It quickly becomes obvious to anyone that talks to him that my father-in-law, Bill, loves his family very much. To say that he would go to the ends of the earth for them is very nearly a historical fact.
It was in 1969 when, having earned an accounting degree in England and worked in the private sector there for some time, Bill and his wife Pat packed their belongings into a shipping container and moved to Sudbury, Ontario to begin the next chapter of their lives together. Bill, a native of the village of Peki in southern Ghana, and Pat, from the town of Consett (near Newcastle), England, as unlikely a couple as one could imagine in those days, setting off to the unlikeliest of destinations. Why Sudbury, of all places? Bill’s hometown friend Newton had been living in Sudbury for some years already, working as a metallurgist for Inco. There was work to be had there, Newton had said in the years leading up to their move, and the reassurance of at least one friendly face in their new home.
It turned out that 1969 might not have been the best time to move to Sudbury. The miners at Inco were on strike, leaving little need or budget for the services of a new accountant, even though Bill had sent his resume in advance. Decent employment was not going to be as easy to find as he had hoped. Pat, at least, found work as nurse in the local hospital. Not knowing what the future held, most of their possessions remained in the storage container.
In the months that followed, Bill spent much of his time in Toronto working with agents at the offices of Manpower trying to find accounting work. The search necessitated his staying in the city for weeks at a time. If an opportunity became available, he would have to be ready to react quickly; such was the competition for these kinds of jobs at the time. Even if competition for the job was not a factor, it seemed that getting work as an accountant in Canada was extremely difficult without experience as a Canadian accountant. All the same, Manpower assured him that if he wanted to work as an accountant, Toronto was the place to be. Sudbury simply did not have the range of opportunities that the big city did.
Of course, his budget did not allow for luxurious accommodation during these extended visits to the city. With a soft chuckle and sigh, he recalls lodging at such dives as the Ford Hotel at Bay and Dundas which, unbeknownst to him at the time, was in its final years, having faded from its glory years in the early 1930s. But he continued to do what he had to do to be near the jobs.
Bill kept trying to get into Inco, to find a job in his new home town of Sudbury, if not as an accountant then perhaps as a miner. This job, however, had a minimum weight requirement. Bill, at 5’1” and 115lbs soaking wet, could not meet the requirement even by affixing extra weights to his shoes. Mild-mannered, optimistic, and persistent, Bill continued his search.
A tantalizing opportunity came from a company located in a town near the Alberta border. It took a day’s travel by train to get there for the interview. As excellent an opportunity as this may have been, especially given the time and effort that had already gone into his job search, it was much farther north and west than Pat had any intention of moving. Bill, she said, was still free to go there and take the job if he wished. She would wait for him in Sudbury.
It was not long thereafter that the Manpower agent Bill had been working with took another long look at his credentials and the long list of interviews he had already been sent to and decided to take a chance and send him to IBM for an interview. The first interview had to be rescheduled, as the hiring manager was in Europe attending a conference. While waiting for the manager to return, Bill continued to search actively, submitting a resume to the government, and even getting as far as interviewing there.
Bill actually sat for two interviews with IBM when the hiring manager there returned from Europe, and the offer of a job followed the week after that. But now came the time for a difficult decision because, on the day that the offer came from IBM, another offer came for a position in a government office. After some soul-searching, and a discussion with the manager in the government office, Bill accepted the offer at IBM. The manager at the government office told Bill to look him up again should he ever decide to leave IBM.
With that, Bill and Pat relocated one last time to the east end of Toronto to get on with the very serious business of setting down roots.
