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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.





Snake Story


In the summer of 1997, my girlfriend Sophia and I moved from London, Ontario, where we went to university, to a small apartment in downtown Toronto. We were eager to meet our neighbours and start our new life there.

All of our stuff was sprawled over the lawn in front of our new building as we had mistakenly booked the elevator later than we should have and so we were forced to wait.

As we waited amongst our stuff, Sophia let out a huge scream...before I could understand what was going on she grabbed her old field hockey stick and started pounding away at something between our packed boxes.

I rushed over to see a 2 foot long garter snake, now dead between the boxes.

Sophia was yelling, still in shock, wondering aloud how a snake got packed in with our things.

She slowly calmed down and took a few deep breaths. Sophia smiled and said that she was glad that the snake didn't make it up to our new apartment, suggesting that the act of bringing in a live snake into our building wouldn’t be the best impression to make on our new neighbours.

As Sophia finished speaking a young lady our age came out from the building and walked towards us with a welcome smile. She had heard someone was moving into the apartment next to hers and so when she saw our things stacked on the front lawn she decided to come out and introduce herself.

She told us that she was there to help us however we needed, all we had to do was ask. Both Sophia and I were happy to learn we had such a nice neighbour.

However, our happiness was short lived...as she left she said, "Oh by the way, you haven't seen a small snake have you? My son accidently lost his pet and we've been searching all morning for it. He is terribly upset."

Welcome to the neighbourhood.

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