Three children, Katharine (in Toronto), Jessica (in New South Wales, Australia) and John (in Waterloo) call me Dad. Their mother Bonnie and I were married in Kitchener in 1972. Our children are all married and I am Pop to 5 lively little ones.
Bonnie and I both went to WLU, then on to the University of Toronto for another year. We moved back to the K-W area for one year before starting a 39 year odyssey to Northern Ontario where we began a teaching career in the pulp and paper town of Kapuskasing. The name Kapuskasing means ‘bend in the river’. The land up there is dotted with lots of lakes. The terrain is like the prairies only with extensive black spruce forests punctuated with birch, poplar and tamarack species.
When we moved there in August 1974, we found a small one bedroom apartment. Bonnie and I had the back apartment and a French Canadian couple occupied the front apartment. Our gas bill for the month of January 1975 was $8.40. January 1975 was the month that the couple in the front apartment were to have their first child. Now the husband did not own a car so a taxi was called when it was time to go to the hospital for the birth of the baby. When the taxi came, the husband yelled that the taxi was here. He ran out and jumped in the taxi and told the driver to get him to the hospital right away as his wife was going to have a baby. The driver took off to the hospital. When they got to the hospital, the husband exclaimed with a few expletives that he had left his wife at home. So they had to go back to get here. She was not a happy camper but it turned out OK. So life in Kapuskasing had started.
The ice in the arena there goes in about August 15 each year, to be available for the triple A midget hockey team and for the hockey school. I was asked to come out to play for one of the men’s league teams. It was lots of fun with, as Don Cherry would say, “A few pops after the game was done”. Twenty-eight years of hockey provided lots of exercise, along with a few dislocated shoulders and torn knee ligaments. If I had the chance, I would do it all again.
Teaching was demanding but fun for the most part. Bonnie was teaching English to a group of French speaking ladies. When Christmas break came, most times we drove 11 hours to visit with family.
In 1978 our eldest daughter Katharine was born, followed by Jessica in 1980 and then John in 1983. Life had never been so hectic but immensely enjoyable. After John was born we purchased a much larger house that overlooked ‘the bend in the river’.
It was in the late 1980’s that I got the bug with geology. Rock outcroppings became very interesting but Bonnie said I could not keep the rocks in her kitchen cupboards! Three of us got our memberships in the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada and off we went tromping around the bush. We taught ourselves what different rocks and minerals were and how to read aeromagnetic maps.
As our teaching careers came to an end, we looked forward to travel and other activities. Bonnie excelled in quilting, scrapbooking and ancestry research. But cancer reared its ugly presence and we lost a lovely caring person last September.
Life goes on and one has to keep moving forward. I enjoy investing and learning more about cash flows, cost containments and pay out ratios. I enjoy reading economic books like ‘Cold, Hungry and in the Dark’, ‘Gravity Shift’ and ‘Purple Chips, a step up from blue chips’.
I was given the opportunity by Glen Agar to join the Rotary Club of Kapuskasing in 2004. After realizing what Rotary did in the world, I felt I had to seize the opportunity to help others. Our projects included:
- Getting 4500 books sorted and sent off to South Sudan (letter of thanks in plastic sleeve)
- Getting 23 wheelchairs refurbished and delivered to Kingston, Jamaica
- Books collected and sent to Native reserves up on Hudson Bay’s coast
- Building fishing rod racks that were auctioned and raised $4,400 to go to the Polio Plus program
In conclusion, I would like to give you two quotes with meaning for me, the first from Stephen Leacock, author of ‘Sunshine Sketches’:
"I’m a great believer in luck, the harder I work, the more I get of it."
And the second quote is from Abraham Lincoln:
"Life is not the number of years in your life. It’s the life you put in your years."
Thanks for the opportunity to address you.
P.S. Currently radon gas has my attention. Information from Environment Canada is available.
Jim decided that instead of talking about 30 years in the insurance business and 15 years as a Condominium Property Manager (which would be quite boring), he would talk about growing up in Belfast Northern Ireland.
Jim was born in Belfast and went on to become the eldest of 10 children growing up in a tiny little bread box of a house with his parents.
In spite of all the bad things that have happened in Northern Ireland over the last 35 years commonly known as “The Troubles”, there still lots of good things about the country.
The main employer in Belfast is and has been the aircraft factory. Some of their major achievements has been the first vertical takeoff plane (hopefully by design and not putting the engine in the wrong way. The STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft was invented and produced here allowing passengers and cargo to get into places with short runways.
The second biggest employer was the Shipyard being the largest in the world in its time. It is of course famous for the building of the Titanic. 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic and a lot of local people were sporting tee shirts showing a picture of the Titanic ship and underneath it said “It was OK when it left here”. Belfast was also renowned for the largest rope works and linen mills in the world.
Some of the famous people who have come from Belfast - Van Morrison (musician), George Best one of the greatest soccer players of all time. Many golf stars - Darren Clark, Graham MacDowell, and the current world number one - Rory McIroy.
Jim came to Canada in 1967 on the “assisted passage” program where you paid $10 up front and repaid the remainder of your fare once you began working. He signed the forms and paid his money and was in Canada 2 weeks later.
Jim has two sons, Mike in telecommunications, and Pete in commercial real estate
. He also has two stepsons Andrew, who, hopefully within the next month will become a police officer in York Region and Trevor who is in his last year at Carlton University.
Jim and his wife Linda came to Waterloo for two reasons - 1, so Linda could take over her new job as CEO of KidsAbility and - 2, so that Jim could retire.
Jim would like to enjoy a long retirement, travel more with his wife to Europe, spend more time at his cottage, eventually figure out the road system in Kitchener/Waterloo, and maybe one day see the Leafs win the Stanley Cup (ah well one can dream).
President Candi thanked Russ and Jim
and there being no further business, Candi closed the meeting at 1:35 pm
