Old Geezers Have Much To Say

"I write to transfer my pains to the page. I am far from being a psychologist but I somehow had an inexplicable, innate sense of survival to surmount most of this shit pile." Gate Lepine - 88

When I sit down at dinner and discuss my day with my wife, I often tell her about a phone call or a coffee that I enjoyed with one of my many old friends - and I mean old. They’re mostly men, all vertical and breathing in and out, just north and south of 90 years of age.

Readers of this page know Gate Lepine. He’s 88, a man of humble means, living alone in a small apartment in Ottawa. To this day, he continues to write, play music and paint canvases. Gate lacks formal education and has worked menial jobs his entire life but, he is one of the wisest men I know.

Then there’s my 91 year old friend, Ron Hume, another wise old geezer. Ron is a highly educated man enjoying a rich life with his new wife and lovely home in a lofty Toronto neighbourhood. A couple of years ago, Ron authored a book (How I Lost $25,000,000…discovered secrets to business success and found true happiness). (Buy it here). Like Gate, his tales are engaging and…best of all…true - such as his encounter with Morty Shulman, the rogue Ontario Coroner.

Ron continues to write, create and recently created a Substack page called The Pathfinder, “a team of highly successful seniors provide practical guidance to help you make the right decisions at critical points in your life”.

Gate puts it this way: my story will, hopefully, inspire optimism in some of the readers who might commiserate with my experiences.

These men clearly come from different sides of the tracks but if they ever had the opportunity to sit down and share a beer, they’d have much to talk about.

Ron’s book is published. Gate’s is not. That is why I post his stories here. As Gate tells it:

There were three main reasons for me to write this book other than hopefully having it published one day.

The number one reason was to release a lot of painful memories on paper and leave them there in print - pains from the past that still haunt me, like my strict upbringing at home as a child; the mental and physical abuse; the multi-generational alcohol problems; the shouting matches followed by long periods of silence; the child who became a man too soon; my wild teens as a rebel; the difficult days beyond; the numerous low-class and low-paying jobs due to lack of schooling or trade training.

I am far from being a psychologist or psychiatrist but I somehow had an inexplicable, innate sense of survival to surmount most of this shit pile through the various stages of my life.

My second reason is that my story will, hopefully, inspire optimism in some of the readers who might commiserate with my experiences. I hope some readers can reach inside of themselves and find their own inner strengths to combat life’s assaults. I will share with you my story, my words, my views, my drop-out from grade school, some humour mixed in with some facts, some hard-earned wisdom for youngsters to chew on if they’re hitting the drugs scene – or boozing it up like I once did. Well, more than just once. Booze and drugs can be fun but the fun doesn’t last and only you can recognize that. I hope that my story can somehow make a difference in someone’s life.

The third, and not the least of my reasons for this story is to tell you about a notorious bartender that I know well, namely, yours truly. I have had some media exposure across Canada as the bartender who, on a cold wet afternoon, in a small mining town in Northern Ontario, gave a nickel to a downtrodden stranger with a guitar in one hand and nothing much in the other. He was missing a nickel for the price of a beer when he walked into the Maple Leaf hotel in Timmins, Ontario. I was the bartender on duty that day. I gave him that nickel in exchange for his singing a song or two right then and there. It was clear from the first note that there was something special about this man. I then introduced him to the hotel owner and with a big nudge from me, the owner gave him a bed and hired him to play and sing in a small corner of the hotel. That “gig” lasted fourteen months. The star of the show eventually progressed to fame in Canada. He became known as “Stompin’” Tom Connors.

However, there is much more to me in all this than just being a barman serving a beer to a lonesome rambler stumbling into our town in 1964. There’s more to me than dropping a nickel on the counter for that beer. In the pages to come, if you care to read on, you will hear much more about other ways I influenced and intermingled with Tom Connors, my friend and “Stompin’” Tom Connors, the legend.

Part 2….coming soon