Collegues Who Became Friends

After high school it was some time before new friends came into my life.  In 1973 we moved to Kitchener and the folks I worked with in the 2 jobs I had there were much older than I so friendships did not develop outside of the workplace.  Then in 1974 I started university and because I was 3 years older than my classmates I had some difficulty in connecting with them.  Not to say that I didn’t have friends but only within the workplace.  It wasn’t until I moved to Calgary to join my family that I eventually found another lifelong friendship.

In 1978 I started working in a lawfirm and there I met Janet who became a mentor to my in learning computers.  She was actually the only staff member who had a computer while the rest of the legal assistants still used electric typewriters.   Fortunately for the accountant she had an electric adding machine and not the comptometers that I used when I worked my first summer job in the livestock office in Burns’ Livestock office in Winnipeg!  Janet was a real whiz kid on the computer and she was generous enough to show me how to work the computer.

At first the legal assistants were eating their lunches in the lounge but it wasn’t long before I discovered that unless Bertha was there to instigate card games (this is where I learned to play a mean game of Hearts) often the conversation became a bitch session about work.  Janet and I took to going out shortly after eating our lunch and walking outdoors.  In the winter we took to eating in the Devonian Gardens on the 4^th floor of what was then Scotia Centre.  One of our mutual interests was a loving of reading and I must confess that Janet had me beat for her speed reading.  She frequently read more than one book per week but always at least one.  She would lend me her books and introduced me to Robert Ludlum and Janet Cox Speas (books which she later gave to me as she ended up with duplicates).  My family also enjoyed reading these freebie books!

Janet eventually transferred over to another law firm and as I had reached a peak I the salary range she encouraged me to make the jump.  Unfortunately the lawyer who hired me ended up leaving one month later and I was assigned to someone who was not a good fit for me (my nice way of saying he was kind of a jerk).  At the same time the company I had co-founded with my father and brother was taking off (Nanton Pure Spring Water Co. Ltd.) so after a year I quit the company.  Janet and I remained good friends and she would let me join her other Nova Scotia friends when they all went hiking in Banff.  Ah, those were good times.

Janet ended up moving back to Nova Scotia about a year later and we corresponded regularly, eventually dwindling to Christmas letters but this past year we have reconnected again via emails.  For someone who enjoyed computers Janet was slow to embrace email correspondence!  J

Once again, a lovely, dear person who I am proud to call a lifelong friend.