| Two years earlier the Grateful Dead played their first concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Melvil Dewey, librarian, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification System, was born in 1851. And Otis Redding, singer, died the day I was born. My earliest memory was in our apartment on Mountain Sights Avenue, just off the great gash in the earth, Décarie Boulevard. From where we lived, you could not see the mountain--Mount Royal, nor were there much sights. I was born in St. Mary's Hospital December 10, 1967. [Fade in.] I was no more than two and was able to climb on the half wall in the living/dining room on which there was a couch on one side. I must have had my cup of cold milk in hand and remember pouring it over my father who laid sleeping on the couch below. Oops! [Fade out.] Early memories: I received my first cut over my right eye (not related to the spilled milk) you can still see a small scar today. I remember the doctor looking at the tiny wound as I looked into the bright hospital lights above. I also remember the brown city buses along Décarie and that huge orange ball, affectionately known as the Orange Julep. I remember seeing tenants sitting on the front steps of our apartment building puffing on cigarettes. Two years later, the family moved out to one of those contrived suburbs further west of Montreal, in Dollard des Ormeaux. We lived just off St. John's Boulevard or blvd St Jean as it is known today. My brother and I, one year older, went to Wilder Penfield Elementary School on Westminster Avenue. I even remember meeting the famous neurosurgeon, Dr. Wilder Penfield in the mid-seventies when he visited his eponymously named school. Even Mordecai Richler's travelling play Jacob Two-Two made the rounds to our school for a crowd pleasing performance. Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1975) was a popular children's book and now an animated series on television. (Oddly enough, years later, I attended Concordia University at the same time as Jacob Richler, the main character of his dad's book.) My interest in anything Richlerania started early. Take note authors of today. You have the chance to influence young lives. I was fortunate that I could walk to school which was not much more than 1.5 km away. Most of my schoolmates, however, were bused in from the surrounding neighbourhoods. The kids that lived on my street either went to schools in the Protestant school board or to a local French school. In any event, the ones I did make friends with came and went with all too frequent regularity in the seventies and eighties--probably towards Toronto due to the instability of the Québec government / economy. Reactionary "language laws" passed by the provincial government made it illegal to post signs in unilingual English on store fronts, for example. English, nay every other language other than French, was banned from public viewing. The once great Canadian Eaton's shopping centre chain was forced to eliminate the apostrophe 's', thus becoming "Eaton" and 'legal' under the office of the French language. Those establishments who did not obey the rules were subject to fines, harassment and sometimes vandalism. Utterly rediculous petty policies like this made my decision to leave Québec easier when given the opportunity to do so. On a lighter and less political note, I grew up in the disco era, and by and large oblivious to the political climate that surrounded us. Just down the street in Pointe-Claire was Fairview Shopping Center. The local roller skating rink, Caesar's Palace, played all the latest hits on CKGM AM radio. I couldn't skate worth a damn--like I tried. I never had a new pair of ice skates, nor played hockey for that matter. Cold winter sports did not appeal to me. I played warm summer baseball instead. The gear was much more cost effective; I had glove and they supplied the rest. When I was not on the baseball diamond I discovered FM radio and hung out in the street with friends. Till around 1977 I only had a portable AM transistor radio - a gift from grandmother. CHOM-FM was an epiphany. I discovered Rock 'n Roll music. Now this music was different, better. The Clash, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC (whom I saw in their For Those About to Rock tour in 1981). While Debby Boone sung "You Light up My Life" and The Lawrence Welk show played in the living room, I was listening to The Sex Pistols belt out "God Save The Queen" and listened to Ray Davies and The Kinks in my bedroom. (An elementary / high school friend currently 'DJ's' at CHOM FM. How cool is that?) In the summer of 1977, my mom took my brother and I to see Star Wars and pretty much everything was cool then. Shortly thereafter, my first movie attended without parents in tow was Grease that played at Fairview Cinemas (now long gone to make way for a mega huge hardware store.) Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman and Charlie's Angels were on television. Needless to say, it was a good time for a young boy. On the downside, my brother and I acted as a human remote control for our massive Zenith TV. As a young student, I entered Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School (PCHS) in the fall of 1980 with much trepidation. This massive concrete school of many profane names was recently converted to an all English school and I just missed the days where tables, chairs and bottles of ink were thrown from the upstairs library onto the cafeteria floor below. It was an 'open-concept' architechtual design with interesting consequences. This was the legend anyway. The worst event I witnessed was a long column of student lockers going down like dominoes. No one was seriously hurt. That was in 1985, I believe. I saw more friends come and go and the exodus to Toronto continued. PCHS was further away south on St. John's just off Pierrefonds Boulevard so I had to take the school bus. I did not dare sit near the back of the bus, as that was where the drug deals went down, hehehe, and all the 'cool' smokers hung out. Yes, they actually smoked on the bus. After two years of lollygagging in grades seven and eight (yes--I played the clarinet in the school band) I remember going up to my music teacher, Ms. Reilly, at the end of the band season to tell her I no longer wanted to be in the school band. I wanted to play football instead. I felt that I was actually letting her down. Like there was not another snotty-nosed-band-geek to take my place! My collarbone was healing nicely after it was broken in a dare in the summer of 1979. I rode down the man-made Westminster Hill on a borrowed bike over an impromptu dirt pile ramp at the base left by the public works. Foolish... just foolish. I even mustered the strength and rode the same bike home with my right shoulder hanging down about four inches lower. I spent the remaining weeks of the summer in one of those doohickey things that keep your shoulders stationary. This was my only broken bone to date. Anyway, now back to full strength, I wanted to play more sports. I eventually discovered there was a weight-lifting room next to the high school cafeteria. During my lunch-hours, I trained with my math teacher to be, Mr. Roy Linden. Even Mr. Winston Roberts, a teacher there and world-class Canadian body builder, wrote up a personalized weight-training regimen for me and other would-be musclemen. I tried to play basketball, but like soccer, there was just too much running... and you could not hit people at least not without getting fouls called against you. I eventually tried out for the senior football team in 1983 being the only one in grade nine to make the team. I enjoyed playing football and was made captain for two of three years there. I played on the rugby team and also participated in track and field for two years and eventually won Athlete of the Year in my graduating year, 1985. I had a few girlfriends in my final year of high school but nothing to go on about here. That fall, I saw another friend leave Montreal, this time to join the Canadian Navy. Like many of my friends, I enrolled at John Abbott College, a CEGEP in St. Anne de Bellevue, me in the Social Studies academic stream. In Quebec, our secondary school system ends in grade eleven aka Secondary Five (grades 7 to 11). The Quebec government invented this peculiar college system in the early 1970's for those students wishing to learn a more specialized trade or to further their education in the arts, sciences, humanities, nursing, and police correctional services, etc. The resulting effect, to be glib, was to keep the youth in schools and off the streets of Quebec for a couple more years. To a large extent, faults and all, the Quebec CEGEP system was sucessful as it offered a multi-disciplined curriculum and course path--outside of the high school setting. I learned to party and study at the same time. A valuable teen survival skill. I recently wrote a blog post of all the bars I remember going to, especiallly in the West Island. Again, I played CEGEP football and was captain for two of three years there. We played football games, and were soundly defeated in Boston, Michigan and various places all over Quebec. Ahem. We did win the occasional game here and there to keep our spirits up. I had many memorable English Literature teachers there whom had a positive influence on my reading interests today. I kept company with a small group of close friends from elementary school and have been fortunate to be great friends ever since. Again, I had met some nice girls whom I met in CEGEP and again, nothing serious. Not knowing what to do after a Diploma in Social Studies, I naturally applied to the local Montreal universities. Concordia University accepted me and once again, I played varsity football for one season. It was fun, but a leg injury finally persuaded me that professional football was out of reach. I did get to play on The Sports Network (TSN) for a game as a starter. That was neat. I studied rigorously, graduated on time, and enjoyed playing university football with those who eventually made it into the CFL and also the NFL. Many thanks to all my coaches who ensured a great athletic experience. In June 1988 one of my close friends had died in a plane crash and my mortality was acutely brought to attention. Donald was a flight instructor when another small aircraft collided with his. I spent the next two years studying and eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. I was now a 'History Major'. Neeeeat! The intervening spring and summer seasons were spent working for student painting companies started by other friends of mine--you know the type: "We'll paint your entire house for about a hundred bucks--guaranteed to last two years." Oh well, it was fun at the time. We did our best. (I would have hired me, too) Also, I later worked as a painter in Facilities Deparment at John Abbott College varnishing the library walls and painted all the classes, offices and stairwells during the summers. This experience gave me an appreciation of people with careers in the trades. They do amazing work that often goes unnoticed. Later on, some of my school money came from also working four summers at a family-owned, local swimming pool service company, now defunct. Basically, the swimming pool season started as soon as the pool ice melted and it was time to pump and acid wash the residential and public swimming pools in and around Montreal. I want to make this clear: I never want to own, nor clean a swimming pool as a result of these years standing in Olympic sized pools waist deep in smelly green water, mouldy leaves, and dead animals and golf balls getting stuck in the trash pumps. I take away some memorable experiences: - Siphoning xylene from huge drums into smaller jugs with my mouth--this carcinogenic fluid was used to thin the epoxy pool paint; - (Accidentally) mixing acid and chlorine imaginatively reliving the horrors of World War One ("My nose is bleeding! My nose is bleeding!"); - Given pickup trucks with balding tires to drive with 40 or so leaking garbage bags loaded with densely soaking leaves while the engine catches fire enroute to the dumpster; - The unloading truck loads of 35,000 pounds of bagged diatomaceous earth ("moving DE" we called it... shudder) into our storage warehouses during the late hot August summer days when there were no pools to paint. Who needs dust masks? Bah! I was even tasked once with the duty of delivering around 30 pieces (of varying diameters) of twenty-foot long PVC pipes from Pointe-Claire to Morin Heights, Quebec. Sounds easy? Well, I was all alone on the late afternoon trip and about 13 of the 20 feet of the load was hanging precariously out the rear of the van. Imagine driving for two hours north along the windy highway with one hand on the steering wheel and the other manhandling the ever-shifting load lest it tumble out the rear onto wary drivers behind me. I did, however, have a red cloth taped to the end of the pipes. Once at the destination, I then had to unload the van (alone) and proceed to assist the other worker install said pipes and then shovel sand onto them. Oh yes, the sand was not so conveniently placed either. As we had no wheelbarrow... it was one spadeful at a time--walking around the perimeter pool. It was after dark when it was done and the long drive home was just as painful. My arms just about fell off. But... I lived. So, being single again in 1989, I took a train out West with my buddy and cycled throughout the Rocky Mountains of Western Canada. Later that fall, I was asked to coach the offensive line at Loyola High School for the season. That was a fun opportunity and it got me thinking that it would be a good idea to be a high school teacher. But being a bachelor, most nights of the week were spent with friends or in the local bars in and around Montreal: Quai Sera (now burnt to the ground), Cheers on St John's, Sir Winnies, The Extension?, that former funeral parlor bar downtown...what ever that was called, Metropolis, Chi Chi's for Mexican margaritas, St Laurent Street when we felt snooty and a ton of other bars on Crescent Street and anywhere else where there were line-ups. I finished my last semester at Concordia University and immediately applied for the fall semester at McGill University. What the hell does one do with a Bachelor of Arts anyway? Plenty perhaps. I had a great time learning and reading and writing all those term papers. Later that spring I was fortunately accepted and spent the next few years learning how to teach at McGill. With a B.Ed., I graduated in 1993 with a great group of young teachers. You can read an article in the Montreal Gazette by Jack Todd about us (minus one other person) by clicking here. It's funny--that article... he actually wrote two columns on us... generated letters to the editor criticizing us! The letters came from fellow students in our class at McGill. Wow--controversy. I think I will post this stuff later for my enjoyment. Later that year, I got my first car, a plum Plymouth Sundance. I was offered my first teaching job at my old high school, Pierrefonds Comprehensive H.S. Okay, it was for only one day of substitution. The next week, I started in a, more or less, full time capacity at MacDonald-Cartier High School in St Hubert in the fall of 1993. A teacher just suffered from a detached retina--necessitating the need for a long term teaching replacement. The hiring process went something like this when I received a telephone call: "Hi John. My name is Peter, can you teach five classes of Economics, three classes of Canadian and World History, perform other substitutions as needed, coach Track and Field, perform after-school bus duty, and continue on with the stock market simulation club?" "Sure--when?" "Tomorrow morning good for you?" "Okay." Ironically, the teacher I replaced had the same last name as mine (which added to the confusion) and was one of the school's favourite teachers. Oh yeah--he had been there for something like thirty years. One fellow teacher even told me he could bend a loonie in half with his bare hands. F********ck me! Needless to say, I had huge shoes to fill. [A 'loonie', to those unfamiliar with the term, is a metallic Canadian one dollar coin.] Eventually, the driving of 500 km per week started to take its toll on me and the car. Two years later, I taught another great group of students at Chambly County High School. Somehow the students were 'nicer' on the South Shore of Montreal. It is hard to define 'nicer'. Let's just say they weren't as snotty as the ones on the West Island of Montreal where I grew up. Go figure. Many of the kids had their own car to drive to school and many of the teachers could barely afford to pay for a monthly bus pass. What a world... On one of the late winter evenings in 1995, I had gone out with my friend one night at Sir Winston's on Crescent St. and met Julie... yadda, yadda, yadda... my fiancé and I then moved onto Coolbrook, off of Décarie Boulevard in the fall of 1996. We had a nice flat and enjoyed the proximity of downtown Montreal. Although we could not control the heat to our apartment, it was much easier for me to get to school to teach across the river in St. Lambert. Julie was just finishing her Masters of Science (Applied) in Nursing and was working at a Contract Research Organization for major pharmaceutical companies. In the summer of 1997, with no prospects of receiving full-time employment as a teacher in the fall, I followed my fiancé, Julie, to Ottawa where she worked as a Clinical Research Associate. Just after moving in, there was a huge teacher strike that commenced in Ottawa. It did not bode well for being a teacher in my new city. We lived in the Saratoga Apartments near South Keys area for the remainder of 1997 till 2000. Giving up on teaching as a career, at least in the short term, I was trained to support the latest computer software and worked for a year for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) call-centre to take tech support queries from all over Canada. We got married in October 1998 and the next week I started at what was then called Andersen Consulting (now renamed in January 2001 to Accenture.) We lived through the Ice Storm of 1998, our first winter in Ottawa. I bought this vanity web site domain, johnwmacdonald.com in 2001 as a birthday gift to myself. We built our house towards the south of Ottawa in Greely, Ontario and been here ever since. My parents still live in D.d.O. and my in-laws live nearby in the south-end of Ottawa. I have taken up various activities since moving to Greely, from reading (especially bildungsromans) and collecting books, vegetable gardening, driving golf balls at the local range, home maintenance, buying and selling books on eBay and so on. I, like a few others, have hopped on the weblog bandwagon in early 2004 and write (read steal) shamlessly from other web sites. I attend many book readings offered in and around the area and enjoy meeting all the authors. Most of them anway. Julie and I recently finished constructing a 12 1/2 foot wall unit in our home to shelve some of my books: It is called the Hubert Aquin Memorial Library. The library was dedicated officially on March 15, 2004 amongst a small group of..., well, okay, is was just me. I attended my twentieth year high school reunion in the summer of 2005. The ten-year get together was fun, and it was great seeing the same bunch of people, and even those whom I missed the first time. In 2005 I have had some exciting opportunities. I was fortunate to sell my literary event photos to Quill & Quire: Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews, met, not one, but two Nobel Prize Winners and many distinguished authors, submitted a photo postcard which will be published by local Ottawa poet (jwcurry), and lastly, was asked to write a bi-monthly column in the Ottawa Citizen about the literary events in town. The first column debuted in the Sunday edtion, 25 September 2005. However, as of June 2006 the column went on hiatus. In December 2005, I became a guest on Nigel Beale's radio show, The Biblio File, which airs every Monday at 6:00am on CKCU-FM. Additionally, my photos have appeared on a Bywords.ca quarterly magazine, on two books of poetry (rob mclennan, Oni The Haitian Sensation) which is kind of neat, and I even have a book review blurb on the back of a cover of Jennifer Whiteford's first novel, Grrrl. 2006 was a bittersweet year. Julie and I were blessed with a beautiful red-headed boy, Matthew Alexander. Then two months later Accenture Inc. laid me off as my role was made redundant. I have been unemployed since then. Yikes. So, if you need an honest, resourceful, and creative individual on your team let me know! That is about it for now... I will leave the interesting 'fictionalized' stuff for my forthcoming novel. I am sure I will be adding more here as I have the time or inclination to share. Feel free to contact me. |
| John Then & Now |
| The Digested Bio: Mr. MacDonald works in Ottawa and can usually be seen, but not heard, where authors congregate. He tries to project humor into otherwise serious situations. John likes to eat on the edge: On a weekly basis he consumes lazy, artificially coloured, farmed Salmon (preferably the Northern European variety); Grade 'A' Alberta Beef; British Columbian Poultry; Unpasteurized Dairy Products; Extra Large, slightly undercooked eggs from a local farm; Unopened, steamed bi-valves (including oysters) found along any public beach; and Fresh Veggies from his raised garden bed (constructed from discarded railway ties). |
| The Digested Bio ... Digested John likes to laugh. |
| © 2004-2006, John W. MacDonald Updated May 2007 |
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