had just bought the equipment, no installation and they wanted two hundred dollars an hour to install everything. There would go my profit bonus, so despite not knowing a thing about computers or, more importantly, networks, I opened the first of thirteen Novell Network manuals and started reading. Six weeks later after working seven days a week we had a fully functional inhouse network.

My foreman, Joe, was Italian, as was most of the production staff. Walking the plant I could see that a lot of things weren't being done right, but I didn't want to interfere with Joe and I couldn't talk to the employees because they wouldn't understand me. I got some Graff paper and went out in the plant at night to measure all of the equipment, then cut-out little pieces of cardboard to represent the machines. I then told Joe to invite the employees to a meeting in my office after work. I couldn't pay them but I would provide pizza. Joe said he doubted anyone would show up but the room was packed. I explained that I wanted to totally reorganize the plant and that the employees were the best ones to know what to do. Joe then said everything in Italian and I could sense how enthused the employees were. No one had ever asked them before. After a flurry of activity production more than doubled and the employees were really happy. Because we didn't just build patio doors plus I saw a far bigger market for what was called Heat Mirror from Southwall Technologies in California I convinced Ciro to rename the company Clearview Industries. a name that still exists today. Joe and I traveled to Southwall to learn more. After we returned and retrofitted the production line we got the contract for the Motorola Head office which was all glass. It was a very big deal.

Just when things could not have been going any better (yes, I had been paid every one of my bonuses) I got a call from a friend of Ciro's inviting me out to a fancy lunch. He started by saying that Ciro could not be happier with what I had done to turn things around and make a substantial profit. He said he was very surprised at the things I had done like getting all the employees together to reorganize the plant, not to mention installing a complete computer network when I had known nothing about it. After heaping all the praise on me I wasn't sure where this was going. I was thinking that this guy must own some similar business that was in trouble and he wanted to hire me, but I could not have been more wrong. Again he stressed about how I had made the business very profitable, so profitable that he was going to buy it. Okay, that's cool. Then the other shoe dropped. Not only was he going to buy the business but he was going to run it! Not cool! My contract was about to come up for renewal so I had no choice other than to just leave.

While I was sitting at home contemplating my future I got a call from what had been one of my patio door dealers, Recom Windows and Doors. They said that they heard that I had installed the computer network at Clearview and that they were getting their first computer and wanted me to come in and set it up and teach them how to use it. It was one of those life changing moments that would set the course of the rest of my life. I have often wondered what I would have done had that phone call not come. For the next sixteen years I ran my own consulting company, originally called KISS Consulting and then Contact Associates, doing everything from supplying computers, software, network installations, computer room design, cabling and even supplying computer furniture. I had over fifty very happy clients over the years, all of which came from referrals. I never once ran an ad. I also came too close to total burnout when I billed ninety-six hours to three clients in one week. My last contract was for Fellowes Manufacturing in Markham, the makers of the BankersBox, installing thirty-five work stations and moving them off a server in Itasca to an inhouse system.

This was the point where my life took some major turns. Near the end of working at Fellowes I had finally made the years overdue decision to end my loveless marriage. I had been staying at the Journey's End motel in Markham plus still paying all the bills for the house in Brampton. My ex had done nothing to get a job and was only too happy to have me pay for everything and give her money. More importantly my mother had been diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and given less than six months to live. Having been apart for so many years I wanted to spend whatever time she had left with her so I went to BC. I really missed my kids but I had been making appointments to see them anyway. I figured if I moved to BC they could come out for vacations like they did before and that would be better. I decided to sell the house. My parents drove down with me in the van and my Dad spent three weeks selling everything in a garage sale. My ex had laid claim to anything of value like all our furniture and gone was the idea of fifty fifty split. She wanted everything using the guilt trip of supporting my daughter. When all was said and done I ended up leaving with my last cheque from Fellowe4s and nothing else. My ex got every dime of the equity I had single-handedly built up doing all the renovations over the years. I didn't want to see any money go to lawyers so I just gave up and didn't fight.

Once settled in BC, originally living with my parents, I quickly learned what the sunshine tax was all about. On my last contract with Fellowes I was charging sixty dollars an hour, plus half that for travel. I still can't believe I was ballsy enough to ask for them to pay for me to come from Brampton to Markham. In BC it was all very complicated because a lot of people were doing consulting for free hoping to land a paying contract. I also found people installing demo software which was totally illegal. It was an uphill battle to land any work until I decided to partner with local accountants. That got me the contract at Central Valley Trucks, although only at nineteen dollars an hour, a far cry from sixty. That whole job turned into a nightmare when they took me to court to get back what they had paid me, almost eight thousand dollars. They lost.

After fighting a losing battle on my own I finally gave up and took a job with Northern Computer. Can't beat em, join em. Although my time with them was short I did land the largest contract in their seventeen year history when I got the contract to upgrade the entire system for a local law firm, Salloum Doak, against thirty-five other competitors. I had known that Dell had bid on the hardware, basically buying the business as they often did back then and that we would not be able to match them. At a critical meeting with all thirteen partners of the firm I was asked if we would partner with Dell? Without hesitation I answered "no". A scary silence fell over the boardroom and I worried that I had blown it. Then the controller asked me how much of a deposit I wanted. Phew! When I got back to the office, cheque in hand, I told my manager what happened. I looked very sad and when I got to the part where I told him they asked me if we would work with Dell and I had told them no he had a look of terror on his face. Then I smiled and handed him the very large cheque. We all hooped and hollered and high-fived a lot that day. It was a great career moment.

Shortly after this rather major accomplishment a lady from Shaw Fiberlink invited me out to lunch where she explained that she was moving back to Vancouver to be with her family and she had recommended me for the job. Soon I was off to Calgary to meet who would be my manager. He explained that the job was basically selling their new business modem to small business and developing a market for fibre connections that were about to be installed in the valley. I got to work and soon not only set a record for business modem sales but also made tremendous inroads with fibre. I had met with the manager in charge of the installation plan and we had worked together to come up with a total plan to connect what was called the Interior Health Region throughout the valley. After a big presentation to a senior manager he gave us a contract to connect two hospitals with the rest of the entire contract based on meeting the standards of the first connection, which we exceeded. The contract was huge and I stood to make about eighty thousand dollars in commission. I had also been working with people like Interior Savings to connect their branches in Penticton, Kelowna and Vernon. I knew it was only a matter of time before I had landed every major contract. I had also managed to join the new Okanagan Science and Technology Counsel who were going to promote the area as a major tech hub. They were thrilled at what we could do for them.

Just when I thought my life could not get any better my world came crashing down. There was a big announcement coming from the President of Shaw and my manager (the ninth in a very short time) was coming from Calgary to our office. The announcement was that Shaw Fiberlink had been sold to a company called Group Telecom, who were basically a hedge fund like Goldman Sacks. The sad part was that they had no interest in laying fibre in the valley because it was "too expensive" so our office was being closed and I was out of a job. Some time later they had laid off all hundred and thirty-five employees of Shaw Fiberlink. Even at that point I figured they owed me at least twenty thousand dollars in commissions but they refused to pay me a dime. I was beyond devastated. I spent months renovating my girlfriend at the time's house and struggled with what to do. After that ended I took at a job with Pacific Cellular selling for Rogers AT&T and then moved to Sunwest Cellular. Neither was a great job so I started looking around again. I found FBC, a company selling tax and estate planning services.

With FBC I covered the South Okanagan, meaning I put on a lot of miles. At one point they lost their rep for the North Okanagan and I covered the whole territory until they hired someone else. During my not quite two years with them I sold more than they had ever seen in their fifty year history and I never lost a prospect. What turned out to be my last contract was with a guy who owned a helicopter company and his wife owned a retail store. Their numbers were high and my commission was nine thousand dollars. The deal with FBC was that within thirty days after I signed them our tax consultant would meet with them. I was starting to get annoyed calls from my clients saying that they had heard nothing from the company. My manager said the company was having trouble hiring and training staff to do the work. He actually said that it was partly my fault for selling so much. Not funny. Then I got an angry call from that last big contract, demanding their money back which would mean I would need to return the nine thousand dollar commission. I quit.

I then got a job as the Regional Manager for a new business publication, Business Thompson Okanagan. It was an interesting job and I did have some success, like getting John Thomson to do a full page report in our paper, and signing  Envision Credit Union to a two page spread. I worked very hard but my manager did not understand that it takes time to build relationships in the Okanagan. I would never have landed John had I not known him for years. My manager and I agreed to part ways. The publication is now called the Business Examiner.

In May of 2005 came another one of those life-changing moments. My father died in my arms, leaving my mother who suffered from Alzheimer's in need of care. My father had done nothing to get her into the type of care facility she needed, and my brother and sister were useless so I was the one who gave up my life to live with my mother and care for her, which was the hardest job I've ever had in my life. No one who has not been directly involved with Alzheimer's will ever understand how incredibly difficult it is. In addition to spending every day trying to get her into a care facility I also finished the renovations getting ready to sell her place as soon as I got her into a facility. After months of trying I finally got her into Winterhaven but my sister pulled her out and that ended in disaster with my mother dying.

I was then self-employed as a contractor renovating a manufactured home in West Kelowna. When that turned into a total disaster I moved to Panama, where I built city portal websites and also renovated a three story apartment house. Yet another disaster and I was forced to return to Canada, originally offered refuge by my cousin in Toronto. I then moved to London, Ontario, following a new love and started working for Phoenix International at a call centre marketing an international trade show in Toronto. It did not go well.

I then spent several months living out of my car and in various group homes like the Centre of Hope run by the Salvation Army. Certainly the low point of my life. Despite living in a group home in a dormitory I managed to get a job at Home Depot. Lousy shifts. Lousy working conditions. Lousy pay, but it was a job. Then about a hundred of us got laid off. For a very brief period I worked for the worst company I had ever worked for, Stream Global Services (now Conversys). Enough said.

I got accepted into a build your business program and managed to earn enough to survive for a little while. When that was coming to an end I again started looking for somewhere cheaper (and warmer) to live out my life and found Ecuador. After moving to Cotacachi I again started building city portal sites for various towns around me. Unfortunately I got screwed by my government when I did not get my GIS pension for six months. It left me penniless and I was borrowing money from a friend to survive. I knew that I had to return to Canada and my friend offered me a place owned by her son north of Belleville. Yet another turning point. Belleville.

Now technically "retired" but still searching for somewhere cheaper and warmer to live I moved to Mexico where I again worked building city portal sites. One of them, for Ajijic, was the best site I had built in my life, but despite that I still never made a dime. After losing my GIS pension, which was a third of my limited income, I had to go back to Canada yet again. I tried to get back to BC but that proved impossible so back I went to Belleville to again live in a group home. Now I finally have my own apartment and I continue to work all day, every day, building websites, praying that someday I will make enough money to live somewhere else.

Well, believe it or not despite the many, many jobs I've listed here I left out a few, like GlassVision Solariums where I thought I would make my fortune and be set for life. For a breif time I worked for a company whose name I think was Canwest something, selling home phone systems. I've also done a number of home renovation contracts for various people. Nothing of any consequence. I've also had numerous business ideas over my lifetime, many of which were eventually developed by someone else. My biggest was inventing what today we know as The Cloud but thirty years ago I developed as InTouch Networks. At the time after assembling an amazing group of partners Microsoft wouldn't agree to something that they did agree to years later, and the whole concept died.

SIDEBAR: In May of 1978 I started working for Gerry Waterhouse as Sales Administrator for what was then a start up, the TCM Division of American Hoist, in a small warehouse with limited office space. Over a very short time I managed growth from less than an original quarter of a million dollars to over six million dollars. Unfortunately American Hoist couldn't handle the growth well. We built a network of dealers partly by offering a good floor plan financing program, but after I did the contracts and sent them to American Hoist for signing they just sat there. I remember having a meeting with the Vice President in his office and saw stacks and stacks of these contracts piled up everywhere. He didn't seem to care. When the dealers would visit us they would ask me where the contracts were. Some would even admit to me that the fork lifts had been put in their rental fleet or even sold, meaning they needed to pay for them. Gerry and I soon realized that it was a house of cards which would soon come crashing down and we would be out of a job.

One day he brought me a brochure for a different kind of fork lift, called NYK, and asked me if I thought we could put something together. After a lot of hard work we were on our way to Chicago to sign the papers to become the national distributor for these fork lifts. I remember on the flight down Gerry asked me what our "company" was supposed to be and I suggested Canada Lift, which we instantly became. I got an incredible floor plan with the Bank of Nova Scotia. I organized a meeting at a resort in Caledon and invited all the dealers. They all came and all ordered product. The next thing we knew we had a quarter million dollar order to soon be on its way, with every unit presold. We found an office in Oakville and got ready to receive the order. Although this sounds like a very bad soap opera we soon got word that there was a big investigation by the RCMP about some conspiracy by Gerry and I. Although nothing to do with handling the new line of fork lifts, which American Hoist was prevented from doing because of their contract with TCM, there was one deal made with one dealer on TCM lift trucks that had been ruined in a shipping accident, for which American Hoist had been paid in full by insurance. Soon Gerry and I were being escorted off the property and charged with criminal offenses, for which we would pay dearly soon.

Obviously it wasn't great being led off the premises or, much worse, being charged, but we had our new company and sold lift trucks on the way on which we were going to make great profits and order more trucks, right? We also knew that being charged was just part of this giant conspiracy theory and we were only guilty of stupidity, nothing criminal. One dealer told me that he heard we were only charged because the RCMP had spent two million dollars doing a national investigation, only to find nothing about any conspiracy. If we had only known what was about to happen.

I got a call at our new office in Oakville to come to the Head Office of the Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto. When we arrived we were ushered into the Executive Offices on the top floor where we met with a roundtable of the most senior executives of the bank. They informed us that the floor plan financing program was cancelled immediately, along with the one hundred and eighty day line of credit they had extended for us to buy the trucks from NYK. Obviously shell shocked I reminded them that they had signed contracts with our dealers to finance their purchases plus the trucks were on a ship arriving shortly. With stone faces they said there were no options here and the decisions were final. It was the death knoll to our business. Everything we worked so hard for was gone. It was the worst day of my life.

As I picked myself up and thought that maybe I needed to do something that only I could control I thought about Real Estate. I took the course and came in third in the class. I became a sales agent with Kyle-Jamieson Real Estate. Until the market crashed because of absurdly high mortgage rates I really enjoyed what I was doing. I still managed to sell some properties for wonderful clients and I worked for six months putting a mall expansion project together, which all fell apart when one idiot refused to sell a property he hadn't even moved into yet for double his money. This was not the career for me, although I have always regretted that.

by TheEditor