Hello Ottawa

A semi-retired aspiring sci-fi author, John and I met for coffee near his home in Nepean. He’s full of stories about his life and experiences, and very passionate about science, the economy, and current events. We chatted for a long time before heading over to Andrew Haydon Park for his photos.

 John recently received his one-year medallion from AA, and he definitely deserves a huge round of congratulations for his hard work and commitment. Read on to learn more about the challenges John has faced, and how drastically his life has changed in the past year.

Can you tell me about yourself?

Well, okay. I’m 63, and I’m semi-retired. I’m still looking for something part-time to do, to pull in some extra bucks and fill my time, stuff like that. But currently I’m in the midst of writing a book. So really I’m mostly just acting as chief cook and bottle-washer at home. My wife has her own business at home now, so I keep the place tidy and make supper for her and whatnot. I help with her business when and where I can. I did some volunteer work for the City of Ottawa to fill in some time and as a type of therapy.

I’m on my third marriage. I have two boys from my first marriage - the oldest is 39. He’s in the military, doing computers and communications. They’re in the Netherlands now with four kids, having a ball travelling all over the place. I didn’t have any kids with my second wife. My current wife and I met online, through Yahoo. We did the email thing, and then the phone thing, and then we met and one thing led to another. She lived in a place just North of Napanee in a really old house – it was almost 150 years old. It was really falling apart, and she had sunk a lot of money into it. I kept on bugging her to get rid of it. Eventually she sold the house so she could move to Ottawa and live with me.

One thing you should know about me is that I love animals. I have two cats at home, and my wife has got a cockatiel that she’s had for years. Nobody knows how old it is because someone else gave it to her, but we reckon it’s probably getting close to 20 years old. It flies around, you know, walks around on the carpet. I also have a ferret. Ferrets are very intelligent, very curious creatures. He’s just the cutest thing. My wife named him Sassy, after her sapphire engagement ring.

Can you tell me about your book? What is it going to be about?

It’s actually hard science fiction. There’s science fiction, science fiction-slash-fantasy, and then there’s hard science fiction.  Hard science fiction basically has to do with stuff that is either current technology or near-future technology. My book starts in the 1920s with Wernher von Braun in Germany. The beginning is about his experiences during the Second World War building the V-1 and V-2 rockets, but then it goes on to after the war when he joins the Americans and gets involved in their space program. Then it gets into the present-day and talks about the current economic situation where the worldwide economy is starting to slip. One guy has a vision of creating a generation ship, where a group of people take a 200-year journey to a habitable planet in Alpha Centauri because World War Three is about to break out.  I’m about a third of the way done writing it. I just pick at it when I think of something. It could be 3:00 in the morning, but if something pops into my head I’ll get on the computer and then go back to bed.

What kind of volunteer work did you do you do with the city?

I was working with the City of Ottawa Health Department. You’ve heard of the City of Ottawa needle exchange program? Well part of my job was an extrapolation of that. I made drug cookers for addicts. These are basically blank bottle caps, and we have a special punch tool we used to punch a couple holes in the side of them, and then we threaded a paper clip through to make a handle. It takes maybe 20 or 30 seconds to make one, so they’re pretty fast to make. We sent them down to drop-in centres all over the city, and then addicts can pick them up, use them once, and throw them away. That’s one of the jobs I did. I also put together prenatal books for expectant mothers, and things like that. It kept me busy.

How did you get started doing that?

Well, that’s a bit of a story in itself. I was working for Nortel, but I got outsourced because they were trying to reduce some costs and they thought that outsourcing their IT department would help with that. Nortel offered a deal where you could go work at the outsourcing company. I did that but I waited too long to accept the deal, so I didn’t get a signing bonus. They did bridge our employment, though. Anyway, in December 2006 I got laid off. My job essentially went to India. I got quite a good severance package, so I decided to take the year off. That might have been a bad idea because after a year when I tried to get back into the workforce again, people wondered why I had this gap year. Getting a job in the IT field was hard. Also there are a lot of younger people in the market, with more education, and they are snapped up first.

I started to get pretty depressed about the whole thing, and I started drinking pretty heavily. By December of 2009 I was drinking a bottle of rum a day. Then in January of 2010 I tried to commit suicide and ended up in the hospital. I got involved with AA and a group run by the hospital. Along the way, my doctor suggested that I apply for some volunteer work so I had something to do during the day. Between the three – the support group, AA, and volunteering – it’s kept me off the booze up to now. I just got my one year medallion in January.

When I was drinking in 2009, I had no thought of the future. I really thought the best thing was to end it all. But now that I have a goal in writing my book, I have a whole new outlook on life. In fact, my wife was my girlfriend last December, and she threatened to leave me when I was drinking. I tried to commit suicide in January of 2010 and ended up in the hospital. I had brought my barbeque into the bathroom, closed the door. The suicide attempt was a real turning point for me. In May 2010 Gayle and I got married.

How long have you lived in Ottawa?

Except for one year away, I’ve been here since 1966. I was born in England, and I came over with my parents when I was five. We lived in the Petawawa and Pembroke area. My dad got a job at the nuclear plant at Chalk River. I guess six or seven years down the line he got a job with the Federal government, so we moved here in 1966. The following year I joined the Armed Forces, which didn’t really sit too well with my parents, but I said, well, it’s pretty hard to find a job just coming out of high school with no experience. I wanted to get a trade of some kind, so I figured that if I joined the Air Force I could do that. I was away for about a year on basic training and trade training, and then I asked for a posting back to Ottawa. I spent the next nine years between Rockcliffe and NDHQ. When I left the military I was a microfilm technician, and then in 1978 I started with Consolidated Computer. This was way before the first microcomputer came out, so these were all rack-mounted computers at a computer plant out in the East end of Ottawa. I was a peripheral technician. Later I was a Macintosh technician, and then PCs started rolling in when Northern Telecom and Bell Northern Research merged to become Nortel. So I got in on the ground floor of the Windows revolution. I was with Nortel from 1994 to the early 2000s.

What’s kept you in Ottawa?

It’s a nice city. My wife has relatives in Toronto, but Toronto itself is way too big. Ottawa is a nice size. You can get from end to end very quickly. The only thing I don’t like about Ottawa is that it’s a Federal town. Being a bilingual country, if you want to break into the Federal government you have to be bilingual. It’s getting worse and worse, you know, to sweep the floors you have to be bilingual. I’ve given up applying for government positions because I’m not bilingual. More and more private companies, even – especially downtown and in the East end – are looking for bilingualism.

I do really like Nepean, though, I really do. When Nepean was forced to join the City of Ottawa, a lot of Nepeanites, including myself, were pretty pissed off. I still use Nepean on my postal address.

Do you feel that Ottawa has a personality?

Oh, absolutely. Everybody thinks that Ottawa is all about the Federal government, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. We have our own NHL team, which is a big plus for us.  Scotia Bank Place – it used to be called the Palladium, I loved that name – is a big draw. The Rolling Stones came to Ottawa in 2004. I would have thought that Ottawa was too small a venue, but they put them in Lansdowne Park and the concert was just out of this world, it was astounding.

Do you think you’ll stay in Ottawa?

Absolutely. I have no reason to leave for the moment. Gayle and I have talked about moving to Brampton, where her son and one of her daughters live. Her son-in-law is opening a restaurant, so maybe I could help out there. The business Gayle has going is all done by fax, email and modem so she can do that from anywhere.

We did your photos at Andrew Haydon Park. Why is that an important place to you?

My wife and I go to Andrew Haydon for a lot of activities. On Canada Day they have a fireworks show there, and we can walk from where we live near Bayshore. There are always lots of things going on. We’re over there quite a bit.

Thanks for sharing your story, John.