During this year, I continue to attempt to market my Christian songs, once again with no success.
JANUARY
Lana becomes pregnant.
I join F.G.B.I.’s yearbook staff as layout editor.
24 FEBRUARY
Monday
Augsburg Publishing House returns my music manuscripts for Jesus and Did You Know, and say they are not suitable for their current catalog.
SPRING
I sing at The Way Inn coffee house in Eston.
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13 APRIL
Sunday
I pass First Year at F.G.B.I.
LATE APRIL
Believing I should attend Jubilee Bible College, Lana and I pack up our things to move to Vancouver.
Lana and I don’t remember, now, why we felt I should go to Jubilee. No doubt it may have had something to do with several of my friends moving there rather than a direct leading from God.
Since he is going there, too, another student, Sterling, takes us with him in his car.
We three stay for about a month with four other students [Shannon, Mike, Avis, and Monty] in a house owned by a woman named Grace Kelly.
Residence:
West 16th Avenue
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Quite frankly, although a very sweet woman, Grace was a hoarder. She had two-foot high piles of newspapers and magazines going back many, many years in virtually all the rooms of the house, with 18-inch-wide paths running through them. Bibliophile that I am, I would have liked to spend more time perusing them all. However, despite the accumulated horde of periodicals, she did keep the house in a clean and tidy condition.
Obviously needing money to pay for tuition, I manage to find a job at the Venture Press printing company.
Looking back, I see now that becoming familiar with the printing environment that surrounded Venture Press helped prepare me for an eventual 40+ year career as an offset printer.
While here, I also meet a fellow worker, Ted.
I remember thinking at the time that if I ever had a gay or even bi-sexual relationship with a man, it would be Ted; something about his personality really appealed to me. So, even as a Christian, I continued to struggle with my sexual and gender identity.
After I eventually leave Venture Press, I find work at the Canadian Pacific Railway in the stores. It's while I’m working here that Lana and I meet a Christian couple for whom I write the song, Ellen-Lynn . Her name is Ellen; his is Lynn.
MAY
With a baby on the way, Lana and I will need a place of our own. So, while looking for somewhere more permanent to live, we manage to house-sit for three families away on vacation.
27 MAY
Tuesday
I receive a response from the ‘Vancouver Reachout with Leighton Ford’ regarding an earlier request to possibly minister in music with them. Unfortunately, they are not currently looking for anyone.
4 AUGUST
Monday
FEL Publications return my songs. Although they “have merit, they would be more suited to another publisher”.
SEPTEMBER
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find long-term rental accommodation since so many places in Vancouver don't want tenants with babies or children.
After we find and rent an upstairs apartment in a house, we’re awakened by the aroma of curry cooking at eleven o’clock at night.
Much as Lana and I love Indian food, smelling it at that time of night in her pregnancy wasn’t conducive to her condition.
Then, halfway through the month, the landlord asks for more rent money because he’s almost out of cash to pay his own bills. I find the situation so ludicrous that I laugh and tell him to “forget it, I’m not paying you any more”.
Lana and I finally come to the decision that we need to move again. We take the train back to Calgary and move in with my parents.
Residence:
9a Street NE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
I suppose we all go through times when we wonder if we should have made different choices. Even then, we don’t always know years later whether we made the right ones or not. It’s a matter of facing, as best we can, whatever blessings and challenges Life brings our way, with the knowledge we have at the time.
SEPTEMBER
Since dad, mum, Lana, and I all feel very uncomfortable with our current living arrangements, some friends [Murray & Colleen] allow us to live in a house they've bought that needs refurbishing. Murray offers me the job of doing some construction in it [laying baseboards, if I remember correctly], but I soon learn I’m totally clueless [and inept] when it comes to building things with my hands.
Unfortunately, I still am. For example, once—later in our married life—when a leg came off our kitchen table, I got some screws, turned the table over, reset the leg, and screwed it on good and tight. Then, when I went to turn the table upright, I realized that not only had I screwed the leg on, but I had also screwed through the tabletop and fastened the corner of it to the floor...
Residence:
10 Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
One morning, Lana and I wake up in our bed to find a real estate agent and his clients wandering through the house. They haven’t yet got to our bedroom.
On another day a cat sneaks in and steals from the kitchen counter some pork chops that Lana is preparing for supper since there is no back door on the house.
I finally land another job, once again at the Calgary General Hospital, but this time in the Housekeeping Department.
My main job was cleaning and polishing floors and elevators during the early morning shift, three days a week and weekends.
A couple of things I recall:
■ Five minutes before coffee and lunch breaks, the other maintenance staff would suddenly ‘disappear’; then they’d return five minutes after lunch and coffee breaks. I guess that way they’d get extra ten-minute breaks.
■ One time I was in the hallway that lead to Emergency when, suddenly, a half-naked man in a hospital gown came running pell-mell down the hallway chased by a couple of nurses and police.
The City of Calgary eventually demolished the hospital on 4 October 1998.
1 SEPTEMBER
Monday
We find a two-story townhouse with a basement in northeast Calgary.
Residence:
Vista Courts NE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Our rent is $90 per month.
7 SEPTEMBER
Sunday
Coincidentally, my ex-girlfriend and singing partner, Valerie , phones on Lana's and my anniversary to see how I'm doing, and to ask if I'm still ‘that way’ [i.e., a Christian]. I tell her I am. Somewhat uncomfortably for both of us, we chat a bit more, and then say goodbye.
In early 1974, in my new-born Christian exuberance, I had mailed her various Jesus People pamphlets on how to get saved and become a Christian. And, as noted elsewhere, Valerie would die in 1990
9 OCTOBER
Thursday
Lana gives birth to our son, Micaal Nathan David in the Calgary General Hospital.
After Lana has birthed Nathan, the nurses tell me I can come back in about an hour once she has gone to the recovery room.
So, I go away for a coffee and eventually come back to ask the nurses where I can find my wife, Lana.
“Who?” One of the nurses checks her book. “We don’t have any Lana listed here.”
After a flurry of activity, we eventually discover that someone took Lana up to the second floor to recover!
Unknown to Lana, the Full Gospel Church fills our house with furniture and food. She comes home from the hospital with Nathan and is overcome with joy and gratitude for this blessing from God.
I obtain a Worker’s License from the Apostolic Church of Pentecost [the Full Gospel denomination headquarters].
As it was, I never did get to utilize it.
At that time, I was somewhat dogmatic in my Christian Pentecostal beliefs. However, after I began to minister in music later at other denominations, I realized that we can’t fit God into a one-size-fits-all package. Each of us views God in our own individual way. None of us will ever see God in the same manner. No matter if we follow the same doctrine or denominational beliefs, our personal view of God will always be unique.
DECEMBER
We receive a phone call from one of Lana's Bible school friends asking me to consider going to Niagara Falls to be a pastor at a Church of God congregation. Although not full time, I would also have to work part-time. I think about it, and then Lana and I both agree for several reasons that this would not be the right time to do such a thing.
Occasionally, throughout the coming years, we would often wonder if we should have taken the pastoral position in Niagara Falls.
This particular winter, we have a snowfall of a good three feet. Since I usually walk to the General Hospital to work, there is no way I am going to try and tramp through all that snow. Not surprisingly, I don’t get paid for that day because I don’t show up as they expect me to do, regardless of the weather.
The distance to the hospital was about six kilometers by car, but it was much shorter cross-country by foot in those days because the city hadn’t yet built the Deerfoot Trail.
This certainly turned out to be a year of several choices we had to make. Right or wrong, as I noted earlier, we did so with the understanding and knowledge we had at the time.
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