In 1981, I was offered a job in Coombs and contacted a buddy who had a lease on an old farmhouse along with 10 acres to see if he had room for me, seems a few old buds were living there, they had a spare room that I could have so I took the job. The community was named after the Army’s Canadian Commissioner, Captain Thomas Coombs. Coombs is wonderful little hamlet that is full of people who live a more laid-back way of life that can only be provided in a place like Coombs. It is an artist mecca with more galleries, studios, and artists per capita than anywhere else in BC.
Coombs and the surrounding area are full of wildlands containing waterfalls and mountains and I had plenty of adventures while spending time here.
The job I took was working as a saw mechanic on a spacing contract that would employ 40 people. This was a government-sponsored UI (Unemployment Insurance) make-work project jointly run by BCFP and the Government. Workers on UI who were employed in this project would see their UI raised to the max allowed and their claims extended to the end of the job. It was scheduled to run for 10 months. It was a cold spring but I was supplied with a truck with a large cube box that was heated, my job was to keep the saws running. I would repair saws daily and if I had no broken saws, I would go out and walk the line, listening to and tuning up saws. The guys liked this as they would get a smoke break while I worked their saws.
One day as I stopped to check a guy’s saw, he asked if I had light, so I quickly gave him a light and just as I was lighting his smoke a forestry checker came upon us. He fired us on the spot, It seemed that the smoke I lit for this guy was not tobacco but a joint and it looked like we were going to smoke it. I had no idea. I challenged my firing and won my job back. After this, I did not walk the line anymore and only worked out of my truck. Over the duration of the contract, I met quite a few foresty employees who were overseeing various aspects of the job. They sugested that I try out for fire fighting.
I took an interesting job in Parksville, working at the Kingfisher fish plant, where we processed everything from prawns to herring row. We would work 5 days a week. On the weekends, the owner and I would work creating handmade seafood sausage, which was sold to local Vancouver Island stores and always sold out. There were up to 50 ladies working on the floor, some had been working there for years; they were all much older than I and took me in like a son. Not long after being there, I became Their forman. The boss was having health issues and was gone for days at a time. He needed me to keep things going.
After the fish plant closed, I secured a job as a foreman on the construction of a huge commercial greenhouse system for Errington Greenhouses. This new system was created in China, and the UBC was funding part of the costs. All the boxes came marked on the outside in big letters, “Red China.” We built 5 separate greenhouses that had fully automatic heating and cooling systems and tables on rollers where the product was grown. Each greenhouse could be managed by 1 person. It was an interesting job, learned a lot.