To start off, I can be a creative person, but I am not always creative. I go through periods in life where I want to express what I am feeling so that I can share it with others. I know I am unique. I look at things differently than many, I might even say most. But I try to be that guy. I don’t want to just fit into a cookie cutter lifestyle.
That’s not enough of a challenge for me.
I’ve always been one to challenge things. It started out early when I was 4 years old, I made my way across “the flats” a 1 acre fields of clay next to our house, where nothing grew. The clay would crack and the edges would curl up with the sun, after a rain. So I made my way to a neighbours house where I then dragged their lawnmower back to our house and proceeded to tear it apart. I’m not sure where mom was, but when dad got home he wasn’t happy. He had to spend the next hour putting the neighbours lawnmower back together and taking it back to them.
In public – grade school, I was a restless child. That’s what they called it in the 60’s. I just didn’t want to sit still. I wanted to discover everything. I spent a lot of time on the office bench. I have always loved sports and people. When we would go camping every summer, I would make friends immediately upon arrival and I wouldn’t stop running until we got in the car to leave for home. I played organized hockey ever since I could skate. At 6 years old, my dad and I found that I was very good in goal. I played goal every year after that in the Oakville minor oaks hockey association. At 12 years old I was drafted to a Montreal Canadians Farm Team and played at Seneca College in Toronto. Every summer we spent all of our summer holidays playing ball hockey and riding minibikes and motorcycles. We had quite a network of trails in Oakville.
I got into fixing minibikes at about 10 years old and the first one I bought was a Kawasaki 49cc for $30. It had a gas tank leak at the fuel shut off so I pulled it all apart, took all of the glues and gunk that the previous owner had put on it. I bought some “Liquid Steel” a new product at the time that would work in a gasoline laden environment. It worked like a charm. I sold that minibike after a month of riding it for $130. I then bought 2 minibikes and fixed and sold minibikes and motorcycles until I started buying cars at 14 years old.
The biggest change in my life was at VBS (vacation in Oakville at Montclair School. Pastor Rudy Weebe closed out the week of fun and activities. He said if anyone is interested in having Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour raise your hand. I gave my life to the Lord that day; August 2nd, 1992. My life would never be the same. I road my old bike home and made it home twice as fast as normal. I ran in the house and told my mom… “I was saved today”. She looked at me and said “they’re still doing that”. Lol. My mom would go on to renewing her faith and working with 100 Huntley street on the suicide hotline, taking trips to Israel and really pouring her life into God.
My first car was a 1964 Ford Galaxy XL with a 390 Interceptor (Police Engine). I pulled the motor and sold it to a guy in the neighbourhood that put it into his pickup truck. It went on and on from there. I wish I had a pic of every car I ever owned, it would be in the hundreds. I know I had over 30 cars before I even had my license and I got that on my 16th birthday. My favourites were 1968 Pontiac Firebird; 428 Pontiac 390hp; 3600lb Schaffer clutch and pressure plate; M50 x 15’s; Crager rims, track bars, 4 speed close ratio munsie tranny with a Hurst competition plus shifter. The other would be my ’70 Javelin, 390 small block all cammed up, headers, 4 speed, very fast. Blue with a white pin stripe graphic.
Not unlike school, when I got out on the road I got into trouble with the police for all kinds of stupid things like driving with wrong plates, no insurance, etc. etc. At 17 years old the police had my license more than me. I learned very quickly that it was best to stay on the good side of the police. I was married to Ruth and had my first kid, John at 17 years old. I bought my first house at 20 years old. That was the sugar shack at the bottom of the 9th line of Innsifil in Alcona. Later I would trade it for the building I am still in on Highway 11 in Oro Medonte.
I was the youngest dad in the neighbourhood and many of the neighbourhood kids grew up under my guidance and influence. Bike-a-thon morning we would have 30 bikes in our driveway. We would be oiling chains, adjusting brakes and gears and we always had fun. I coached hockey and baseball starting with T-Ball when the boys were young.
At 16 years old I was board of school. I was pulling engines and transmissions at home while my auto class had me cleaning spark plugs with a sandblaster. So boring. I left school and went into forklift repair at a place my dad worked for called Top Line Equipment in Toronto. Dad had started in forklifts as a mechanic in the London area and moved into sales in Toronto. After 10 years of fixing them, one day I knocked on a few doors, when I was out on another service call, service call and brought back a stack of signed PM’s. PM’s were annual signed preventative maintenance contracts. My boss said “even the sales guys don’t do this well” and that is when my move into sales began.
I have started 3 businesses from scratch. The first was Panels and Bumpers Unlimited in Alcona Beach. That was a 7 year business which ended in 1994 when 2 of the 4 warehouses for aftermarket collision replacement parts, in Toronto went bankrupt. Fitwell and Raemac, the latter had a normal inventory level of $5M. The OEM’s, Ford, GM and Chrysler all took a run at aftermarket parts distribution as it was starting to take a big piece of their business. We had created a next day delivery by running trucks to Hwy 9 every day to meet supplier trucks. We would then do our runs to the body shops in Central Ontario. And we serviced most everyone up here. Dealerships were buying the most parts of anyone. The OEM’s offered out stampers overseas OEM contracts for $70M but they had to sign on the dotted line that they would not stamp for aftermarket anymore. That is what put 2 of the 4 warehouses out of business and as the quality went down so did sales. Brilliant moves by the OEM’s. We shut the doors and I went back into forklift sales. My legacy that stuck in that industry is a next day delivery to body shops. Where, prior to Panels and Bumpers Unlimited, Paul Sadlons and most every other dealer that was here back then was 1 week delivery on collision replacement parts, they only received shipments once a week. We forced their hands, all of them, to institute a next day policy and step it up right across the board.
I sold Toyota for Dunlop Lift Truck Service in Barrie. When Dunlop went through a management change and could no longer sell Toyota forklifts, I moved to Liftow to continue selling Toyota’s. I met my second wife on the internet. We talked for almost 2 years before we met. Dee moved up here from the states and married me in 1999. Dee and I grew that branch of Liftow from 2 mechanics and a parts guy in a small 1500 SQ FT unit to a 6,000 SQ FT unit with 2 parts guys, 6 mechanics, a receptionist, a branch manager and then I trained another sales guy. After training the sales guy, Peter Eisner Liftow let me go. I had done what they needed and they had always been good to me, in fact I always felt they were paying me way too much, just to sell forklifts. So now what to do? I’m not that guy who change brands and moves on like nothing happened. As a mechanic I had learned that Toyota was hands down the best bang for the buck and I wasn’t going to jump ship. That would erode away at my self integrity. It would mean that all of the Toyota forklifts I had sold and told those people as the best forklift in the industry would have been a lie and it wasn’t. So, my only clear way out would be to change industries.
I had been dabbling in computers. I had successfully rebuilt my 286 Tandy and upgraded it to a 486 motherboard and since it was a Tandy, it was very proprietary and I wound up changing out almost every piece except the case. That was actually a great experience for the road ahead. Dee and I started Computer Elite in 2002 and we haven’t looked back. Starting with nothing, we grew the business consistently over the next 10 years to needing 8 full time employees and keeping a steady climb in sales. We added a second location in Barrie and plan to expand into Orillia and Midland in the next 2 years.
We started Elite Graphics and Marketing in 2015. That business is growing at a good pace now that we are getting the right people in place. It will continue to do well. Dee and I do everything together. We run Christian Sports, 32 churches involved in Men’s and Coed slow pitch baseball as a recreational way to meet others. I am Commissioner and I play on the coed team that my middle son Jason is coach for. All of my kids play on the team. John and his wife Laura, Jason and Lacy, Jareth and Alicia and even one of our technicians and his twin brother, Rob and Oliver, are on the team. We do hockey with 2 ice times in the winter 6am and 9pm Saturdays. For added excitement and fun we run an RC Track as a community outreach to keep the young guys in our community off the streets and out doing something constructive. We meet a bunch of great people at the track. We race every other week on Saturdays. Last race we had 70 entries. It’s a busy day on race day around here. But fun.
We now have 6 grandkids. In order of birth it’s Cooper, Avery, Alex, Mason, Owen and Isabelle. And they are all adorable. God has richly blessed me with kids that all follow Him. If there is one thing I ask it is that all of my kids and their kids know God. Experience His splendor in their lives. It is what I want most. But if you think I stop there you couldn’t be further from the mark. I have found something, a peace that passes all understanding. So why tell you? If I was walking in the forest and found an opening to a cave that when I investigated it, I found more gold and jewels than 1000 people could spend in their entire lives, would I not come and tell you? Sure I would, I can’t use it all and you can sure use some, so here you go! That’s what I am telling you with God. If you haven’t ever done it, take a few minutes and try to understand about Him. Reach out to me if you don’t get results. I can help. I had a lady sit across my desk talking about having us build her a website. We started talking about God and she had been raised in a family of science scholars. I explained that God doesn’t want to be discovered through science and therefore you will never meet with Him while trying to discover Him with scientific evidence. God want’s to meet you and the best way I have found to do that is in a step of Faith. So what does a faith step look like? Try telling God, instead of going out drinking with my buddies tonight, I’m going to stay in. But I’m not doing it because one of my buddies made me mad. I’m not doing it because I am out of money and can’t spend anymore. I fully want to go out. I’m ready to go and I want to. In fact I’m stoked to go out. But I won’t. I will set tonight aside and I am doing that only for you God. To step in faith, that you have better plans for my life and I want to see evidence of that. God will answer. You will get a phone call from someone or someone will stop by, something you would have clearly missed had you gone out with your friends. If you do this, or something similar, and you are doing it FOR GOD, no other reason, He will make the biggest change in your life happen right before your eyes. My greatest times of experience with God are those types of scenarios. That is how it has been in my life, since August 1972.
Life is busy. For everyone. If not physically, emotionally. Sometimes it feels like I spend all my time doing things for others. But that is a fantastic way to be. Take time for others. Help make this world a better place. If everyone does one thing a day to make this world a better place to live, we have done a good thing. Sure, sometimes it feels like no one cares. Sometimes people do things that hurt us deeply, but we are best to look at it and say, they didn’t see the damage they were doing, forgive and move on. It lets us let go of it. Jesus himself said “forgive them Father, they know not what they do”. Besides if you able to step out of your own shoes and be 3rd party to your own situations, you would see, you leave collateral damage in the path you walk too. You are causing pain and trouble, in your life walk, for others too. Look behind you in any given situation and you will see people that have been effected by your decisions. Some are hurt and you didn’t even notice that you caused that pain. Let’s clean up the paths behind us and try to keep them as clean as possible going forward. Pay close attention to those around you and be mindful of what things you are doing and saying and how it effects others around us. I’m always here for you if you ever just need to talk. The real question is: Are you there for someone else? Because you know what it’s like to need someone to step in and help when you’re down, broken or financially in tough shape. Just don’t ever stop helping just because you don’t need the help anymore yourself. Besides helping others in a multitude of ways is very good for you, your health and your own mental fitness.