1994/5 A NEW LIFE AND SUDDENLY BUSY AGAIN (pic of 1st office in Calgary)
For the past few weeks and around the Christmas 2020 period. I have deviated and gone astray from the chronology of our life. Since finding each other in the Andes of Peru in early 1978. The chronology part, has taken us, thus far, in a full “circle” since I left Calgary in late 1977. When I flew off to the wilds of Peru, seeking fame and fortune. To a time in early 1994 where, now married with a family, we returned, back to Calgary. The journey was wild and in that period we had travelled, lived and worked in 10 different countries. In addition to that, we had visited, explored and vacationed in another 10.
By the time of our return to Calgary in 1994, I would consider us “seasoned travellers”. Maybe, even a wee bit worldly. At this point, I will now attempt to get back on track with our adventures. Maybe even reestablish the timeframe of events, in our life. I will always break off from this path, as more random memories, flit thru my mind. I will try and capture these early musings whenever I can. And put them down on paper, before they fade away in the darkness. So if my humble efforts at writing in this blog seem a bit confusing, it is only because they are.
For those of you used to, an orderly and compartmentalized mind. You can now see what I am dealing with. As my memories veer off track without the slightest rhythm or intent. I keep trying to pull them back on some sort of path, so please bear with me. Additionally, I am also sure, very few “out there” could give a shit. About what I/we did on arrival back into Calgary in 1994. However as boring as it may be. I need to keep the thin thread of our life and times together by following some sort of critical path. I can easily forgive anyone who chooses to skip this article.
So as I said, it is now winter 1994, we had left our long term employer. This, in a fit after not being able to find an assignment that we wanted. We were now determined to launch a business of our own, back in Canada. Deysi, as she always did, looked after the move, selection of housing, schools, banks, vehicles,and accommodation. Basically everything that might otherwise distract me from a focus on making some “spending money”. By now she was an expert at this critical task of keeping things as normal as possible. Always, amidst the chaos of our lives. The girls had been uprooted many times already, in their short lives. However with Deysi guiding the ship they never seemed to suffer ill effects from these disruptions. Well I say that, but who knows, maybe we were all weird and just thought we were normal.
Deysi quickly located a home for us in Lake Bonavista in South East Calgary. This was an affluent area, however by 1994 was showing the first signs of aging. I remember that when I left Calgary, those many years earlier, Lake Bonavistsa was the “place to hang”. Now almost 20 years later, it was starting to lose its shine. As the rich and famous had moved on to other new areas. That suited us fine as we hardly qualified as either the “rich” or “famous”. The area had good schools and soon Ange was enrolled in Sam Livingston School grades K to 4. Ron, had to finish out a few months of grade 9, before starting High School. I remember her not being real happy to go back to Junior High. When Grade 9 in Rockville, MD., already qualified as High School.
My god how the years had sped by. Deysi and I had already decided. That even though I did not as yet have a client and my business could NOT, easily start from home. That there was no way that I could work from home! The distractions were just too numerous. I would have not accomplished anything, other than follow Desyi around all day.Constantly, pawing at her, and getting myself in trouble along the way. So within a few days I had an office located and was moved in. Thus the birth of my company EPC Project Services LLC. I was now founder, president, CEO,& owner. As well as, copy boy, coffee maker, IT manager, complaints “hotline” operator and janitor of this huge conglomerate. My early days in this office have already been covered in an earlier post, so I will move past them.
Also, I quickly found my first client and was starting on a new path in my life. Owning a business was ‘liberating”! I could come in as early as I wanted, say 5 or 6 am, and stay until 7 or 8 at night. I could work 5 days for others. Then spend the weekends doing books, paying bills, preparing invoices and organizing stuff for the upcoming week. I could also “pay” myself last, if there was any money left over after paying everyone else. And after paying for supplies, utilities, equipment, and the landlord. As well as, anybody else that was now queued up for a shot at my meagre earnings.
My God was this fun! No more steady job, steady pay check, security, or order in my work life, not for me! I needed the freedom to work twice as hard, face failure and starvation on a weekly basis and “kiss butt” twice as much as I did before! I just had to keep telling myself, every day; “My God Jimbo what a genius you are and isn’t this fun!” Had I not kept telling myself this, I would have realized that I had basically “jumped out of the frying pan, into the fire” and traded off security for insecurity. I had a permanent “plastic smile” on my face to fend off anyone who doubted my decision. “Lord help us all”, often passed through my mind.
But all whining aside, the fact was, that I had no other choice. Because returning to face Deysi with failure, at the end of the day, was never an option.
Beside having a new client that took a large amount of my life, I was now involved in some other activities. If you can remember back to my previous time in Calgary, before the Fires in Kuwait days, you will remember a house we had outside of Calgary in the Springbank area. “Why aren’t you living there again”, you might ask? If you also remember, we held this house along with my brother (L), brother in law (B), and Deysi’s brother in law (J). Coincident with our arrival back to Calgary, was an opportunity for us to “trade” this 20 acre property for an office building, smack in the middle of downtown Calgary. It was a humble, 16,500 sq. ft., 3 story older building located at 6th and 6th (SW) in the heart of the city.
It had just so happened that the owner of this building, coincidently the same guy as sold us the acreage in Springbank, (after having got himself in financial troubles, owed “L” legal fees and had run out of people to lend him money) had again got himself into further financial woes with a building he owned in downtown Calgary. Faced with losing the building to creditors, he had decided that his original 20 acre parcel now had a greater potential to get him out of trouble, than did the building he owned. Thus it came to pass that he now wanted to trade us his building (full of debt) and in return get back a piece of his acreage (paid for and debt free). So we made this exchange and for the next few months, completely “gutted” and renovated our new property.
It all started with ripping out all of the floor tiles and carpets, ripping apart all of the washrooms which were located on every floor, repainting 100% of everything and getting it ready to rent. I left out a couple of the things we also tore apart, because I wanted to describe them separately, as each of them provided a unique memory that sticks to me until this day. The first major task was the fluorescent light fixtures and the supposed “lead” that they may or may not have contained. The second was the removable, suspended, ceiling panels. As part of getting financing for this building, we were required to have a full environmental assessment of the building, its structure, the contents and anything forming part of the building.
In other words, from the front street to the back alley, everything inside those boundaries was to be scrutinized. This assessment determined that the ballasts in the fluorescent light fixtures, probably, contained lead. My questions were, how much could they possibly contain and how would it escape, as the ballasts themselves were about 2″ x 2″ x 8″ long and were sealed units. No matter how ridiculous it seemed, some “expert” had determined that the ballasts presented potential harm to anyone in the building (as it was the building was completely empty), anyone walking past the building and probably anyone in the whole City of Calgary.
As I read the report, it became obvious that we were now in for a significant expense in order to mitigate this potential city wide disaster. Not that anyone had actually claimed there was lead in the ballasts, just that it was likely, based on the type, style, and age of the light fixtures. This in itself was sufficient to cost us a lot of $$$ for remediation.
Come the day of remediation and up to the back door rolls a bright yellow truck, equipped with all the bells and whistles to bring a tear to a “ghostbuster’s” eye. Out pile a handful of “lead remediators”, the finest looking set of idiots that Calgary had to offer, at the time. They were resplendent in full body “ghostbuster attire” complete with “moon boots” and major acid handling gloves, full head masks, and some even had magic wands, while a couple of them, pulled large insulated plastic garbage cans on wheels, behind them. They knelt and had their prayer, asking to survive this foray into the unknown and the lurking dangers of this building.
It may have been funny to some, but not to any of us that were paying the bills. They got busy disconnecting ballasts, putting each in an insulated bag, transporting it to the insulated garbage cans at the back door of the building and then gingerly removing the ballast from the bag and putting it in one of the garbage containers. This went on a long, long time until they had finally rounded up each and every evil little ballast in the building, and had stored each of them safely in their special, high tech, insulated garbage cans. They now wheeled them out into the alley and positioned them behind their “ghostbusters” van. Once there, they finally realized what a few hundred “lead” ballasts weighed.
Using all the resources at hand there was no way they were lifting these containers into the back of the van, so after a quick meeting they started “hand bombing” them from garbage can to back of vehicle. Talk about the “Keystone Cops”! That done, they all disrobe and pile into their “ghost mobile” and head off down the alley. Geezus, is all I can think, save me from fools and remediators. This is not quite the end, you see in their haste to get finished and down to their “local”, they had forgotten to close the door on the back of their truck securely, and as they proceeded down the alley, they were spewing ballasts all over Calgary.
Somehow they realized what was happening and suddenly the truck screeched to a halt and out piled the Keystone Cops, this time with no “ghostbuster” gear on. They ran around in panic and barehanded, gathered up and threw the ballasts back into the truck. Having gathered them all up, they slammed the door and headed on their way. Let me say it again, Geezus!
The second major task was the removal and replacement of the ceiling panels from the suspended ceilings throughout the building. The environmental assessment said that these were in a “friable” state due to age, and that when touched or moved emitted a fine dust of “whatever they were made of” into the air. This fact I fully agreed with. These were the white, 2′ x 4′ pressboard type panels, with decorative holes and squiggles punched into them, that sat in a metal frame hanging from the roof a few feet above your head. Lord knows, in my day, I had spent many many hours gazing away at this type of ceiling in many different offices all over the world.
This building contained something like 3000 of them. We all agreed, these stained and disgusting looking tiles had to go. It appeared to be an easy job, right. You pop one out, grab a new one and pop it in the hole, easy. Well not exactly and this is where the story starts. Luckily, at this time I had a lifelong friend “R” who was kind enough to manage the remodelling of this building, while the rest of us continued with work, in order to fund these projects. Also, luckily, Deysi’s youngest brother “J’cito” was available and looking for some work at the same time. We transported him down from Edmonton and he bunked in with us while he worked at the building.
The reason I bring this job up, is that you cannot possibly imagine just how difficult it could be to “pop” out one of these panels and “pop” in another. First of all about 1/3 of those that “popped” out then disintegrated into bits, pieces, shards and a cloud of dust as soon as any pressure was put on them. Of course the new ones never quite “popped” back into the hole vacated by the removal of the old one. And of course, if you try to squeeze it, wedge it, or force a new one into a hole, it also broke apart in your hands. So gently “wiggling” and coaxing was the method of inserting a new tile into place. Anyway, I get ahead of myself.
What I really wanted to describe was the intimidating task that R and J’cito faced when the new tiles were delivered. R had asked where I wanted them stacked.I said, well just leave them in the stairwell and on the landings going up, you are going to need them up to the top floor, anyway. Delivery takes place, not one, not two, but three Building Supply truck loads. R then calls me down to look at them. My God what a sight this was. They were stacked in bundles from the bottom stairwell up through the openings to each floor all the way too the roof on the third floor. The landings were all full, and there was just enough room to squeeze by them to get top the stairs.
Geezus! All I wanted to do was get out of there and leave them to it. Mind staggering is no exaggeration. As much as it seemed like, “pop one out – pop one in”, it never quite happened like that. It seemed like 1/2 of the new tiles had to be cut in one manner or another to fit around the walls, around light fixture, building columns, divider walls, vents, and any other appurtenance attached to the ceiling. It was slow torture. Old tiles had to be carried out back and put in a special container for disposal. The particulate in the air was choking, and progress was akin to watching paint dry. Both R and J’cito developed a special hatred of ceiling tiles. Once finished, J’cito quickly “scurried” back to Edmonton before I came up with something else for him to do.
Little by little the renovations were completed, and now included 100% new carpeting, 100% new washrooms, art work in the foyer (another bill collected “in trade” by my brother L), and thanks to “R’s” nephew we now had every nook and cranny in this building painted 100%, with colors chosen by Deysi and “Happy”, my brother’s wife. I now had a place to permanently locate my business and did so immediately. L also moved his law practice in and we started leasing space to third parties. Looking back it seemed like a crap load of work, that we jammed into a couple of months in spring and early summer 1994. Whhheeewwww! Am I glad I unloaded that one. However, it does set the stage for our next three years in Calgary.
6 Comments
Deysi
Another great story. You have a good memory, you remember things I almost forgot .
Jimbo Red
Yeah, a mind like a steel trap, right?
Ange
You’re now starting to enter the years I have vague memories of! I remember I loved going to the office because you let me play Time Bandit at the computer which I think was the “receptionist” area computer in the office. So much fun.
Jimbo Red
You used to come to work with me on Saturdays and sit behind the reception desk happy as a clam.
JMW
Pretty cool you guys did all that!
Jimbo Red
And more, but if I say anymore, everyone will think I’m BS’ing.