PETER TURNER
1963 - Lemoyne D'Iberville

It was A Dark and Stormy Night…….
(Nah, wrong story)

I was Very Young As a Child….....
(Won’t work - too cute)


O.K., here goes.

Since most of you knew me when I was in high school, I’ll pick it up there.

After graduating, I got sucked in by teachers telling me I wanted to be an engineer.

I didn’t want to be an engineer.

So I flunked out of McGill after a year, worked for a year, and then came back to study geology (which is what I wanted to do in the first place). By that time my dream of being a professional athlete was gone- too slow for baseball, too lacking in talent for golf and not stupid enough for football!

I graduated as a geologist after spending 3 summers working in the North West Territories and started working on a Masters Degree. While collecting my rock specimens in Northern Quebec, I got shot at by a hunter who was either drunk or blind (probably both). In any event, I thought that there were better ways to die so decided to get a real job.

I also had found someone who, for reasons unknown to this day, wanted to spend her life with me. I definitely wanted to spend my life with her! She had been studying nuclear physics at McGill but quit to marry me (which tells you that she probably wasn’t smart enough to be studying nuclear physics in the first place). She is Norwegian and her name is Wencke. Since no one outside of Norway can pronounce that, we call her Vickie but I call her “She who must be obeyed”!

I ended up working in the pharmaceutical industry, first as a sales rep and later as a sales trainer, product manager and director of marketing. This wasn’t accomplished with the same company as, by that time, I realized that I had a little problem with taking orders which led to me quit or be fired from several jobs.

We had moved back and forth between Montreal and Toronto several times and, while in Montreal, something happened that would drastically alter my life. Vickie started studying the bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I found out, I said that we would have to get a divorce because there was no way that I would deny my kids a blood transfusion! When I realized how much a divorce would cost me (heh,heh) I decided that the best course was to prove the Witnesses to be the frauds I knew they were. After two years of studying all sorts of stuff including the Bible, I had to admit to myself (grudgingly) that there was a god and I should be doing what he tells me to do.
Having done a lousy job of proving them wrong, I have, for the last 25+ years, spent considerable time knocking on doors and giving Bible based lectures. I have never regretted it. Jehovah is one boss I find easy to work for (and I haven’t been fired yet!).

By that time we had two beautiful daughters and were living in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. In a moment of madness, I decided to quit my job and start an advertising agency (with no clients of course!). The clients eventually came (mostly pharmaceutical) and, several years later I sold the business to a large international agency. I stayed on for a few years but my heart wasn’t really in to working for someone else so at the earliest possible moment, I quit. There was, however, one small problem. I was still under a very restrictive agreement which meant, essentially that I couldn’t work in my field in Canada. So we found a way to move to the U.S. - to Jacksonville Florida. I had a friend there who was a touring golf pro (I caddied for him from time to time, fulfilling my dream to be on the golf tour). Having invested in a sunglass company (Ocean Waves Sunglasses), I now had a visa and could stay and work there. But one daughter moved back to Canada to marry her sweetheart (who I call the “Polish Prince”), and after graduating from high school, the other planned on moving back as well so, after a unanimous vote that we preferred Canada, we all moved back to Toronto.

Shortly, a friend of mine whose ad agency in Montreal was in trouble, asked if I would go down there for a while to try and save it. We lived first in a penthouse right downtown with a roof garden and then moved into what had been a brothel on St. Catherine Street in Westmount. We liked that place better-probably because there was a beer store right beside it that stayed open ‘till midnight. And we really liked Montreal- walking everywhere; Schwartz’s on the “main”; the Greenspot in the “Point” and Biddles jazz Club!

Eventually, I had to tell him that I couldn’t fix his problem and, with regret, we decided to move.

By that time, my mom and dad had died as had Vickie’s dad. Both the girls were married and Vickie’s mom was having some health problems so we decided to move closer to her in B.C. I was able to keep doing copywriting and design for the sunglass company via the internet.

We now live in Montreal, PQ.

We play golf all year and buy fresh prawns down at the dock. Vickie has finally gotten to fulfill her lifetime dream of being a working artist in the studio I built for her. We have a woodstove. What more could you ask for?

I’ve been married 32 years. At this stage Vickie renews my contract on an annual basis if I promise to behave myself. I lie and get another year. Both daughters live far away but we get a chance to see them and our 4 grandkids (2 boys/2 girls) almost daily via the internet using videoconferencing. I have a few health problems but all in all life is very good.

It’s been wonderful catching up with old (and we’re ALL old!) classmates and hearing what they have done in life.