Copyrite `04.

This is, as near as I can remember, an accurate list & description of places that I have been employed, with the hopes of receiving fiscal remuneration.

Many times over the years I have heard people complain that there are no jobs.  The only times I have not been able to find a job is when I didn't look.

In `94 I ordered out for Chinese.  That is to say, I sponsored a Chinese lady as an immigrant.   She had been in Canada about two weeks and thought that she had been holidaying enough and it was time to go to work. 

As she didn't know the city, nor the bus routes, I figured it was best to find her a job within walking distance of home.   I took her out one morning and started pounding on doors.   Starting at the nearest business to our house.

Going into business buildings and having absolutely no idea what the business was, just a name on the door, we would walk in and I would ask them if they were hiring and explain that Bin was looking for work and that she couldn't speak English or Cantonese.   Most places would say they didn't need anyone.   Some places would ask what kind of work she was looking for and I would say, "Anything".

We started about nine thirty in the morning, giving employers time to get the morning rush straightened out.  That's also the time of day the boss has found out that someone didn't show up for work and they are short a hand for the day.

The second day we started at the building next to the one where we had left off the day before.  On the third day we only spent an hour because we found her a job that she started the next week.

In `95 I turned in eleven sets of T 4's for my tax calculations.   One year I turned in twelve. 

The secret to finding a job is to ask.   Don't spend all day looking through the paper or sitting around an employment office.  Go out early in the morning and knock on doors, close to where you live. 

Why spend money on commuting if you don't have to?

ABBREVIATIONS USED ON THIS PAGE

Abbreviations for Canadian provinces: Alta, Alberta; B. C., British Columbia; Man., Manitoba; Ont., Ontario

CJIB – Radio station in Vernon, B. C.

E - 183 Employers. 

Gas Pot – A motor that uses gasoline for fuel

Hwy - Highway

TCH - Trans Canada Highway

The BIG R – A radio station in Salmon Arm, B. C.   I don’t recall the real call letters.

For explanations of truckers terms see my Trucker's Glossary

Author’s Note: When I speak of chips, or chip trucks, I am not talking about potato chips.  I speak of wood chips that are used to make pulp. Pulp is used, mainly, to make paper, but is also used to make lipstick and many other products.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

1952?

E-1 -  Maintenance man

    I was about six years old, give or take a year or two. When we would go camping, in Kelowna we would put our tent on the beach, at the end of Gyro Park.  Friends of ours owned a house and a concession stand there.  I remember the sour smell of the machine that cut the potatoes into french fries.

Dad kept the fuel for the camp stove in a one gallon clear white jug. One morning the sun, shining through the glass, burned a hole through the tent and into a mattress.  Luckily mother smelled it before it burst into flames.

When we went camping we had two, full size, tick, mattresses rolled up on the roof of the car.

I believe I received ten cents, per hour, or maybe per day, helping the maintenance man in Gyro Park.  He would carry one end of the irrigation pipes, used for the sprinkler system, and I would carry the other.  I'm sure I was more hindrance than help. 

This was my first job other than working for my father.

E-2 - Helping deliver newspapers.                 

    When we lived in the West end of Edmonton I helped one of the neighbour boys deliver the Edmonton Journal.   He paid me ten cents per day.

He introduced me to French Fries with Vinegar, though I much prefer ketchup and gravy, now.

E-3 - Selling and delivering magazines,

Has been moved to SE-1

1959

E-4 - Janitor `59/7 - `60/7

    The man who lived next door to our first home in Gleichen, Mr. Babitsky, had the janitorial contract at the school and each night after school, for seventy-five cents an hour, I would sweep and mop floors and take out the garbage.

His son, Earl, much older than I, tied me up in a chain, with a padlock, and locked me in the coal room. 

I slipped off my shoe, slipped out of the chains, climbed up the coal chute, and went back to work. 

He never figured out why I didn’t get in trouble, with his dad, for not getting all my work done on time.

E-5 - Throwing hay

    In summer and fall I would get work with the neighbours throwing bales of hay at harvest time.

I only list one job here but I worked for several different farmers for a few years.

When the season would start we would get choosy about who we worked for.  We would try to work for the one who served the best food.

We generally got 35 cents an hour plus two big meals a day.

The one place we didn’t like to work was Imbeau’s because their bales were wrapped with wire instead of twin.  The wire would cut through your gloves fairly quickly, and then, of course, your hands.

Plus the bales weighed 90  pounds.

« Go back To My LIFE LINE

1962

E-6 - Paper route; Province & Sun July & Aug.

This has been moved to SE-2

E-7 - Sanitary Food Market  `62 Aug. - 63 Apr.

    I have a friend who was working in a corner store.  One night when my father and I went to the sawmill we saw him working in the mill.  Larry told me that he had quit his job at the store and as far as he knew no one had taken his place. 

When we got home I phoned Mr. B. and asked for the job.   Jack told me that if I could get my driver's license he would hire me. 

The next day, my sixteenth birthday, my father took me into Vernon where I passed my test, with flying colours, even though I had never parallel parked before.  The next day I started work.

After school my duties were to put up orders and deliver them.  On Saturdays I would stock shelves, wait on customers, put up and take out delivery orders.   I drove a Ford half ton.  I was paid seventy-five cents an hour.

I got to a customer's house, one day and half their groceries were rolling around in the back of the truck. The other half were missing.

I had gone over the railway crossing too fast and I had also left the tailgate open.. 

Luckily, I was able to go back down the street and find all the groceries, in good condition.

  E-8 - Cutting thistles

    My father’s office was in the premises of the Real Estate. One of the realtors had an empty lot on the edge of town. The lot was overgrown with tall thistles.  George Salt hired me to cut them down.

After a few hours of swinging a large scythe and making no headway I quit the job and suggested to Mr. Salt that he hire a farm tractor with a mower.

1963

E-9 - Bob's Lucky Dollar   Cliff St. July & Aug     

    I don't know why I changed employers but I worked one summer for Bob instead of Jack.  I did the same work for Bob as I did for Jack, plus use the grinder to make hamburger, and used a brand new Valiant as a delivery vehicle.  

I pushed in the cigarette lighter and when it got hot it popped out so hard it landed on the seat and burned a hole in the new upholstery.

Another time, I was passing a slow driver and I passed as we went over a railway crossing.  The crossing wasn’t wide enough and both of my left tires were flattened, and the wheels bent, as they bounced over the rails.

I spent the rest of the summer working for free as I had to pay back the tow truck and the repairs.

1964

   
E-7 - Sanitary Food Market   Jul. & Aug.

    I recall, one day, coming out of the back room with an armload of dill pickles in jars.  Mr. B. came up behind me and poked me in the ribs.  One thumb on each side.  I jumped and dropped the pickles. 

Jack didn't say anything, just went and got the mop.  

The store smelled of pickles for weeks.

1965

E-10 - Pump Jockey and AAA Tow Truck Driver.  10845 61 Ave.   Mar. - Apr. (Now, `04, a Mac's Convenience Store, with gas bar)

    At that time Martin Estate Esso was South of Edmonton but now it is well within the city. 

I was working at an Esso service station where I pumped gas and drove tow truck. 

One cold winter night a customer was in a hurry and I took my glove off to write out his credit slip instead of going inside.  

My hand froze to the gas pump and we had to use coffee to release me, the only thing coffee is good for. 

I quit shortly after that.

E-11 - Salesman

    This was door to door selling but I didn't knock on doors.

I would pick names out of the phone book, whom I thought were single ladies, and set up appointments.

I was selling a line that was of interest to young ladies who were going to get married.

Hope chests, and everything that went in them.   Sewing machines, pots and pans, fine china, etc.

I never made a sale.

I never realized it at that time but after many years of selling for many companies I now realize that I am a great opener, but a poor closer.

E-12 - Hudson Bay Wholesale Warehouse   11807 105 Ave.     Mar. - `66 Jan.

    I got a job with The Bay, although in those days it was called by its full name.

I was working in a warehouse near the rail way tracks.   Here they stored all manner of stuff that was not sold in the retail stores. These products were sold to little corner stores or used to put in coin machines.

The Bay had one of the largest vending machine operations in Canada.  The vending machines at U of A required two full time service men.

 I started as a penny puncher in the Vending Department.  In those days, cigarette machines couldn't give change, so the change, two pennies was inserted through a small slit in the plastic wrap  My job was to unwrap cartons of cigarettes, hold each package against a machine which would punch a hole in the plastic wrap.

In my spare time, which wasn't often, I was learning how to repair the machines.

When I learned that I would never be promoted to a driver, because I wasn’t 21 years of age, insurance was more expensive for underage drivers, I transferred to the wholesaled department which was in the same building.

We carried all the different brands from all the countries in the world as we supplied all the cigar stores. At that time we were paying $3.16 a carton and selling them for $3.18 a carton. 

 Each payday I would buy a carton.  Each time I would try a brand I had never tried before.

I worked in the tobacco department putting up orders of tobacco products and then shoving the trays along a line of rollers where other workers would add other products such as: frying pans; sugar; chocolate bars; etc.

Because of its type of construction and its food content, the warehouse building was designated a fallout shelter in case of nuclear attack.

The building was situated underneath a siren that was to be used in case of nuclear attack. They tested it one day. You have never experienced such an ear shattering noise.

1966

E-13 - Pondosa Pine Sawmills   Mar. - Jul.

Img  E-13
(Photo `03) The empty space on the far shore was the site of the mill.
The logs were floated across the lake from where this picture was taken.

    The Pondosa Pine was a huge mill that hired seventy-five men per shift and ran two shifts a day.   It was far from a town and they had trouble keeping a crew.   I started as a feeder for the senior resaw, I guided cants, large pieces of wood, into the saw and I helped the sawyer change the blades.   I got $2.15 / Hr.

After only two weeks we were closed for two weeks for maintenance.  When they called me to come back, I asked them if I could have the sawyer's job, I had heard that he had been fired. 

I received $2.35 an Hr. and had to quit after a month because I hurt my back.  They put me on light duty which meant I wandered around the mill relieving anyone who needed to go to the washroom or take off early.  I did virtually every job in the mill except run the head rig, main saw.

The job I liked best was feeding the jack ladder.   This is an endless chain that takes the logs out of the lake and into the mill.  On really hot days in the summer we would accidentally fall off the wharf and into the lake.   We didn't stay in very long because the water was pretty cold.

The mill closed for two weeks maintenance in the summer and I stayed on to do repairs.  Going to work one day my car broke down and as I was going to be late anyway I phoned in sick. 

After fixing the car I and two others went to Banff for the weekend.  When we got back to Enderby on Monday we phoned in sick again and two of us packed up a tent and some gear and went back to Banff for a whole week.

E-14 - Celgar ( Columbia Cellulose) Hooking chokers   Aug. - Sept.

    In the fall I joined J. and J. in Nakusp and went into the bush hooking chokers, putting steel cable around trees that have been felled, and then hooking them on the bullhook, the big hook on the end of the cable that is on a winch behind a; skidder, a cat, caterpillar tractor, or bulldozer.

Several trees together make a turn and while the cat, or skidder, drags the turn to the landing the chokerman sets more chokers, on the West Coast they call it setting beads, to be ready for the cat when it returns.

I also worked as a landing man.  The landing man undoes the chokers from the trees when a turn comes in.  With an axe or a saw he trims off any branches and the top of the tree.  With a stamp hammer he puts a brand on the end of the tree, now a log as the branches and top are gone. 

The hammer has raised letters on the head which are the brand or identifying mark of the company that is doing the logging.   Logs are branded to prevent theft.

E-15 - CKAY  Sept. - `67 Jun.

    Everything comes to he who waits.  

After many years of looking, I found a radio station that would take an untrained DJ.  CKAY   1500 on your AM dial. 

I had the 6 PM to 1 AM slot on weekdays playing MOR, middle of the road, and on Sat. Afternoons I played R&R, rock and roll.   A new manager took over and I learn to like something I had never heard before, C&W, country and western music. 

Then a radio station in Victoria took over the management and we went easy listening and automated.  All I would do was put the big reel to reel tapes on the machines and push the play button.  The tapes were made in Victoria and I would break in every now an then to read the news or give the time.  

Then they automated that. 

About that time ASP2 moved back to Alberta so I gave up and left.

1967

E-16 - Flyers

    I worked for a delivery company going door to door delivering flyers.

Most apartments wouldn’t let you in but, my partner and I, would pick the lock on the front door and, starting from the apartment furthest away from the manager’s apartment, slide a flyer under the door of every apartment.

We got paid $1 per hour. 

The man who drove the vehicle to take us to our routes knew all the sleazy restaurants and he would advance us $1.00 at noon time. We could get lunch for $1.00

For the Burnaby Centennial we delivered booklets throughout the city of Burnaby.

We also did some flyers in British Properties.   This took a lot of walking per flyer as there are very long driveways, and they are far apart, on steep hillside.

E-17 -  Koffman Food Importers 1375 Odlum Dr.     Jun. - Jul.    

Img  E-17 (Photo `06) Cheeses from around the world.

I brought boxes out of the coolers, opened the boxes, unwrapped the cheese, and passed them on to the cleaning girls.
A few of us from work filled the trunk of my car with beer and spent a Sunday on the beach at Point Roberts.
Working in the cooler the next day was very pleasent, it felt soothing for my sunburn.

E-18 - The BIG R

    In  the Okanagan Valley, I tried to get a job in radio but the best I could get was spare board, and Saturday mornings, at the Big R in Salmon Arm.  

I tried for a job as writer, writing ads.   The boss gave me some facts and said to write an ad.   He said what I wrote was very good but I took too long. I hadn’t realized there was a time limit so I took my time and made it the best I could.

E-19 -  The BIG R  and CJIB

    I made a few dollars as a freelance news reporter selling tips, stories, and reports to the Big R and CJIB.

E-20 -  Porta Sawmills   Aug. - `68 Feb.        

    A two by four is a piece of wood two inches thick and four inches wide.  A two by four is, or was for many years, eight feet in length.  Nowadays six foot lengths are also common.

Two by fours are also known as studs because they have been habitually used as studding for construction.  If you live in a wood frame building your walls will probably be constructed with two by four studs.

Stud mills are small sawmills that concentrate on cutting smaller logs into studs.  Often the mills were made portable to save on transportation costs.  Instead of bringing the logs to the mill the mill was taken to the forest.

Stud mills generally concentrate on stud logs, leaving the larger, and the smaller, logs for bigger sawmills.  They are not designed for logs over one foot in diameter.   Nor are they designed for logs smaller than six inches.

Large logs can be cut into two by six or two by twelve while smaller logs can be cut into two by three or two by two.   Stud mills concentrate on two by four.

For several months I worked at a portable mill that was set up in a mill yard and dumped it's waste into the conveyor system of a big mill.

Often the waste conveyor would plug up in the big mill and though we were supposed to tell our boss so he could stop our mill we would ignore it and our mill would continue cutting. 

Our waste would pile up on the conveyor chain and when the large mill started up again, their waste, combined with ours, would often be too much for the chain.  The chain would break and the end would fall into the burner.

This would result in us getting laid off for the rest of the day, or week, which is why we wouldn't tell the boss when we saw the chain stop.  We were making too much money and always wanted days off, especially in winter as we worked outside with no protection from wind or rain.

When I first started at the mill my job was to run the cut off saw.  The fork lift would place logs on a conveyor system that moved the logs sideways when I stepped on a pedal.   As the logs neared a metal trough with a conveyor chain in the bottom I would control their entry into the trough with a set of kickers that I operated with another pedal.  The idea was to have an endless line of logs in the trough but never one on top of another.

By pushing a lever I could move the conveyor chain and make the logs move backwards or forwards.  I stood beside a large, rapidly rotating circular saw blade.  The protective cover over the blade was very heavy and had a handle on it.  When I had the logs where I wanted them I would push the handle forward and force the blade of the saw into the log, cutting it so that it was eight foot six inches long.  When I pushed another lever a set of kickers would lift the stud log out of the trough and flip it onto another set of conveyors that would take it to the head saw.

Any pieces of log that were shorter than eight foot would stay in the trough until they reached the end where they would fall into the waste conveyor.

The head rig was a simple affair.  From his enclosed booth the sawyer would control the kicker that would take the logs from the conveyor to the carriage.  He would adjust the settings on the carriage, according to the size of the log, and run the log through the head saw.

The head saw was similar to the cutoff saw I was running but was stationary.  The carriage would carry the log through the saw cutting off a slab of wood and bark.   The slab would fall off.  If the log was small the carriage would release the log, now called a cant.   Kickers would kick the cant off the carriage and it would return for the next log.  If it was a larger log the carriage would take the cant back for a second cut.

After going through the head rig the slab and cants would be lying on a table beyond the sawyer's booth.  In this area the edger operator stood. 

The edgerman's job was to firstly drop the slab into the waste conveyor and then decide which side of the edger he would put the cant into.

Some cants, if the log had gone through the saw twice, would be two inches thick and have bark on two sides.  These he would lay flat on one side of the edger where the saw blades inside were four inches apart.

The larger cants would only have one flat side and these would be run through the other side of the edger where the saw blades were only two inches apart.  In front of the saw blades was a planer head, set at four inches, that took off the rounded top of the cant.

Sometimes I ran the edger.  In front of the edger is a very noisy and dangerous place.   The edger itself screams all day and you are also standing very close to the screaming head saw. 

Though there are metal guards, the edger can kick back cants or large pieces of wood.  More than one person has been killed, and many people have been injured, running an edger.

On the other side of the edger was the tailer or the person who tails the edger.  The tailer's job is to separate the slabs of pieces of wood with bark still on them and drop them into the waste conveyor.  He then gathers the remaining wood or studs and drops them on the green chain.

Both positions, edgerman and tailer, require a strong back as the cants and studs are very heavy.  You must also be very quick as the cants come off the head rig in a steady stream and therefore the studs have to come out of the edger just as quickly.

We would start early in the morning and we had no lights on the green chain.  The green chain, in our case, wasn't a chain but two pipes that sloped down.  The man who was tailing the edger would drop the boards on the two pipes and they would slide down to two rails.  There was two of us, one on each side of the rails. 

Often the tailerman would drop the boards crooked and we would have to sort them out quickly before he dropped more.

The studs had to be piled with a strip of wood separating each layer so they could dry evenly in the dry kiln.  They also had to be sorted according to species as different types of wood dry at different rates. 

Fir and Hemlock could be piled together but Spruce and Cedar had to go into separate piles.  In the early winter mornings while it was still dark we would have to sort the boards by smell.

We always liked being sent home because we always got paid for a full day.

In the winter the temperatures would often be ten to fifteen degrees colder than in town although we were only a few miles East, up the valley of the Shuswap River.

On the coldest days we would sit in our cars until the boss got the main motor, a big diesel, warmed up.  Sometimes it was so cold it wouldn't start and he would send us home.   Other days, when it was well below freezing and the motor did start we would see the carriage moving back and forth to loosen up the grease in the bearings.  If he ran a log through the saw and we weren't there to move the lumber he would be mad.   Once the head saw started cutting he never stopped until coffee time.

As soon as we saw the carriage moving, the head rig was the only place where there was a light, we would get out of our cars and hide under the saw.   The reason that we hid rather than go to our work stations was for safety.   When the logs are that cold the teeth can fly out of the head saw.  If only one or two flew out the boss would shut down the saw and replace them.  If a lot of teeth flew out he would shut off the saw and we would get sent home.

One morning we were hiding under the saw and we heard the first log go through the saw but as we started to crawl out to go to work we noticed the carriage didn't return for a second log.  The next thing we noticed was the boss' pickup flying out of the mill yard.

Upon investigating further we found the finger tips of one of the boss' gloves lying near the saw blade.  Gathering up four fingers we jumped in a car and flew into town.   By the time we got to the hospital the boss was in the operating theatre.  The doctor was happy to see us arrive with the missing finger tips.

The boss had stopped the carriage after the first pass and then, without stopping the saw, had stepped out of the shack to clean some bark out of the saw guide.  The blade had caught his glove and pulled his fingers into the saw.

As the boss was the only one who knew how to run the saw we were laid off for the rest of the winter.

1968

E-21 - Load box cars with shingles

    One of my friend’s father had a delivery company and sometimes we would take the truck up into the mountains to a shake mill, a saw mill that makes shakes, and get a load of shakes.   Shakes are like shingles but with rough, rather than smooth, sides.

We would load the shakes into boxcars on the siding in town.

E-20 -  Porta Sawmills   June 

    I went to work for Porta but the big mill closed for the summer.  As their conveyor carried the waste from our conveyor we had to close down.

E-22 - CKWL 88 N. Second St.  Jul. & Aug.

        The building I worked out of burned down. They moved to 98 N. 2nd. Then they moved to 83 S. 1st. It burned down in `92 and they rebuilt in the same location.

        The boss at the Big R had a friend who was manager of a radio station in Quesnel, B. C. It was strictly a summer job doing summer relief at the satellite station in Williams lake. I jumped at the opportunity.

I opened the day with the early morning show for one month while I replaced the wake up man.  The next month I replaced the mid morning man.  The rest of the day I did news reporting and called on customers to sell advertising time.  I also made commercials.

For communications between the two stations we had an old military telex.  One Saturday it went `beep’, it was receiving a message for me from my boss' son in the main station.   "What do you think this is?  An underground rock station?" 

I had been playing the full twenty-seven minute version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant.

In researching, through old phone books, to find the address and get a photo, I have found this buisness suffered several set backs, due to fire. After I left, within four years, they moved to 88 Second N. Ave. Then, within 6 years to 98A on 2nd Ave. Now, `06, they are located back on 1st Ave.

E-23 -  Dickinson’s Construction   Oct. - Nov.

    I worked for a company that was building a dry kiln at Riverside Lumber’s sawmill on Mable Lake Road.

My first duties were to swing a pick a break up the concrete like ground to lay the rails for the lumber carts.

After a couple of days of this a loader came by and, using the fork of his grapple, broke the ground for us.

I was working with an older man who smoked constantly.   I never saw him use a match, he would simply light the next one from the butt of the previous one.

He smoked a carton a day of  Sportsman plain end.  He bought slip and slide packages of 25, eight packs per carton.  He opened a new package: when he arrived at work; at coffee time; at noon time; at coffee time; and when he left to go home.

After the tracks were in I was helping the masons build a concrete block wall.  I was picking things off the ground and my hard hat kept falling off.

Once I bent over to pick something up, my hard hat fell off. I bent over to pick up my hard hat and injured my head a against a protrusion.

I was so mad at that stupid hard hat I picked it up and drop kicked it like a foot ball.

My boss saw me, and fired me.

1969

E-24 -  Cloverdale Cheese  Feb. - Mar.    

    My friends and I jumped the train, in the dead of winter, to Calgary.

At the unemployment center I was told there were no jobs. I said, “In a city this big, there has to be at least one job.”

The lady disappeared into the back and came back a while later, saying, “There is one job but you wouldn’t  be qualified.”

I asked what it was and she didn’t believe me when I told her that I had experience as a cheese cutter.

I told her that I had worked at Koffman food importers in the cheese cutting room.

I am not sure she believed me but she sent me out to the job.

I didn’t actually tell her I had been a cheese cutter which is what the job was but I didn’t figure it could be a great deal as I had watched it being done.

However when I got to Cloverdale Cheese I found that they didn’t use a machine to cut the big blocks of cheddar.   Everything was cut by hand, but that was simple enough to get the hang of.

1st marriage

E-25 -  United News  Feb. - Jul.

    After I got married, in Enderby, I took my bride to Calgary where I was delivering magazines to stores for a company called United News.  I would pick up the salesmen's orders from our warehouse and take them to stores.   At the stores I would pick up the last months magazines that hadn't sold.

On Saturdays I had a route of my own on which I also did the sales and kept track of the inventory, as well as the delivery and pickup. 

On Monday mornings I would deliver bundles of the Star Weekly Magazine to residential addresses for delivery boys.   A cop gave me a ticket for being off the truck route.   In a 1/2 ton van?

A truck route is a designation for all traffic not just for trucks.  A truck route is a marked route to show traffic the quickest and easiest way to get from point A to point B.   Routes with the widest streets, the highest speed limits, the strongest bridges, and the least number of low overheads.

When such routes were originally designed there was no law requiring anyone to use them.  Where and when did city governments become so dictatorial as to demand that commercial vehicles remain on them and no other street?

This was my first experience with the discrimination that I would face over the years to come.  Governments seem to think that trucking companies are pots of gold.  They believe that ticketing trucks is an easy way to fill their coffers.

Most companies, when I quit, I usually walk off the job with little or no notice. At United News  I gave two weeks notice.  During the last week I had my replacement with me learning the route. 

As I didn't have a vehicle of my own, at that time, my boss was kind enough to let me take the company van home.   Each morning I had to go back to the shop to pick up my replacement.

My very last day of work, I was only two intersections away from the shop when a big car with an old man, I suppose, to be politically correct, I should say, `Elderly Gentleman', behind the wheel, was coming towards me.   He had his signal light on and he stopped in the middle of the intersection.  As he was stopped I didn't slow down.

How many times have I been warned; be wary of little, old, men, wearing hats, particularly if they are driving an older model car. (I learned this in Victoria, B. C.)

This particular intersection, a `four way go', no traffic control device of any kind, was in an industrial area.  As I crossed the unmarked crosswalk the old man stepped on the gas and commenced his turn.  His left front fender collided with the left side of my van.

Luckily he was driving a big tank and hit me behind the driver's compartment.  Neither of us was injured.

I've always felt bad about leaving the company under those circumstances.  In fact I've always felt bad about leaving that company.  I'm sure if I had stayed there only a little longer I would have worked up to sales rep and made a decent wage but the driving virus was beginning to take hold.   The infection was setting in.

E-26 -  Bluebird Cartage  August

    I had given up driving a van to graduate to something bigger.  With the hopes of driving a tractor trailer I had hired on with Bluebird Cartage.  I was given a five ton flat deck with a gas pot and an eighteen foot deck to haul various products around the city. 

Once I had a load of heavy gauge pipe for a sprinkler system being put into a new high-rise in downtown Calgary.

The pipe was twenty-two feet long which meant that it not only protruded past the end of the deck, it extended many feet past the rear axle.  To get to the downtown core I had to go under the railway.

Going down into the underpass was not a problem.   Coming up the other side was.  To this point I had been experiencing a lightness in the front end and it was like I had power steering, which I didn't.

As I started up the steep hill the front end came off the ground.  So far, in fact, that I was worried about the cab hitting the underneath of the railway overhead.   It probably would have but the tail end of the pipe came to rest on the pavement leaving me many feet above the pavement with an unobstructed view of the underneath of the overhead. 

I had to put it in reverse and back up to get the steering back on the road.  After doing this several times I was able to idle my way up the hill. 

I was so flustered that I didn't even look to see if there was traffic behind me.  No one chased after me so I assume I never hit anyone but as it was a fairly busy street I must have startled a few drivers.  I can guarantee you that none of them were as frightened as I.

When I got to the construction site they wanted me to back over the curb at an angle.  I tried several times but as soon as the rear tires would hit the curb the front end would lift and the truck would swing sideways until it was perpendicular to the curb. 

I tried it slow and I tried it fast but it was like riding a bucking bronco.  Even perpendicular it would not climb over the curb.

Finally they had me park parallel to the curb and then, because the overhead crane was busy pouring concrete, they wanted me to unload by hand.  I told the foreman he was out of his f...ing mind.  Each piece of pipe weighed several hundred pounds.

Eventually he rounded up a crew of labourers and we did unload by hand.

When I am driving, nowadays, I carry with me a portable computer, in a nylon satchel.  It is a 386 SX 20, out of date by today's, 1999, standards.  It is classed as a notebook (smaller than a laptop).

In 1969, I had to deliver two pieces of a computer to the U. of A., Calgary.  The two crates took up, approximately, half of my deck space and, when put together with the rest of the pieces, would not have had the equivalency of an XT.  We had a crew of men trying to be careful with this delicate equipment.

Four of us were trying to lift one wooden crate and I dropped my corner on the end of my finger which popped open.   Sort of like stepping on a grape. 

After we finished unloading I went to the hospital where they pushed the innards back into my finger and closed it with two, crossed, butterfly bandages.

E-27 -  Trans Canada Trucking

    I was off work for two days and then I went to work for Trans Canada Trucking, where I got a chance to drive a tractor trailer.  I worked two-days-in-one for that company, my first and my last.

This was my first trip with a tractor trailer.   I was pulling a short van and cut a corner too close.   I made a stop sign lean over but backed up without hurting it too much.  Then I backed into an overhead door.

I was backing in from my blind side and had to jackknife, the tractor is at a sharp angle to the trailer, which meant I was unable to use my mirrors.  I asked the guy in the warehouse to guide me in. 

After a few tries I had it lined up and stopped where I thought I should be.  I was close but the roll up door wasn't high enough.  I had stopped three inches inside the doorway. 

The man from the warehouse had been yelling at me to stop but he was inside the building where I couldn't see him in either mirror.   I couldn't hear him because he was forty feet away from me with a trailer between us and I was sitting inside the truck behind a roaring motor.

After unloading I took the trailer back.   It was snowing and the wipers didn't work, the defroster didn't work, and the heater didn't work.  When I got back to the yard I parked the rig and walked.

E-28 - CFWB Assistant Station   Manager  Aug. - `70 Jun.   $325/Mth

    By phoning around, like I do many times when seeking employment,  I located a position as a DJ.                  

I didn't have a vehicle but my mother came with her station wagon and we packed up and moved to Campbelton, a suburb of Campbell River, B. C.

My duties would be the same as that in Williams Lake:   Stop at the police station on the way to work and check for stories; mid morning DJ playing MOR; during which I had a recipe time; in the afternoon call on customers to sell advertising time.

The manager of the station, was hitting the bottle and getting into trouble.  Many mornings I would have to start earlier and do his show, as well as my own. 

I would find myself taking out one turntable, record player, and replacing it with a typewriter. 

While a song was playing on one of the other turntables, we had three, I would write up news stories or commercials.   Removing the typewriter and replacing the turntable I would then use it to dub music while I recorded the commercial I had just written.

We had a part time lad who did the rock show after school.   The rest of the day's broadcast was relayed from the mother station in Courtney. 

Between doing the boss's wake up show, my mid morning show, my noon quiet hour, Jamie's late afternoon show, while he was studying for exams, the news, sales and production, and answering the phone and front door while, Miss Campbell River, the receptionist, was away for some function or another, I seemed to be a one man station, but I wasn't getting paid any extra for it.

I had started out at $300 a month with a promise of a raise after thirty days and the consideration of a second raise after six months.  It took me a year to get my first raise.

When the boss was finally fired I asked for his position, and salary, but he was replaced by someone from the head station.   I quit.  But not before I played `Alice's Restaurant’, the full version.

The boss was listening to it on his car radio.   He came storming into the station, grabbed the record, and scratched it with the end of a metal edged ruler, so it could never be played again.

1970

E-29 -  Rowley's Taxi

    After moving back to B. C. from Alberta I had changed my drivers license but I was only licensed for a private vehicle.   I had to take an exam to be able to drive taxi.   A friend lent me his car but it was a Mustang which proved to be too small to be used for a taxi exam. 

I had to rent a larger car to take my chauffeurs exam and get my class `C' license.

I went to work for Rowley's Taxi.  It would be the first of eleven companies, in ten different municipalities, that I would drive taxi for.   

Rowley's Taxi was a pretty boring place.   I spent most of my time sitting in the taxi stand.   I read, on average, a pocket book a night. 

We had brand new Plymouth Satellites with slant six engines and were dispatched immediately a customer phoned, which wasn't very often.

One night I was talking to one of the driver's from Frank's, the other cab company in town.  He had worked for Rowley's previously.  He told me how much better the money was at Frank's.

Of all the females I have had sex with I met twelve of them while employed as a driver.

I picked up, one night, as a fare, a Native Indian girl.    I got fired. 

E-30 -  Frank's Taxi  Jul. - Aug.    

The next day, after leavings Rowley’s Taxi, I started work at Frank's Taxi.  The money was better, because we were always busy. 

Frank's let customers wait until they had a trip going their way.  This way the cars were usually full in both directions.  At Rowley's they were usually empty in one direction so as to give the customers faster service.

Frank's customers didn't seem to mind the wait and the company and the drivers both made money.  It took me over a week to read a book. 

The cars were older and bigger.  The glove box carried a selection of all types of music, eight tracks, for all tastes. 

It was not uncommon to go to the sea plane base, pick up a logger who had been in camp for a month, and take him to the ferry in Nanaimo or even Victoria.  Big trips and big tips.

E-31 - Kamloops Pulp & Paper   Sawmill Aug.

    For one week I operated a forklift in a sawmill across the tracks from the downtown core. 

E-32 -  Blue Star Taxi  August

    My next job was behind the wheel but there was no money in it. 

In all the cab companies I worked for I would never again make as much as I did driving for Frank's.

E-33 -  Gas station   August

Img.E-33 
(Photo Sept. `04) Remodeled since `71, service station and restaurant.

    Avola is a little whistle stop on the `Yellowhead Highway'.  Hwy. 5 runs from Kamloops B. C. to Tete Jeune Cache.  Over the years the tourist promotion people have spread the name until it now encompasses Highway 16 and stretches to Edmonton. 

I worked at the Pacific 66, the only gas stop in town.   From midnight to eight AM I pumped gas, did minor repairs and did the books for the day.  My wife worked day shift in the restaurant. 

We lived across the highway in a motel.

Working separate shifts solved any problem of finding a babysitter but we were unable to find any larger accommodations so after two weeks we quit our jobs and moved.

E-34 -  Capital Taxi    Aug. - `71 Jan.

    Working graveyard shift, out of a little room in the basement of a hotel, I would sleep on a cot until the phone rang.

1971

E-35 - Control Room Operator

    I worked part time, Sunday evenings, operating the control panel for the on-air programming.

E-36 - PU&D (Pickup and Delivery)   July 

    Canadian Pacific had a train station and freight office in the center of town and I drove five ton trucks doing city deliveries.

I should have been fired because one time I lost two cat rollers.  Two large rollers, used to support the tracks on a bulldozer, were in the back of my truck and I didn't secure them. When I was going up a hill they rolled out through the back which wasn't a door but a chain mesh.  One of the rollers was found by a passing motorist and returned.

Another passing motorist found a box of ammunition and returned it, but not to my office.

In Vernon there is a large military base, left from the second war, and used in the summer as a cadet camp for army cadets from all across Canada.

I had been in one part of the army camp and was crossing the highway to the other part and one box of ammo fell off when I accelerated too hard.  When I was unloading we came up one box short.  I called the office to see if it was still in the warehouse but they told me the military police had called and it was in their office.

I went to the Provost office to claim it and some junior rank started to dress me down for not looking after military property.   I handed him the weigh bill.  He wanted to know what that was for and I told him that it wasn't government property until he had signed for it.  I further informed him that I wasn't one of his little cadets so he could just quit yelling at me.

Some officer in the back office overheard me, came out, told the corporal to back off, signed the paper, and told me he would deliver the box of ammo to where it should be.

I came back from lunch one day a few minutes early and one of my fellow workers was struggling to tip back a large carton onto a hand truck.  I bent over to give him a hand and the shop steward kicked me in the butt.  He told me that I was still on my lunch break and if they needed  assistance the company could hire more men.

I sat on a packing crate until well after start time and the foreman came looking for me and asked me when I was going to start work.  I told him he should check with the shop steward to see if I had his permission to go back to work.   He took me to the managers office and we had it out.

I told them that any union that wouldn't allow me to give a person a helping hand and who would physically hit one of its members must be a pretty shitty union and walked out the door.

E-?? - Oldham’s

    I tell everyone I worked for Oldham’s, but I didn’t. 

I had met E. once, when he only had a small truck and was working out of the warehouse, where I worked for Blue Bird Cartage in Calgary, Alta.

Years later, when I was living in Vernon, B. C., E. had a large company with head office in Kamloops, B. C. and a branch in Vernon, B. C.

I applied at the Vernon branch and went for a trial run to Calgary, Alta, down to Penticton, B. C. and back to Vernon, B. C.

I didn’t get the job.

The driver I was supposed to run team with didn’t feel I had enough experience and wasn’t able to get a good sleep while I was driving.

When running team a driver has to keep the truck quite and smooth.  Slow over bumps and in corners.   No; Jacobs brakes, horns, or stereos. And no grinding, or missing gears.

I have found, over the years, that a single driver who doesn’t spend all his time in a coffee shop can put on more miles in a day than a team.  The single driver can drive faster and a team takes twice as many breaks because each driver has to use the washroom and get coffee.

In Mexico, between Tijuana and Acapulco, the long distance busses use team drivers.  Their sleeper is a little box, across the bottom of the bus, between the steering axel and the luggage compartment.

How anyone can sleep in there is beyond me.

E-37 Vancouver, B. C. S & N Timber   - I don't remember anything about this one.

E-38 -  Golden Crown Cabs   March

    I had rented a room in Vancouver but it took six weeks to get your fingerprints through the City of Vancouver so I went to Bonny's Taxi in Burnaby where it only took two weeks through the R. C M. P. but when the two weeks were up Bonny’s didn't need a driver so I went to West Vancouver where the city accepted my Burnaby police clearance.  

I worked one week of night shift and spent most of my time sleeping in my cab.  I think I took home about fifteen dollars for the week. So I quit.

West Vancouver has no industry, only light commercial and residential, and has more money per capita than any city in North America.   With a BMW or Lincoln, or both, in every driveway, who is going to take a taxi.

E-39 - Streiling Lumber Industries Ltd. 5300 Byrne Rd. Burnaby S. Streiling (Pres). Forklift Operator   Jan. - `72 Mar. 

Img  E-39 (Photo `06) Not sure if that is one of the original buildings, back in the trees.
The building on the left is newer. During the late `90s and early `20s it was used as a movie studio. `The Core, Scooby Too' among others.

     I hitchhiked to Vancouver and got a job operating a fork lift in a finishing mill in South Burnaby.  What is now car sales and movie studios was, in those days, sawmills and industrial.

W1 came to Vancouver and dragged me back to Vernon.

E-40 -  Twin H Moving and Storage `71 Jul. - Aug.

    I drove a five ton flat deck truck hauling all manner of stuff all over town.  When things were slow with general cartage I would help pack furniture.   If things were slow at Twin H he would farm me out to the other companies in town. 

I loaded or unloaded furniture as a swamper for all the big names; Mayflower, Allied, Chapman's, United, North American, Atlas, etc.

E-41 D Windsor Cartage - I don't recall this one.

E-42 - United Cabs  Aug. - Dec. (Yellow, United, Crescent Checker)

    They didn't want to hire me because I wasn't a resident and didn't know the streets.  I said, “Give me a street map and I'll find it”.  They sent me to get an Alberta driver's license and I started training the next day. 

I worked the single shift; 1 PM to 1 AM.  

1 AM is bar closing time so they wouldn't let me go home.   At 3 AM they would have me take the other drivers home.   At 4 AM I would take a break for supper.  At 5 AM they would give me a good trip to cap off my night.   At 6 AM I would go home.  I would usually sleep in and not get started until 2 or 3. 

I did that for seven days a week and took home about $300 a month.  I worked for 3 months and then took a couple of days off.  I arranged to deliver a Volkswagen beetle to Vancouver for Avis.  On the way through the Okanagan I stopped in Vernon and picked up my wife.   In Vancouver Avis gave me a Plymouth to take back to Calgary.   I detoured through Vernon and dropped off my W1.   I think they call it a bus man's holiday.

My most memorable fare was Pierre Berton and his publicist, Mr., I believe, Jack, McClelland of McClelland and Stewart publishing.

I asked him how a budding writer gets a script read and Mr. McClelland gave me his address.

I mailed him my manuscript and he sent it back, saying, `Its too cliché’.

I threw it into the garbage.

Years later I would regret that move, after I learned what `cliché’, means, because I didn’t have a copy of my story and I had written it to be cliché.

Since then I have written another novel and several movie scripts

It would be many years after that instance before I actually sold anything.

The first thing I sold was an  article, Burn Camp that appeared in the `00 Sept. issue of  `Western Driver' (Vancouver, B. C.).

1972

E-43 -  Ohashi Bros. Jan. - Feb.    

Img E-43
`54 Kenworth 280 HP. Cummins Motor.All cleaned up for a parade in Vernon, B. C.

    I quit the taxi in Calgary and went home to Vernon for Xmas.  During the Xmas season my brother in law, who owned a small logging co. introduced me to a friend of his who drove a logging truck.  As things were slow between Xmas and New Years Bert only made a couple of trips but I went with him on both.

The first trip I wasn't allowed behind the wheel and on the second trip he let me drive for two miles on a straight stretch with an empty truck. 

With my training completed I went and asked Mr. Ohashi for a job.  Bert had told me that his boss had one truck without a driver.  I asked if I could take one of the trucks and drive it around town to get the feel of shifting the transmission, it had two sticks (shift levers) on the floor.

Sig was worried that the roads were slippery but I assured him that having driven cab in Calgary I was used to driving on black ice.

Sig said that it cost fuel to run around town empty so I told him I could try and get a load. 

January third, 3 AM, I swept the snow off the windshield of the `56 Kenworth, opened the hood, checked the oil, radiator, fan belts, etc., and unplugged the block heater from the extension cord running to the back of the shop.

Eventually I figured that the next step was to turn the key but few trucks start by turning a key.  Like old cars the key turns it on and a separate, push, button turns the starter.   Also, the older Cummins diesels have a compression release, for easier starting on a cold winter day, in the days before glow plugs.   The push button I found, after that I was lost.

I averaged one load a day, while other drivers were making two.  The temperature was about twenty-five below F.  I had the heater off, I had the window open, I had my coat off, I had my shirt open, and I was sweating.

Going up the hill I had chains on all the driving tires.   Coming down the hill I added chains to all the trailer tires.   After eleven days I put it in the ditch.  Mr. Ohashi asked, "What took you so long?" 

After the skidder towed me out from under my load of logs, the only damage was a bent center pin on the front bunk, Mr. Ohashi said, " You can't haul logs with it like that.  Get it in the shop."

Five weeks later I was climbing up the front of the load and fell.  I landed on a chain hook on the side of the frame.  The doctor told me I would have to stay off work for awhile.

E-44 -  Lavington Glass Plant    Jan. - Nov. 

    When Spring comes to the mountains logging shuts down until the ground dries out.  I got a job in a plant that makes bottles, any kind of glass container that needed a lid. 

I started in the receiving dock unloading bottles that people had sent back for recycling.  If they came in with the tops on them we had to break the tops of the bottles, it takes too long to take the tops off.

The tops are broken by bashing the bottles against the inside of the trash bin.  Any glass that was left in your hand would go into one of three bins, depending on the colour of the glass.  If the bottle or jar had any contents, such as, cigarette butts, tinfoil, paper, or any other garbage the bottle automatically went into the garbage.  The time to clean the garbage out was more in wages than the glass was worth.  

I tell you all this in case you are the type of person who likes to recycle.  Whether it is glass, plastic, or metal, be sure the container is clean.  A dirty container cannot be recycled and will only go in the garbage.

Recycled containers are melted down and if there is garbage in them it may not melt.  When the molten material passes through the mould the unmelted garbage will leave a weak spot in the new container, what is called stones.  The new container cannot be sent to a customer and will have to be destroyed.

From the receiving dock I transferred to the paint department where they paint names and pictures on bottles such as the green and red label for Seven-UP.  I took training on how to run the paint machine and later switched to the mould section and took training on the machines that actually make the bottles.

Two of the eight machines constantly made brown glass for beer bottles.

One time when we were making beer bottles the colour pellets didn't melt properly and little bits of the pellets would show up in the glass.  The machine has to keep running to use up the glass.  A board was put across the conveyor belt and for two weeks, twenty-four hours a day, the machine would make one hundred sixty-one bottles per minute and they would all hit the board and fall into the garbage.

One time one of the lines was getting stones in the glass.   Serge, one of the new guys and the day's relief operator, was sent to find the stone puller.  He asked me if I had seen it.  It took me a minute to catch on and then I told him the last I seen of it, Fred was taking it to the shop in the basement.

There is no such thing as a stone puller and as far as I know we didn't have an employee named Fred.  About an hour later we had a mad foreman looking for Serge because no one had been relieved for their coffee break. Awhile later Serge came slowly up the ramp from the basement with a wheelbarrow full of block and tackle and crow bars and all kinds of paraphernalia that the guys in the shop had gathered so that Serge could assemble a stone puller.

Another time, two machines were making the little milk bottles that restaurants give to you with your coffee.  These are very tiny and would fall over.  Once hot glass falls it is marked and has to go to the garbage.   It took two months to make a truck load of these little bottles.  

The truck driver fell asleep, the truck went in the ditch, and the trailer burned up.

One night when I was relief operator one of the beer machines jammed up and the glass was going on the floor.  The moulds were all over flowing and unable to close.   I stepped on a sharp edge of glass and got five stitches in the bottom of my foot.  The doctor didn't have to use antiseptic because the glass was so hot it cauterized the wound.

E-45 - Massey and Son   Nov. - `73 Jan.   

Img E-45
Trucks back into a hole so it is easy for the loaders to top off the load.

    My sinuses were acting up, working in the hot steam of the IS, individual section, machines at the glass plant, so I went back logging.  Frank Massey owned the logging company and his son John had the trucks.  I was driving a truck into the same area of the Kettle Valley, in the Monashee Mountains, that I had been hauling the winter before.

My first trip up, John loaded me and when I came down the hill I had trouble turning the first switchback corner, I even had chains on the steering tires as well as the other sixteen.  It was a mild winter and all the trucks were running chains on all eighteen tires on the steep hills.  After coming through the corner I couldn't straighten out.  The truck went up on the bank and ran over a tree stump then broke loose and I was able to get it back on the road.

When the boss had loaded me he had put one log too far forward and it had gin poled, stuck into the bull board, the headache rack, on the back of the cab that holds chains and other goodies and prevents the load from running through the cab, theoretically.  When I bounced over the stump, putting a big hole in the oil pan, the log broke and I was able to steer the truck again.

I pulled the truck to the side of the road and shut it off while I inspected it which is when I found the log and the hole in the oil pan.  Shutting it off had saved the motor.

I would put that truck in the ditch three more times that winter, twice when it was empty.

Then John explained to me that the truck had lock axels which tend to make a truck go straight ahead in corners.

1973

E-46 - Electrician    Jan. - Mar.

Img E-46  
(Photo `05) This may be one I helped build.

    Between Vernon and Kelowna, on the East side of the small town, was a big plant that made motor homes, van conversions, campers, trailers, all types of RVs recreational vehicles.   My job as an electrician was to run the wiring on the van conversions.  

As it didn't take me long to wire one I helped the other people on the line, doing everything from; flooring, plumbing, insulating, sheet metal, to hanging the curtains and vacuuming out the finished product.  

We were short of van bodies so they put us to work helping build canopies for awhile but our new vans never showed up so they laid us off.

A few months, or years, later I was in Port Hardy, B. C. I saw one of the motor homes in a service station.  While talking to the owner I learned he had an electrical problem.  From his description of the problem I had an idea of the cause.  When I had built them I had gathered the wires and bundled them using a large metal staple. On the floor, under the dash I found the staple and pried it loose.  Sure enough, the staple had rubbed through the insulation and was shorting out the wires.  I reinsulated the wires with electrical tape and rebundled them with a zap strap. Problem solved.  But what a coincidence.

E-47 -  Riverside / Commonwealth Mobile Homes  `73 Mar. - May.

    Just North of Vernon, above Swan Lake, was a mobile home sales.  I was driving the tow truck and helping set up the homes that were sold.   The other man who helped me set up, the senior service man, told me how he hated it when truck drivers would come up behind him and turned their Jacob's brakes on.  He would get back at them by stepping on his brakes.

I explained to him that what he was doing was tantamount to suicide.  If a truck that weighs thirty times more than his pickup is on his tail, and the Jacob's brakes are screaming it means that the driver is trying to keep his truck back from running over him.  Stepping on the brakes and slowing his pickup more could be the extra that the truck behind can't handle and the rig will squash him like a bug.

The Jacob brake is not a horn.  Drivers don't use it to wave at people.  It is what the name says, a brake.  It is used to slow or even stop a truck.  It keeps the main brakes from overheating allowing them to have more stopping power.

It is amazing how many towns you will come to and you will see signs telling truckers not to use their Jacob's brakes in city limits.   Invariably, just past the sign will be a long hill going down into the town.

I often wonder how much these people who complain about the noise of the trucks using Jacob's brakes would complain if the driver didn't use them and over cooked his brakes going down the hill.   Can you imagine how much noise there would be if that load of propane couldn't stop at the bottom of that hill and ran a red light.  

The resulting explosion would definitely wake up the complainers when the windows of their homes all of a sudden turned into thousands of pieces of flying glass.

E-48 - Johanson Contracting   April 

    The other drivers were not happy when, on my first day, I was given the newest gravel truck in the fleet.   After two weeks of hauling sand, etc. he put me on a road project driving a bulldozer, pulling a packer.  The cat was so small that it was difficult to sit properly with my feet on the pedals so I used to sit with my feet up on the dash.

After a few days of sprinkling with the water truck and then packing, with the cat, I was finished my job on the new street we were making.  I took the water truck back to the shop and phoned my boss in the office downtown.  I thought the phone was going to melt in my hand. 

The boss was yelling at me for not looking after the gravel truck, something about the bolts being so loose that the hoist was ready to come through the transmission.  He told me I was fired. 

I hung up without bothering to explain to him that some other driver had been running the gravel truck for the last few days, I had been running a cat.

E-49 -  Hector LeBlanc  & Sons   Jun. - Jul.

Img E-49
`69 Western Star.A load of peelers bound for the plywood plant in Armstrong, B. C.

    My wife's (W1) brother had a small logging show up on Mable Lake and the man hauling his wood, logs, was short a driver.  I only made one or two trips out of Mable Lake, the rest of the time I hauled out of Sugar Lake.

I was driving what I called a falling apart star.   As I went down the road I could look in the mirror and see parts bouncing off the road.  It was a `69 White Western Star with a 335 Cummins motor and a five and four Spicer.   The four wasn't an extra stick like most trucks but was an air operated button on the main stick.

My daughter liked to ride in the truck with me.   She liked to stick her head out the window.  She liked the feel of the wind whipping through her long hair and the sounds of the Jacob's Brakes ripping the air.

E-50 -  Island Copper (Utah) Mines   Jul. - Dec. 

Img E-50
`Electra Haul 120.My instructor climbs to the cab.

    I phoned an ad in the paper and took the bus to Vancouver for an interview.  I flew up to Port Hardy and took a training program of two days on how to drive the big trucks.  Lectra Haul Unit Rigs, V 12 GMC motors turning a huge generator.  A large electric motor in each back wheel.  One lever; forward, neutral, & reverse.  Maximum speed sixteen miles per hour.  Empty, ninety tons.  Payload, one hundred twenty tons.  Gross weight, two hundred ten tons.

I was concentrating on the mirror, watching the loader, so I would know when I was loaded.  When you were loaded the loader operator would tap the back of the truck with his bucket.   If I could time it right I could pull out before his bucket hit me and he would get a surprise, being braced for the shock.

I was on a bit of a decline, had one foot on the brake, and one on the gas and the lever in forward.

As soon as I saw his empty bucket coming towards me I took my foot off the brake, shoved the throttle to the floor.   The truck took off like a rocket then nosed up into the air like a bucking bronco.

I thought the world had come to an end.   I was flinging my arms looking for something to grab onto.

When the dust had settle the left front corner of the truck was way up in the air and peering out the side window I could only see the side of the truck, not the ground.

While I was watching in the mirror I had failed to see a house size boulder fall off the bucket of the shovel and land directly in front of my truck.

The foreman claimed that I had driven over it intentionally.

I got fired.

1974

E-51 - Dept. of Holidays (highways)                    

    P. S. had had an accident and destroyed the snow plough.  I was hired to drive the new plough when it came as P.'s driving privileges were suspended.  

The two of us would go out to a job site, I would drive as he couldn't.  I tell all my friends that I used to be P. S.'s chauffeur. 

The new snow plough never showed up so I spent all my time as a labourer. One cold winter day, ,after crawling through a culvert full of, freezing, water, to clean out a blockage of sticks, placed there by a beaver, I quit.

E-52 -  Haida Freight

    I drove for the main freight company in the area.  Using a Mack slim line cab for my deliveries around town.  The motor didn't have any engine brakes so after one trip my daughter didn't want to ride with me anymore.

I was let go after backing into the back door of the hardware store in Port Hardy, twice.  Actually the final straw was backing over a car at Sears.

The lady at the store asked me if I wanted her to move her car and I said, "That's OK, I'll just back over it."

As I was backing up I looked in the mirror.  I could see her car wobbling, I hadn't felt or heard anything.  Sure enough the under edge of the back of the box had sliced through her fender like a hot knife through butter.

When I went inside and told her she thought I was still joking.

E-53 -  HP Towing

    H. P.'s son drove a car and took me to Fish Trap Falls North of Kamloops.  There I picked up an older Dodge tractor with a snap on coffin.

I took the truck to Penticton where I picked up an eight foot wide mobile home and took it to the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen.   It was winter and the Hope Princeton was full of snow and I was running at night but I didn't have any troubles.

I dropped the trailer at the ferry terminal and bobtailed into Vancouver where I met Harold at the CPR ferry terminal.   Before they built the condos that now line the shores of Coal Harbour, the CPR used to offer ferry service for cars, trucks, and trains, from downtown Vancouver to downtown Nanaimo.

We went a couple of blocks to Georgia street to a drive in Restaurant.  The White Spot is still there today but I don't know if they offer car hop service anymore.   We parked his rig and ordered from the car hop.   When she brought our order she couldn't figure out how to get the tray into our cab over.

The White Spot specialized in trays that stretched across the interior of your car and clipped into the slots in the doors where the glass of the windows fits.

We teased her for awhile and then took the tray into the restaurant and sat at a table.

Later that night I caught the 2 AM sailing to Nanaimo pulling a new modular home.  From Nanaimo I drove North to Sayward where I caught the ferry to Beaver Cover.   By the time I reached Port Hardy it was dark again.

Going into the industrial park at the end of Hardy Bay, where Harold had his yard, was a low railed, narrow, logging bridge.   I never felt a thing but when I got to the yard Mrs. Partington noticed I had a log sticking out of the side of the trailer.

I must have cut the corner onto the bridge a little too tight.  The first beam from the railing had ripped through the side of the trailer and had tagged along for the ride.

Needless to say H. fired me.

E-54 -  Pt. McNeil Ent.

    This company used off highway gravel trucks which are much larger than normal trucks and cannot take loads on a highway.  We were building logging roads in the mountains for Rayonier during the day and on the weekends we were building a dry sort near Port McNeil for M & B, MacMillan Blodell.

I got a flat on the way to the old mine where we were getting the gravel for the dry sort.

Despite the fact that I had a spare tire laying at the tailings pile the boss made me take off the tire, take it apart, patch the tube, reassemble the tire and remount it on the truck

E-55 -  Rayonier   Jeune Landing Camp `74 Apr. - `76 Apr. 

Img E-55
`61 Pacific with fifth wheel trailer. Normally I drove a `52 Hayes HDX

    My experience driving the off highway gravel truck got me a job in Port Alice driving an off highway logging truck.   Both trucks were the same, `52 Hayes with 200 Hp Cummins, Jacob's brakes, and four and four, twin sticks, each with four gears forward, Spicer transmissions.  One of the big differences between the logging truck and the gravel truck, besides the trailer, was the water cooled brake system. 

Behind the cab is a large tank which forms part of the bullboard and holds water and air pressure.  The air pressure forces the water through lines to the wheels to cool the brakes on steep hills.

A bullboard or headache rack is built behind the cab of a truck and is used to hold chains, shovels, and other tools a driver might need.  Its main purpose, however is to prevent the load, if it shifts, from coming through the back of a the cab and injuring the driver.

Though referred to as Port Alice the area is broken into four distinct areas.  There is the old pulp mill and town site that is actually Port Alice.  Then further North is the new town site, but I don't recall the name.   Just North of that is Germansen Landing. And North of that is the logging camp, Jeune Landing.

When the camp was in full swing I would stay at Jeune Landing in the bunkhouse.  If because of weather, the camp was only running partially the bunkhouses and cook shack would be closed.  I would commute from Port Hardy, as it was only a half hour drive. 

I had enough seniority to work but not enough to be on a truck as they didn't run them all.

During one Spring or Fall slow down I ran surface cat.   That is to say I operated a bulldozer and after a truck would dump gravel on the subgrade of a new road I would spread it with the D7 Cat.

Another time I ran a D8 above a gravel pit.   We were trying to clean off the loose rock so the driller could come in and blast some more rock.

While driving ore truck in the mine I had met a cat operator who was fairly lazy.  We, as truck drivers, were not allowed to back within thirty feet of the edge.  We would dump our load and the cat operator would push it over the edge.

This one cat operator had been around for years and he would guide me back until I was near the edge, he assured me that he had been there long enough and knew when it was safe.  When I would dump my load it would all go over the edge.  This way there would be several loads dumped before he had to push any.

With this in mind I followed the instructions of the old cat operator below me.  I was on the top pushing rock and debris over the edge so that it wouldn't fall on the drill operator.

Being new to operating a bulldozer I would timidly approach the edge and then back off.  However all that was in front of my blade was not going over as I backed up too soon.   The old cat operator below me was getting frustrated as I wasn't sending him enough material for him to push to the side.  He kept urging me to come closer to the edge.

Thinking of the old cat operator at the mine I figured this old operator was probably just as experienced and knowledgeable.   As he waved me forward, I moved forward.  This happened several times, each time I would move a few inches closer to the edge.  Finally as the rocks went over the edge, so did the blade, so did the rest of the bulldozer.

It wasn't straight down but it felt like it.   The cat went sliding down the steep slope of rock and came to a shuddering halt when it's blade collided with the rocks at the bottom.   Which I did too, shortly there after.

As machinery in those days did not come equipped with enclosed cabs or seat belts I when flying over the controls and slid along the cover over the motor.  My shoulder collided with the exhaust ripping the muffler off and melting my eiderdown vest, which prevented me from getting a serious burn.

My hard hat prevented any serious injury to my head as it collided with the rocks just shortly before my head strained the restraining straps within.

My body then flopped, not really forward or down but, towards the slope of rock.  However, the cat was between me and the rocks so my stomach was draped over the blade, my feet were resting against the radiator, and to all intense and purposes I was standing on my head.

As my head began to clear, and my hearing returned, the bulldozer had stalled, the rocks had quit sliding and rolling, and all was silent except for the laughter of the old cat operator.

It took me some time to slowly pull myself together and twist around until I could sit up.  The grizzled old man, with his barbaric French accent, was rolling on the ground, holding his sides, in pain, as he laughed, and laughed.

Another time we had a slowdown I went setting beads. In the interior, of B. C., we called it hooking chokers.

There had been a tremendous rain, some one hundred inches in seventy-two hours.  The town had had to be evacuated and a severe mudslide destroyed many homes.  Many of the evacuees had been taken to the camp at Jeune Landing.   Many of the homes of the permanent staff were old float houses that had been hauled up onto the shore.  In one of the houses the residents, and some of the evacuees, were having a party as the storm raged.

One of the partiers went outside to relieve himself and nearly fell overboard.  The rushing waters, of the creek beside the house, had swept away the gravel under the house and the former float home was again floating, on the salt chuck, tidal waters of Neurotosis Inlet.  The party continued through the night as the house drifted with the tide and a boat found them and brought them back the next day.

During the storm the back end of Victoria Lake rose fifteen inches.  Towards the head of the lake a large house had been built on stilts on a rock sticking out of the water.   The rising waters lifted the house and carried it downstream. The rising waters aslo lifted a bridge and swept it away.

The company took some crummies, small bus like vehicles, for transporting equipment and employees, around the back side of the lake.  

In the morning we would board crummies at the camp and take the shorter road to the work site, as far as the site of the old bridge.

When we got to the bridge site we would shinny, or slide, down a mud bank.  At the bottom was waiting a boat on a rope that stretched across the creek.

Because no one had turned the boat over the night before it was full of water and using our hard hats we would bail it out.   Then, pulling on the rope, we would propel ourselves across the creek while some of the party continued to bail as the boat had holes in it.  On the far bank we would slip and slide as we crawled up the steep mud bank to the waiting crummies.

At the end of the day we repeated the process in the reverse direction.

They took me off hooking chokers and had me drive an old Pacific with a V 8 GMC.  We took the log trailer off and put on a low bed.  I would move a D8 cat to various places where the operator tried to repair flood damage to roads and culverts.

Once, the camp was shut down because of forest fire.   They took the logging rigging off the old Pacific and put on a huge tank for water.  I had to load water at the lake and take it into the hills.  One of the other drivers wanted the job and with his seniority he bumped me but they left me on the truck.  He got tired and wanted me to drive but I said, no.  I told him he had asked for the job and bumped me off and they didn't tell me to drive they just told me to stay with the truck.  So I would sleep and he had to work.

One spring I had to assist the powder man.   He would run the air track drilling holes in the rock face of the quarry and I would change the rods.  Adding more sections as we went in deeper and removing sections as he pulled out.

He was a strange old man who spent all his time in the bar drinking at night and all day sleeping.  He would get the drill going, take a bite of sandwich, and fall asleep.   When the rod got to its depth he would note the change in the sound, wake up and pull the steel.  I would add another section, he would start it back in the hole, take another bite of his sandwich, and then fall asleep again.

He scared the hell out of me the first time he showed me how to put the dynamite (40% Forcite) into the holes.  He used a powder tool (looks like a pair of pliers with a point on one handle) and drove the point through the stick of powder to make a hole for the fuse.  I thought we were dead.

Img E-55
`52 Hayes HDX.200 Cummins, 4 & 4 Spicer, 12 Ft. bunks.
Empty it weighed 35 T. The largest load I pulled weighed 89 T.

The man on top of the load, in this picture, is called a log stamper, and it looks like he is stamping on the load.

In actuality he would reach over the ends of the load and stamp the ends of the logs with a stamp hammer which would drive a brand into the wood.

When it was found that he couldn’t reach all of the logs and pirates were stealing too many unbranded logs he had to wait until the logs were unloaded then run on the logs while they were in the water so that he could reach the ends of more logs.

E-56 - Prison guard & dispatch   `74 - `76

    This was a part time position. Members of the force would call me, usually late at night, when they had a prisoner that needed baby sitting.

My duties included answering phones, learning how to use the police computers, and dispatching patrol cars.

I was called in one night to baby-sit two young boys who had been caught throwing rocks through the window of the school.

When I had arrived the officer had just got off the phone to their mother.

She was indignant and had accused the officer of waking her in the middle of the night, for nothing. She said her boys were sound asleep in their room, and hung up the phone.

The officer, and I, loaded the boys into the patrol car and took them to their home.

After much knocking on the door the mother finally answered, screamed at the officer for waking her up, and slammed the door in his face.

The officer and I took the boys out of the patrol car, led them up to the front door and pounded on it.

When the lady opened the door, she started to yell at the officer, saw her boys, grabbed them by the arms, dragged them into the house, screamed at us, something about kidnapping her boys out of their beds and slammed the door.

The officer just walked away, shaking his head.

Once we had a prisoner who thought he could bend steel.  He was grasping the door frame, he thought he had the outer bar of the door, with both hands, and had his feet up on the wall, straining for all he was worth. He finally collapsed, exhausted.

We had a good laugh, watching him.

Sometimes, if I couldn't stay awake, I would go in the back room, put a blanket on the floor, open a locker, put my head in the locker and go to sleep. The lockers were on the other side of the wall from the cells and if the prisoners were moving around I would hear them. Also the phone had a long cord and I could put it on the floor by my head.

That's how I met my buddy Paul. He was a weekend prisoner and I didn't lock the cell door. One night I fell asleep at my desk. 3 Am, Paul lifted my head, stuck; a coffee under my nose, and the phone in my hand.

E-57 - Prison guard

    The police in Pt. Alice came knocking on my bunkhouse door one night.  They didn’t have time to take their prisoner to Pt. Hardy and the Pt. Hardy police had told them how to get in touch with me.

1976

E-58 - Trimac  

Img E-58
COE and `A Train’ One of several that I drove.Returning empty to Dawson Creek, B. C.

    My first highway trucking, other than logging.  Mostly Freightliner COE.

I drove which ever truck came in first.  

When a truck came in from a trip they would phone the driver on the top of the list.  You were supposed to have eight hours off between trips but some times you would only be asleep a couple of hours and they would phone you.

There was one driver who took a monkey with him.   The truck was so full of monkey shit that no one else would drive it.  That was the only truck that only had one driver.

We hauled every type of bulk product; gasoline, diesel, cement, lime rock, glue for making plywood, etc.  Trimac is the largest bulk Carrier in North America. 

2nd marriage

E-59 -  Grand Mountain Transport

Img E-59
GMC chassis with Bluebird bodies.

    A big school bus painted green.   I drove around town like a city bus and picked up workers to take to the mine then brought other miners back. 

To accommodate the three shift changes at the mine I worked three shifts of four hours each every day.

1977

E-60 -  Pt. Hardy Taxi   Jan. - Jun.

Much like Capital in Veron, on the night shift you would sleep in the office until the phone rang.

Most of our work came from the local reserves.  There was a new subdivision being built at the Coal Harbour reserve.   When you picked up the Indians there, on a Friday night, they would pay you for the return trip so that they were assured of a ride home.

One night I stopped at the Sea Gate Hotel, went inside to find my fare, held the door open for them, telling them the cab was right ....there....  My car was gone.  

The police found it at the entrance to the Tsulquate Reserve.  I had left the keys in it, and the motor running, and some natives borrowed it.

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