Summer Jobs

My first Summer Job, 1965

I vaguely remember the time frame, but it must have been before going to Bagotville when I was 16 and just old enough to work.

I got a job in an office in downtown Ottawa as an assistant to a secretary, a file clerk I believe was my title.  I was pretty naive and faced my new job with a Pollyanna type enthusiasm.  I adored my boss. I did everything she asked as best I could and thought I was doing okay. 

One day after my break, all the secretaries got together to have a coffee in the staff room.  I thought I was staff too, so I meekly joined them.  This mistake was akin to murder, I guess as my boss then turned into a red demon, with horns and a pitch fork  and fire coming out of her mouth as she hurled verbal vitriol at me.

I was crushed.  This experience convinced me never to take an office job.  I thought secretaries were all catty and mean and I wanted no part of it.  This affected me for the rest of my life.

Summer Job, 1966

Art’s father landed me a job in the Laurentians in Quebec at ‘Far Hills Inn’.  It was a beautiful resort. I was working at the reception desk. There were about ten other students working there as well.

That summer there was an international conference on microbiology.  I thought the direction of my life changed as biochemistry fascinated me. I would sit close by whenever I could to listen in on the lectures.  But that was not to be as my life took on other directions.

I remember the creepy circumstances surrounding my departure from this job.

To get to the staff quarters, we had to go to a cabin in the woods.  This was cool.  I didn’t mind walking there after my shift.  But the kids started to terrorize me on the walk home, scaring me in the dark. I had a feeling this was not going to last.  The day they chased me around the kitchen with a butcher knife did it.  I called my parents and they came and got me.  That was the end of that summer job.  

I wasn’t confident in my choices of summer employment.  I could only hope that things would improve.

Summer Job, 1967

Things were starting to look up.

The customs officials at Gananoque Ontario found taking advantage of the cheap alcohol and cigarettes across the border in the States, just a little too tempting. When their stockpiles were discovered in the basement of their office at the border crossing, they were suspended. The government looked to University students to fill the positions for the summer.

This was a fun job.  Everything was done by hand in those days… forms for everything: cars, busses, vans, trailers, boats, RV’s…. , etc. A couple of years later I learned they had a hard time reading one of the student’s handwriting. It turned out to be me. Oops!

One day this big bossy guy started to ask me a lot of questions.  I thought it inappropriate and wondered who the heck did he think he was?   My fellow students later told me he owned the bridge.

One of the highlights of this summer was my spell of constipation.  I should never have told my mother, because after about a week, she started insisting I go to the hospital. Well, I just couldn’t see myself going to emergency for that! After two weeks she was beside herself.  I thought I better get serious about this and I took the necessary measures with more commitment.

The birth was imminent and, apparently, inevitable the following day when I went to work. Yes indeed, the problem seemed to have been solved early in my shift.  The humiliating part was immediately after I left the WC.  A plumbing truck pulled up and two big guys trudged into the washroom.  After quite a few minutes, they come out carrying the toilet.  Their timing was impeccable. I turned my eyes away bashfully, hoping my activities had nothing to do with the problem, whatever it was. I just really didn’t want to know.

That summer I rented a room in the home of a man who was a prison guard.  He was working at the prison where Steven Truscott was serving time for murder of a young girl. Steven was convicted when he was 14.  I read the book on his story and I was convinced he was innocent.  I always hoped I could go to the prison to meet him, but the opportunity never arose.

The couple I stayed with had no children. There were just the two of them, he and his wife.  They were weird.  One night I was out until 10:00. They apparently thought this was too late, and they locked the door on me.  I slept in their car in the driveway.  When I look back on it, I think this was just a terrible thing to do to a young girl.

Summer job, 1968

I got a job at Carleton University in the kitchen.  The guys there were fun and we laughed a lot.

The students would do tricks like loosening the tops of the salt shakers and putting them back on the tables, or doing the same with the ketchup bottles. 

Since I ate cafeteria food for the whole year, I grew to love the taste of it.  To this day I love overcooked macaroni with hamburger, soaked in tomatoes.

I always felt bad about the day the big burly butcher popped out behind the freezer door and startled me, causing me to let out this blood curdling shriek. Everybody ran to the rescue.  He looked so helpless.  He didn’t know what to say. I realized they thought he had done something untoward to me and I quickly explained that was not the case. He would sort of tip toe around me after that.

Summer job, 1969

I remember being in Timmins, Ontario, standing in the street looking into a store window at a large TV.  Men, looking like relatives of the Micheline man, were walking on the moon! This event made my job with the Commission of Biculturalism and Bilingualism seem rather insignificant.

However, that was what I was doing this summer of ’69, travelling in Northern Ontario studying the assimilation, or lack of, of residence  of non-English Canadian origin.

We generally found everyone assimilated.  This was not good news for the French Canadians, as their language and culture were disappearing.  After this study, things turned around completely and more focus was put on developing their French culture. You could say they saved it in the nick of time.