Building Character |
| Gerry Albert |
| I ran away from home when I was 13. I couldn't stand my stepmother so
I went to live with my Mom. At that point I went on a quest for true
happiness, thinking that there had to be a better life. Well perhaps not
better, but I did have some unusual experiences.
1972- I lived on chestnut street in Preston, Ontario. About a year after I arrived they put a sewage plant at the end of the street. Approximately 2 months later there were huge sewer rats chewing through our walls. The landlord didn't care and the authorities never heard of such a thing in Preston. We moved. We landed in Stienbach Manitoba next. My stepfather (Harry) opened a restaurant there as he was an accomplished chef. That lasted about a year or so when Mom and Harry found work at a fly in fishing camp at Dogskin Lake. We wound up relocating to Lac Du Bonnet Manitoba. What a buzz it was to live in the northern wilderness with nothing to do but explore. That winter Mom and Harry went to work at a logging camp just north of Whiteshell Provincial Park. I was 15 at that point and hated school. Kids in Manitoba didn't think much of kids from Ontario. Anyways my mom let me skip school that year so I could look after the dogs while they were at the logging camp. Well here I am at 15 years old alone in the bush with 3 dogs and a domesticated wolf. This gave me the opportunity to witness a multitude of wild critters in they're natural habitat. The best part was sitting on my roof at night and listening to the wolves howl while the Northern Lights did their thing. If I wanted fresh drinking water I had to walk down to the lake and chop through about a foot of ice and drag my buckets back to the house on my toboggan. If I wanted a bath I would just melt snow on the stove. Finally spring sprung and it was time to pull up stakes again. Our next abode was in Sioux Narrows, Ontario. That's where I snagged my first job at Motlong's Rod and Reel. Here is where I snuck into a bar for the first time and actually had a couple beers. I found Northern Ontario and Northern Manitoba to be enchanting as far as geographical locations go, but the tough guys were really tough and they wanted everybody to know it. I decided at the end of that summer that I needed to get back to civilization for a while so I packed up and headed for Brampton, where my Dad lived. This is where I finished high school and joined my first band.
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(an article by Mart De Haan)...or... A story about a story
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