2025 Our life in Port Hawkesbury 1973 - 1976

 

Excerpt, pages 247 – 282 from my memoirs.

 

Our life in Port Hawkesbury 1973 - 1976

 

As mentioned, my job had become less and less secure as the springtime proceeded. I had felt it. Perhaps that was one or the reasons that I had signed up as a student at McGill University on the new year. I had even sent out the odd tentacle, probing what else there may have been for me in the world. As for working for ASEA, I had joined for life in 1964, or so I thought. I carried an ASEA name pin under my lapel and would flip it up on occasion, showing that I was a company man.

This was not the case, from the company side. Then as now, employees are dispensable, to be hired and fired as need arises. I was too young to know and learned that lesson with a shock. One of the last days of May 1973 I was called in to the president's office. Alec DeLery explained what I already knew, the prospects for our turbine business were grim, given the current state of our largest category of customers, the Pulp and Paper industry.

Two persons were given three months notice that day, myself and Al G., the resident salesman to the same field. The shock was somewhat softened by the three-month notice. My last day would be the last day of August.

What goes on here? Monica is near full term and I get laid off. I had left my last job at General Electric as Monica was near Ingbritt's birth. Six years later, same story?

I took the train home in total shock. I forgot my house keys and my book on the train and had to run out and make new keys the next day. The lapel pin was taken off the next morning and hidden away in the bottom of my jewellery box, it is still there. The sense of defeat was immeasurable. I felt that I had given all I had to my boss and my employer and now what? - My feeling of dejection was deep and hurt me a lot.

I have since learned not to trust any employer much beyond the next pay cheque and to keep my résumé updated and close at hand.

At that point, 33 years old, I went out far and wide looking for a job. 100 résumés went out in one week. That resulted in over 25 interviews in eight cities, from Chicago in the west, to Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto and Halifax. I got time off from work to travel, no questions asked.

Now I was at home with my newborn Annelie, but had no job. My stomach was churning with fear even though I knew that I had good prospects. What if? I only had six weeks of pay cheques remaining. Then, the phone rang, and again, and again and – again. I had scores of telephone calls during these two weeks. The strangest call came at 03:00 one night, it was a personnel manager who called to inquire, could I accept the job now if he raised my salary 10 % and upgraded me to a Buick company car?

“Would I join ???”

When my two weeks of “stay at home with baby” time was over I had seven (7) job offers on our kitchen table, complete with relocation offers, benefit plans and retirement plans.

What to do? Who could choose? Is there any one better than any one else? Every offer was for a more than 50 % higher pay than my current salary. I sat down on the very last night and drew a spread sheet on a large sheet of brown wrapping paper, practically covering the entire kitchen table. The world was mine, all I had to do was to chose.

I included our priorities and my career dreams. What we liked and what we didn't.

Finally, late at night, we made a joint decision. Not the fanciest, not the one with the highest pay, but the one that would give me most useful practical experiences, to be part of a plant.

(It was the right choice, I benefited greatly from those experiences in future years.)

We would leave the big city for a while. Live closer to nature. Work in a closer setting and, hopefully, one that is more secure.

I didn't take that fabulous sales job in Toronto – that company was sold two years later.

I didn't go to another turbine manufacturer, power generation construction took a hiatus for a few years.

I didn't join a consulting firm, you would never know where you worked from month to month.

I went for a secure government job, working for a boss that I had already known for five years, in a small but beautiful place; I would become the Maintenance Superintendent for the Point Tupper Generating plant in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia.

Some time later, Al G. and I were invited to a corporate farewell party in Montreal. Al, who was also asked to leave as I was, had got a position at Montreal Engineering, later SNC. True to form, they sent him on long overseas assignments, so many that he and his wife eventually divorced. Not for me…

The entire staff were there and we left with the feeling that even if business could be bad, we could still lose our jobs but we were still loved by our bosses and colleague's. I am so happy for that show. It gave me a bit more belief in the kindness of humanity again. My distrust in employers was well founded, I had to leave no less than nine more positions in years to come. There was, really, only one thing I was never told, “You are stupid”, but I sure got some stories about acquisitions, bankruptcies, economic slowdown, etc.   

As all readers may know, not much of that little kindness remains these days. Business has turned more employee unfriendly and brutally money oriented over the years, as I came to realize many times during my then, and future years.

Time to pack up and leave after our six years in the metropolis of Montreal. Next stop, the not so grand Port Hawkesbuy, NS, with all of 2,000 inhabitants. My new boss had rented a nice, newly built, house for us there.

The parties were over. The goodbyes were said. The packaging had started and the moving van was to arrive at 08:00 the next morning. In the middle of the night there was thunder, there was rain. We looked out and closed all windows and – the phone rang. It was our neighbour. “We have flooding, the basement is filling up.”

Sure enough, we got down to about 25 cm of water, still raising. The sewer had backed up. Fortunately for us, it was mostly rainwater, not very dirty. So much of our belongings had been neatly laid out on the floor for the movers. It was now all now soaking wet. The washer and dryer motors were under water as were many toys, lots and lots of bed clothing and so much more, including my typewriter.

Worst of all, my entire life's collection of photographs which were so carefully organized and stored in a moisture proof metal container, was floating on top. It had an open bottom drain allowing it to slowly sink as it filled up with water.

The water had subsided by sunrise but we hadn't gone back to sleep. We had spent the rest of the night wringing out the water and carrying wet stuff of all kinds upstairs. The idea was to try to save some by giving it some of the morning sun before it was all inside the van. Nope, the moving company was not interested in delaying our move, not even one hour. They were sold out for the next couple of weeks. Some of our goods was packed dripping wet, spreading moisture among what as not wet.

We travelled to the Montreal airport on one of the warmest days of the year, only to arrive in Halifax on one of the first cold fall days. It was early September. The temperature shock was brutal.

Our first home was at a hotel for a few days until our furniture arrived, long after the promised date. By that time much had become mouldy and had to be discarded. Most of the toys were saved. My typewriter got a good lube job and could type again but – 90 % of my pictures which were mostly slides, so popular then, were irretrievably lost. Over 2,000 photographs, covering the last 12 years of our life, gone. What little remained were a few B/W pictures and my negatives in albums that were packed among the books.

I never took a colour slide picture again, they were too fragile and hard to keep.

Port Hawkesbury became a shock from day one. Sure, we had all been there several times during earlier years, always had a good time, been invited to friends and seeing the best of the land. Now we lived there. It took a while for the telephone to arrive and the basement in our newly built house leaked when it rained. So many new things to live and learn with.

The Sobey's store had run out of Coca-Cola.

“We'll soon get some more. The Coke truck usually arrives every two weeks.”

Monica became an instant celebrity, a woman who could drive – and had a car. She made many friends who loved to go shopping with her or just drive around. Our children were well taken care of. Ingbritt started in grade one in a school some three blocks away. It sounds near, but wait until you get a metre of show during the day and your child is still at school. One winter day, she came home after a two-hour session swimming with a friend through the snow.

The weather was fantastic, a never-ending string of surprises. We could have a storm that blew for three days in one direction, then be still for two hours and blow in the other directions the next three days. Snow would come in great quantities and melt away the next day, or turn into a solid sheet of ice. We saw and, I must admit, enjoyed it all. Weather strengthens you if you are smart enough to stay out of the worst. Sure, I did, on occasion get stuck and have to walk the last bit of my trip, either home or to work. The reason was often another stuck vehicle, or two. My car was still there a few hours later, when I could go back and retrieve it. It was a small place, after all.

Proud daughter in father’s safety hat

My job was different. I may have known the technology of a power plant but I was now also the boss of a number of mechanics and other staff. The Plant Manager, Ted LeMaistre, was great. He gave me a lot of help and introductions to what was to be done. I was a rookie and probably quite green in the eyes of the other employees.

Ted had a degree in English from his youth and always, secretly, wanted to be an author. Being plant manager didn't give him many opportunities to use his English skills but he still did. His messages for the billboards were written in the most obscure words known to an English speaker, somewhat along the lines of Winston Churchill, known for being able to hold a speech that could only be deciphered later. I was sometimes asked to write another note, explaining what he had tried to express. Secretly, I think Ted was quite proud that nobody understood his English.

I came into a plant that had just been completed. The commissioning of the newest half of the plant was just about finished. There were tonnes and tonnes of flammable debris spread out just about everywhere. The new interior paint job was hardly to be seen. My first self appointed task was to clean up the plant. I got about fifty unemployed persons from Manpower Canada to help. It took several weeks and over 150 loads for our little pick-up truck to the dump to complete that task.

Then on to fire safety, also in my realm of responsibilities. We all took a course on fire protection and then it was off to the races. The local fire department came in and trained us all on the basics. Unbelievable but true, none of the station employees had ever been taught about fire protection. We were practicing in the yard, making plenty of smoke as well as some controlled explosions, performing all sorts of fire extinguishing and fire suppression activities. The fire department packed up and went home after two days.

On day three, it happened. Some of our spare parts were kept in their shipping containers at the bottom of one of the boilers. The welder, working above, hadn't paid attention and – the weld spatter started a fire among the boxes.

Act quick, these boxes are all right under the oil supply lines.

Quick, get water. Now!

Several of the water hoses were already in use for something else, hopelessly and uselessly curled up on the floor. I got hold of one that was properly rolled up and connected and dragged it in near the fire. The guys took over, throwing some burning, and some not affected boxes out in the yard.

Thousands of dollars worth of expensive spare parts and supplies had been manhandled in a most destructive way. But, no real damage was made. Sure, there was some paint gone here and there. To our luck, the boiler air inlet was nearby and it had safely sucked most of the smoke into the boiler. A little smoke, or even fire, couldn't do any damage there. The internal boiler combustion temperature was about 900^o C.

Lesson learned. The next day, the clean up continued. Nothing combustible was left in the open. That was the first, of my three sets of clothes to be discarded because of burns and a horrible smell while I worked there. The other fires were even more exciting.

A few weeks on, an oil seal let go and our brand new, large and expensive plant air compressor caught fire. This was not a matter of water, it was oil burning, all around the base and flowing out over the floor, ever nearer the main lubricating pumps for the turbine. - And, as we did find out later, the hydraulic fluid that we used would burn almost like gasoline.

Our newly acquired fire fighting skill came to good use. We quickly brought out our large dry extinguisher and saved the plant. The compressor didn't fare so well. The bearings were gone and all the exterior wiring was burned off. The plant was rapidly running out of air for the control system, now only supplied by a small standby compressor.

I made a quick run to a nearby construction site, talked fast to the supervisor and stole his large air compressor. It was a bit heavy for our truck but was soon put up in our backyard and connected to the plant air system with hoses. Then, a new problem. Diesel fuel. The on-board tank was running down quickly. Our plant may have been running on oil, millions of litres every week, but that was heavy oil. We had no light fuel oil.

Now it was late at night. Who could we contact? One of our employee's brother ran a fuel oil delivery service. They had the fuel truck parked for the night. But, that is fuel oil, not engine fuel. A quick visit to the fuel specification sheet and an Engineering handbook convinced us. Light home heating oil is good enough as emergency fuel for a Diesel engine, just don't use it forever.

Late that night, we could finally put some fuel to the compressor. The fuel gauge was solidly resting on the empty mark as we started filling the tank. After all, we had saved the plant from a shutdown on a high-load day in the fall. The residents of Nova Scotia never knew.

Sadly enough, that large construction compressor came to an inglamorous ending in our service, a few days after the burned plant compressor was repaired and ready to go. The operating staff, for sure, put oil in the fuel tank occasionally but had forgotten to add a routine to check the oil level in the Diesel engine. Weeks later, the sump was dry and the engine seized, again with oily smoke coming out the wrong vents. That cost the corporation a nice mint. We had to pay to completely overhaul the entire portable compressor set before returning it to the rightful owners.

My mechanical foreman, Jim, was always on the job early. He liked getting up early, he said. I had introduced a maintenance priority system, designed such that the most urgent jobs would be completed first. Strangely enough, many assignments that were signed off as completed, showed up in dire need of attention a day or two later. I complained and Bill told me.

“We just have bad equipment, it breaks a lot.”

I took me a while to figure out that the mechanics, all friends of the foreman, were mostly sent to fix easy or comfortable things. This meant the ones that were neither hot, nor cold, nor high up nor hard to reach nor – worst of all, would take a long time to fix.

Statistically, our repair completion ratio was superb but, the plant had more and more breakdowns on critical equipment. I met the foreman Jim almost every morning and he reassured me that all was well. It wasn't at all. I had a really rude awakening after I was called in one night. One of our main oil pumps required a seal replacement, normally a routine job where not much could go wrong. Before returning to my warm bed at home, I had dug out the manual, opened it to the right page, unfolded the assembly drawings and handed them to the mechanic.

“You are sure on what to do now?”

“Oh yes, no problem.”

When I came in the next morning the plant was still running but just about to shut down. The pump casing had split open and there was hot flammable oil spewing all over the place.

We scrambled to put it all together again. I asked the mechanic what had gone wrong. He mumbled a reply. Then, it dawned on me, he couldn't read. He had proceeded to loosen the bolts holding the casing together, never managed to replace the seals and reported the pump to the foreman Jim as fit for duty.

This is about the time that I realized that most, almost every one of our mechanics, were temporary employees, without operating certificates and were paid on an hourly basis. Our corporation was provincially owned and I spoke to our personnel department in Halifax. They all agreed, we should try to make them all permanent employees, with benefit and pension plans like everyone else. There was this little issue of qualifications, though. These men were all working in positions that had work specifications attached. That should be no problem, I thought, they all seem like qualified mechanics to me.

Not so, we were soon to find out.

The personnel department came to town with two days worth of aptitude and skill tests, to be completed by all potential employees, in principle by almost the entire staff.

Jim, my foreman was excused. He shouldn't have been, I learned later.

Now, where did most of our staff come from? Cape Breton Island had primarily lived off the coal mines for the last 100 years. Coal mining had gradually declined until it was just about all gone by the mid 60's. Then the Federal and Provincial governments had embarked on a great training mission, to make these unemployed coalminers into tradesmen, to fill all the new positions that would become available with all the new industry that was, for sure to move in soon. Some craftsman's tickets, such as welders, journeymen, fitters & al. were sometimes handed out for very little reason. Many of our employees had come work with these rather flimsy qualifications.

I was greatly humbled when the results came back. Almost all had shockingly low marks, even the ones who talked a mile a minute and didn't seem to mind putting a wrench to just about anything. There was an extra set of test sheets in the name of a man who had just quit. I had taken that and filled it in to the best of my ability. That one test had a 99 % rating, all the other were 50 % or less, with a few of the ones who couldn't read scoring under 5 %.

This was a catastrophe, we were running the plant with illegal and now confirmed, under-qualified, staff. We did manage to borrow some qualified persons from other plants. Some of the better ones were provisionally retained until they became certified.

Martin S. will always stand out. He was a tall, slim man with the true gift of gab, always willing to work. He liked to drive our company truck, especially with the snow plow. He had the uncanny ability of getting the truck stuck, even without the plow. The worst was the day he came back in a police car, he had managed to roll the truck on a straight stretch of the highway. He was drunk. We took away his driving privileges and put him on the cleaning crew. The union representative protested a bit but turned quiet when all the facts were laid on the table.

How many other drank on the job? Even after our super cleaning job, we would still find the odd empty 12 ounce mickey bottle hid away in a corner somewhere. It was great enjoyment, and sometimes very shocking, to read the Halifax Herald Monday paper. There, on page two, was a listing, complete with names and addresses of all the persons that had been caught driving drunk the last week. Some of my employees were mentioned there too.

Sure, people drink in Nova Scotia, it is in their Scottish blood. But drinking on the job? We never really found out. It was all done on on the sly and the empty mickies continued to show up. Car accidents were all too common. The most memorable one, fortunately one where nobody got badly hurt, happened the Saturday morning.

I got a call.

“You have to come in and help operate the plant. The night shift has already done double shifts and worked for 19 hours, they are not fit to continue.”

“Where is the morning shift, there is supposed to be five of them?

“They have collided and are all in the hospital.”

“What?”

They were in two cars, and had collided when one car entered the highway in an unsafe manner. How great is the chance that two cars colliding would carry the entire day shift for a plant? These did. Only one person was hurt enough not to come to work later in the day. He had a broken arm.

One winter day, we had a good size snow storm, followed by freezing rain. The plant operated well even though some of the safety grills over air intakes threatened to freeze over. The boilers were choking for lack of air. We had to place a couple of warmly dressed maintenance men with spades on the roof, to bang the snow off the grills. The problem was rectified the next summer, we just removed the grills and raised the sides of the inlets so no person could fall in.

One snow storm was worse than most, it raged for over a day. The snow and wind confused three grey seals, which we “sort of” knew. They were sometimes seen near our plant seawater intake. We used to keep one of the large roller doors ajar for reasons of ventilation, and especially so when the air intakes could be blocked. We had already sucked in a large window in the lunch room once, closing all doors too quickly when the plant was at full power.

Then – a call. There are seals in the turbine room. What a joke, seals inside the plant?

Yes, they were very real and very angry seals. The male, accompanied by two females, had meandered about 200 metres off the seashore, across the frozen yard and inside the plant through the partially open service door. We called RCMP, you must help. They arrived in an impressive looking four-wheel drive vehicle. One of the officers decided to drive out, over the frozen yard, to have a look at where the seals came from.

That was not such a good idea, the truck ended up at a precarious angle, just centimetres away from having slid into the stormy sea. Not good. The officer wisely left the car and walked back. We towed that car back on to terra-firma the next day.

The two RCMP officers hadn't yet met a seal they couldn't handle, they said.

What to do? The seals didn't know where the sea was. They were, as we were at times in the raging storm, totally confused. How do you tell an angry male seal to get back to the shore? He wasn't very happy at all. We convinced him, using broom handles, to return outside, which of course was no better than an uneven sheet of ice.

We fetched our small company truck, fortunately a four-wheel drive. A lasso was thrown around the tail of the male, and he was pulled, backwards, towards the water. We all stood well back, and angry male seal is not play with. Was that ever a time when I wished for a camera, even though the blowing snow might have obscured all.

The ladies followed their man, and when they were close enough to see the waves, the rope was cut. He wiggled out of the lasso in seconds and took off over the shore ice into the water, ladies in tow. I was learning a new skill when in charge of maintenance. - Keep all ground level doors closed to keep the seals away.

The RCMP had filed a report and our adventure with nature’s own was written up in the Halifax Herald the next day. I am sorry I cannot find the article now.

The plant was quite new and many of the employees were either related to each other or old school mates. I didn't quite like the way I found added hours on many of the time sheets that I was asked to sign, but didn't protest at first.

Then came the restaurant incident.

What?

What does a restaurant have to do with an operating power plant?

The latest union agreement stated that any employee, working overtime, was allowed to order in a restaurant meal after four hours. Someone drove around and collected the menus from all the five restaurants in the area. Five!

One was a tourist hotel, catering to the tourist crowd. They had steaks, lobsters, filet mignon and other fancy food on the menu. The union agreement said. “Restaurant meal.”

This one was a restaurant too.

Suddenly I had to sign off five course gourmet meals plus taxi delivery fees every day. So many had ordered “the best” that the bills became ridiculous. The chief executives of General Motors couldn't have eaten as well as these plant workers.

There was also a sudden rash of overtime, as well. Things were getting out of hand.

I soon found out that my foreman Jim, related to or old friend of many of the staff, regularly allowed extra time to be added on the time sheets, up to the four hours that triggered a free gourmet dinner. One mechanic was regularly called in on Saturday, working and getting a free meal. - I went in one Saturday, waiting for him to sign in at security. On the way out I looked at the log. He had not come in.

Sure enough, next week I had to sign for his time sheets and a huge steak dinner, complete with a taxi-delivery charge. The work hours were fictitious and the taxi receipt was home made from a numbered pad in my foreman's office, he had forgotten it on the top of his desk.

Time for a change. We had renewed union discussions and the foreman got in the spotlight. But, given the shortage of skills in the area, he was allowed to stay on the job then. He screwed up some time later, though, and was demoted to plant cleaner, a job I know he stayed at for at least the next ten years.

I may have felt that people in general were quite honest, but that was certainly not the case with our plant workers. They felt entitled to anything that was loose. We bought many dozens of batteries and other household supplies from our local Canadian Tire store every week. I was a well seen customer. All small orders were on a local purchase order form, supposedly over my name.

Things got worse, our staff started replacing hand tools at an alarming rate. How many expensive wrenches can a mechanic loose or break? How many portable air compressors or electric welding machines could we use?

The system was quite ingenious. We, at the time, received dozens of 30 tonne truck loads of heavy fuel oil every day. What was to go, was placed next to the truckers' designated washroom and promptly disappeared. This was an organized ring of thieves, probably lifting tools and equipment from all the plants in the area.

We worked with the RCMP. They suggested that we add a gate so all had to stop. Then we replaced most of our guards and, presto, our tool bills went down to near zero.

Ironically enough, that Canadian Tire store took on a place in my life. While our investigations were going on, the RCMP wanted to talk to the store manager too. The store had done nothing wrong but the manager brought in the regional supervisor for us to meet. The supervisor stayed in town for the night and invited me to have dinner with him. We talked about this and that, and then he said:

“How would you like to own this Canadian Tire store?”

This came as a shock to me, I had never, ever, given a second's thought about operating a store. He explained why. The chain was looking for bright young men to open new stores and also to run some of the existing ones. He had already talked to some of his friends in Nova Scotia about me. He knew:

“I was a good man.”

This store was for sale, I could “technically” buy it with no money down, financed by the corporation while I learned the ropes and earned the money. Would I be interested in starting as the assistant manager for a few months? The salary would be set to more than match what I earned now.

This was probably the first, of several totally and beyond belief stupid decisions in my life. I talked it over briefly with Monica. She liked the idea of me being a steady government employee. The prospects of me in retailing didn’t appeal to her at all. I called back the next day and said,

“No thanks.“

A follow-up; Many years later, back in Montreal, I made friends with our local Dollard des Ormeaux Canadian Tire manager. I casually asked if he knew about the Port Hawkesbury store.

“I owned that store for a few years from 1984, after the new owner who took over in 1975 had sold it to me. He walked away with over a million dollars.”

That could have been me.

In Port Hawkesbury I felt that I was, for the first time in my life, well paid. Perhaps we could build a house here? Go for it. Shop for a lot. - Found one. Shop for a prefab home, - found one. Shop for a builder, - found one. Shop for a contractor to dig and pour the foundation. - Found one. Get a mortgage, - no problem.

So, let's start now, before the bad weather sets in.

The fun part was over. From this point on it was “manana” all the way. Nothing could be done now, or at any specified time in the future. I tried calling all the persons I could think of to perhaps get some kick-help.

“You are in Nova Scotia, things take its time.” - That time seemed to never come.

We got frustrated and I decided to spend our assigned house down payment at a travel agent.

“Four tickets to Sweden, please.”

Christmas in Sweden. We flew via London with a stop over for a couple of days, even though Annelie was only about six months old. That was not such a good decision. The miners of England were on strike and most all of England was under severe power rationing. Interior heat was at a minimum.

Our hotel room was colder than cold with a fresh wind blowing through the totally unsealed single pane windows. Annelie had the beginning of a cold and we, for sure, weren't going to enjoy such a cold place. There was an electrical heater in the room, but it had a piece of wire and a big red sign over the switch. “Power emergency, must not be switched on.”

To all the dear freezing British people who all were so cold during the winter of 1974 – 1975, I apologize. I unwrapped the wire and switched on the heater. Our room was nice and cozy. We didn't freeze but you may have... I put both the wire and the sign back before we left.

Christmas shopping in London was, then as now, exciting.

It was wonderful to see all our friends and relatives in Sweden again. As usual, the visit turned into a whirlwind of parties, here there and in between. We held a ten-year anniversary meeting for our college. Fortunately, I was the only one who had kept a complete list of the addresses and telephone numbers, the college office wouldn't give them out, for privacy reasons. 22 of about 35 from my little specialty class showed up, most of them with wives and fiancées. I had been instrumental in making the arrangements, by remote control and mostly via letters.

The event was spread out over a full day, starting with a show of the buildings and laboratories. Several of the professors showed up. It was really different to talk to them from our newly established positions of power, we were also gainfully employed and on our way in a profession.

We did re-live a few major events, such as when Börje Karlsson had dug up a drawing for the buzz-engine that was used in the V1 flying bombs in WW2. He machined a smaller scale body out of a piece of brass, added the membranes and fired it up with the aid of a compressed air hose – attached to a bench inside the laboratory. The kerosene fuelled exhaust flame reached the opposite wall and all the windows shook threateningly.

Fortunately, the first run was only for a second, or so. Subsequent runs, with more fuel, were conducted with all windows open. We had to finish the experiment when the caretaker showed up, mightily upset about what we were about to do to his building, such as blow it up.

There was also a new Volvo passenger car engine, attached to a water brake for power calculations. Nobody told us that a car engine is not designed to run continuously at full load. After the first unhappy and costly piston head replacement, after less than one hour's worth of running, we were strictly forbidden to conduct any more extended full power tests.

These were the days when the race was still on among the car manufacturers to get the absolutely maximum power, often by cheating nature a bit, running the tests with the engine block immersed in ice and without any auxiliary loads at all. This way of testing could show a highly temporary output some 30 % higher than as installed. Many a car was still sold with an engine that might last a few minutes only, if the driver was too lead footed. This whole scene was soon corrected with new international rules for testing, gradually introduced in the next few years.

Much to our pleasure, the same Volvo engine was still in its test stand, still looking to be in good health when we were there, ten years after our graduation. We did take notice of a stroke limiter on the accelerator, putting a limit to how much power it could produce.

We finished off our day with a dinner-dance. There was also an election held. Who had come the furthest in their career in the intervening ten years? Some had really done very well for themselves but I was chosen to be the most successful of all. I felt honoured.

The next morning, we started the five-hour train trip to Karlskrona for more holiday partying. The star was of course our little Annelie, a smiling little lady with a full head of charcoal black hair, just like her grandmother and grandfather. Ingbritt had a very light blond hair then, like father. Both girls turned to about the same blond hair colour when they got little older.

To work for the government certainly did have its benefits. Even though I had only been there for a few months, it was quite alright to take my vacation early, and certainly adding a few days free time was not out of place. After some four weeks in Sweden, it was time to return to Canada.

Again, winter played its games with us. We left Karlskrona by train, in a snowstorm, had a very bumpy ride on the ferry from Malmö to Copenhagen airport and arrived in Halifax in a raging snow storm. I give my full kudos to the airline captain who put us down.

It would normally be a four-hour drive to Port Hawkesbury. This time, our rental car got us as far as to Truro, NS, after an hour and half, normally a 20-minute drive. There was no point in continuing. I may have learned by then, even though I may have forgotten later,

“After rain comes sunshine, after snow comes ...”

We stayed at the Stonehouse hotel and enjoyed a dinner in their dining room, with the full snowstorm raging outside. The next morning, we woke up in clear sunshine. The roads were cleared and we continued to Port Hawkesbury in good time.

The story of my life, getting stuck somewhere unexpected due to bad weather.

The power plant behaved quite well for several months and our nightly sleep wasn't interrupted that often by urgent service calls.

Our next-door neighbour, on one side was an RCMP officer. On quiet evenings we enjoyed his and his wife’s good company with stories from when they had been posted in the far north of Canada.

All evenings were quiet in Port Hawkesbury.

All.

In a dilapidated house next to ours lived a squatter family with five children, soon six. Yes, they were for real. The newborn baby slept in a cardboard box on the kitchen floor. The mother was quite nice and Monica did a lot to help them with their daily life. The father sat around a lot with a beer or a rum bottle in his hand. I offered him some work, helping to sound up the leaking foundation on our rented house. He lasted about three hours, asked for his pay and went across the street to buy beer.

We were good friends with both the new and the previous major, Billy Joe who, as I recall, went to prison a little later. Some of his dealings were not always good for the people or following the letter of the law.

The new mayor, Almon Chisholm, whom I helped to elect that fall, had a daughter, Connie, who Ingbritt went to school with.

Almon told me, years later, that the squatter family stayed in their “appointed house” until the lot was sold and a home was built there, then they disappeared. A little different from today, I think.

Another of Ingbritt's class mates was Brenda-Lee. Her mother lived on welfare in one of the apartment buildings nearby. She would – in the loudest human voice I have ever heard, lean out of her window and call: “Brenda-Lee, come home”. We did, for years afterwards, jokingly call out the same words so imprinted in our minds as they became.

Since our home town was so quiet, really quiet, and so lacking in entertainment we drove around quite a bit. The honesty of the adults was a surprising. Nobody locked their front door, or bothered to bring the toys or tools in at night. We did, of course carry on with the big city discipline of clearing our lawn and locking our outside door, not that we had ever lost anything in Montreal, but just in case. It was common to see cars parked with the keys in the ignition. Given the cheap gas at the time, many would not even shut off the engine for a quick shopping visit. A heaven for car thieves, perhaps?

We didn't have home delivery of the mail, it was not customary in smaller towns, even though Canada was, and is, the country of rural mail delivery routes. Living remotely gets you the mail quicker than in a town. One day, when I came to pick up my mail at the post office, the lady behind the counter leaned forward and said in a low, confidential voice:

“Mr. Lindvall, what is so valuable in your car since you lock the doors every time you pick up your mail?”

“I lamely replied, “Oh, it is just an old habit from Montreal.”

“Do they steal from your car there?”

She probably convinced herself that the big city of Montreal was a very lawless place.

For a little local excitement, there was a movie house in town, owned and operated by major Almon who also had a convenience store in his house, in addition to sometimes going to work for CN rail. The mayor had lots of jobs.

The movie house was old and creaking. By that I mean, totally loose and ready to fall into the sea. He showed a lot of kids’ movies. They filled the theatre best, I think. The movie house, built on stilts, partly over the water, finally did come loose on its foundation in a winter storm and really threatened to fall off the cliff. Then it was closed for good, years later.

Oh, there was excitement one day. A tractor, pulling a heavy trailer attempted to get down a steep hill. The brakes weren't good enough. The driver, the tractor and its cargo ended up inside the Royal Bank branch. Fortunately, nobody was in the way. The equipage was, according to the local newspaper, stopped from going thorough the building and into the sea just beyond by the bank vault. So, we all were happy that our deposits were safe from a tractor on the loose. The driver was OK. The bank opened a few weeks later, with a new front wall and shiny new glass doors.

We toured Cape Breton Island in all directions. You could not buy any seafood or any fish at all in Port Hawkesbury even though we were surrounded by fishing villages. The locals just didn’t buy any fish, they all got it in a different way from the fishermen. On our trips, we always stopped for fresh cod and, of course, for lobsters when in season.

The lack of a fish store in the community didn't mean that we had to go far, anyway. I would occasionally find a present on my desk when I got to work. A good size cod or, not to mention the lobsters in a plastic bag, surrounded by ice. Some of the other management personnel had similar surprises. In truth, I never quite figured out who the giver(s) were but I had my suspicions.

Any serious shopping had to be done elsewhere, we were 1.5 hour away from Sydney, and about four hours from Halifax. We made the trip to Halifax every month, or so, weather and road conditions permitting. We had our favourite hotel, restaurant and stores.

We met our prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once, he had breakfast at the table next to ours and we struck up a conversation. He moved his coffee-cup and plate to our table so we could talk better. I always voted for the Liberals after that encounter. I was totally convinced of his abilities.

The Nova Scotia map is dotted with lakes. I and a few friends from the plant decided to go on a fishing tour. This time on a remote lake, far from the maddening crowds, we hoped.

One man owned a WW2 vintage four wheel driven large Reo truck, the same one that was sent to Russian during WW II by the tenths of thousands. Said and done, pack it up with all our perceived needs for a couple of days in the bush. We had it all – including a small boat and a propane powered refrigerator for the beer.

The trip took quite a while, once we were off the highway. The truck bounced up and down and as long as at least three wheels were touching ground, we were making progress. We got stuck a couple of times but got on the way again by skillful application of some pieces of wood, brought along for the purpose. In retro-respect, how crazy we were to go far into the woods in a heavy vehicle that could break down or get stuck for good. All went well, though.

After many hours of our bouncy ride, we arrived at the shore of this remote and perfect lake. This one must be teeming with fish. Camp was set, we launched our little outboard powered boat, made a quick run for some fishing, returned, opened the refrigerator and broke open the first cold beer.

Wow, were we ever to catch fish here, we thought. (You already know from my words – we didn't, or at least not as much as we had hoped for.)

As it was near evening we got the camp fire going and prepared for the next day. We listened to the loons as the sun neared the horizon and felt really good. Then – the silence was interrupted by a buzzing sound. A seaplane. It circled our lake. It landed and motored up to shore some distance away. Out stepped two men. They set up camp, just as we had done, including a boat, an inflatable one with a small motor.

“How long did it take you guys to get here?”

“We drove for four hours. You?”

“15 minutes, we just took off from New Glasgow.”

The next day we all went fishing in different parts of the lake and got very little. As we left we congratulated ourselves on what a superior time we had had, compared to our flying friends, our beer came cold from the refrigerator, they didn't have any cold beer.

The fish? Once the beer was gone, there was room in the refrigerator. What little fish we had not eaten was carefully cleaned and travelled home, nicely chilled. We may have had one meal each when home again. On a cost per kg basis, this was probably the costliest fish meal I have ever had. We had shared the cost of gasoline, and this monster of a truck sure did consume gas.

The common feeling was – perhaps we should charter an aeroplane and try an even more isolated lake next time.

There was no shortage of little adventures in our lives these days.

My car, the Volvo, locally made in Halifax, was still a real oddity in Nova Scotia and I had some trouble keeping it going. Once, a rear brake locked on the highway near New Glasgow. I stepped out, checked out the smoking wheel and looked up. There was a car stopped right behind mine.

“Need a ride?”

Here was another case of a friendly and helpful Canadian. We all got a ride into town. He dropped us off at the Volvo dealer. They walked us across the street to a motel, sent a tow-truck to retrieve my car and we were in good hands.