It’s Nov 5th today and this is a day that I always would rather erase from the calendar. It is however one of those days that has memories that have shaped me for a large part of my life. Be honest and own your mistakes.
We emigrated to Canada when I was quite young. While it didn’t phase me to get new friends and learn new a language I know it was tough on my sister who came in her teens and had some tough times leaving her friends behind to come to a new country. High school isn’t always the most inviting and welcoming to newbies and my sister certainly wasn’t thrilled with moving to Canada. Her first few years in Canada were probably not her wonder years to say the least.
It’s not like we didn’t speak English at all when we got here but we were very novice. Dad had given us English names as he’d always envisioned a move to reunite with his family in Canada who’d emigrated here after the second world war. Dad had been back and forth between Canada and the homeland a few times and after marrying our mom and having my sister and I he wanted to move us all to Canada and we arrived one summer on Canada Day, of all days, to begin our lives here.
I was placed in Grade 3 and on my first day learned my first word in school from a classmate. Up until that time we’d read some English books and when we came that summer the Price is Right and other TV shows were our main English immersion summer school classes.
Puke! That was the word my classmate taught me. His sister had apparently performed this act the previous night and he shared this with me. I had no clue what that meant or was so I just nodded and caught on when he mimed the act a few seconds later. So Jamie, if you’re out there, you can take credit for teaching me my first English word. Well done.
In order to make ends meet in our new country my mom and dad both worked. Dad had a day job and eventually went on to own his own contracting business while mom ran a day care in our home and was a house cleaner and a janitor at a local hardware store 2 nights a week. This establishment was owned by uncle, (yes nepotism existed in the 80’s folks) who wanted to see us succeed so he gave us a hand up as opposed to a hand out.
When I graduated high school and wasn’t quite sure about university I stayed home that summer and tried to find a job. My parents were quite clear. Stay at home and get a job or go to school in the fall…..and get a job to pay for it. They too were wanting me to get a hand up not a hand out. I applied at the local pulp mill as they always hired students in the summer but was not hired. I went to pick up my mom from one of her cleaning jobs and told her my job search would be continuing. My uncle got wind of this and a few days later came to me to tell me one of his warehouse workers was leaving and that he needed someone for at least the rest of the summer. I’d already been accepted at a local community college to take some university transfer courses so this was the perfect solution. The fact he even offered me this job in light of the story that preceded his job offer shows what a gracious and forgiving man my Uncle Co was and remains to this day.
But let’s flash back a few years. It’s my second year in Canada and Mom is working nights as a cleaner at the hardware store. Dad who by now was his own contractor wasn’t home so I accompanied my mom and her co-worker to the store where I would run around the store and warehouse while they cleaned.
It was Nov 5th, a Thursday, that I accompanied my mom and her coworker to the store and she began to clean the offices and counters. At some point I came across a pack of matches left on a shelf and being my age fire was very intriguing so I lit one match. As it was burning down to my fingers I needed somewhere to get rid of it so I tossed it into a plastic garbage can in the paint department. paint. department. plastic.garbage.can…..see where this is going? That can was full of flammables and immediately caught fire. Not wanting to burn down the store I picked up the now on fire garbage can and dragged it outside. My fatal mistake after that was instead of leaving it in the 5 acre asphalt parking lot to burn to the ground I dragged the can behind a wood framed warehouse which inside contained yet more flammables like plywood and lumber. Now more concerned with putting this fire out than getting caught playing with matches I ran back inside the store and went upstairs to get a glass of water to put out this fire which was now becoming a bit of an inferno. After the third glass of water my mom’s coworker was starting to wonder why I was so thirsty and that was right about the time the fire alarms went off.
We exited the building and I don’t remember exactly how long it took the fire department to respond but I do remember walking down the road away from the scene of the crime with my mom asking if I could skip school the next day. Not sure to this day how those two things were related in my arsonist brain but that’s where my head was at as we walked.
As it turned out the fire somehow got into a corner of that warehouse and was deprived of air so the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it probably should have been. It was still was quite a mess and took some time for my uncle’s business to recover from.
The next morning the fire marshal came to our house, I believe it was during school hours so I guess I was allowed to skip school that day. He broke me with 2 pointed questions.
“Were you in the store last night Frank?”
“Yes.”
“Did you set this fire Frank?”
“Yes”
Case closed.
I was charged with arson as a juvenile and had to go to court. My uncle was told by his insurance company that they weren’t going to pay his claim as they thought he’d put me up to this in some sort of insurance scam. I do believe eventually they saw that this was clearly not a scam but more of a dumb kid doing dumb things and paid out his claim.
I got probation from the judge and was told if I kept my nose clean until I was an adult they’d expunge this incident from my record. I’ve never checked to see it that ever actually was expunged. Perhaps I should? May be best to let that lie?
So when my uncle hired me to work for him that summer after I graduated high school we were both well aware of the optics of him hiring the arsonist that almost leveled his enterprise. He joked he hired me to make me work off the damages. He may only have been slightly kidding as the warehouse that I burned did suffer from leaks for years after the fire repair. One summer day both he and I were on the roof in +35 degree weather doing some repairs in the area where the fire had been and he asked me if I knew why he’d asked me in particular for help that day?
“Yes.” was all I replied.
I got the nickname Flash and Torch and Sparky from my co-workers when they learned of my pre teen exploits and for years after that any time there was a fire in my hometown some joker would always ask me if it was my handiwork.
“No.”
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