About Me

Hello everyone.
First of all I should give you a brief background.
I was born in Trail BC and raised in Fruitvale about 15 km east of there where my parents still reside. Upon graduation from J.L. Crowe SS school I had numerous jobs. I worked in the coal mines in the East Kootenays, mills and underground mining in the Squamish area,  power line construction in Saskatchewan, and sought my fortunes in the Yukon for a season. It was there that I joined the Canadian Armed Forces as a Meteorological Technician based out of Comox, BC. Upon completion of my term, I started work as a "Met Tech" with the Atmospheric Environment Service of Canada. My postings there started with a mandatory isolated area posting which was Cape St James on the southern most tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands. (now Haida Gwaii) I spent 8 months there, had 1 month vacation, and another 6 months. This was isolation as our only contact with the outside world was by radio telephone. (no such thing as satellite tv, which was a good thing.) Other than that we received our mail and food once a month by Coast Guard helicopter. Having survived that I had postings to the Gonzales Observatory Weather Station in Victoria BC, the Hope Weather Station and finally to the Vancouver International Airport. It was there that I decided to fulfill a dream of being a commercial helicopter pilot and started my flying lessons in January 1981. By the time I finished the course the "Recession of 81" was in full swing leaving pilots with 8,000 hours flying time out of work. It took about 6 years for the helicopter industry to recover to the point of hiring low time pilots again. Of course by this time I had to move on and took a job as a Met Tech for a fly-in mine north of Smithers where my wife and I lived for 2 1/2 years. The mine eventually shut down and we decided to move to Parksville on Vancouver Island where we had good friends. Our daughter was now 5 years old and our son was 1. It was here that I got my start on operating heavy equipment (mainly excavators) which I have done for the past 20 or so years. The past 12 years I was employed by a civil construction company named "Knappett Industries" in Nanaimo.
One evening last June one of my superintendents called me to tell me of a job that "had my name all over it." This job was for a "Heavy Equipment Operator Instructor" at Vancouver Island University.
So here I am today having been accepted for the position, one that I have never been so thrilled to undertake.
My thanks go out to Knappett Industries for all their support over the years and especially to Jeff Martin for giving me the heads-up. An amazing team of incredible people.
Now to complete the story...PIPD 3100 here I am!