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It was while working at a Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada that the author met many American contractors who specialized in nuclear contract work within North America.

These men and women jokingly called themselves Nuclear Whores and the website in which they found work was called http://www.roadwhore.com/.

According to the online ‘Urban Dictionary’, a Road Whore is defined as: “A temporary worker from out of town. In engineering and construction, road whores seek out and find massive bonuses, high pay rates, hazardous duty pay, per diem, housing allowances and any form of premium remuneration”.

These new friends taught him the ways of the contractor and he soon began a life as a nuclear contract engineer, moving from project to project around Ontario.

Soon after beginning his life as a nuclear contract worker, the author met and fell in love with a news journalist while doing improvisation at Second City in Toronto.

Three years later they got married. A year after that they gave birth to a son.

Unfortunately their love was short-lived. It ended two years into their marriage while living in Kincardine, Ontario while working under contract at the Bruce Nuclear Facility and she was home with their son.

One day, she packed everything including their son and moved to Oakville leaving the author in Kincardine, all alone.


Like many parents who suddenly find themselves inthis position, the author was surprised when told he was not an equal parent of his 1 year old son, but was what his divorce lawyer referred to as a “Secondary Parent”.

As such, he was not allowed to talk to his son whenever he wanted or to see him whenever he wanted. He had to fight to see his own son, and this took time.Without his boy in his daily life, he couldn’t eat, sleep or work. He was absolutely devastated.

After a few days, he went to his family physician who was immediately concerned for the author’s well‑being. This country doctor suggested a personal remedy of his for overcoming difficult times; he told him to concentrate all his thoughts away from the negativity of the present to the funny, happy stories of his past. He suggested trying to relive these memories, by recollecting them through painting, writing, songs, etc...

So, he wrote.

Each day, he concentrated on one funny, true story from his past. He would think about it for hours at a time, sometimes all day, and then would write it down. It took 42 days for the author’s lawyer to get visitation permission to visit his son in Oakville and in that time he wrote the stories that compile this blog.



Death by Freezer



"Did you hear about Maurice Levasseur? He killed himself. Yup, locked himself in a freezer".

This was the rumour going like wildfire around my friends. I was fifteen years old and it was now being told to me by my friend David.

Maurice Levasseur was a longtime local from Port Perry who was very active in local events and community spirit.

It was hard to believe what I was hearing. It just seemed like yesterday that he was leading us all in a cheer to inspire the local Junior C Hockey Team to victory. The team's name was the Mojacks as it was sponsored by "Mother Jackson's", a local factory that made pies.

Maurice would spell out the word Mojacks one letter at a time telling the crowd, "Give me an 'M'" and then we'd all yell out the letter as loud as we could. Maurice would usually get mixed up with the letters and often he yelled out the wrong spelling.

This just made it all the more enjoyable. At the end he'd finish with a loud "AND WHADDYA GOT??"…asking everyone to yell out the word we just spelled...which spelled properly would have been Mojacks but often we were forced to yell out "MOJASS!" or "MOACKS!" or whatever it was that Maurice had just spelled.

Nonetheless, anything that started with an 'M' and followed with an 'O" was close enough for us and we all cheered on anyway. Maurice really was the highlight of each game.

This is why I found it so hard to believe that Maurice would have ended his own life, and in such a horrible way, dying alone in a freezer.

It was with saddened hearts that David and I walked back to his place. When we arrived, David's parents were outside with his Grandfather, getting ready to take him home.

"Mom, did you hear what happened to Maurice Levasseur?" asked David.

"Yes, poor man died of a seizure".

"Seizure?? I heard he died in a freezer"

"No. Who told you that?" they asked.

"Grandpa did!" David said. He then yelled to his Grandfather who was very hard of hearing and recently had a minor stroke which affected his speech. "Grandpa! How did you say Mr. Levasseur died?"

David's Grandpa, having great difficulty speaking had to breathe out heavily with each word to get it out..."fffffiezure" is what I heard him say.

It soon became clear that David mishearing his Grandfather was the start of this rumour regarding Maurice's cold demise.

The funny part was ten years later, I was sitting one night in the Port Perry donut shop and the table beside me had a couple of guys sitting at it. They were talking about old memories of the Mojacks and the one guy asked the other if he remembered Maurice Levasseur.

"Of course I remember him. He was great. What a horrible way to die though."

"I heard he was getting something out of his freezer when he had a seizure and he fell in and froze to death."

"Yeah, that's what I heard too".

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