Know your parents' finances before they're gone
It may well be just how it was with my generation, but I suspect that children are still uncomfortable discussing finances with their parents. Other than the obvious signs of jobs and possessions, we assume our parents are doing okay handling their finances. Not always.
In my entire life I don't even remember overhearing a conversation about money from my parents. They both had jobs, working man types and we always had food on the table and clothes on our backs. We went on vacations, albeit camping, every year and we had a few "toys" like mini bikes and a skidoo. My parents drove late model cars and I don't ever remember not going somewhere because we couldn't afford it. We never went to Florida or did things like the theatre or had any luxuries, and there was no question that none of us would be going on to university, but we were never poverty stricken, at least not that I remember. In my own life, when we were just starting out and the factory I was working in went on strike, and I did not get any strike pay because I was not in the union yet, nor could I get unemployment insurance because I was on strike, things got pretty scary for a bit. I remember having nothing more than potatoes and onions in the house for a couple of days because what money we had went to baby formula.
My Dad always worked hard and I don't ever remember him being out of work except after the fire at the refinery when he was in hospital for several months. My Mum worked with the bank forever and still did after they moved out West. My Dad was a Real Estate Broker for a time here in Ontario, but he couldn't take being away from the family as much as the career demanded. When they moved out West he got a factory job with what later became Western Star Trucks. At the time I didn't understand how he could go from broker to factory worker, but I realized later that he got his family life back with that job. Come 3:30 he was gone, leaving the job behind and they had a camper and a boat and they went everywhere. They had a good life even though they never had any real money to speak of.
They both retired early, in their late fifties and we assumed that they took early pensions or had money stashed somewhere to live on. Both my parents drank and my Dad smoked, although he "hid" it from my Mum. Yeah, right. Dad loved his steaks. Mum loved to gamble and went to the bingo and the casino all the time. For seventeen years every winter they went south to a fifth wheel trailer in Yuma, Arizona. Dad always bragged about how much cheaper it was to live there. I learned much later that my uncle let them stay in the trailer and ended up giving it to them in his will. When they couldn't travel south anymore because of the health insurance they sold it for something around eight thousand dollars.
Back in Ontario, with help from the Veterans' Loans Program, they managed to buy an old farmhouse in Streetsville. Before that we had been living with my grandmother on Hugo Avenue in Toronto. To my knowledge my parents never owned a home before Streetsville. They had lived on the island and in an apartment in Ajax and on a farm that would become Don Mills today, but they always rented or worked for it. Streetsville was the princely sum of $10,000, but it had no indoor plumbing and was heated with a stove. It was like going back in time to the eighteen hundreds. The next years were spent renovating the place, putting in central heating and indoor plumbing and many other things, including aluminum siding the entire place, so I assumed my parents got the money from somewhere.
In 1970 life for all of us changed dramatically. My parent packed up and moved out West to Kelowna. They had tried to sell the place in Streetsville before they left, but the market wasn't good, so they had taken it off the market and rented it instead. This was a fatal mistake. Not only did the guy renting it not pay the rent, but he left the place with the heat shut-off. The water pipes froze and the place was flooded, damaging everything, especially the original wood floors. My Dad had to come down by bus to assess the damage and repair everything. I don't know what they eventually sold it for, but a lot of the money went to a lawyer trying to sue the tenant for all the damage. Before any settlement was reached the lawyer committed suicide because he had embezzled money from another client, so my Dad lost everything as well.
While they were renting a house on Marshall Street in Kelowna, they would camp every week-end at a place called Shady Rest out in what was called Westbank at the time, now West Kelowna. They had a spot reserved right on the beach and one day the manager came by to tell them that they would not be able to camp there anymore because it was being converted into a mobile home park. My parents jumped on it and were amongst the first three people to lease lots on the beach. Somehow they managed to finance a mobile home costing $12,000 and put it on the site, where they would enjoy life for the next thirty-five years. It was an incredible spot, year round.
My Dad never seemed interested in starting any kind of business, but he had called me one day in a bit of a panic, telling me that friends of his were building a theme park and they had run into some money troubles. If we could come up with Nineteen Thousand dollars we would get forty-nine percent of the business, which was to be called The Flintstones. My Dad had been working part-time for the people that owned it, building log boats and many other things. He was very talented that way. My wife at the time would have nothing of it. I offered to put our house money in trust for two years and, if the theme park failed, we would come back to Ontario, but she wouldn't budge. My Dad could not come up with his share either, so we both lost out. The park went on to make over a hundred thousand dollars per week for many years and was eventually sold to interests from Calgary for 2.7 million dollars. Yes, our ships had come in and sailed without us.
When I moved out west in 1993 it was primarily because my mother had been diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and didn't have long to live. I wanted to spend whatever time she had left with her and Dad, not to mention my family out there. Mum and Dad seemed happy and they had their little pleasures, like "Happy Time" every day. My Dad was always puttering around with something. For a time he made little animal windmills, like Tweety and Sylvester. People loved them and he couldn't keep up, but I don't think he ever made any money.
Life changed again beyond drastically when my Dad died in my arms in the spring of 2005. That's when I got the rude awakening on their finances. As my father's executor and now my mother's care giver I had to know everything and it soon became clear they were not in good shape. First, my Dad had no insurance with a death benefit, which sure would have helped. There wasn't even any money to cover the costs of any funeral, even though his wishes were to be cremated and not buried. He also didn't want a sad funeral so I had a celebration of his life instead. Still the costs of the very basic process were twenty-five hundred dollars, money we did not have. I was fortunate to find a most compassionate funeral director who asked if my Dad was a Vet and then told me I could get the money from the Vet's association and that she would wait for the money. I have no idea what I would have done if she hadn't told me that.
Second, they had built up a large line of credit, too large, with a local bank and hadn't been making any payments except interest for many years. It looked like this is how my Dad dealt with their expenses being more than their fixed incomes for quite some time, if only because there was nothing that he had borrowed a specific amount for. It was the a very big build-up from their draw and it was allowed based solely on their thirty-five years with the bank. It is important to note here that although they owned their mobile trailer they did not own the land it sat on, in fact, they paid dearly to rent it, four hundred and twenty-five dollars a month when Dad passed away.
Dad's pension would now obviously stop, but his small Veteran's pension would thankful run for a year, so that was going to help a little. At the time of his death their home was on the market, but the decision was made that it would be too much for Mum with her Alzheimer's to lose Dad and then be forced to move, so we took it off the market. She was also getting worse and would need to go into a care facility, something that was not available at the time because there were over three hundred people on the "emergency" list already. I knew it was going to be tough to survive, but I hoped to be able to take advantage of programs such as Community Futures to see what I could do for money.
The biggest shock came with the arrival of my Dad's Visa bill. He owed a shocking fourteen thousand dollars and with an interest rate of nineteen percent. I had remembered him being very stressed about something with Visa, if only because it was the first time he had ever mentioned anything about their finances. He said that something had gone wrong with the automatic payment they were to take from their account and he hadn't noticed it on the bank statement, and now they were pressuring him to make up the back payments. He didn't say how much he owed or what the payments were, just that it was giving him grief. I can see why.
There were so many issues with this Visa account. First, how in the world did he ever manage to owe that much in the first place? And why, when they had a line of credit with the bank, and at five percent, didn't he just increase the line of credit and not up the Visa? When I delved into this with the bank, the first excuse I got was that Visa and the bank are separate operations and there is no coordination between the two. Weak excuse, at best. Second, the reason he owed so much was that he had called asking for an increase of ten thousand dollars to put a new engine in his disaster of a boat, something that the bank should never have allowed. When I questioned why they didn't at least offer to increase the line of credit, they had no answers and admitted that they should have looked after my father better. I told them I at the very least wanted the ridiculous interest charges reversed and the amount added to their line of credit. I then realized that for some unknown reason the account was only in my Dad's name, so in my mind the account was gone with him. I asked them to show me any documentation where my mother had agreed to pay the account. I also checked the law and discovered the debt did not automatically fall to my mother.
The next disaster with the bank was that, as executor of my Dad's estate now, I had to redo all the paperwork for the account. As soon as I notified the bank that my Dad had passed away they asked for his debit card and they cut it up right in front of me. No problem, I figured, because they would now give me one in my name for the account, right? My own bank, BMO, had issued me a card the minute I opened the account with them. No such luck. They then inform me that it will take a "couple of weeks" to issue me a card. When I asked how I was supposed to pay for things like groceries now, they had no answer. I had to carry cash.
Next thing they called me up to ask me to come in and bring my mother to sign new papers and I receive our debit cards. Remember that my mother's Alzheimer's was so bad she could not possibly control her money or have a debit card. She was a gambler and loved the casino, but with her memory she could easily blow all her money and not remember doing it, so a debit card was out of the question. I stressed with the manager that she was not to even mention this to my mother or sparks would fly. When we got to her office the very first thing she did was pull out my mother's debit card and ask her to sign it! I had to say that my mother was not allowed to have one, and that set her off. She blew up and stormed out of the office, hollering about not being able to have her own money and making quite a scene. I told the lady I was dealing with to go and get her because it wasn't my fault she hadn't listened to me. The manager ended up calming down my mother and explaining that I was just in charge of things like Dad was now and that the bank would do everything they could to help her. All total BS.
I explained that we were going to be losing Dad's pension now, but that I was going to try to get unemployment or find a way to make money to help out, and the bank manager said they would allow any increase I needed on the line of credit to help. I said that as soon as I could find a care facility for my mother I would be selling her place and pay down the line of credit. I mentioned that there were things I could do using my renovation experience to add value to the home and she agreed to extend whatever financing I needed. So, as bad as things were, I thought we would make it, at least until we could sell the place.
The next few months were challenging on so many levels, but we managed. Mum always blew up at me when I told her that things were different now and she could not afford to spend the kind of money she had been at the casino. This was a weekly fight. When the winter set in heating became a major issue. She insisted on having the heat set at twenty-five degrees, which was like an oven. We had a pellet stove in the living room, but the pellets were very expensive. Their place was also the only one in the park still using oil, which was also very expensive. In one three week period we spent $750 on pellets and oil. I kept the pellet stove blasting for her in the living room, but I kept turning down the thermostat for the furnace and every time she walked by it she turned it back up, swearing at me that it was her home and she wanted heat.
It started to drain our limited finances and my attempts to get work were also a disaster. I had managed to register for a course through Community Futures and get Mum into daycare, but she absolutely refused to go, so I lost the course and the funding. On top of all that the bank suddenly chose this time to inform me that they had changed their minds and would not allow any increase in the line of credit. We hit rock bottom when I had no money for either pellets or oil and we had no heat. Finally I managed to convince their oil supplier that, based on the thirty-five years we had been a customer they would deliver oil and let me pay for it as soon as the money came in. We would have frozen to death. The days my mother had to wear three layers of clothes and her coat were pure hell because she could never remember why it was so cold in there and begged me constantly to turn on the heat. It was hopeless.
The point here is that all of this could have been avoided if I had asked my father to share some information with me, just in case something happened to either one of them. I know this is difficult because no parent wants their children to interfere in what they view as their private affairs, but the reality is that one day you will be dealing with it whether you like it or not. It's a whole lot easier to ask the questions and find the information you will need when your parents are there to answer your questions than it is after they are gone.
To my dear Dad
Father's Day brings memories of the worst day of my life, when my father died in my arms. I have been tormented by the memory of that day and it always brings on the tears. I would give anything to have him back, but the reality is he's gone. I like to believe that he is sitting on a porch somewhere, with my mother, looking out at the lake they loved so much, having "Happy Hour" and enjoying life, whatever than means where they are now. Although both of my parent's lives ended tragically, my Dad's from what's called "dry drowning", a result of his asthma and my darling mother from Alzheimer's, they both lived long and mostly happy lives. My Dad made it to 81 and my mum to 84, although she didn't remember much the last few years of her life.
Another Father's Day without my kids
I will go to my grave forever regretting the loss of my kids. I did nothing to deserve this. If you have kids, treasure them and hold them forever close. If you are kids, never let a day go by without making an effort to stay in touch with your parents. They will not always been around and, trust me, whatever your relationship with them is, you will regret any missed moments when they are gone. I know.
Lessons Learned Too Late - You've got a friend
Do you remember your best friend from Grade Five? How about your coworkers at your first job? Or the people who attended your wedding (the first one)?
In days gone by people, especially family members, often lived in the same place, more often than not, small towns in the country. In places like the East Coast of Canada, the whole town might all be related, which makes dating a challenge. As time went by and the world got smaller and careers got less traditional and we moved out of the horse and buggy age and into the era of fast planes, families started living further and further apart, often only connecting at holiday times like Christmas, or family reunions or, much worse, funerals. You lost daily contact with your immediate family, your brothers and sisters and possibly your Mum and Dad, and cousins, well, they were soon distant memories.
Going back into the fifties and sixties, long before the technologies we have today, or sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Ancestry.com, you kept track of your high school friends with the yearbook and maybe a few phone numbers. You made all sorts of promises to stay in touch but you never did. You might have carried a small address book, but it soon became out of date as everyone moved around or away from your hometown. As you changed jobs you lost contact with everyone at your previous job. As you moved, maybe miles from your hometown, maybe even across the country, you lost touch with family and friends. You made new friends wherever you went, but they too moved away or you moved again and you lost touch. If, like me, you look back on a lifetime of jobs and places I've lived, you soon realize that you came into contact with hundreds and hundreds of people over your life and you often wonder "where are they now?"
Sites like ClassMates, Facebook, MySpace and so on are growing even more popular because they allow us to not only interact with our current friends, but they help to find long lost friends and family members we have long since forgotten. When I first joined ClassMates and registered under my grad year, I soon discovered many of the people I had gone to high school with. It was a real treat to learn where they had ended up, what they were doing now, and to reminisce about times we spent together. Sites like ancestry.com are devoted solely to tracing your family back through the generations. It isn't as popular or useful as a Facebook because it's not free and it needs people to go looking for you or your relatives. A combination of this site with Facebook would be ideal for getting in touch with old friends and colleagues.
In my own case, my parents moved me out of downtown Toronto to the middle of the country, north of Streetsville when I was only twelve. I lost touch with all of the friends I went to public school with because, first I no longer went to that school and, secondly, if I ever had anyone's phone number it was long distance to call them, so I would never have called anyway. I vowed that, as soon as I got my driver's licence, I would go back and visit them. Never happened. I went to your typical three-room schoolhouse in Churchville, Ontario and made many great friends, most of whom lived in the village of Churchville. I met my first love, Roxanne Rollings, in Churchville. I met Dave and Doug Fraser, Wayne Wilson (who I later learned married my Roxanne), and so many more guys and girls who were my life. A lot of them moved on with me when I graduated to go to Streetsville Secondary school, but, again, as important as they were in my life at the time, I lost track of all of them. Even the guys I was in the bands with, who were closer to me than my brother at the time, all drifted away. My first band, The Tempests, was with Chris Hayes, David Kirk and Don Thurston. No idea where any of them are today. I went on to be in bands with Doug (Buzz) Sherman, who went on to be in Moxy, but died tragically in a motorcycle accident some years later, Paul (Zak) Marshall, one of my best buddies ever, Nolan Yearwood, who was the Commissioner of Finance for the City of Toronto, Alan Macquillan, every bit the star. I really miss him and his stories. Victor Dimitroff, who I did find a couple of years ago on Facebook. These were all guys I played with over ten years of being in a band and they were an important chapter in my life.
My career spanned several employers over the years, most in and around Toronto and Brampton, but then I moved to the Okanagan in 1993, leaving there in 2007 to travel to Panama, then returning to Toronto in March 2009, and then to London in September 2009. It has been a journey and along the way I have met many wonderful people and I'm happy to call many of them my friends. Given all the time apart I don't know if those I consider to be good friends would still feel that way about me. Some I have hurt, unintentionally, like my previously oh so solid friend, Bianca, who came to me in my hour of need after my father passed away suddenly in 2005, and who since helped me out when I was struggling in Panama, for which I have not repaid her. I feel terrible that this has cost us our friendship and I hope one day to be able to repay her and rescue our friendship.
Facebook allows me to keep track of friends and people like those I met with what is now called the Okanagan Club. I get to make comments on their page, but hardly anyone ever comments back because they either don't know me or have long since forgotten when I was on the executive. It's kind of funny that, at the time, I put forth a proposal to widen the approach of the club to not just skiing, which it was at the time. Took a couple of years and a new exec but they finally bought into the idea.
For me, LinkedIn is gradually getting to be a sort of Facebook for business, as I widen my "network" more and more. It doesn't help a lot to rekindle old relationships at companies I have worked at and, in fact, some of them, like Shaw Fiberlink, are long gone anyway. Most of the people I worked with at the TD Bank, when I was only nineteen, are probably dead by now. I was just a kid.
My point in all of this is that, if you are young, or if you have kids that are young, get them to include their friends in their Facebook group, or at least get email addys for them. Email addresses, particularly ones like @hotmail, don't change with the provider, like Bell or Rogers, so they will probably stick. Encourage your friends or your kids to get @live.com or @live.ca email addresses with their full names, so that they are reserved, for women, at least until they get married. Long ago I got my full name, garycjones, at all of these - hotmail.com, gmail.com, live.com, and live.ca, so I will be the only one in the world with my name. This site is also the same, so if someone remembers my name they can pretty well find me.
Do all that you can to stay in touch with your friends. They are the family you choose.
Lessons Learned Too Late - A picture is worth a thousand words
Take lots and lots of pictures -
No question that technology has changed a lot over the years. When I was a kid my Dad had one of those old folding box cameras, but he did take a lot of pictures of us as kids. Those pictures are long gone now and I wish I had thought to scan them all before they were gone.
A big part of my life was my ten years in the band. Fans were always taking pictures of us, both on stage and with them at breaks, but today I don't have a single picture of me over all those years. I was in the house band at the old Club Bluenote, backing up some very famous entertainers, yet I don't have a single picture of those nine great months.
Over the twenty-three years I was married I owned all kinds of cameras, from instant cameras to decent digital ones, but I have but a handful of pictures of the kids and family. We did things like spend a week in Florida, going to Disneyland during our vacation and I don't have a single picture of our holiday. We went to Expo 86 and spent three weeks traveling around BC and Alberta with my parents. Again, not a single picture.
During the fourteen years I spent in the Okanagan I was a little better at getting pictures. Things like Merritt Mountain, hiking, skiing, boating and lots of other things I did get pictures of, but what about all my friends and my dance partners at the Corral and so much more? They are all wonderful memories in my mind, but I have very few or no pictures of any of it. Countless hours spent dirt-biking, snowmobiling in the mountains, boating, hiking and so much more, not to mention family. My mother and father are both gone now and all I have is my few photos to remember them by. Now that they are gone I wish I had hundreds of photos of all the special moments we spent together over the years.
So, no matter what you do or who comes into your life, take lots and lots of pictures. You will never regret it, especially not when you grow old and have them to look back on to relive those wonderful memories. If you have kids make it a regular thing to "interview" them every birthday to watch them grow up. Record every special, and even not so special, moment in their lives. Encourage them to take lots of pictures of their own friends growing up. One day they will thank you.
Lessons Learned Too Late - Your health is vital
Never take your health for granted.
Although I was never an athlete or played any organized sports, I was always in good shape. Except for when I crashed my dirt-bike and couldn't do anything for a year, putting on forty pounds in the process and being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, I was always active. When I was much younger I was a drummer in a band and that kept me in good shape, that and lugging equipment around. Before I got my license, living in the country meant I did a lot of miles on my bike.
My early years of marriage were consumed with home renovations and I was always either at my day job, or renovating our house. Over the course of my career, before my break-up, I did spend a lot of time either in my vehicle, travelling to either work or sports events for the kids, or on my butt at the office. I did bike ride with my daughter, Heather, and once in a while we would kick around the soccer ball, but there wasn't a lot of regular exercise. I did join the racquetball club and played at least once a week. I smoked. I drank. I ate poorly, but I was in okay shape. I took no regular medications and had no health issues.
My really "active" life started at the age of 43, when I moved to the Okanagan. I was determined to make up for lost time in Ontario, working all the time, so I took up pretty well every activity going. I joined the Courtplex and played racquetball regularly. I hiked the mountains. I dirt-biked the mountains with my Dad just about every week-end. I mountain biked. I roller-bladed. I downhill and cross-country skied. I water-skied. I snowmobiled in the Greystokes and around Revelstoke. I was always doing something, including renovating for some girlfriend at one time or another. I worked and played hard, but I felt great. I took a test for lung capacity at the Courtplex and they had to do it over again because they didn't believe the results. I was in the top three percent of Canadian men even though I smoked. I could play three hours of racquetball on a Sunday morning, then come off the court and light a cigarette. Even my friends who smoked were shocked.
After I was diagnosed with diabetes, life changed a little. I now had to take daily medication. My doctor told me that if I didn't lose the weight I had gained being off for a year that I would die, plain and simple. It was a wake-up call and I lost the weight in about four months and got active again, this time with even more passion. I remember things like cross-country skiing with Darlene and Norma, both twenty years younger than me, but after I reached the crest of the very long hill, I lit a smoke and waited about ten minutes for them to come over the top, huffing and puffing and cursing me when they saw me smoking. When I took my group out hiking every Sunday I would have to wait for them to catch up, again, many of them much younger than me. When we all went boating together, I was usually the one who wanted to go skiing all the time. I danced at the Corral from nine o'clock 'til closing, several nights a week. I was still in great shape.
Throughout my time in Panama and after I returned to Toronto, my diabetes was pretty well under control. I worked hard renovating in Panama and I walked everywhere, having no car or bike. In Toronto I got a bike and I bladed and biked the trails near my cousin's place. My cousin fed me too well, but my weight didn't change too much. When I came to London I still biked and roller-bladed and did some work for my then girlfriend.
This all came to a crashing end when through circumstances I had no money and no meds for six weeks. Although I begged anyone I could think of, from government to charitable organizations, no one would give me my meds and I ended up in the hospital with dangerously high sugar levels. There was a period of five days in December that I slipped in and out of what's called DKA, finally getting much needed insulin from my doctor. December 16th, my last day of work at Home Depot, was also my last smoke. I had no money for food, let alone cigarettes, so it wasn't much of a decision. Over the next six months I gained twenty-five pounds. I have acid reflux. My feet are swollen and painful all the time. I developed "frozen shoulder" in my left arm and cannot lift anything. Even the simplest movement is painful. My vision is blurry first thing in the morning. I sleep ridiculous hours. As someone who functioned well on a maximum of seven hours, and who never could "sleep-in" or nap during the day, now I get eight or nine hours at night, and I can nap for several more hours during the day. I laid down yesterday at three for a short nap and woke up at seven o'clock! My nurse says it is a side affect of the insulin I am taking, but I also know I have zero stamina now. I can't walk more than a few hundred yards before I need a rest. I can't bend over and tie my shoes. Between my arm and my weight, getting my socks on and off is a challenge. I take a whole mess of drugs, from early morning through bedtime. I hate needles, but I have to take four of them every day for the rest of my life.
So, the lesson here is to stay active, no matter what. Watch your weight and keep it down because, as you age, it gets much harder to keep the weight off. Look around you at all the older fat people. Maintain your ideal weight as long as you can. Don't deny yourself some good food, but do whatever it takes to stay in shape. Find whatever exercise turns you on and keep at it. You'll be glad you did. If you do "fall off the wagon" don't just accept it because it will only get much harder to take the weight back off or get back in shape. The longer you let yourself go, the harder it will be and, like me, you may just get to the point where there is no going back. You will feel like you aged overnight, believe me, I know.
"Adventure" Boating
It could be said that all of my boating in the Okanagan should be called "adventure" boating. This was a term Wade and I started using to describe just some of our boating experiences, but it could also describe my record with boats in general.
When I first moved to the Okanagan I believed in the adage that it was a crime to live on the lake and not have a boat. One of the very first things I did when I arrived in the spring of 1993 was to buy a boat from Dockside Marine, which was to set a theme for the next fourteen years. I put a deposit on it because we were heading back to Ontario in the van to sell off everything in the house on Mara Crescent and would be back in about three weeks or so. I was to bring them a certified cheque for $5,600 after we had water tested the boat. My brother and I met the sales guy from the dealership at the Kelowna marina and he took us out for a spin. The boat seemed perfect, so I handed over the cheque to the sales guy and my brother drove the boat back to our marina in Westbank. I was to pick-up the trailer later in the week.
When my mother and I returned from garage saleing Saturday morning, where I bought a tow rope and a spare gas can, my Dad greeted us at the door and, from the look on his face, my first questions was going to be "who died"? He told me he had watched a story on the news about a boat on fire over in Green Bay and he had run down to make sure my boat was still in the marina. It wasn't. We immediately phoned the RCMP to report my boat stolen and see if we could match up the information, but they had little to share. A local resident had gone out to the burning boat to make sure no one was on board, then he had phoned it in. Although the RCMP attended to where it sank, they had no information what-so-ever as to its location. They said it was way too deep and I would never find it. They were useless and proved even more useless as far as catching who stole my boat. I managed to find the witness and he was very helpful. I asked if the engine was in the "up" position or down, but he could not remember. Because the boat was in the marina I left the engine down and this would mean it might not have been destroyed in the fire. I hired a recovery crew and we met the witness out on the bay. Amazingly he was within twenty-five feet of where it went down. They towed it to the beach but as soon as it started coming out of the water I saw that the engine was in the "up" position and it was just a mass of molten metal. The leg was fine but everything else was toast.
Oh well, I thought, I never even got to drive my first boat, but the dealer's insurance would cover it so I just needed to find another boat. I called the dealer, who informed me that it was not covered by their insurance because it was a consignment boat. I said no one disclosed this to me, and they still had my trailer, so the deal was not finalized and they were obligated to still be insuring it. To my amazement they said insurance was up to the owners of the boat. When I called them they said that they had let the insurance lapse back in May when they took it to Dockside, who they understood were insuring it as part of their inventory. They were as amazed as I was that there was no insurance on the boat.
Before I just accepted that my welcome to the Okanagan had been losing $5,600, something I could ill afford, I contacted a lawyer who agreed that the deal was not finalized because I had not taken delivery of the trailer and had not signed off. Obviously I needed the trailer and the papers to transfer the insurance and get new plates for the trailer. He made it all sound pretty simple and said we could sue them in small claims court because it was less than ten thousand dollars.
When we first got to court I learned exactly what kind of closed-knit community Kelowna was. The principle from the dealer was an ex-mayor and he was greeted warmly by the judge. After hearing his argument that the boat had been paid for in full by certified cheque, the judge ruled that was sufficient to consider the deal done and we never even got a chance to speak. So much for fairness. Welcome to Kelowna!
Much as it pained me not to have a boat, it was a couple of years before I thought of owning a boat again. I don't even remember the exact circumstances of how I found my next boat. I seem to remember it was parked outside a door and window salvage place, which should have been my first clue. It was a strange little boat because it was a tri-hull, something I didn't even know existed. The guy from the store came out and said it was a consignment boat, but he knew a little about it. He said the tri-hull design made it very stable, especially in choppy water, which there was no shortage of on Lake Okanagan. We took it out on a relatively calm day and it ran great. He was right - it was incredibly stable. I bought it.
Although I don't remember exactly how many years I had my little 14 foot "cork" we sure had some interesting times. Every decent weather weekend was spent on the lake, most of time just trying to find some calm water to ski. A bunch of us boat owners would find each other somewhere around Kelowna and tie all the boats together, kick back, enjoy the sunshine and some "pops". It was heaven. At the end of the day someone would volunteer their place and we would buy some steaks and have a BBQ, then pull our boats and meet at the Corral for the night. It was the best times of my life with the best people. Thanks to boating I soon had about twenty really great friends.
Two of the more "adventurous" (read life threatening) experiences with this boat were the hydroplane races and our weekend across from Summerland. Pretty sure it was the first year of the races and, of course, the best place to watch them from is on the water. The wind was pretty strong and the water was choppy, conditions my boat didn't like much. As the water got too rough the races were cancelled and everyone started for home. We had been on the north side of the bridge. Often the conditions on either side of the bridge were night and day. This was one of those times. As we came under the bridge, heading for the Eldorado just down the shore from the bridge, where the trailer was, we encountered the biggest waves I had ever seen on the lake. Thankfully Wade, who has a lot more experience than I did, was driving. We had two very drunk girls in the back and he looked at me and said it was good they were drunk because they didn't know how much trouble we were in. That didn't make me feel much better.
He started basically "tacking" like a sailboat, because if we headed straight down the shoreline, the boat would have been swamped. Every once in a while Wade would shout that we had "incoming" and a wave would crash over the bow and flood the boat. I had the sump pump running full blast, but the boat was lurching so badly there was no way I could manage to also bail with a bucket. At one point, when Wade yelled, I was on the cell phone, so I calmly told them to hang on and held my phone up high so the water crashing over the windshield wouldn't soak it and then went back to talking. Wade told this story many times. Admittedly it must have looked pretty funny. At full speed, the ride to the El might have taken ten minutes, max. This day, with all the tacking, we didn't get close until forty-five minutes after coming under the bridge. The swells were so huge I had no idea how I was going to get off to get the trailer and even less idea how Wade was going to get the boat on the trailer. As we approached the dock he said I had one shot at it and I would have to leap because he couldn't come in too close or he would crash into the dock. I literally took a "leap of faith", praying to make the dock, and not smash my body into the end of it, or worse, hit the water and drown, but I made it.
I backed into the boat launch area as best I could but the waves were just huge. I didn't know whether to stay to help Wade or stay away to avoid being killed when the boat came launched in mid air somewhere around the trailer. So true to Wade, he hit the crest of a wave, surfing the boat up towards the trailer. As the wave broke the boat landed perfectly on the trailer, literally a few inches from the winch. Wade just bowed. I hooked it on and pulled out and we tied it down properly. I had never seen anything like that, before or since. There were so many things that could have gone so wrong!
One of the joys of having a boat was to pack up and head to the other side of the lake, to Okanagan Mountain Park, find a deserted cove and camp for the night. One warm summer night Jackie and I loaded up some firewood and headed across to a favorite cove. It was getting a little dark by the time we got there but I managed to tie the boat off with the anchor and a nearby tree. We slept in the raw, of course, and when we woke to a glorious sunny, warm day, well, nature took its course. The next thing we hear is the giant CAT machine start-up at the top of the cliff, where someone was building a house! We made some guy's morning. You never saw two people get dressed faster!
Wade and I thought we would see if we could get a bunch of our friends together and camp across the lake for a weekend. Early Friday morning we started looking for places but they were all taken, all the way down the lake. We finally found a perfect sheltered cove with no one there, so we decided to head off early the following weekend and claim it. The following Friday was an awesome day. We loaded all our stuff into my boat and Wade's, Summer Thunder, and made our way down to our cove, just across the lake from Summerland. We spent the day and much of the next ferrying people across from Shaughnessy's Cove. In between we ate, drank, water skied, hiked and, in general, had a blast. I think over the weekend we had some twenty-one people spend some of the weekend there.
The number one "adventure" ever? Well, we decided to boat down to a pub in Penticton Saturday night, so we loaded up both boats. I remember having at least four good looking babes in my boat for the trip down. We had tied our boats off at the docks in front of the Lakeside and gone into the bar. Around ten-thirty someone came into the bar hollering that whoever owned the boats outside should get out there right away before they smashed to smithereens. When we rushed down to the dock the first thing I saw was that my bumpers were completely smashed to bits and my boat was crashing up against the dock. In minutes it would also be in pieces. Wade hollered instructions to me that I had only one shot at cresting the wave out of the marina or I would be smashed on the rocks behind us. Where were the girls who had traveled sown with me? Safely on Wade's big boat. I had a moment of panic at going it alone, but at the last minute, my buddy Greg volunteered to risk his life with me.
We no sooner managed to leap over the first giant wave out of danger from the docks, than the bow nose-dived into a huge wave and we were swamped by tons of water. In the darkness I heard Wade hollering at me to speed up so that we would cut the wave and not drown. I gently moved the throttle up but we were being thrown around like the cork my boat was. I honestly didn't think we were going to make it, especially not in the pitch black of night with no idea where we were or how not to crash on shore. Wade saved my life that night. He kept checking ahead and coming back, circling my boat and making sure we were okay. It took us hours to navigate to below the single light we remembered up on the hill and get into our little protected cove. No idea what we would have done if we had not had our sheltered cove or anywhere to go. It was a brutal storm. I wanted to kiss the sand when we finally made it back.
When we packed up the next day and bagged all our garbage, as we always did, everyone started piling the bags in my boat, not Wade's. I asked if they thought I was a garbage barge, which was a huge mistake, as the name stuck. I came down the lakes with babes and went back with bags of garbage. Not a happy ending.
Near the end of one summer we went up to boat and camp at a campground in the Shuswap, I think it was called Scottie's Cove. We ventured down the south leg of the Shuswap and ended up in a little marina, called Little River Boatworld, to get gas. While I filled up, Wade had wandered up to the lot to look at the boats for sale. He called me to come and have a look at one. It was what's called a "deep V" for the hull design. It had a very wide berth; a ski locker and an Evinrude 135 outboard. It was also very clean with hardly a mark on it. This boat had obviously been cared for. Wade urged me to speak to the dealer about it and I did. He said it was a 1984, one owner boat that they had always taken care of from the day it was new. They had just done a complete engine rebuild and he showed me the file, which showed $3400 for the rebuild alone, plus regular maintenance since 1984. They were asking something like $9900, but I told the guy I would only pay $8400, which was nothing to do with the boat value; it was all the money I could manage until I sold my current boat. He phoned the owner and to my considerable surprise and delight, he agreed. They would give it the once over and deliver it down to me in Westbank the next week.
So, here I was owning two boats all of a sudden. I was working at Central Valley Trucks at the time, who were located right at the very busy corner of Highway 97 and Sexsmith Road, so I asked if I could put the boat in the yard with a For Sale sign and they said no problem. A few days later I got a call from the RCMP telling me they had found what was left of my boat just outside of town on Glenmore Road. Although we had a security video showing them hooking up to the trailer, the black and white quality was too poor to read a plate number. I went to see the boat which had been ditched off the side of the road. There was nothing left but a shell. They had even stolen the sump pump. I managed to get a decent insurance settlement, plus they never asked me about the trailer, which was still fine and I sold it for over a thousand dollars on top of the insurance settlement, which was about six grand, so I made out okay.
There's a whole sidebar story here as to why it took forever to get my money from the insurance company, involving a boat that Greg wanted sold and he had transferred it into a friend's name, Don, in Vancouver. It had been stolen the very same weekend as mine and when the police called Don, like an idiot, he said he knew nothing about it, so the police thought there was some sort of ring stealing boats and they thought I was part of it. I wasn't.
The funny part of the new boat was that I had to put ten hours on the engine before I could take it over a thousand revs, so I spent the better part of a week puttering along the shoreline in Westbank. Finally on Saturday morning I knew if I went down to get gas in Peachland that would come close to the ten hours, so off I went. I was disappointed to be all alone on such a momentous occasion, but no one was available. It took forever to get to Peachland, of course, cruising at about trolling speed, but eventually I filled up. As I looked out to the lake that had been so calm coming down, now I could see the whitecaps. Just my luck, I thought! All this time puttering around to log hours on the engine and now this!
I eased out of the marina and started heading back to Westbank. The boat was pitching and rolling in the swells, so I gave it a little more throttle. It felt like it was cutting the crest of the waves a little better, so I gave it some more. Before long I was at full speed, knifing through the crests of waves with ease. I could have had a drink, the ride was so clean and stable. I was thrilled and let out a yippee, but no one was with me to hear me. I was so excited to tell Mum and Dad how great the boat was when I got back. It was the start of many hours of wonderful boating in my favorite boat. It was everything I could have wanted. The deep ski locker was perfect. The wide beam was perfect for having lots of people on board. The engine just purred and you could have a normal conversation at full speed. The deep V design is perfect for conditions on the Okanagan.
Had I not run into money problems I would never have had to sell that boat. I don't remember the exact circumstances but I had a period where I didn't work and money was getting tight. It was nearing the end of summer, the worst possible time to sell a boat, but I had no choice. I parked it on the side of 97 at Ethel and prepared to sit there until I sold it. I got asked to move it twice, and I said I would, but I stayed put. Eventually a nice young couple stopped to have a look and they ended up buying it. Although I had installed a smoking stereo system in it for a few hundred bucks, I basically got back what I paid for it. This was my last boat and will probably stay that way.
Although not specifically my boat, Dad's boat sort of ended up being mine and it was even more of a disaster. It involved a crooked dealer, a crooked seller, and a horrible bank, but it's one for another day. I'm missing boating on the Okanagan a lot right now and don't feel like another story at the moment. More later.
Memories of the Kettle Valley Trail
My Dad, rest his soul, and I spent almost every weekend dirt-biking on our trusty Hondas. We saw such amazing country and had so many wonderful memories. You couldn't beat dirt-biking for a cheap sport. I had several Hondas over the years, my favorite a 1987 Honda 185 that we bought off George who used to run the off-road adventures. Dad and I modified an old boat trailer by adding ramps using steel door frames and tie down bars.
We could load our bikes in about five minutes. We had a pack of beer in a cooler strapped to the back of the bike. Mum packed us a lunch. Even though we rode miles, one ride being two hundred and fifty kilometers through Douglas Lake ranch, we hardly ever used more than a couple of bucks of gas. It was always a hoot when we stopped and opened the beer, which, of course, exploded after being bounced around on the back of a dirt bike.
We biked everywhere around Kelowna and up behind Peachland, and up in the mountains around Revelstoke. My very first ride, when I got my first bike, was the Kettle. That was back in the days before motorized vehicles were prohibited. At the time most of the trestles were scary as hell, with missing ties everywhere. We had parked at the lot at the end of June Springs road and, after a couple of the smaller trestles, which were scary enough, we came to the huge steel trestle, I think number 5 or 6. We got off our bikes and walked to the start of the bridge. I was amazed at how high we were (I think it's two hundred feet above the valley) and I was worried about all the broken and missing cross ties. Dad said, naturally, "don't look down" and told me to just think about it being a normal road, forgetting we were so high and death appeared almost certain. I still remember the moment of panic when I hit that first tie and the bike started lurching up and down as I crossed the next ties. Thankfully most of the missing and broken ties were off to the sides, as I had no clue what to do if they were in my path. You couldn't turn the wheel or down you would fall between the ties and you would be thrown off like a bucking horse, falling to your untimely demise at the bottom of the canyon. I think that bridge is something like five hundred feet long, but that day it felt like it was miles until I finally reached the safety of the other side. I wanted to get off and kiss the ground. I also had thoughts of killing my father for making me go across, but he couldn't stop laughing, which took the edge off the moment, that is, until he reminded me we had to go back the same way. I had forgotten that or I may never have gone in the first place.
Over the next ten years or so we never had a "bad" ride. Every one was filled with adventure beyond anything I had ever done, then or since. On one ride, I think up to Jack Pine lake, we were cruising along, Dad in front this time (we took turns eating each other's dust), when all of a sudden there was the biggest moose I had ever seen, trotting along beside Dad. They were both moving along at a pretty good clip and Dad was looking back at me with a huge smile on his face. All I could think of was what if that moose decided to turn into Dad. He would be just a memory. After a bit the moose did turn, but went off the road, probably as startled as Dad was at the experience.
Don't remember exactly what year it was, but one day when we went up to bike the Kettle, there were new barriers built and signs saying our days of dirt-biking the Kettle had come to an end. From then on I went up many times but on my mountain bike now. Still a wonderful place to go! As we sat on our beach in Westbank, watching the fire across the lake, I had no idea that I would wake up one morning to learn the trestles were gone. I had worked with the restoration society, adding planking and safety railings, with a great bunch of people. I broke down crying at the thought that it was all gone now. The fire of course went on to destroy 234 homes which was even more tragic. I was so angry when I learned from someone related to a fire-fighter that they had decided to "let it burn" when they first arrived at the initial fire, supposedly because they had been arguing for years to do a controlled burn in Okanagan Mountain park. The investigation that followed was a political white-wash and the truth never came out.
Another horrific experience with the Kettle was a windy day we were biking around number fourteen to eighteen, if I remember right. The wind was so strong that we were getting off our bikes and walking them across the very open and dangerous trestles. As tough as it is to ride across, it's even more fun trying to push a two hundred and fifty pound dead weight bike up and over all the cross ties. I got about half way across when I sudden strong gust of wind made me think I would be blown off. I had a moment of sheer panic and froze, afraid to move a muscle. I called to Dad, who had gone ahead of me, for help. As soon as he saw me frozen in terror he hollered that he would get across and then come back for me. It seemed to take forever, but he came back, took my bike from me and then coached me to walk across. I wanted to get down on my hands and knees. My hard leather biking boots felt like I would slip and fall any minute. It was not a walk in the park by any means. The following week we learned that a nineteen year-old girl has fallen to her death the following week off that same bridge. She was with her boyfriend, who must have been traumatized for the rest of his life. When we went up again there was a stone monument to her with her picture. It was a difficult and emotional moment for us. Such a tragedy! Naturally I thought about how that could have easily been me.
I know after the fire there was a huge movement to rebuild the trestles. When I left the Okanagan some had been restored and some had bypasses built. I don't know what the status is today, but in my dreams I hope to get back there one day and again bike the famous Kettle, one of the Okanagan's least known treasures.
Just Be Friends
This one is for all the broken-hearted men
Who feel that they will never love again.
They had found the one they’d been searching for
Someone to love unconditionally and truly adore.
But something went wrong along the way
The moment of dread. Those words she’d say.
“Let’s just be friends” ripped a hole in your heart
Just when you thought you would never part.
She was your one true love. The girl of your dreams.
Were those moments of love not what they seemed?
So lonely as one. So much better as two.
Now filled with pain. No idea what to do.
Too much sadness and pain for one man to bear
How could she do this to me? Why doesn’t she care?
