“He worked the Sunday graveyard shift..and I was getting ready for school on a Monday morning. We lived in an apartment in the West End. The buzzer rang and they said “Vancouver City police, can we come in and talk to you?” I said “Sure” so they came into the apartment, sat down and said “Your father passed away at work.” And there I was, 14 years old. I still remember it, clear as day. I went into instant shock.

“My father was very influential because he was a single parent and I was growing up with him. He did such a good job of taking care of me. I was just a teenager when he died of a massive heart attack. It definitely had a huge impact on my life because I realized we take so much for granted. I didn’t have a chance to thank him...one of the hardest things for me to get over in my life is not being able to tell my dad I love him. Even though he died 47 years ago, I still think about him all the time, and how brave and strong he was when he was alive, working full time as a single parent. And my mother, she was influential too, because she was motherly in all the protective ways and taught me how to be independent. She lived until 92. I was still learning from her my whole life and she had so much to bring forward from her life. I think that my parents — even though they separated when I was young — both gave me a whole bunch in my life. The most valuable lesson I’ve learnt from both my parents — now that they’re both deceased — is don’t take anything for granted.

“When I was 10 years old — when my parents were still together — we went to Paris. We were running across the street. All of a sudden, a police officer ran over, grabbed my dad, and said “You can’t jaywalk like that.” He struck up a conversation with the police officer right away, and asked “Can you take a picture with us together here?” and the police officer agreed. Now, we have this picture with my whole family and these two police officers in uniform right near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I always thought it was so cool because at first, we were scared that we were in trouble, but after my dad spoke to them, he was able to make us feel like everything was ok.

“It took many years for me before I was stable. When I was young, I got in trouble, and well…after my father passed away, I went into group homes. I was there because I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and the other kids were there because they were bad. I got into fights and situations and ended up defending myself. By doing that, I ended up causing more problems. Being young and not knowing everything that’s going on, you sometimes do things that you regret and it causes a lot of problems. I don’t think that in the 70s they had the proper support groups, so the adversities I went through in these group homes were incredible. There are too many stories, but a lot of the time, there were drugs, alcohol, violence involved. I was just a kid, so it taught me at an early age about these things I’d never seen before.

“I ended up in the psychiatric unit at the Vancouver General Hospital. It’s quite an experience to be in a little room where they’re treating you like you’re some sort of crazy person. And I didn’t feel like I was crazy, but that’s the way I was treated. And there are long-lasting effects from that, because when you’re in that situation, it’s difficult to get out. I never hurt anybody, but they put me there because I had [an] aggressive nature. Due to adrenaline, I said things or acted in such a way that they thought I was dangerous. It made [me] very frustrated and angry inside. I knew I was a good person, but I was being treated like I was a madman.

“All adversities make you stronger. I feel like I am stronger from it. It also taught me to be patient. Because I was still a teenager, I was still growing. At the time, I didn’t think it was a learning experience. It was a strong learning experience to go through, because something like that could have ended really badly, but it didn’t. When things happen so quickly, someone could’ve gotten hurt or killed. It could’ve changed my whole life — going to jail — but instead, I grew from that, I made it through that.

“I was 19 and I’d been going through a lot. I’d been getting stronger when I met my future wife. And we had beautiful children — a beautiful family. But we had adversity in our family. That was very painful. My oldest daughter died of colon cancer; she was only 26. She was the most beautiful young lady. You don’t see that coming. That’s an adversity that I will never be able to get over; it only makes you stronger. She never smoked, she was a vegetarian, and there was no answer at all to why she died of cancer. We should appreciate what we have because you never know when it’s gonna end.

“I had a medical scare about a month ago. I was going into work in the morning, and all of sudden, my heartbeat increased. I was scared that I was having a heart attack, so a co-worker rushed me to Burnaby General. The doctor there was really good, he said “I know what you have, it’s tachycardia.” It’s an electrical impulse irregularity. They hooked me up to everything imaginable, and they were all standing around my bed — doctors, nurses. The doctor said, “We’re gonna administer a drug into the intravenous. The first 2 seconds you’re gonna feel the worst you’ve ever felt in your life. Then your heartbeat is gonna go from 0 back to normal.” They were all calm, but afterwards, I realized I could’ve gone into cardiac arrest. That’s why they were all standing around me. I thought it was a miracle. That all happened within 15 minutes of being there. I was there for 6 hours because they wanted to make sure I didn’t have a heart attack. They were so kind. I laid there so thankful that I was alive. I was scared. I actually thought I was going to die.

“Just that experience alone is an adversity that makes me so thankful that I’m able to continue on life and appreciate everything we have and not take things for granted. Can you imagine [if] it happened where there wasn’t someone around? That I laid down and had a heart attack and died? Instead, my life was saved. It’s incredible.”