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

On getting older

Back when I turned seventy and still in Mexico, but living in Chelem in the Yucatan Peninsula, I was reminded of the saying that growing old is a privilege denied to many. It was an age I thought I would never make it to because of the less than ideal way I had lived. I had smoked for most of life, having not started until I was twenty-two and the only time I quit for six months I put on some seventy pounds and was in the worst shape of my life. I had more medical issues and couldn't even walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath. I had zero stamina and asked my doctor if I should just start smoking again. Of course he disagreed but as soon as I started again I lost the weight over just a few months. My normal weight was usually around one seventy but I had ballooned to two forty after quitting so I was very happy to be back to normal.

This birthday milestone was also the first time I sensed my own mortality because my father had died at eighty-one and my mother had died at eighty-four, so I suddenly realized that I might not have too many years left before I kicked the bucket. Still I didn't feel "old" because I was still in pretty good shape. No aches or pains of any consequence. Although I had been diagnosed as diabetic back in 2004, it was under control. I had started taking insulin in 2011 but my sugars were still pretty normal with my medications and the two insulins I took. Before the disastrous move to Chelem I lived in the Lake Chapala area. I walked more than I ever had in my entire life. I ate better. I danced a lot. I felt pretty good overall. Even after the move I still walked a lot. The little local store in Chelem was several kilometres away and I walked it several times. I also swam in the pool where I was staying. I never got to dance because there was nowhere to go. 

After all that happened to me after the move my stress level was off the chart. I had lost one of my pensions after being out of the country for six months so I was really struggling financially. I also was running out of my medications, especially my insulin which cost a fortune in Mexico. At one point I collapsed in Progreso and the EMTs got me to the hospital where they gave me insulin and got me back on my feet. Add that my new landlord had not told me the place was sold so I had to find somewhere to live and couldn't find anywhere and I knew I had no choice but to return to Canada, something I thought I would never do when I first moved to Mexico in September 2017. The first day I arrived in Ajijic I fell in love with the place then two weeks later I met the love of my life and was going to get married and live happily ever after in Mexico. As John Lennon said, "life is what happens while you are making other plans". After a disastrous trip back to Belleville to apply for my visa in Toronto as soon as we got back my fiancée dropped me by text message. It nearly killed me. I cried for days. I thought my life was over and saw no reason to go on. Then all hell broke loose with my idiot landlord in Riberas Del Pilar and I had to move to Chelem. Yet another big mistake.

My appeals for help from everyone including the Canadian Consulate all fell on deaf ears so I had no choice but to try to get flights back to Canada. I had also contacted the President of the housing charity about getting a room in one of the group homes again and he had confirmed that I could move back to the place I had left two years earlier. I only had my measly pensions to buy the flights with so I searched and searched but couldn't find anything. Then one day when, as usual, I found cheaper flights but every time I tried to book them they were sold out, this day I actually booked the flights, to my considerable surprise. It was then that I realized just how bad the flights were. I was flying out of Merida, the closest airport, to Mexico City then to Cancun then to Toronto. I had lengthy layovers and would take more than twenty-four hours to get to Toronto. As bad as the flights were they were even worse when my first flight out of Merida was delayed two hours. By the time I got to Cancun I collapsed at the airport and was rushed to the airport medical centre where they gave me insulin. I fell asleep waiting to board and only caught the flight to Toronto because one of the airline staff found me and got me on the flight at the last minute. 

Just before I left Mexico I got an email from the President of the housing corporation telling me that the room he told me I was getting was no longer available. Now I had nowhere to stay when I finally got back to Belleville. Just more stress. I arrived in Toronto close to midnight and had to wait for my bus to Belleville at six thirty in the morning. No one had told me that the bus did not go to the bus terminal in Belleville. Instead it dropped me off in the middle of nowhere at a truck stop off the 401. It was a twenty dollar cab ride into town and I didn't have any money. Luckily I called a friend and she rescued me. I called the Emergency Housing line and was put up in a motel. By the time I got to the CHMA office to apply for housing I was a total mess. Although they promised to find me a room they insisted that I first go to the hospital which I did. My sugars were off the charts, above thirty and I should have died, but after five days in the hospital they brought them down and released me. 

This was all in November of 2019, before the virus hit. I went through a nightmare with getting my pension reinstated, leaving me with not enough to pay my room rent and I was threatened with eviction to the street the next day but I managed to get help from the local housing authority and avoided getting thrown out, but it was close. Physically I was okay now that I got my meds again, but mentally my stress level was killing me. I didn't know how much more I could take. Then I got really sick and spent five days in bed which didn't help. When I finally got better my friend took me to the Legion in Trenton every Saturday so I got to dance again. I knew I didn't have the same energy level as I did when I danced for hours several nights a week, but I managed. Then the virus hit and the world stopped. 

For fifteen months now I haven't done a thing. When I lived in Belleville before going to Mexico I was very active. More in the summer than the winter but I still danced every week. I went to the concerts in the park every Wednesday and Sunday and danced. I went to the Waterfront Festival every day. I worked the Elvis Festival in Tweed. I went down to Kingston quite a few weekends with a guy that lived at the home. We went to the Provincial parks often to spend the day at the beach. I wasn't getting a lot of exercise but it was all something. It all ended with the virus. Not only was I not getting any exercise but I was also bored out of my mind. Although I had more than my share of challenges in Mexico there was always a sense of adventure every day. Now there was nothing. I literally could feel myself wasting away physically and mentally. Soon I had a host of new aches and pains. My peripheral neuropathy in my feet suddenly became so painful that even walking was difficult. The bone spur in my shoulder which I had not been able to get surgery for before going to Mexico now suddenly ached all the time. Even my skin became so dry that I looked like the elephant man. The various creams I had used stopped working. I had new balance issues and nearly fell in the shower. My vision got worse and I had to get new glasses, which I could ill afford. 

When I finally got moved out of the group home to my own apartment it's across the road from the YMCA. I figured I would join and at least be able to use their pool to get some much needed exercise but, of course, it's been closed for a while and now even if they reopen I'm told that the pool will not open this year. There goes that plan. There's talk of things like the Legion dances starting up again but I don't know how long it's going to take me to be able to dance again. All the concerts and festivals are cancelled. Even the parks are limited but I don't know anyone who drives now so I have no way to get anywhere.

For most of my adult life from my first real job on I was the proverbial workaholic, usually working fifty or sixty hours a week at least and during the sixteen years that I did consulting often many more hours. I remember billing ninety-six hours in one week alone. Makes you wonder when I slept. After I moved out West to be with my mother in 1993 I was determined to get a better work life balance. Right away I had bought a boat but that got stolen and set on fire the first week I arrived back in the Okanagan. I did join the local racquetball club, the Courtplex, where I met a lot of new friends. I started hiking in the mountains around Kelowna and, of course, started dirt-biking with my Dad. Over the course of my fourteen years in the valley I was incredibly active. In the summer I swam, dirt-biked around Kelowna and Revelstoke, water-skied, hiked, danced at the Corral, biked the Kettle Valley Railroad, ran a roller-blading club most Sundays, and even paraglided.  In the winter I downhill skied, snowmobiled around Kelowna but mostly in Revelstoke, still ran the hiking club despite the snow, danced three nights a week at the Corral, and, most importantly, got into cross country skiing at Telemark. My friend Brian Wall had got me started and at first I couldn't quite see why I would do it, but then once I discovered the rhythm I loved it! I also learned why those NordicTrack machines are so popular because I was never in better shape in my life. My stamina was top notch. Despite still smoking my lung capacity was tested at the Courtplex and I was in the top three percent of Canadian males. They had me do the test three times because they couldn't believe it. Of course that lifestyle all ended when I went to Panama and I would never again be in such good shape, physically or mentally.    

As much as being so out of shape now, feeling so old and dealing with the stress of being poor is not great, nothing is worse than the emotional pain of not being in love and being cut off from my family. My twenty-three year marriage was a total disaster because the girl I fell in love with at first sight never loved me back. I tried and tried to make it better. A better house. A better car. For her, a better job. At one point she even went off the pill without telling me and we had a daughter, but nothing changed. Then she killed our unborn child without even talking to me first and I sure knew that my marriage was over. It was only on the very last day we were together, sitting in the house that had sold, that she talked for hours about what a terrible wife she had been and taking full responsibility for the failure of our marriage, but it was too late. It was over.

Over the years since my divorce (for child abandonment according to her lawyer. Yeah, right) I've certainly had girl friends, girlfriends and came close to getting married again. As much as I thought I was in love with my ex from the start I didn't really know what love felt like until I met Tracy. We were awesome together despite our age difference of twenty-two years, that was until her girlfriends from school started asking her what would happen when I was seventy. That ended the relationship. She asked me to move out, although she did say it might be the biggest mistake she ever made, and it nearly broke me. Not only was I so hopelessly in love with her but I also loved her three kids. It was a very bad breakup. Next came Magaly in Panama. Again she was much younger than me, plus she didn't speak a word of English, but we got along. It was very hard to leave her when I was forced back to Canada. Back in London, Ontario I never had so much as a girlfriend. In Cotacachi, Ecuador I met Patricia and had a very romantic and lustful short relationship and after I was forced back to Canada, again, she wanted me to come back and marry her. We couldn't do the long distance thing though and soon she just wanted money, so that was over.  Same love drought when I came to Belleville. Nobody special, then off I went to Mexico.  

In a short two weeks I met the proverbial love of my life, Elba. As much I thought I had been in unconditional love before, I was wrong. Over the months we were together we were so very much in love. We kissed all the time and told each other we loved each other all the time. We lived together. We danced. We talked for hours upon hours even though my Spanish was a little rough. People who saw us out together always commented on how they had never seen a couple more in love than us. We got engaged on New Year's Eve to the congratulations of many of our friends. Her very large family welcomed me with open arms and constantly asked why we weren't married already? I had already booked my return trip to Canada but now it was going to be to apply to the consulate for my visa to come back to Mexico. To my surprise Elba wanted to come with me and offered to pay her own airfare when I told her I couldn't afford it. It turned out to be the trip from hell with everything from screwed up flights to it being freezing back in Belleville. I was so glad to finally get back to Mexico, that is until Elba said she was not coming back to Ajijic the night we got back. Then she sent me a text message telling me that the relationship was terminated. It broke me and I saw no point in going on.  

Back when when I left for BC to be with my mother who had fifth stage melanoma and had been given less than six months to live I didn't know that it would be the last time I would ever see my wonderful daughter, Heather. Way back in 1994 I drove across the country in the dead of winter to see her after talking to her on the phone and she wanted to see me. Instead my ex and her new husband hid Heather away and wouldn't let me see her. I tried for three weeks but failed and drove back to BC crying all the way. 

My son, Christopher, had three daughters, only one of which, Danielle, I had ever met, but when she was just a baby. Back in 2009 when he and I connected in London, Ontario he was going to set up a time and place for me to meet his other two daughters, Marissa and Mackenzie, but after three months getting nowhere he sold his phone and blocked me on Facebook. When she was fourteen Mackenzie connected with me on Facebook Messenger and she was so angry at her parents for not letting her make her own decision to talk to me. We chatted back and forth for a while and then she said she was coming to Puerto Villarta for a friend's wedding and she wanted to meet. I was so excited! But she stopped talking to me, never said anything about meeting, refused to answer my pleas on Messenger and has now blocked me. I had posted a photo of the three granddaughters on my website and Danielle sent me the most horrible message on Messenger telling me not to try to talk to anyone in the family. Throughout all of this, like the twenty-eight years my daughter has not spoken to me, I have begged and pleaded, as have many friends over the years, to understand why everyone cut me off. I think even child molesters and murderers are treated better. No one was stronger on family values than me. Back when Chris and I connected I asked how his Mum was and he said he didn't know because he hadn't talked to her in six months! When I asked Mackenzie how her sister were she said she had nothing to do with them! What the hell kind of family is this? It all makes me SO sad and there's not a day goes by that I don't think about my kids and grandkids. I pray that I find out why they've all cut me out of their lives before I die.     

I've never felt so old, unloved and forgotten.   

by TheEditor

Moving again

For most of my adult life the one consistent factor has been moving. From the many houses we bought, renovated and sold during my married life of twenty-three years to my first major move out West in 1993 to be with my then dying mother there was no shortage of moves. During my fourteen years in the Okanagan I moved several times, most often moving in with various girlfriends and before and after caring for my mother. My last move in BC was to the disaster that was my renovation in Princess which I have detailed in another post. When everything fell apart on me and my doctor said I had to get away from all the stress or I would have a heart attack this was the start of my foreign moves. 

After months of research my first international move was to Boquete, Panama. Back then it was a combination of good weather, lower cost of living, doing something where I could make money, and finding somewhere in the mountains maybe as beautiful as the Okanagan. Boquete was a mixture of good and bad, mostly bad after the horrible renovation of Vista Grande which left me penniless and I was forced to return to Canada and had a roof over my head thanks to my cousin in Toronto. After wearing out my welcome at her place I followed a lady I had met and fallen in love with to London, Ontario. That quickly fell apart on me and I lived everywhere from my car to several homeless shelters, finally ending up in my own apartment on Hale where I lived for several years. As I approached retirement age I again searched for somewhere warmer and where I could continue to work to make extra money. 

This time, again after much research, I went to Cotacachi, Ecuador. This move started off better than Boquete, Panama but just as quickly turned into a disaster. That was mostly because I got screwed by my own government. Despite assurances before I left Canada that my GIS pension would be deposited it wasn't, leaving me more and more desperate for six months. By the time it finally came through I was already booked to come back to Canada, this time to Belleville. At the time I had no idea how much Belleville was going to be part of my future. After nearly freezing to death in Frankford and having a breakdown at the Salvation Army in Belleville I ended up in the first of what would be several transitional houses in Belleville, the first being on Murney. From there I moved back and forth between Forin and Victoria, now part of All-Together Housing.

As my one year tenancy was about to expire plus my room rent had gone up a hundred dollars I again started looking for somewhere to go, again warmer and escape the Canadian winter, lower cost of living and where I could work to make some extra money. This time I knew that my GIS pension would end after six months out of the country so I had to find a way to replace this income. I thought I did. Before going I had connected with a guy in Ajijic, the place I was going, and asked about the city portal sites I had built. He said there was nothing there like that and I would have no problem earning an extra five hundred a month to replace my lost pension. That proved to be so wrong. 

Although Ajijic turned out to be my favorite place, far better than Panama or Ecuador, things soon fell apart on me again. At one point the government suspended all my pensions, leaving me thirty-three cents in the bank for three weeks. After that my landlord, the landlord from hell, put my rent up two thousand pesos (about a hundred and twenty dollars) and wanted it paid in advance. This led to the worst decision I ever made when I moved to Chelem in the Yucatan Peninsula when I was offered a month's free rent. Just made a bad situation all the worse and again I was forced to come back to Canada.

After nearly not surviving the flights back the room I thought I had available with All-Together Housing was not available after all. I ended up in emergency housing who put me in a motel in Trenton. The next few days were just horrible, shunting me from various Comfort Inns to the reserve and finally to the CMHA who insisted I go to the hospital first because my sugars were off the charts. After five days in hospital I was moved back into a different room at Murney. Within a week I was then moved to Dunbar where I stayed until moving back to Forin in April of last year. I was then on the Emergency Housing list for my own place. 

In September of last year I was told that a place was available on Turnbull but because of the virus situation I couldn't get anything I needed for my own place, from a bed to all the things I needed. These would normally be available from St. Vincent de Paul or the Salvation Army, but they were both shutdown because of the pandemic. After some back and forth with Housing it was agreed that I could not move; however, I would still not lose my position on the housing list. Then in January I was advised that an apartment at 50 Rollins Drive would be available March 15th. Shortly after I visited the apartment and it looked fine. It would be my first time living in what was a senior's complex and it was disappointing that all the normal activities were all shutdown because of the virus. The apartment was small but at least it would finally be my own place. Progress!

After all the troubles at Forin I was relieved to get out of there, but all hope of ever moving somewhere warmer and with that spirit of adventure that I had experienced so many times before was all gone. Not only was I going to be stuck in Belleville, the last place in the world I ever thought I would live, but I would be facing another Canadian winter, something I thought I had left behind. Belleville is the least scenic place I've ever lived since going to BC, but the virus makes it all the worse. When I lived here before I had friends who took me everywhere from Kingston on summer weekends, to various provincial parks, to local festivals like the Elvis Festival in Tweed, to the Belleville Waterfront Festival, to dancing every week in Belleville and Trenton and simple day trips. Since the virus hit I've done absolutely nothing other than work at home and the occasional shopping trip. Total boredom! I can only hope that things get better post virus. As a hopeless romantic I will never give up on meeting someone to share my life. I am also planning to join the YMCA across the road to quit smoking and get in better shape. I also have my bike that I have yet to ride and I'm now close to the nice paths along the lake.  

For well over twenty years I've always hoped that things got better. Moving to BC gave me the best fourteen years of my life. Even though Panama and Ecuador both ended in turmoil there were some good parts. Mexico was the one place I thought I would live out the rest of my life in, especially when I met the love of my life and was going to get married. Getting dumped by text message came far too close to ending it all for me and I'm lucky I survived. For now I have to accept where I am and focus on some way to earn enough money to go back to Mexico. I refuse to give up on my dreams.   

by TheEditor