Former Careers in Western Canada

I did a lot of hotel work. That started in Montreal where I worked as front desk night auditor, busboy and bartender at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
In Vancouver my longest hotel jobs were at the Bayshore Inn.
Another early jobs was repairing NCR cash registers; if they hadn't lied to me back then perhaps I might still be doing this one!

Some early traumatic work experiences prompted me to get my Industrial First Aid ticket. That led to a variety of industrial jobs. Around 1982, I tried to get steady floorhand work on oil field drilling and servicing rigs based in Edmonton, Alberta. I never managed to get on steady.
Perhaps I have the wrong personality to put up with the BS or perhaps I am just accident prone.
On one of my oilfield jobs I went to a hillside outside Fort Liard in the North West Territories. In another position, I did two mid-winter tours to Norman Wells on the frozen banks of the Mackenzie River.

I was also influenced by a desire for a good union wage. I ended doing union construction labourer and first aid work for more than five years around Vancouver.
I poured a lot of concrete and did lots of clean-up. On one job, I worked on an Intrawest apartment in Coquitlam from pouring basement concrete until the outsied was complete a year later.
One of my last construction jobs was as a helper on the injected stone pilings for the new third runway.