Courage curiosity & kindness with Marc from Montreal

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello there, Radio Serrita listeners versus Preston Galer and I
am one of the supporters and avains of the Aaron's
Opinion podcast. Aaron's Opinion is a show where we discuss
critical issues in the blindness community and all across the
universe and galaxy. We have interviewed various fashions in the industry,

(00:23):
from podcasts creators like myself, to real life stories in
the Blinds Committee, from discrimination and even worldwide phenomenon such
as people studying university and even true stories in one
person's life. You can catch Aaron's Opinion on various Herenet

(00:46):
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(01:09):
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(01:31):
you continued into Aaron's Opinion, and we hope you'll get
some inspiration by what we do. We are Aaron's Opinion,
where we inspire, entertain and motivate to help you live
your life to the fullest in the blind community. Aaron's Opinion.
Help one person today, help one million people tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Welcome or welcome back, everybody to another exciting episode of
Aaron's Opinion, the podcast for blind people. We speak about
critical issues in the blindness community and all other issues
from across the universe galaxy, and today we are certainly
going over to oak Canada. Absolutely like I said last time,
next episode, Oh Canada.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Here here it is from ok Canada.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
All right, before we get into this episode, I do
have to tell you before I forget, because I'm afraid
if I don't mention it now, I might forget it later.
Today's episode is highly graphic. Most of this episode, a
great percentage of today's recording will be about the topic
of suicide, self harm, sexual assault, abuse, domestic violence, domestic abuse.

(02:41):
We also use a lot of bad language, so if
any of these things upset you or bob you, this
is not a particularly appropriate episode. And in other words,
what I mean is this is not a particularly light episode.
If you want something lighter, you should definitely listen to
something else. And again, I'll make this statement one more
time at the end of the outro or at the

(03:01):
end of the intro. But I just have to make
sure that you know for sure this is a huge
trigger warning today. If you want the electronic business card
to know exactly how to get in touch with the show,
please let me know, and I am more than happy
to send you the electronic business card. Of course, there
are many other great ways to get in touch with
the show, certainly one two four zero six eight one
nine eight six nine one two four zero six eight

(03:22):
one nine eight six nine Aaron's Opinion six at gmail
dot com. A A R O N S O P
I N I O N six. That's the number six,
Aaron's Opinion six at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
I don't forget.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Follow follow along on Instagram at Aaron's Opinion, And of course,
don't forget about being added to the public WhatsApp community.
Somebody did that, by the way, and they will hopefully
be a guest on the show soon coming up, so
it's definitely possible join the public WhatsApp community Aaron's Opinion
podcasting community or the Facebook group Aaron's Opinion Podcasting Community.

(03:55):
The Facebook group is private and it is certainly growing,
so thank you so much. Don't forget about following along
and following, liking, and writing a review, as ten of
you have already done, write a review of that Facebook
page Aaron's Opinion podcast. Let's see who wants to be
review eleven. That would be a pretty good number to
be a review. And I suppose remember, the only way
for the only way for others to find out about

(04:16):
the important work we do here at Aaron's Opinion is
for you at home to rate and review, rate and review.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
That's the kind thing to do. Don't forget. We don't
care where you're listening to the show.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
As long as you're downloading it and as long as
you're listening on Spotify, Apple or whatever platform you like,
we don't care. Here's the download contest with fifty four
votes this week. In other words, basically fifty four downloads.
It's very similar to voting. Fifty four votes. We welcome
our listeners from the United States.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Here's the interesting one with six votes this week. We
want to say gooday down under there to the listeners
from Australia, thank you so much, and of course our
four votes are four downloads this week from Oh Canada.
I didn't specifically know what. I didn't specifically look at
the chart to tell what part of Canada, but I
want if they're from Montreal, which definitely leads us into

(05:04):
today's guest. Remember, if you want to know exactly what's
going on here at Aaron's Opinion, and another great thing
to do would be to be a free member of
that patreon. But remember you don't even have to pay
money for it. You can just be a free member
and then you will be the first person to see
the videos when they come out before the public knows.
So if you're one of these people that always wants
to know, Hey, Aaron, what's coming up next?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
How do I know?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
You have to be a free member of that patreon.
And I absolutely refuse to post publicly on that, but
I do think that posting to all members is actually
very generous. So if you're a free member of the
patreon and you want to know what's going on, that's
a great way to do it. So join the patreon
Aaron's Opinion. As I always like to say. I forget
if it's on the business card or not, but if

(05:44):
it's not, let me know and I'll just simply send
you the link. You can even join the TikTok as well.
We occasionally post I don't remember the last time I
did post there on TikTok, but it is a good,
a good thing to do, so you can join that
as well. Don't forget about following along on you to
band on xat Aaron's Opinion TV. And don't forget about
liking the video commenting below, and of course subscribe to

(06:07):
the channel so you will know exactly when we premiere
the next video on the channel. Remember when video is
premiere on the channel, that's exactly when you can download
them on Apple or your podcast player of choice. Don't
forget about that. Okay, here we go. Now we're going
to get to to today's guest. I'm going to give
you one more trigger warning because I mean it, and
then at this point, well I warned you today's episode

(06:30):
is it contains a lot of talk about domestic abuse, suicide, violence, dying, drugs,
all sorts of negative things today.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
So let me kind let me kind of preface it.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
For you Okay, we are joined today by a man
who likes to be called Mark from Montreal. He's a
very nice man and he's a very happy man. And
one of the reasons why he's happy is because he
has spent a lot of his life going through the
journey of life figuring out that sometimes you just have
to choose happiness. Sometimes you just have to choose the
high road in life, which is a tremendously valuable lesson

(07:08):
to anyone, anyone who is blind or cited. Really, it's
it's a lot of great lessons today. So basically, Mark
used to be married to somebody and their marriage started
out well like everything else does. But it ended in
a very specific way. And it's not fair for me

(07:30):
to tell you how it ended.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
I'm gonna let Mark tell you.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
But it ended in such a way that our great
friend Mark from Montfreal had no choice really, but he
had to leave. As I say, by the way, we
use a lot of bad language in this episode, by
the way, so it's marked for it's marked explicit for
a reason.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
This is not for children.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Anyway, he had to leave, and then he moves out
to Western Canada, builds a career, builds a life and
comes back to the eastern part of Canada eventually, where
he now resides. At any rate, today's episode is fascinating
and it truly teaches us about being resilient and being
kind and being curious. So, like I said, this episode

(08:11):
is not with the faint of heart, But if you
want to listen to a great episode, if you truly
want to learn about the beautiful life of Mark from Montreal,
then this episode is absolutely for you. So without further ado,
don't forget everybody you're listening to the Aaron's Opinion Podcast.
My name is Aaron Richmond, and now let's sit back

(08:33):
and let's listen to courage, curiosity and kindness with Mark
from Montreal. Welcome or welcome back, everybody to another exciting
episode of Aaron's Opinion, the podcast for blind people where
we speak about critical issues in the blindness community and
all other issues from across the universe and galaxy.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
My name is Aaron Richmond.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Tonight, we're joined by someone who apparently has been more
wanting to be on the show for a while. He's
a huge fan of the show. It's Mark from Montreal.
He joins us, and apart from the fact that Mark
is just a really nice guy and just a great
guy to talk to. Mark has also been through a
lot in his life that he wants to go over.
He's learned a lot of lessons and he thinks that
there's a lot of He knows that there's a lot
of lessons that people need to learn from around the

(09:19):
world and in the blindness community and really really all
over the place. So Mark, I'm going to mute my audio.
Why don't you just basically dive into your life story,
covering everything you want me to know, and don't tell
me anything you don't want everybody else to find out about.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
So there you go.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
Okay, Aaron, thanks a lot, Thanks you for having me
on board on the podcast. It's a pleasure and an
honor to be here. Well, I grew up here in
Montreal in the fifties and sixties. I was born in
fifty six blind from birth due to premature retinopathy. My
parents were always there for me. I had an older

(09:56):
sister who kind of resented the fact when I came
along as a blind person they had to take a
little bit more care to make sure I didn't go
down a flight of stairs or stuff like that. And
I love to play with electrical outlets and pull the
knobs off of TVs and change the TV channels with
the flyers, all kinds of stuff. So I was a brat,

(10:18):
I guess, and a little spoiled, I suppose. But my
parents gave me all the opportunities that they could. My
father had a construction company and later got into harness racing,
racing in Florida and in Saratoga, New York, and at Foxboro, Massachusetts,
but mostly at blue Bonnets in Montreal. The harness racing

(10:40):
industry is now a thing of the past, I believe.
At Saratoga they only have the flats and no blue
bonnets anymore, turning it into housing projects. So that's a
change at the times, I guess. So that was my
birth and I guess my upbringing. Then I went to
school at the Montreal Association School for the Blind, which

(11:02):
we'll just call the MAB, which is now the Lesbridge
Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Center and has been taken over by
the provincial government and merged organizations. I started there in
nineteen sixty one. I was five years old. Stayed there
all week and came home on the weekend. So all

(11:24):
my friends were basically in school, and I was friends
with neighbors and stuff at home, but I really didn't
have friends in the community, being away at the school
for the blind all week where it was. Back then,
schools for the blind were the mainstream, and they were
just starting to talk about interfacing blind students into the

(11:47):
public system, and it hadn't happened yet. You got to remember,
this is sixty one, sixty two and right up to
the seventies, and there I learned. The most important thing
I think that I learned was the use of brail,
and how to use brail with the first of all,
the big tack board and then a huge slate, two

(12:11):
line slate, and then you graduated to the Slayton stylists,
and once you got really proficient with the Slayton stylists,
then they let you use the Perkins railer. And that
was the nirvana of brail, of course, back in the day.
And so once we all got to the Perkins brailer,

(12:31):
we had our favorite ones that we wanted to pull
off the shelves in the classroom. Some were better than
others and some were not so much that way, and
we had activities at school all week. Maybe somewhat regimented,
I think, but it was more or less to keep
us occupied. Like Monday night was swimming, Tuesday night might

(12:54):
have been a guitar lessons, Wednesday night bowling, I might
have those switched music appreciation Thursday night, and home you
were on Friday. And then as we got older and
into our teen years and before going to regular high school,
you could come in on Sunday nights, especially if you
had a girlfriend and wanted to spend some extra time

(13:15):
with her. So you know, that was kind of cool,
you know, Sunday night and you had that extra time
and you'd go hide outside the school. I'd go go
neck and and wherever you wanted to do it. You
know that that was the fun of the teenage years.
So then after that came high school. My first two

(13:35):
years at a school that the Montreal Association Blind for
the Blind sent all most of their blind students to
Montreal West High. And I was challenged with that because
my father had money, and of course because my father
had money, they said, oh, you can't stay at the MAAB.
Your father can send you home. You know, like he

(13:56):
had men working for him picking up construction equipment. For
the further construction, shovels, the excavation equipment, the bulldozers and
the heavy equipment that they use. So this guy would
pick me up at the MAAB. I had a study
room there where I could listen to talking books, books
on tape, or do my assignments and use the encyclopedia.

Speaker 5 (14:19):
But I was like.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
There and home like at seven o'clock, half supper, and
you'd have three hours maybe to do some things around there,
and then back to school the next morning. So that
got to be really tough for me. In the meantime,
I got involved with the singing group in Saint Lambert
on the South Shore where I lived, called the Hero
and Now h Ear and Now, and people familiar with

(14:46):
Saint Lambert and the seventies and might remember the Hero
and Now. We were about fifty kids from high school,
some of them going to Seizeup which is junior college,
and some going to McGill University in Concordia, and we
used to do documenical services all over the province and
into Ontario to places like Cornwall and beyond, I suppose

(15:08):
a little ways. So that's where I got to know
a lot of the students and a lot of the
local people. And the person who ran the Here and Now,
Bob Mitchell, who I admired greatly, was a teacher and
the director of this choir, and so he said to

(15:31):
me one day, why the hell aren't you going to
school in your own community? Why are you going to
Montreal West High School? And I kind of thought the
same thing. But it was the accepted fact that if
you went from the MAAB Montreal Association for the Blind,
most of you went to Montreal West High and it
was accepted that you would go there, you would do

(15:54):
your four years because you went to grade eleven in Quebec,
we didn't have twelve and thirteen like Ontario and the
rest of the provinces in Canada.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
So you know, I.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
Broke the mold, and I said, you know what, Bob,
you're right. So Bob talked to my parents to get
their thoughts on the idea, and then talk to people
at the school board, the South Shore Regional School Board
and to the principal, Paul Crow at Chambley County High School.

(16:23):
And Paul said, you know what, We'll take them on
in one condition. We'll give them the extra time to
do the Braille and everything like that. But we're going
to treat them like any of the other students. Okay,
So I'm good with this, right, So I off I
go for to do grade ten and eleven at Chambley
County High School, where I was treated like any of

(16:45):
the other kids going. There was a school of about
eight hundred at that time. So I went to high school,
did my ten and eleven, participated in after school activities
and like debating clubs and other social activities. I wasn't
a sports person, but I was more an academic type

(17:08):
person back then, and this is where I got to
know people, some of whom had been singing in the
here and Now with me. I sang bass in the
here and Now. But there were a lot of tenors,
altos and sopranos that went to Shambley County High So
I did my two years and finished grade eleven, and

(17:28):
from there I went to Acadia University in Wilfill, Nova, Scotia,
where I had to do a four year academic program
because I did not go to junior college, which is
Quebec's system before going into university. I believe it's three
years of academic or two years and then vocational school,

(17:49):
like if you want to be a plumber or something
like that. So that was the difference, and I made
a lousy plumber. I would have made a lousy plumber
or electrician or something like that. So I went to
Akkadia University and I got bitten by the bug because
I got involved in the radio station there called Radio Acadia.

(18:11):
We used to broadcast into the residences on carryer current
where people would pick up the signal on seven hundred
on the AM on their radio. So anybody in residents
could listen to Radio Acadia, or they could listen in
the student union building or the dining halls. Now that's
where I got bitten by the radio bullet and pailed

(18:34):
to take advantage of the academics. I think I got
disillusioned by the fact that I was majoring in sociology
and one day I'm sitting in class and this professor says,
how do you know that you know what you know?
And like I'm like, give me a freakin' break. I'm

(18:57):
paying thirty six hundred dollars to go to university and
some dude and twenty six hundred dollars to live in residence,
and my father was paying it that wasn't a problem.
But some dude is asking me, how do you know?
Let you know what you know for all this money like,
so I didn't take it seriously and I got involved

(19:18):
in the radio station there and after that, and I
partied a lot.

Speaker 5 (19:24):
One night you're living in residence.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
One night it was a bunch from PI, one night
was a bunch from Nova Scotia. One night it was
a bunch from Quebec. And I had a girlfriend at
the time who became my fiance later on, who will
discuss later on as we move along on this podcast.
So that was my time at Katia and I ended

(19:48):
up only getting five credits the two years and were
supposed to get ten. And the Dean of men said
to me, you know this is not really for you.
You should think about doing someth something else with your life.
Well I knew right away because I got bitten by
the bullet. I was a disc jockey for a university

(20:08):
radio station, so I knew that's what I wanted to do.
So I went home and brooded over the summer and
wanted to get into the broadcasting course in Halifax, which
was run by the Nova Scotia department of education, and
so I applied and being outside and not a resident

(20:32):
of Nova Scotia, they frowned upon that. And they've frowned
upon the fact that I was blind, and how the
hell is he going to do this job? Like, how
the hell does he know one difference between one record?
Those are the things with round holes either in the
middle of the forty fives or the little ones on

(20:54):
the thirty three and the third records that we don't
hardly use anymore, the seventy eights. But so they said
to me, Okay, we'll give you a shot. And so
you start out writing copy for the commercial department, which
were really psays that we did and those would be

(21:15):
read by announcers onto tape like commercials and put on
the air. And then you went and worked the news shifts,
working from six to midnight, then gradually coming up to
being the morning news newsman. And then you got to
the big time where you actually worked on air as

(21:37):
a DJ, starting with the all night show and working
up to the morning show. Because there was always people
coming and going. Begetting contact training at a radio station
in Saint John, New Brunswick or Sydney, Nova Scotia or
Halifax or Monkton or wherever in the Maritimes. The equipment

(21:59):
I used at that time was a triformation's one sided
rail printer that sat on the floor and was hooked
up to the wire service, which would print out whatever
printed material was coming across. The newswire was called broadcast
news in those days. It's now the Canadian Press and

(22:21):
you hear newscasts every hour on many stations from the
Canadian Press in Canadian radio. So from there I was
sent out to contact training once I'd done my stick,
and they took me a little more time because they
had a hard time convincing station managers to give a

(22:45):
blind broadcaster a chance. There was only me and one
other guy going to a university program at Ryerson, which
was an actual broadcasting school in Toronto, myself and him
and we were the only two potential blind broadcasters in

(23:06):
Canada at the time. So eventually what happened was a
friend of mine from the broadcasting course went to his
program director, Bruce Lee, and that was his actual name.
He was from Port Moorian, Nova, Scotia, with a really
good radio voice, and he said, Bruce, you know, I'm
really tired of doing the all night Show, and I'd

(23:29):
like to move up, and I know somebody who I
believe to be capable to do the all night show.
So Bruce said, well, get him to send me a
tape and I'll listen. And this was an air check
tape of stuff I had done at CRXL, the broadcasting school,
and Bruce liked it and he said, okay, we'll give
you a chance. So I started there doing the all

(23:53):
night show and doing Sunday Mornings where you played four
hours of religious tapes and community programming, and then you
were on the air from ten to noon. And I
went to Bruce and had my record collection because I'm
into music of the fifties, sixties and seventies, and so
I had my record collection. And this station had only

(24:15):
opened in the mid seventies, I believe, and was on
fourteen ten kilocycles at the time. They're on FM now
and in stereo, as are most stations in Nova Scotia now.
And they gave me two hours to do an oldie show.
For the last part of my shift. The phones went

(24:36):
ape shift, and that's no word of a lie. The
phones wouldn't stop and people would call in and say,
have you got this, have you got that? Have you
got this? And I went to my fiance and I said, Maureen,
I need help with this because people are going absolutely
ape shit crazy and they want to hear requests. Have

(25:00):
we got them in the music library here or do
we have them at home? And it came to the
point where I said, no, we don't have that here,
but I do have it in my record collection. So
I took notes with my Perkins Brail writer that certain
person had called in from this part of the area
that we served Lord Ways or Arashat or somewhere, or

(25:25):
Port Hawkesbury or antigon Ish or wherever. And I made
note of that, and if I had the record, I
brought it in and made sure this is for so
and so and antagon Ish who asked me to play
this record. So this is what I did. And I
also did summer substituting where they had students doing my
all night show, and I had the chance to do

(25:48):
other stuff. And I also had responsibilities of doing commercials,
recording them on tape. And you had like a jingle
and you had maybe twenty five seconds in the music
bed to read the copy of what the commercial was
all about. One thing that happened in that regard was

(26:10):
I became an extremely fast braille reader because you had
to and you had to brail out the copy yourself.
The stuff that came off the newswire where you had
to read actual news, weather, marine, weather, sports and all
that was in grade one braille. So you can imagine
how fast I would have to read to be able

(26:33):
to sound like a regular radio broadcaster. And the reason
I think I got into radio was Montreal mentors here,
people like Bill Roberts, George Bolkan, Dave Boxer, Mark Maywee,
Denny and so many others. I wanted to be just
like them. Well, two years down the road from that,

(26:56):
I got laid off in the true tradition of the
maritime and says very economically deprived and all that sort
of thing. And they said, we want you to record
tapes for us with a little bit of banter in
music that we can play for six hours on a
special machine and we'll change the tapes. And I said

(27:17):
to the station manager, who was not the program director,
I had another interview to go to for a district
administrator's position with the CNIB and Frederick to New Brunswick,
because I was looking at other career opportunities because I
wasn't getting the chances. I thought I was duing radio
because you got to remember, I was one of two broadcasters,

(27:39):
and the station managers would say, we are good stairs
in my place. What if he falls down the stairs,
my insurance would come over that and all this kind
of crap. So so ended my radio broadcasting career. And
I said to Bill Martin, the station manager, and you
can delete the name out if you want. I said,

(28:03):
you know what you can do with your tapes, Bill,
shove them up your ass, because I'm not replacing myself
with myself. So I went for my interview in Fredericton
and that was the end of my radio career. In
the meantime, Morian was working at the Recreation center in
Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, setting up equipment and taking reservations

(28:28):
for people who wanted to book the gym or book
equipment or whatever. And she got laid off. Well, we
had to eat. We both needed work, and she was
cited and could probably get up pumping gas, which by
the way, I did do for the Kinsman Club, which
is like the Lions or the Rotary Club. Or those

(28:50):
type of service clubs. Bruce Lee had the program director,
had gotten me involved in the Kinsman Club when I
was first in radio there at Cigo and one of
the reporters from the Scotia Sun, here's this blind guy
pumping gas for people, Like, how the hell does he

(29:13):
do that? You do it by sound or they tell
you I only want so much. I said, okay, well
tell me when you get when I get to five
bucks or ten bucks, and we'll stop the pumps. And
of course Maureen saw this, and later on, once we
got out to Alberta and she ended up managing seven
eleven stores, I would be the one sent out at

(29:34):
thirty below to pump our gas for our car, so
you know I was well trained in that. But getting
back to Fort Hawkesbury, well, nineteen eighty came and the assassination,
unfortunately of John Lennon. About two weeks after that, I

(29:56):
flew and Maureen flew from Nova Scotia to Edmonton, Alberta.
So my father flew us out to see what we thought,
and we were told and I was told by the
CNIB in Halifax there's this guy named Tim Chuck who
is a vocational trainer and the economy's good in Alberta.

(30:17):
He'll help you get a job doing anything. So I
went out, and she went out, and we I went
to the CNIB, talked to Bill. Set me up with
a telemarketing operation with the Globe and Mail and newspaper,
a national newspaper. Now that job lasted for six weeks,

(30:38):
and in the meantime Maureen had gotten a job as
a proofreader for some company, and then got on with
Seven to eleven and worked her way up from store
clerk to assistant manager to a manager and eventually had
her own store or group of stores, two in Edmonton

(30:59):
and one in two in one in Edmonton and two
in Saint Albert, a bedroom community. And she got a
news store in Saint Albert. Actually there were two, an
older store in a new one, and she got the
new one with gas pumps and everything, and that's where
she ended up working. So we moved to Alberta officially
and drove from Nova Scotia to Alberta. We left December

(31:24):
twenty second, stopped at my place here in Montreal, where
my family was, but they had gone away to Florida.
So I got the key from next door from my
uncle and you know, it was like have steaks, have
anything you want? I think we ordered Chinese food for
Christmas Day because Maureen wasn't about to cook a turkey

(31:45):
for me and her in a strange place, you know.

Speaker 5 (31:49):
Just for us.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
And then the twenty sixth of December, we left for Alberta.
Drove across northern Ontario, hit black ice outside of Pembroke,
which is outside of Ottawa, kept going and eventually ended
up in Alberta. We stopped in lloyd Minster, Saskatchewan, just

(32:10):
on the border December thirty first, because Moren wanted to
be off the roads on New Year's Eve because all
the drunks were out there and she didn't want to
have to deal with that. So we stayed in a
motel in lloyd Minster. That part of the city is
in Alberta and part of the city is in Saskatchewan.
And we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on TV,

(32:34):
and I think we got drunk ourselves for New Year's Eve.
So that was kind of fun. And so when I
got out to Alberta and the Globe and Mail job,
which lasted for six weeks, then I took off a
skills course at the jack Braden Community Institute, because I

(32:54):
had to have something on paper to say that I
had a course with the idea getting employed by the government.
So my employment counselor at the time recommended me to
one of the office managers for Canada Employment Immigration, and
they just happened to be looking for a switchboard operator

(33:16):
who was bilingual.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
So I fit the.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
Bill, and so then I started in February nineteen eighty
two with Canada Employment and Immigrations and its various incarnations
of same, the name changing over the years. Switchboard operator.
I became a job order consultant and took ads from

(33:40):
employers and used JAWS to input those ads into the
National Job Bank until such time as the website became
self serve, at which point I monitored as that employers
were putting in with JAWS to make sure that they
were following the p's and g's of the federal government

(34:02):
and the National Job Bank. Like some employers would try
to put ads in and say, like for Hooters, that
they had to have certain surprize breasts or whatever, seriously,
and that was against the guidelines, so I would refuse
those ads.

Speaker 5 (34:20):
Well, I got to talk.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
To your manager because this is not acceptable.

Speaker 5 (34:25):
And I have a right. No you don't.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
You can ask for certain types of restrictions based on insurance,
must be over twenty five for driving purposes, but you
can't demand stuff like that. So and well, let me
speak to you your supervisor. What's your name? I said,
my name's Mark. I'm only obligated to give you my

(34:48):
first name. And they get on the phone with my
supervisor and first thing, you know, the supervisor would be
telling them the same thing. So that's what's my job,
which I eventually went to with the Alberta government because
the FEDS sold us off. Basically, we were given six

(35:08):
weeks notice because Alberta wanted the programs and services that
the FEDS had, and so we were the first of
the ten provinces in three territories and New Brunswick was
after us. So we were traded off eleven of us
in the job orders area and four hundred in all
total across Alberta, me being the only blind one to

(35:35):
the Alberta government where we were treated like the four cousins.
And I didn't have any equipment taken over from the FEDS.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
It was my boss's lack of insight or if the
FEDS wouldn't let it go. I suspect it was a
little bit of both, and I started in ninety seven.
We transferred to Alberta in December of ninety seven, and
I sat in my office listening to the radio for

(36:06):
four months in order to get paid until I got
my equipment similar to what I had with the FEDS,
and that would have been computer, the latest version of Jaws,
open book versus braille in the earlier years with the FEDS,
which became brail and speak, Kurzwell reader a reading machine,

(36:29):
and then open book after that, and brail and speak.
And this is what I had on moving onward with
the Alberta government, where I basically did the same job
as I had done with the FEDS. In the meantime,
my marriage was going self. Maureen had suffered of two

(36:55):
bouts of depression and other issues, and she started being
not only verbally but physically abusive and throwing things at
me when she lost her temper and so on and
so forth. She eventually busted her femur, which ended her

(37:17):
up in a wheelchair, and through various things. She was
let go from seven to eleven because of her depression
and works for I think a year and a half
for Triple A which is CIA in Canada, Triple A
the American Automobile Association which was CIA. She was a

(37:41):
telephone person, you know, helping clients with booking trips and
trip ticks and services for Triple A and referring them
to the travel services and so on and so forth.
And then she was let go because the new supervisor
came in and wanted to clean house basically, and Maureen

(38:06):
was the least senior of the bunch and the first
one let to go. And she then took a job
with a company called Psykes at Home, an American company
who happened to have a contract with one of our
cellular providers, Rogers Communications in Canada, where she did customer

(38:26):
service and business services, depending upon which she needed her
And so she did that, but in the meantime they
weren't giving her enough time to pee, being in a wheelchair,
so she'd just pee in the garbage can. And guess
who would have to clean out the garbage can and

(38:47):
the papers associated with paperwork from printing off things and whatnot.
I'd have to go into little little shower, empty the
garbage can and clean out the piss not only there,
but under the sheets in the bedroom where she'd pee
in the bed and all of this stuff. And meanwhile
we had two cats and a dog, various cats over

(39:12):
the period. So due to her incontinence, I was getting
complaints from people at work that my clothes stank and
I stank because of it, even though I took a
shower every day. And eventually somebody came in to see

(39:32):
her because of her health from home care and reported
it to the owners of the condominium of where we
were living. This would have been in and in December
twenty sixteen, and so we got a nice eviction notice

(39:56):
in February saying that we would be required to vacate
the premises from the condo association we were renting the
only condo who that was owned by a person who
lived in Montreal as a matter of fact, but owned
this condo in Alberta. And so we were faced with

(40:19):
trying to find a place to move. And I called
the moving company and I left Edmonton March twenty ninth,
twenty sixteen, two hours after the movers had come and
said to Maureen and I, sorry, we can't move you

(40:40):
because of the condition of this place. In here, we'd
have to come in with hasmat masked, and so on
and so forth. And so she was. After the movers left,
she was sitting at the table bawling, ariz out, what
are we going to do? We have an apartment, but

(41:00):
how are we going to get there if they're not
going to move us? And because of all of this,
and I had given up at this point. She had
asked me a month before to participate in a suicide
pact with her, and she said, I'll put the cats
and dogs down humanely, and then we could take your
insulin and we could end it for ourselves. So I

(41:23):
gave myself seventy two hours of contemplation on this one.
And after the seventy two hours, and this was prior
to the movers coming. This would have been in March,
I believe, early early end of February. I said, I'm sorry, Maureen,
I can't join you in that suicide pack because I

(41:45):
have things to left, things left to do on this
planet before I'm done. So the day came the movers left,
and she says, I don't know what I'm going to do.
And I said, well, Mareene, I know what I'm going
to do. I'm leaving. I'm going home to Montreal and

(42:06):
I'm starting a new life there. And she said, you leave,
you don't come back. I said, don't worry, I won't.
So I left. I got in a cab. I went
to our bank that we had a shared account in.
I'd just gotten my life insurance policy, cashed it in

(42:27):
because she wanted my money, as she's been taking my
father's money all along, and I took half of it
out for me. Went across the road with a bank
draft from the bank I was at to a credit union,
a local Alberta credit union, to a nationally recognized bank,

(42:49):
so I knew I could pull out the put the
bank draft in when I got to Montreal, so and
I took that. Actually the account was set up in Edmonton,
but I could take money out of it in Montreal
because it was a nationally recognized bank, so that was
no problem and there would be no paper trail for

(43:11):
Maureene to follow. So I did that and I took
out I believe it was six or eight hundred dollars
paid for my one way airplane ticket to fly from
Edmonton to Montreal. March twenty ninth, twenty seventeen. I called

(43:32):
my brother once I checked in at Edmonton International and said, Rennie,
what are you doing tomorrow morning at about a quarter
to two And he says why. I said, because I'm
flying in to Montreal on a connector from Toronto and

(43:52):
he said, really you and Maureene. I said no, I
left her, and he said, well, it's about freaking time.
We've been telling you that for years. So I left.
I came to Montreal, spent about a month and a
half at Renie until we found a place in the
borough in Montreal where I wanted to live, close by

(44:15):
and near friends who had gone to the Montreal Association
for the Blind, and close to that institution which was
now the Lethbridge Layton MacKaye Rehab Center, because it had
been taken over by the government and other organizations incorporated
into it. And I couldn't take the physical abuse anymore

(44:37):
that Maureen was pushing out, like the physical abuse of
throwing stuff, the incognitance and the whole nine yards.

Speaker 5 (44:48):
So that's why I left.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
My divorce to her came through in twenty twenty one,
about three weeks after she passed away. She fell out
of her wheelchair after her trying to commit suicide in
twenty seventeen. She had taken some of my insulin that

(45:13):
I had left and left a suicide note blaming me
for everything that was her problem. The owner of the
condo from Saint Agath, Quebec called my brother Rene and said,
what's wrong with Mark and Maureen? What happened on my condos?

(45:33):
A mess and this and that. So Renne explained that
I had left Maureen and that Maureen had committed suicide
or tried to, and this is how they found her,
and that's why they contacted the person who owned She
ended up in the psych ward at the Gray Nuns
Hospital in Edmonton and spent two or three months there

(45:54):
before she could prove to her social worker and the
powers that be that she could take care of herself,
and they eventually found a place for her to live
and carry on and go back to working for Psykes
at home and doing her job, which she did until

(46:15):
she passed away in twenty twenty one. And like I say,
three weeks later, my divorce degree came through, which was
useless because she was dead, you know what I'm saying.
So that's basically why I came back to Montreal. I

(46:36):
got involved with the friends I had here who some
blind and some knew who I've met, met my spiritual
wife Sandy, who lives in a building diagonally across the
road from me, because she's in a chair wheelchair as well.
My friend Christine actually said to me, did you have

(46:59):
to pick another one of those? You know like meaning
you know, like you've got enough trouble with Moraine. So
there was a lot of prejudgment. And I mean Sandy
was different from Maureene. She was clean, she took care
of herself. We took the paratransit wherever we needed to go,

(47:21):
and where we didn't take paratransit, we took the regular
buses and the metro systems where the metro stations would
be accessible, something like only twenty four of the sixty
metro stations in Montreal are So we were both involved
in advocacy groups with the User's Committee for Lethbridge Layton

(47:46):
Maconn were involved in the social activities of the Quebec
Federation for the Blind, and we're advocates for other people
with other disabilities. So that brings me up to the
present day and I just want to comment on who

(48:07):
is smirk by our jehan? Where's he at now? Well,
we have a relationship, although those spiritual and not a
real marriage. It's the old disability of question of where
if you live together and one of you is on

(48:27):
Some people call it social assistance, some people call it welfare.
It depends what province you're in. They look at the
person who has the money or the income, and in
my case it's old age security and the money I
get from my public service pension from working with Alberta.
I would have had a federal pension as well, but

(48:50):
when it became unlocked when I transferred to the province,
Maureen insisted that I cash it in and she spent
ten thousand dollars flying to New Brunswick to go to
her sister's wedding. And so with my federal pension. In
any case, I have my old age, I have my

(49:11):
public service pension from Alberta. It's about two grand a
months I guess, all told, and that's what I live
on and she's on welfare. We can't live together because
as soon as they see what I'm bringing in, they
cut her off her benefits like her dental, her medical,

(49:31):
the money that she gets would be reduced because they'd
figure I would have to support her. And that is
a thing that's a problem not only for people in
the States who are I believe on what they call SSI,
if my information is correct, but in Canada, all across

(49:53):
the country, for people who are disabilities of any sort.
So that's where we're at, and me and her, we
just do what we do. We're advocates for people with disabilities.
We're out there helping people. She's always trying to help

(50:14):
the homeless, and if she sees somebody in need, she'll
buy them a coffee or a burger or something, you know.
And she's involved in our borough here, which is called
Notre Madame de Grass abbreviated in DG. She's involved with
the community Council here and volunteers with them and volunteers

(50:36):
wherever she can. So and as for me, pretty much
the same thing. I try to be out there and
active with people, trying to get to know people and
help them. Now I have forty five percent hearing loss
in one ear and seventy five percent in the other ear,

(50:58):
So that is an issue crossing the streets and whatnot,
which is why I've taken this decision to apply to
guide dog schools for as a first timer at sixty
nine years old. I'm thinking of first of all Seeing
Eye and then CNI and then Guiding Eyes and then

(51:21):
Mirror which is our local guide dog school in Quebec,
then GDB and CNIB, and I've also called Guide Dogs
of Canada and Oakville and that's in Ontario and I
am waiting to hear back from them. I've made two

(51:41):
phone calls with no success. Although they're supposed to be
taking on clients as of July tewod, I haven't seen
any evidence of that.

Speaker 5 (51:51):
Now.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
Being a first timer for guide dogs, you have to
go through in this assessment. You have to have your
eyes as through Lethbridge Layton MacKaye and your O and
M skills or maybe it's done by the schools in
some instances. So the basic applications are in the vision
and audio reports, and the O and M reports have

(52:15):
to come from Lethbridge Layton MacKaye and the medical reports
from my doctor. So that's where all this stands at
this point. I've received information from Guiding Eyes that my
application has been activated and is open, but I will
be informed as to what comes next.

Speaker 5 (52:37):
And that's the only.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
School I've heard from as of yet. But I think
it would improve my ability to get around and to
give me more confidence to get around. Although I do
walk over to Sandy's. I've walked from here to Lethbridge,
Layton MacKaye on my own, it's just about seven blocks.

(52:59):
I go with friends too, We go out to breakfast
and stuff like that, and I just say to my
friends who I'm walking with, friend or friends, when I
get to the corner, I'll tell you when I think
it's ready to go, and if it's not an audible
light signal, you tell me if I'm right or not
because of the hearing issue, and that works, you know.

(53:22):
But I'm just not as confident as I once was.
I learned how to use the cane in nineteen sixty
eight with our first orientation and mobility instructor, Bill Rudkin,
who taught me then and gave me the confidence that
I had through most of my years to travel independently.
I used to take the regular buses in Edmonton and

(53:47):
in Montreal too for times, and you know, travel anywhere
and everywhere until I met Maureen, and then a lot
of times we drove places like most couples do, you know,
you drive out and go to Tim Horton's, or you
drive out and go for steak dinner or whatever. Sometimes
we'd drive when we were in Nova Scotia, from Fort

(54:09):
Hawkesbury to Ayganish, which is like thirty miles west. We'd
get to Annyganish and say, ah, there's nothing here. Let's
go to New Glasgow, which was a bigger place half
an hour more. And we'd get to New Glasgow, I'd say, oh,
screw this, We'll drive to Halifax, which was another hour
and a half. So we'd go to some of our
favorite stomping grounds in Halifax from the days when I

(54:29):
was in the broadcasting course. She'd like, she'd liked to shop,
and I'd like to, you know, check it out the
restaurants and some of the stores and buy CDs and
electronics and all that sort of thing, because you got
more in the big city of Halifax than you did
in the little town of Fort Hawkesbury of four thousand people.
Or sometimes we'd go the other way to Sydney, Nova Scotia,

(54:52):
which was three hours away, and do what we needed
to do, turn around and come back and I'd sleep
in the car and then I'd go in and do
the all night show good memories from our marriage. It
wasn't all bad, but it gradually slid and went downhill,
and that was that's it. But I think I've I've

(55:12):
had a very good, rewarding life. The best thing I
ever did was to leave Alberta and come back to
Montreal and get involved here with activities like Enable Montreal,
which was the first one of the first things I did,
which was the project at at Concordia to make Montreal

(55:32):
an accessible city, and we all worked on various ideas
and programs and put proposals together after two months, like
Sandy's was how to make Concordia University more prepared for
emergency situations for disabled people, not just blind, but people

(55:56):
hard of hearing, people in chairs, et cetera, et cetera.
And mine as to how to make a metro station
more accessible for people with disabilities. And there were several
other projects involved, probably about a dozen or so. And
that's where I met Sandy in twenty eighteen, and then
we moved on from there. But I'm very thankful to

(56:20):
have had the opportunities I had in radio as judged
Judy would say, fifteen minutes of fame.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
But I loved it. It was my best job. I
loved meeting the people.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
I loved doing the commercials, the partying, everything that went
into to being a broadcaster. And then from that, well,
the government years paid the bills, federal or provincial. I
didn't mind working for the Feds, but Alberta we were
treated poorly and I didn't like it as much. And

(56:54):
then I retired and came back here where you know,
at sixty nine years, well, you know, I have to
say I've done pretty good. I have people like Sandy
in my life and my other friends, and people like
Kayla who are absolutely amazing. She's a wonderful friend. I

(57:16):
have no inhibition about speaking French with her because she
doesn't judge my quality of French with is not the best.
And we help each other out and we speak on
the fly. And the friendships are the things that are
most important in life. And she is of course right
up there and a wonderful person to have as a friend.

(57:40):
And I've only known her for about four months. We've
met on Jacket FM and then moved to vaux Rail
and then WhatsApp and now we do FaceTime back and forth.
So that's absolutely wonderful. And friends are the most important
thing that you can have. So I've had a pretty

(58:00):
wonderful life, I would say. And I figure, I'm sixty
nine years old. Now I've got twenty more years to go,
and it's hard to say what I will be able
to accomplish myself or with others in those next twenty years.

Speaker 5 (58:18):
That's it, that's great.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
You know what really stood out to me in your
story this evening was your your enormous, enormous resilience. You know,
you are a very resilient, You're very happy, and you're
a very kind person. I'm glad my microphone was muted.
Do you mind, by the way, and I don't mean
to offend you either way, Do you mind if I

(58:45):
say something graphic use a bit of graphic language, by.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
The way, Go ahead? Absolutely, Oh, okay, good, because I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
I'm glad my microphone was muted because when you said
the part about how your ex, you know, Mormhen, said
that you should commit suicide with her, all I said
was fuck me, you know, fuck that, Get the fuck
out of that. That's that's a life lesson right there
that people need to learn. When your partner tells you
to end your life, that's definitely a clue that you

(59:13):
need to get as far the fuck away from that
person as you can possibly do.

Speaker 5 (59:18):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
And that's On the other hand, there was obviously some
serious mental and cognitive issues with her, which I feel
compassionate and sorry for that she was suffering as much
as she was, she was obviously very unhealthy and a
very a very unhealthy person, and that's very sad, that's
incredibly saddening. But you made the right choice, I know.

(59:42):
You know, if they if they start telling you to
kill yourself, that's that's when you just need you You
don't even need to divorce them.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
You just need to run.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Yeah, that's what I did, you know, especially the movers
and all that.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Especially no, especially when she said you should end your life. No,
because all those other things you could live with. But
when they tell you to end your life, no, no, that, No,
you need to run.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Never mind the divorce papers. Just run.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
The other thing that stands out to me is that
you're a very happy person. You know, You're just You're
just a very happy, pleasant guy. And I think that
really says a lot about you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
You know, you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Believe in in being happy and helping people, and I
think that's so good. You know, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
You know, you grew up and you were working in
radio right in the you know, right in the heyday,
right in the height of the radio industry. You know,
it's interesting because here in the United and.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
That was a privilege, in an honor that they gave
me the chance in Halifax through that broadcasting course through
the Nova Scotia Department of Education. I was a Quebecer
and I had to move and live and have a
physical residence in Nova Scotia before they'd even consider me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Right right, Well, that's still really spectacular and h yeah,
that really that's really really special you were that you
were able to do that because in the United States
there was a height of radio broadcasters the the golden
Age was the fifties to the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Do you know Luke Holb.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
No, oh, if you're if you have me on Facebook,
I'll introduce you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
He's around your age, you might be a little older.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
He did exactly what you did, but he worked in
American radio and he had a lot of the same experiences.
He's an expert him radio operator, and he also helps
a lot of people around the world just like you.
He's you. You would love geeking out about his knowledge too.
He'll tell you everything about that. In the old times,
they when the radio stations in America didn't have anything

(01:01:42):
to play, they figured out that if they turned their
antennas and their dials just right, they could actually play
Canadian radio. Basically, they would bounce off the ion a
sphere transmit Canadian radio into the United States and for
old people this was very exciting. And then over time
they started to be able to play, you know, other
other countries radios, but it was for the time period

(01:02:03):
it was very exciting because you were speaking.

Speaker 5 (01:02:05):
It was I used to d X.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
I used to listen to Larry Glick from WBZ to
Boston and I'd go sleep in scot School in the
mornings in the seventies when I was in high school
because I was an avid Glicknick and I used to
do X Sunday nights, radio stations used to go off
the air and I used to DX and try to

(01:02:27):
pick up those stations locally that went off the air,
and the stations in Mexico or Cuba or somewhere exotic.
Trans World Radio from bon Air on eight hundred. It
was on eight hundred and they were on the air
most of the time except for Sunday nights when they
did maintenance and they used to do Tuesday night maintenance

(01:02:48):
on the FM transmitters up on Mount Royal, So you'd
try to get Plattsburgh, New York, Burlington, Vermont, all those stations.
And when you had e skip on FM in the summertime,
you know, you'd get stations from Iowa and Missouri where
Kayla is and like this is on trick and FM,

(01:03:08):
you know, absolutely, just absolutely amazing. I am on Facebook.
It's Mark Bayergent. I took on Sandy's class name, so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
I couldn't find you later, you know what, later on tomorrow,
I'll send you. I'll send you my link on Facebook
and you can add me. I look through Kayla's friends
and I couldn't find you, so her friends are not
visible apparently, But oh yeah, that's always a problem in
tracking people down. But once you add me, I'll be
able to connect you with Lou Holb and he will
absolutely you'll absolutely love talking to him.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
He's I sure would, Yeah, lots of memories of radio
and DXing and all those kinds of things.

Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
I loved it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
I love the industry and I still do it. But
it's a fraction. It's a very sad case when you
have all these companies. Even in Canada, you have Rogers,
and you have Bell, and you have of there's another
company or us which are the main three, same as
you have clear Channel and the other ones I can't

(01:04:08):
think of in the States. It's pathetic, it really is.
It's what the radio and funny.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Thing, well, the funny thing that I've noticed is a
couple of things. I agree with you that that that
terrestrial radio and amateur radio and a short wave and
those things have really gone downhill over the years. My
father is a ham and so am I. We don't
do the hobby at the moment, but we have our
QSL cards. My father has a full, a full, you

(01:04:34):
know album album of them from you know, radio radio Muscova,
Radio Moscow and all Yugoslavia and all sorts of ancient
ancient countries that are no longer, no longer existing.

Speaker 5 (01:04:44):
No longer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
But it's it's all very very fascinating and you're you're
very right on one hand. On the other I've noticed
though that internet radio has really picked up. You know,
people have really become interested in radio online, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
So it's a similar thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
It's not quite as magical, And it's only not as
magical because it's no big deal. When you join my
WhatsApp group you can talk to somebody in South Africa
just by typing. You know, that's not exciting anymore, you know,
because because of technology. Well, but what I will say
for the younger listener is fifty years ago, if you said,
oh I got a message from England today, that would

(01:05:22):
have been like a sci fi thriller, you know, that would.

Speaker 5 (01:05:24):
Have been yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
That would have been like a magical experience. And it
must have been bizarre when the US, when the American
military started sending signals from of course, as you know,
mon Talk Montalk Air Force Base, when they started sending
signals over to England and a British voice picked up
on the other end. I don't know how scared they
must have been, but they that must have freaked them
out the first time, because if you had never spoken

(01:05:47):
to another country and you never knew that you could
do that send your voice across the ocean. That must
have been really freaky out that that must have been like, WHOA,
what did we just do?

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
I've talked to I've talked to Blind Insighted Ham about
their first experience getting that first contact. Yeah, and it's
absolutely a wonderful experience and it still is, except you
have so much hash now on shortwave and the noise
background with all the electronic equipment out there. Yeah, it

(01:06:19):
takes a lot to do what you used to be
able to do in the sixties and seventies. I mean,
I have a shortwave radio and it's pathetic now when
you turn the bands and you can hardly get any
stations anymore. I used to listen to Moscow mail Bag
or Out.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Of Your Netherland father too, my father too, Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
Shut box all those shows.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Joe Bedenoff, we used to do Moscow mail Bag and
he was at Expo sixty seven to cover it for
Radio Moscow, and you know, you know, it's just amazing.
And there's none of that anymore, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
There's none of it now.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
There's less of it now, but all so too when
you're still able to make a contact over you know,
over amateur radio. It makes it all the more exciting
now because you didn't use the Internet. You used technology
in the atmosphere, so it's almost just as magical. It's
just different, you know. And yet with all of the
one moment, with all of the you know, electronic devices,

(01:07:22):
interference you know, RF and things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Yes, you're very right. I mean, I mean, I'll show
you interference.

Speaker 5 (01:07:28):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
You come down here to Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
You won't be able to if you think you have
interference issues in Canada, come down to the state side.
We have all sorts of of you know, different moved.

Speaker 4 (01:07:37):
I'd moved to Florida in a minute. I wanted to
get back to Hollywood Beach where we used to go
when we were kids, and my father had a place
in West Hollywood, him and my uncle, they bought They
had a construction company of course, outs at Miramar, you know,
West Hollywood. I'd love to go back there. That's one
of the things on my bucket list that I want

(01:07:57):
to do.

Speaker 5 (01:07:58):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:58):
Calda and I are talking about maybe meeting up next
year at AFB convention in Saint Louis, because that's not
far away from where she is, you know, that would
be really cool, And then she couldn't she put me
in contact with a lot of people that she knows,
you know. I mean you do that anyway on Clubhouse,
on WhatsApp and whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
You know. Clubhouse really had had its hype, but now
Clubhouse is really backing off. Now, I'm noticing Clubhouse had
a moment, but now it's like fewer people are on Clubhouse.
You know, I've noticed.

Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
Especially derailed all the blind people when they came out
with two point zero. It wasn't accessful. They're building it
back now, but no blind people want to use it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
I see, I see because it's the train.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Right when it came out, all the blind people were
talking about it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
I got on there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
You know, I always felt, hey, this is fun, but
I don't really you know, just my honest opinion. I
didn't really have a voice. I didn't really have a
place there. Doesn't mean it's bad. I just didn't couldn't
fit in with that community, you know, of Clubhouse. You know,
I kind of feel the same discord, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:09:02):
Yeah, yeah, I don't like discord. I really never have.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
But the first Clubhouse experience I had was I went
on and my friend Earl Zwicker from Toronto would talk
me into it. Oh, they're just making it voice over accessible.
I went into a room and then was this guy
talking about the Holocaust, who'd live through Who's living in
Auschwitz or Dachau, I can't remember which one, and the life,
the day to day experiences and what went on, and

(01:09:29):
how he's giving back now to students and going to
speak at schools and educate kids about the Holocaust and
what it was really like. And he has his mementos
and stuff. And doctor Fuschi Fauci what Anthony Fauci, who
was the doctor for various presidents. He was another one

(01:09:49):
that sticks o for me on Clubhouse. And to me
actually talk to these people was really I mean, I
was Larry King on steroids, you you know what I mean.
It was just wonderful to have that experience.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
Wow, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Absolutely, No, I never knew that all these people were
on Clubhouse. I just never paid attention to it, only
because I, you know, just got into my podcasting podcasting
lane and just stuck with it, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
But that's great that you enjoyed it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Well, I think certain apps have have their advantages and disadvantages.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
You know, certain apps lasted.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
You know that one that you mentioned earlier today Radio
Jacket FM. Yeah, that one didn't last, right, that one's
off the market now.

Speaker 4 (01:10:30):
Right, Yeah, it's gone. Yeah, that didn't last. Look at Roger.
Look at Roger. The same thing happened with Roger in
twenty fifteen. The blind people embraced it was actually you
could search for groups on Roger of interest that you
could join, and the blind people embraced it for a year.
And it was only an experiment by the developers to

(01:10:51):
create something else called Pika for businesses. And you know what,
they fell flat on their oars with it. They deserved
to do, because they would not sell the servers for
Rogers to blind people who wanted to run it and
make it go. They said, no, we're not interested.

Speaker 5 (01:11:07):
Screw you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
And that's what happened. And that's the the minds of Roger.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Yep, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, That's that's what happens. You
have to know why you're why you're creating these these apps,
you know. But I agree with you, man, and I
give you another thirty years, you'll make it to one hundred, man, because.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
Yeah, I got a lot of people out there whose
lives are wanting to make miserable. Yet so I'm not done.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
That's good, that's a good attitude to There's a lot
of there's a lot of people you need to help,
and there's a lot of people that you know that
deserve you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
As we say, you're karma, you know, if it's hope,
so sure or but but overall.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
What you want to do when you end your life
is you want to try to come to the end
where you're helping people. You would it would be nice
to end a life on it on a good foot, you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
Know, absolutely absolutely, and that's what I intend to do.
But it's people like Sandy, my my spiritual wife because
we're not legally married, and people like Kayla who push
pushed me, encourage me, and who make me go forward.
As Kayla who said, you've got to do this podcast.

(01:12:10):
You've got to talk to Aaron and talk about you
and talk about what you've done because people need to
hear that, you know, and so she that's why she
contacted you on My Behalf.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
And I really appreciate it because she's right. You know,
you're you're someone who's had a really a really hard life.
But what stands out is that you're just you're disgraceful.
You're disgraceful about it. You kind of accept that there's
going to be bad people, and you also accept and
embrace the good, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:38):
And there's a lot for me to learn about that.
I have a hard life, at least I think I do.
You know. I'm thirty four years old. I have health
problems like you, like we all do.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
But like you, I stay active in my Lions Club too,
and I get out in my community, you know, walk
the dog, run the podcast, run my teaching company, run
my teaching business that I have for myself, you know.
And I you know, and I get up. I get
up every day. I get off off my ass and
I do something. And it really, it really does offend
me when I hear stories about sighted people or blind

(01:13:07):
people saying, oh, it's oh, wee is me? You know,
I'm kind of I'm kind of used up with that.
I'm used up with that woe is me attitude. I
truly am, I truly truly am used up with that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
Type of things.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
I am true, I am too, like you just gotta.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Do, get off your ass and do something good, good,
and that's what you've done. It's interesting how you love
Florida so much because Florida is awfully hot in the summer.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
It's a little hard here in the summer, it really is.

Speaker 4 (01:13:32):
We know what you find the nearest beach and the
nearest what you would call bloody Mary. We call caesars
in Canada because they're made with clemato juice and instead
of tomato juice, same bloody things. So you have a caesar.
You're there on the beach on one of those chairs
or things you lie on, gets too hot, go in
the ocean, jump on the wave. And that's something Sandy

(01:13:53):
can't do because of her motorized chair. And like if
she goes on a plane, she's afraid to do it.
If you've read articles about what airlines have done to
motorized wheelchairs and crap them. She would have to pay
for that and set herself and then be reimbursed by
Quebec Healthcare after the fact. So you know, that's that's

(01:14:17):
a situation that we're dealing with. That's something so if
I want to do stuff on my own, I have
to do it without Sandy because there's so much that
she does not have access to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
That stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
No, I went to Canada, as I told you, I
forget what I told you. I think I told you.
I went to Canada with my mother and father a
couple of months back in May, and I loved it.
I loved Morial, I absolutely loved it. It was obviously
very cold, but it's always cold, but it's always not cold.

Speaker 4 (01:14:47):
Now it's tiny frigging degrees outside.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
So that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
When we were there, we were there in May and
it was quite rainy the whole time, but it was
kind of nice.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
It was kind of relaxing and kind of nice.

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
I was.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
It's a wonderful city because it's very cause Mapaula. If
kayleb Ever comes here with her French, she would fit
in like in thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Okay, Well, well, Caleb will fit in anywhere because she's
just a nice lady. She's just very dynamic. She's a
huge character.

Speaker 5 (01:15:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Absolutely, she's She's a persona for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:15:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
No, I was shocked when we were in Canada. Man,
those restaurants Inmial. There you can find a great restaurant
every night of the week. It's I was shocked at
the goodness of how much great food they have. It's
ridiculous for such a relatively small place. A ton of
businesses and a ton of food choices. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):
Yeah, all of our three million people, you know, you know,
it's surrounding.

Speaker 5 (01:15:44):
I get what you mean.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Yeah, even still, I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting all
that all that great food, you know, I wasn't expecting it,
you know. So, But but I was pleased by it,
of course. And then I went to the uh what's
it called, the aqua, the zoo thing, the dome thing,
the big o that thing.

Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
Yeah, I know I haven't loved but.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
I loved that because I love my parrots and I
can see pet with my usable vision, you know, I
can go right up to the glass and you know,
look at the penguins up close, and they're so cute
and they're so magical, and that that's a great I
love that place. That zoo thing, that's amazing. That's the
closest thing to a zoo they have.

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
And if you've got there, well you haven't been to
Granby two, which is about forty miles away. That's a
huge zoo and you know, in the eastern townships, and
that's if.

Speaker 5 (01:16:29):
You ever come back. You got to go to Grandy two. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:32):
Absolutely, you know, there's so much to see in Montreal,
and I'm a Montreal food stall. I'll be the first
one to admit it. I lived in Edmonton. I've been
in Calgary, I've lived in Halifax. You know, I've been
the Spokane and Dallas and all over the country and
all over North America.

Speaker 5 (01:16:49):
With Maureene.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
We used to drive places or flying. Yeah, there was
no we didn't have a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
You know, it sounds like, you know, intellectually, it sounds
like Maureen was actually a nice lady at first, but
over time it sounds like things kind of disintegrated with
her as her health, as her physical health went, her
spiritual and emotional being crumbled, is what it sounds like.
You know, that's what happened. Yeah, there's a lot to learn.
There's a lot for us young kids to learn about that.

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Pick your either, you know, and you're not going to
take this personally. Either pick your wife. Either pick your
wife carefully, or or don't get married in the first
place if you don't want.

Speaker 5 (01:17:25):
To deal with exactly, because you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Know these young kids, you know, I shouldn't be saying this,
but I'm saying it. These young kids don't understand when
you tie that knot you know, forever means forever.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
Yeah, I mean people don't get that now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
You know, forever really means believe it or not forever
until death do you part.

Speaker 4 (01:17:44):
But neither the same token. No, And I'm going to
be Devil's advocate here on this one. Sure, if your
life is not necessarily in jeopardy, but if you are
miserable in your space with the person who doesn't recognize
you or your talents or what abilities you have and

(01:18:05):
what your needs are, that you've got to get out
of that marriage.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
For your own health for sure, for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:18:12):
And sanity and everything else to move your life forward.
I've seen so many people like that too, who stay
in a marriage for the kids, or who stay in
a marriage because they're comfortable and they're afraid to break out.
And I mean h And one thing Kayla has taught
me about that is, if I was to ever move

(01:18:32):
on from Sandy, uh, you know, or something happens to
her because she does have health issues, blindness is not
a factor for me anymore. At one time I would
say I want a cited persona like Maureen, because we
could go places, we could drive places. Well, you know what,
if you're blind, you can still make it happen. You

(01:18:55):
may not be able to do all the things, but
blindness has very little to do with it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
You're very right, You're one hundred percent right. Yeah, in
your case, you didn't have a choice. Sadly, as disturbing
as it was, Maureen didn't give you a choice.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
In the end, you didn't have a choice. You needed
to leave, you needed to flee. So in other cases,
people have people have more.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
Of a choice. In your case, you truly didn't have
a choice, you know. Anyway, anyway that was you know.
But but what you've done since is you you're just
a happy person. You know, You've just decided to take
the high road. And that's something that I need to
learn from and and and keep doing in my own
ways and in my own life.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
And that's so good.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
And you know, yeah, you're you're a very a very happy, pleasant,
fun guy to have around the community. And we're so
we're so glad to have you, mate, We truly are.
You know, I'm sure you I'm sure you have a
lot of questions for this. Aaron Richmond Guy, Aaron, you
know Aaron Richmond, Aaron's opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
You know, I really get under.

Speaker 4 (01:19:48):
My STA's opinion, and you're actually getting opinions and experiences
of others.

Speaker 5 (01:19:56):
Why did you go with that?

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
Well, during the pandemic, I excuse me.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
During the pandemic, I was taking care of my elderly
guide dog, who had since retired. By the way, for
the record, I love guiding ice for the blind. I
had a guide dog from them for thirteen years. She
was lovely.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Her name was Nannie. She passed in twenty twenty at
the height of the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Anyway, I was, you know, from day one of my
own life, Mark, I was immersed in audio right from
day one. My parents were driving back and forth to
hospital and I and they put on the radio. You know,
So from day one in my life, I knew what
talk radio was, and I knew I knew what it was,
you know, before I could say, you know, before I
could say the jingle WML, you know Washington, you know,

(01:20:44):
the Washington's WML station. They were putting it on, you know, right, So,
and then what happened is I have always loved to talk.
If you haven't noticed, I can't shut up, and I
won't shut up, and I you know, got you know,
finished my university, which was very traumatic for me, as
everything is. And then after that, I started teaching English
as a second language, as you know, back in twenty fifteen,

(01:21:05):
and I still do that now.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
I still am a French speaker.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
But in twenty twenty, I noticed that a lot of
the podcasts were not really perceptive and reflective to my opinion,
and they weren't really willing to let me talk, and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:16):
That really bothered me. So I created Aaron's Opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
It was first known as something Else, and then over
time it developed into the title Aaron's Opinion because in
my opinion, I want to hear your opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:21:27):
So it's about It's about.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
The fact that I want I want to give you
the privilege of transmitting your knowledge so that others can
learn from both of us.

Speaker 5 (01:21:34):
And that's why I hope I've done that.

Speaker 4 (01:21:36):
I hope I still somebody some inspiration and anybody who
wants to reach out to me. It's marked by our
Joe if you can spell it. M AAR C B
A I L L A R GEO and zero five
six at gmail dot com. And I can be found
on Facebook that's marked by our Jean Maloy with a

(01:21:57):
dash between the byar Joe and the m L L Y.
And if I can if it's a legitimate contact, or
if we have legitimate friends, or you know more than
one or two, I will, you know, look at that
because you have to be so careful with friend requests
and so much phishing out there. But people who want

(01:22:19):
to reach out by email or by Facebook. I'm not
a big messenger fan. I do do WhatsApp. I love WhatsApp,
but then you have to have the person's contact information,
and that's a trouble. There's not too many social media
apps out there where you can actually look for people
or look for subjects and then join that conversation. Colubhouse

(01:22:45):
is one place, but you know, it's very hard to
find those.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
You're very right, Mark. Do you have any final questions
that you really want to ask me? You asked a great
one about the title of Aaron's Opinion. About any other
questions that you need to know about me and the podcast?

Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
Well, where are you going from here? What are you
going to interview more like interesting people? Is it restricted
to Canada, the US? Or I can give you some
ideas about that when you know, when we have discussions.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
So any contacts that you have around the universe, whether
they're Canadians, Americans, no matter where they're from, no matter
what country they're from, I don't I don't restrict countries.
I mean, I interviewed somebody from Nigeria. I've interviewed people
from South Africa, England, France, Australia, you name it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
I don't stop interviewing people, never, never, never do I stop.

Speaker 4 (01:23:35):
So it's nice for us because we can reach out
and talk to these people as well if they give
us their contact information exactly. You know, Marshall McLuhan said
back in the sixties, the media is a global universe.
And back at the time there was no satellite or
anything like that. But he saw what was coming and
here's where we are today.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Right, right you are you know what you are so right,
you are so right, And this is how much things
have changed now and now we have this whole universe
and it's really really really spectacular for sure. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
So I don't stop interviewing. I keep reaching out to people.
I got people lined up so definitely don't hesitate. What
you need to do is give me too many I

(01:24:17):
want too many people from you who I need to interview,
because not all people come to the show, so you
can never give too much help. And I'm sure that
you will love contacting some of the people I know.
And I'm sure that as time progresses and as you
think of people, Hey, Aaron needs to interview this guy
or this lady, you know, you'll definitely think of it
and definitely send them my way.

Speaker 5 (01:24:35):
For sure, I will send them your way.

Speaker 4 (01:24:38):
Absolutely. I've been a pleasure and an honor to do this.
But yeah, go back so much, and thank Kayla for
suggesting that I do this.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
You're very right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
I will certainly think Kayla too, but I'll think Mark. Mark,
you did a great job. Thank you, sir, and we
really appreciate having you on the show, and you truly
did a great job. And we'll catch up in a
bit absolutely all right, until next time, everybody, Mark, you
did a great job. And until next time, be well everybody,
and of course, help one person today, help one million
people tomorrow. You've been listening to courage, curiosity and kindness

(01:25:13):
with Mark from Montreal right here on the Aaron's Opinion podcast,
the podcast for blind people where we speak about critical
issues in the blindness community and all other issues from
across the universe.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
And Galaxy Mark.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
You did a great job, and I just want to
say we'll get to you in a moment, but you
were very courageous to tell your story in such a
beautiful way. For the Electronic Business Card to get in
touch with the show, please just ask for it. One
two four zero six eight one nine eight six nine
one two four zero six eight one nine eight six
nine Aaron's Opinion six at gmail dot com. A a
r O N s O p I n I O
N six at gmail dot com. Don't forget follow along

(01:25:46):
on Instagram at Aaron's Opinion. Join the WhatsApp community Aaron's
Opinion Podcasting Community. Join the Facebook group Aaron's Opinion Podcasting Community.
There are so many great people in that group. Just
keep joining and we just cannot thank you enough. So
thank you so much to all the new great people
who join. Remember rate and review the show Aaron's Opinion.

(01:26:07):
Wherever you download the podcast or on Facebook, you could
be that eleventh review on the Facebook page Aaron's Opinion
podcast that would be great. Don't forget to like it,
follow it, write a review of it. Don't forget if
you don't rate and review. If you don't rate and review,
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work we do. So rate and review. That's the kind
thing to do. And if you don't know how to
rate and review, no worries. You can ask me, or

(01:26:28):
of course you can simply share this episode with a friend.

Speaker 3 (01:26:31):
That would also help at any rate.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
We want to say thank you to all of our
downloads this week in the contest. Fifty four downloads from
the United States, six from Canada. No excuse me, let
me start over. Fifty four downloads from the United States,
six from Australia down Under, and four from Canada.

Speaker 3 (01:26:46):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
We want to say thank you to all that, and
we also want to say that you are welcome to
follow along on TikTok, and of course you are welcome
to follow along on Patreon, and that's really the only
way for you to know exactly when the next video
is going to come out, because we put those out
on Patreon first to encourage you to join as a
free member, and of course if you are in fact

(01:27:08):
very generous. The lowest tier is five dollars a month,
sixty dollars a year.

Speaker 3 (01:27:12):
You know, that's actually a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
So if you even give five dollars a month, that's
actually a lot of money. So that's very, very very generous.
And a couple of people have paid. There are a
couple of paid Patreons, but I'm not going to tell
you who they are, but i will say that I
post to the I post to the all members. In
other words, if you want to see what's going on
on the Patreon, you just have to be a free

(01:27:34):
member to see it. Anyway, we want to say, don't
forget about following along on x and on YouTube aout
Aaron's Opinion TV. Don't forget about liking the video and
tickling that bell to know exactly when we premiere the
next video. When videos premiere, that's when they can be
downloaded too. So that's a good way to know what's
going on there, all right, Mark from Montreal, Mark Bayell Jean.

(01:27:56):
By the way, I love saying your last name.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
I know you don't like I know you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
You to just prefer that people just call you, Hey,
just call me Mark, No worries, mate, but I just
love to saying I just love that. I love the
last thing that's so called biog. I love saying yes,
I know that's it's it is a little strange. Yes,
Mark from Montreal, mate, thanks for joining us tonight, and
I just want to say thank you for having the
courage to share your hard story and all of your troubles.

(01:28:20):
And you know, the way that you share your story
really meant a lot to me. You share your story
in a way of seriousness of your story is very candid.
You have a very deep and a very you have
be very you're very connected. You're you're very connected in

(01:28:41):
a very emotional way. You know, you're very emotional, you're
very powerful, but but you and you're very serious and
you're very dark when you need to be. But also
your kindness even though you're you know, even though you're
you come across as you know, even though that you're
you're a very Even though that we covered a lot

(01:29:02):
of serious topics tonight in this episode or whenever you
choose to listen to it, you should know that you
also cover the topics in a very kind and loving
and strong way. And I think that's a very a
very admirable trade of yours, Mate, So Mark from Montreal.
The only thing that I hope for you is that
you continue to be a happy person and that you

(01:29:22):
continue to truly from my heart to yours, that you
truly continue to bless other people with your happiness and
your knowledge that you can give. And the only thing
I want is for you to be happy and keep podcasting,
keep connecting with other radio people around the radio universe,
and just keep having a wonderful day in Montreal, in
oh Canada. Absolutely, Mate, you are forever welcome in the

(01:29:44):
Aaron's Opinion family.

Speaker 3 (01:29:46):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
We want to take this time to thank all the
other podcasters and radio stations for continuing to syndicate and
share out Aaron's Opinion when you can, it means the.

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
World to us.

Speaker 2 (01:29:55):
Thank you to all of those other guests, past, president,
future who continue to share your knowledge with us on
the show each week, you each day, We couldn't do
it without you either. And of course least but not last,
but not least or least but not last. We want
to take this time to say thank you to all
the listeners from every single country who choose to download
Aeron's Opinion from the United States, from Australia, from Canada,

(01:30:17):
from many more. We want to say thank you. We
also know there are millions and millions of choices in
that podcoalk, and we thank you for choosing Aaron's Opinion.
Let's see, I'm not sure where we're going to go next.
It's pretty interesting. We might go straight side, we might
go over to Nigeria for the next one. But of
course I just want to say thank you for listening.
This was another great, another fascinating conversation and we just

(01:30:39):
want to say thank you so much everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:30:41):
So that's it for today.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
That's it for this one, and of course don't forget
you're listening to the Aeron's Opinion podcast. My name is
Jaren Richmond. We'll be back soon. Thanks so much, everybody.
All right, take care and of course ol one person today,
alt one million people tomorrow.

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