Before arriving in the Sault in 2002 to launch SooToday’s news operations, my career had a number of false starts. I worked as a colourblind paint mixer, cleaned toilets at a payday loan place, baked many thousands of hand-shaped loaves of bread for Sharon Havrot Martineau’s dad, and unloaded entire truckloads of plywood by hand for a building-supply establishment that had no working fork lift because I fried its electrical system by installing a wrong-sized battery. In the mid-seventies, I was also a licensed prospector. I knew nothing about geology but an old-timer in Kirkland Lake told me all I had to do was stake a mining claim and I could build myself a nice log cabin there while I started my exploratory digging. I’d been reading magazines like Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith and dreamed of going back to the land. The nice young lady at the mine registry office knew my type and spotted me as soon as I walked in the door. She warned me there were responsibilities associated with mining claims and I’d have to dig an awful lot of trenches. She told me point-blank a mining claim was no place for a city boy just looking for free land beside a pristine northern Ontario lake. I left the registrar’s office with a prospector’s licence and a shiny set of metal claim tags. But even at that tender age I’d learned to listen to wise young ladies and decided life might be easier reading the news at CJKL-AM in Kirkland Lake. I support any government initiatives that discourage fools like me from tying up Ontario’s valuable natural resources without serious plans to do the work
Before arriving in the Sault in 2002 to launch SooToday’s news operations, my career had a number of false starts. I worked as a colourblind paint mixer, cleaned toilets at a payday loan place, baked many thousands of hand-shaped loaves of bread for Sharon Havrot Martineau’s dad, and unloaded entire truckloads of plywood by hand for a building-supply establishment that had no working fork lift because I fried its electrical system by installing a wrong-sized battery. In the mid-seventies, I was also a licensed prospector. I knew nothing about geology but an old-timer in Kirkland Lake told me all I had to do was stake a mining claim and I could build myself a nice log cabin there while I started my exploratory digging. I’d been reading magazines like Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith and dreamed of going back to the land. The nice young lady at the mine registry office knew my type and spotted me as soon as I walked in the door. She warned me there were responsibilities associated with mining claims and I’d have to dig an awful lot of trenches. She told me point-blank a mining claim was no place for a city boy just looking for free land beside a pristine northern Ontario lake. I left the registrar’s office with a prospector’s licence and a shiny set of metal claim tags. But even at that tender age I’d learned to listen to wise young ladies and decided life might be easier reading the news at CJKL-AM in Kirkland Lake. I support any government initiatives that discourage fools like me from tying up Ontario’s valuable natural resources without serious plans to do the work