Snakes and ladders, bad bosses.

The world of work has an armload of promises for you.

When I got hired in the industrial door business, they made me a helper. I had never done any carpentry or welding, although I worked on my own car and had a few simple tools. They put me with Pete, a guy with exactly one year’s experience and sent us off with a handful of orders, a pickup truck, a torch and a welder. I had used a torch in high school shop—about four times as I recall.

We had a few tool bins and a few ladders. We tried not to forget anything, materials, tools, fasteners, you name it, and we made sure it was aboard the truck.

You learn a lot by doing, and a few things by watching. One time we were putting a heavy-duty wood sectional door into a pole barn outside the city. I was only a small ways up off the ground, with my feet maybe seven or eight feet above the floor. I was on an aluminum ladder with the swiveling sure-grip feet on it. With the siding on, and in a new building, there was nowhere to tie the top off. Theoretically we could have screwed something into a beam and used a bit of wire.

There must have been some grain dust on that highly-polished concrete floor. I can’t quite recall what I was doing, but whatever torque or force I applied—perhaps I might have been trying to screw something to the ceiling, to hang the back of the track on that side, but the feet slipped out and the ladder went.

Nowhere to tie off, and where's your nine-buck an hour helper?

Now a pole barn is constructed of vertical beams with narrow horizontal laths, which is what the metal siding is screwed onto. They’re one above another, set about a foot apart. The top of the ladder hit every one of them. I ratcheted down the wall, one lath at a time. I had time to think, and to enjoy the scenery. The frickin’ irony of it all. I was younger and fitter then. Like a cat, in some ways, after clambering up and down ladders and scaffolds all the time. Some big doors had catwalks above them…on a really big door, you can go across from side to side on the tops of the sections. But this was a small door. I danced on the ladder all the way to the ground, where I ended up with one leg sticking through and under it and me, and the other leg all ‘akimbo’ as they say. I had bruises all up and down both legs, and it wasn’t too good. I said a few things.

Another time we were in a brand-new, municipal trucking garage. They were going to bring the dump trucks and salt trucks indoors. It was easier to maintain them, they were less prone to theft or vandalism. Nuff said. Due to the big trucks, we were installing a high-lift door, which basically goes up a couple of feet and then the tracks lay back just like the normal type. They were such nice guys. They let us use their scaffolding and everything as the guys putting in the sprinklers weren’t there that day. It was their idea and everything. I’m not sure if Pete and I had used them much before that.

So my buddy welded some angle iron across between two trusses, and hung another bar on there. When I told him it was straight, he tacked her on. One side of the tracks were hung temporarily. I unlocked the six-inch wheels, all four corners, as he was telling me to push him across to the other side.

Running down the middle of that truck garage, as yet still under construction—hence the new door and stuff, was a twelve by eighteen-inch concrete trench, covered for its full length by twelve-inch spruce planks laid in there just so, on the little rabbit they had for the purpose. All that melting snow, and they were going to wash trucks in one end of the building. The metal gratings hadn’t arrived on the site yet, probably still being fabbed up in town or just down the road in some welding shop. And when the two far wheels hit the plank the thing split right down the middle. The feet dropped into the trench, and including my buddy, it was a half of ton of dead weight. My end tipped up. The force and the leverage might have been enough to catapult me up into the rafters, but the scaffold had stringers across the bottom and they hit the edge. The far vertical risers hit the far side of the trench. My stomach was on the bottom cross-stringer, and at that time I weighed about one hundred and eighty-five pounds. There was a long moment when I knew there was nothing more I could do. But she didn’t go over. My buddy was saying a few things, and his body didn’t go plummeting past me…

“Hey, Pete! Are you okay?” Finally four fingers clapped over the end of the planks he was on.

The other hand came up and over and clamped on. The top of his head appeared and then his eyes. He said a few things, I said a few things.

Theoretically, we had been in and out of industrial plants many times, and we had sat through any number of safety meetings, and safety ratings, and I guess you could say we had seen all the film strips in the industry.

We still did dumb things. Even when we thought we knew something, but no one saw fit to mention the drainage trench. It was safe for their purposes. There’s no telling why we sort of missed seeing it, never even comprehending it as a possible threat.

No matter if you’ve got thirty years in the industry, just because you have experience, doesn’t mean the last guy did or the next guy will.

I don't care how much you make. It's not worth getting killed over.

You see, one time I was working for these bricklayers. We were on a building, six stories, in Hamilton. We were using two sections of scaffolding, with planks across the centre gap to bridge and make it three sections long. I built the thing myself, all those years of experience you know, and it was okay. I was slugging mortar, and carrying twelve-inch heavy blocks, with another guy, and we were keeping three bricklayers going. We were doing okay and would make it through another fine summer’s day—at nine bucks an hour.

I went across to bring a guy something and one of the planks just let go. It cracked right in the middle. What you don’t know can kill you, because apparently some guys, who were in fact laid off for stupidity, had been asked to clean off the roof one day, a few weeks beforehand.

The silly buggers decided the quickest way to do that was to yell down and clear the area, then chuck it all off the roof. I’m thinking the plank that had my name on it was probably one of them planks they threw off there.

What the hell are you going to do? By the time the boss, the foreman and a lawyer had a go at me, I was ready to sign anything, even a false incident report.

They said I hurt my back ‘lifting blocks.’ The boss’s kid was a lawyer (Snakes and Ladders—get it?) and I was in a lot of pain. It never occurred to me to get a lawyer of my own.

They promised to help me with the Worker’s Compensation forms. They promised to take me back when I felt better. Of course the first thing Worker’s Comp wanted to see was the incident report—and it didn’t make a lot of sense considering what I put on my application form. But it was too late.

Why did I sign it? Otherwise the place would have been knee-deep in inspectors and they would probably have shut the job down, and then everyone would be out of a job. That’s what they said. And my brother worked there too. See, we never get any training in how to handle situations like that. But my employer clearly did have some previous experience, didn’t he?

Yeah.

Like a fool, I signed the damned thing.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

END

D-Day Remembered.



Canadian troops come ashore on Juno Beach.



D-Day means different things to different people, yet history is a generally agreed upon thing. Children are taught the story of those who lay in Flanders Fields, and most adults perceive dangers represented by various ‘isms’ – Imperialism, Fascism, nationalism, communism.

When taken to extremes, when men cannot be checked by reason, force ultimately

becomes the only answer.

In 1914, Canada went to war in joyous outbursts of patriotic fervour.

In 1939, Canadians went to war of necessity. The alternative: enslavement of the

world by Nazis.

In 1950, the country went to war with a new sense of purpose and national identity, (we get this shit out of history books) part of a United Nations effort to ensure that aggression would not pay.

Today our Armed Forces have developed an important role in keeping world peace

when called upon.

To the cynic, Nov 11, Remembrance Day here in Canada, may be about ‘the brave lads who died to keep India British.’

To most it is about recognizing sacrifice and perhaps, in some sense, validation of our own values.

And we all know someone.

Alec Ambroise

Alec Ambroise joined up and served in Europe in the Signal Corps (later transferring to the RCAF).

Would anyone like to be on a troop ship in the mid-Atlantic? He was there. A rumour flashed through the tightly packed men below decks. The Bismarck has broken out and is roaming the seas. The ship makes radical course changes for the next few hours, which comforts no one.

Another uncle, Peter Davidson of Strathroy, was wounded in Italy. The Italian campaign was one of bloody attrition, with house-to-house, hand-to-hand fighting, accentuated by rough terrain and atrocious winter mud.

My great uncle, John Farr, was with the Canadian Third Division, from Normandy to northern Germany at the surrender. His pay book shows his place of birth as Dawn Township. He was a farm boy and likely didn’t finish high school. He was trained as a rifleman and with a light machine gun, also as an artilleryman and signaler.

Yet another uncle, Frank Nalepa of Port Huron, Michigan, stormed ashore on Omaha Beach. It was a bloodbath and the attack nearly failed in the first half-hour. He was lucky, he got through. But 4,649 young American boys became casualties that day on Omaha and Utah beaches.

They are all gone now. When the last Second World War or Korean War veteran passes, it will be the end of an era. It will become a dusty memory, stacked on forgotten library shelves.

I suspect they all came home sadder but wiser, more committed to living life to the fullest.

We take so much for granted. Maybe that's the real message here. We take it a little too much for granted.

If prophecies are self-fulfilling, let us believe that Canadians will continue to serve with honour, integrity and distinction.

This country is a beacon of hope for starving, oppressed masses of humanity in other lands.

Let us remember that too.

Canadian family values are really just corporate values.

90 Sparks St., Ottawa location of the Royal Bank of Canada. (SimonP.)

Family values are really corporate values…

We  live in substantially nastier economic times than our parents did, with all of their high regard for authority and social customs. From 1990 to 2000, families in the top 10 percent income bracket saw incomes increase an average of 14.3 percent.

Families in the middle brackets saw incomes increase by a measly 0.3 percent, and Canadians in the lowest brackets saw their incomes reduced an average of 0.7 percent.

In October 2000, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced, “We must reduce the gap between rich and poor. We have always said this…” In 1990 the average income of the top ten percent was $161,000 and by 2000 it was $185,000. The lowest ten percent’s average income in 1990 was $10,341 and by 2000 it had only increased an average of $80. The top ten percent increased their earnings by over 295 times that of the poor.

In 2004, the top 20 percent of Canadian families earned 42 percent of all market income. The bottom 20 percent of families in this country earned a microscopic 3.6 percent. The 1990s saw an unexpected increase in numbers (of people, not income,) for the low-income groups, even as unemployment fell.

A report issued in November 2006 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that, “If the rich keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer, Canada will end up more like the U.S. Approximately 65 percent of those polled believed that most of the benefit from Canada’s recent economic growth has gone to the richest Canadians, and hasn’t benefited most Canadians.” The facts bear this out.

The Globe and Mail stated in May 2007, “It is a mark of a healthy society when incomes grow and no one is left behind. The system is working…” Once again the print media in this country reveal their strong ultra right-wing bias and a complete disregard for the truth. They don’t even seem to read their own papers.

In recent years the top income families took home an average of 13 times the income of the lowest ten percent of families. This compares with 5.6 times in Finland and is twice as much as the average in the Nordic countries. In 2004 the gap between rich and poor in this nation was greater than at any other point in our history.

A poll that came out in 2005 reported, “While a record number of Canadians believed that the country was in a period of strong economic growth, the majority say they are not receiving any of the benefits. Only 11 percent of Canadians believe their household income will keep pace with the cost of  living.” (Pollarca/Globe & Mail.)

In The Rich and the Rest of Us, issued by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, economist Armine Yalnizan showed that 40 percent of Ontario families with children saw little or no income growth for the last thirty years.

Countries that do better than us in income distribution include Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Mexico, Turkey, Poland and the U.S.

Norway, Sweden, Japan, Austria and others do a much better job than Canada.

Here on the National Newswatch website is an important article on how tax cuts represent a ‘race to the bottom,’ and how the gap between rich and poor is not just widening, but at an accelerating pace.

ING, owner of Intact Financial, & Trafalgar Insurance,
Grey Power, etc. is a global corporation. (MapLab.)