Ham and eggs and suicide

Back in the early eighties, a couple of guys named Bill Player and Len Rosenberg concocted a scheme to vastly enrich themselves at the expense of... well, it's hard to say.

What they did was buy a portfolio of apartment blocks from Cadillac Fairview, a major construction conglomerate at the time, and then flip those apartments a couple of times, with the final purchasers being a consortium of imaginary Saudi investors who were paying close to 50k per key for buildings that Player and Rosenberg had picked up months before for half that amount.

Those very buildings have been changing hands, 25 years later, at well over 100k per key, so I suppose that one way of looking at what was much ballyhooed as the greatest fraud in Canadian history, would be to say that time has exonerated Player and Rosenberg.

Alas, time has not exonerated me and Kipling.

We were broke dumbfucks 40 years ago, and we're still broke dumbfucks!

A couple of times a year I get together with Kipling at the Teviotdale Truck Stop to shoot the shit about who done good and who done gone etc.

Today was one of those days.

As it often does, conversation went round to who has managed to beat the system and who has not.

Since we are both of us getting on in years, a lot of our conversations go like this:

So whatever happened to what's his name?

Who?

You know, what's his name...

Do you remember his name?

No, I can see his face, but what was his name?

What's his name's name?

Ya, what's his name... What was his name?

Who?

You know, what's his name the wop who used to work in shipping at Kearney's.

Lotsa wops worked in shipping at Kearney's

Ya, I know but this guy, what's his name... what was his name?

Oh ya! What's his name. Fuck! What was his name? I remember the guy... always had a big smile on his face...

Ya! That's the guy! What was his name anyway? Tony? I wanna say Tony...

Nah, I think his name was Lew... like Luigi, I'm pretty sure it was Lewy... but ya, I think you're right, I think we're talking about the same guy. Big happy face all the time!

Ya, that's the guy! So whatever happened to him?

One thing that Kipling and I have noticed over the years is that little guys who rock the boat get fucked, and big dog shitbags who have political connections get to loot and plunder with impunity. Player and Rosenberg were little dogs with big ambitions.

So here we are in Teviotdale for breakfast again. Highly recommended. Nothing is great but everything is really good. The wait staff are mostly middle-aged local farm gals who never in their worst nightmares imagined themselves pouring coffee for me and Kipling in their middle age.

But they're not bitter about it. They intuitively sense we've suffered too.

When little dogs, interlopers, pretenders, get too big for their britches, the real big dogs, aka "the establishment," swings into action. One day Bill Player and Len Rosenberg are the toast of the town; up and coming wheeler-dealers in the finest tradition of capitalism's street of dreams...

Next day they're scum.

Happens all the time. You could ask Robert Campeau about it, or you could have a few years ago, but my understanding is that he's a few exits ahead of me on the Alzheimer highway these days, and there's no point in asking him anything.

Shit happens.

So what happened to what's his name? Used to have the big block 'Cuda?

You mean what's his name?

Ya, you know the guy... 'Cuda notch-back with a big block... a 68 or a 69...

Ya, I know who you mean... what was his name?

That was a 68 I think... fer fucks sakes, I don't think you could get a big-block 'Cuda in 69.

Fuckin' right you could, I had one!

What, that white one with the black stripes? The 440?..

Ya, that was a 68.

Fuck off! That was a 69!

Oh ya? So how come I saw you driving it in 68?

Oh fuck man, it was my car, I remember what I was driving. It was a 69.

So how come I saw you driving it in 68?

Oh for fucks sakes man, you can't remember 68 from 88.

Long pause...

Ya, you gotta point there... but the Dago, what was his name?

Ya, ya... I know the guy... I ran him a couple of times with my Super Duty! Whatever happened to him?

Suicide.

Oh for fucks sakes! He was such a happy guy! What happened.

Don't know man... lost his job, got into the hard drugs...

One thing that didn't happen when Len and Bill flipped those apartments was people losing their jobs. That happened later, when the government, acting in its capacity as enforcer for the big dogs in the real estate and banking industry, seized and liquidated their companies.

I'm having the breakfast special. Bacon, sausages, ham, three eggs, home fries, toast. Kipling tells the server he's fat enough already and will hold to a two-egg and ham special. We're gonna be outta there for under twenty bucks, at least if we don't tip those middle age farm gals. So we'll be outta there for thirty.

Seems that if you're a well-connected shitbag, all sorts of wonders may happen. How else to explain that Porter chappie, who was holding hands with Big Steve one day, and was on the lam, ducking multi-million dollar embezzlement charges the next?





But that's nothing. Back when Len and Bill and Robert were being tarred and feathered, well connected insiders were running amok. It was the heyday of deregulation. CN and CP were divesting their trucking operations, and within the space of a few years both companies had been looted into the ground, the assets stripped, the pension funds eviscerated, all by a coterie of hangers on of former PM Mr. Mulroney. The only people who were ever charged were a few hapless front men who took the fall for the big dogs operating behind the scenes.

The true story about who lost big and who won bigger in the dismemberment of CP Express and Transport, Interlink, and Route Canada has yet to be told. Oddly enough, it's very hard to find information on these topics, even now as the information age is supposedly at high tide.

Yes, it's fun to get together a couple of times a year and swap theories about who done what and why somebody might have off'd themselves.

I remember when things were winding down in the frigate program. I was a late hire and therefore one of the first to get a lay-off notice. Went back the next summer, hoping to hoist a few with the old mates. Had a few phone numbers. Got in touch with Buddy and other Buddy, but another Buddy was disconnected.

So we get together, me and Buddy and other Buddy, and I says, so what happened to Buddy? He ain't answering his phone no more.

Aye... Buddy got his lay-off...

Ya OK, I got mine too... so what?

He got his lay-off notice. Then his old lady says she's gonna leave.

What, the gal with the carpet-cleaning business? Jeez, I coulda seen that coming... she had dreams, that girl... wasn't gonna hang around with a guy had no job... Well, that sucks! So where's he at now?

He's nowhere man... he shot the old woman.

Then he shot himself.

When pacifists built warships

Ya, I know that ain't a warship.

But here's my point; I spent a couple years at Irving Shipbuilding back in the early '90s, working on the Frigate Program.

It was a good gig. Strong union, sensible management, fair wages.

I was a welder/steel-fitter with pacifist inclinations. As a shop floor guy who needed to feed his family, my attitude to the big questions has always been; if I didn't do that job somebody else would.

I realize at some level that's a cop-out. Any Nazi death camp commandant could make the same argument.

But back to the picture above.

That's a "megaload" making its way from Idaho to the tar sands developments in Alberta. Every Teamster, Ironworker, etc. on this job is approaching it in the same way I approached my shipyard gig; if I didn't drive this truck somebody else would, and I've got a family to feed.

I don't think we need to judge those folks for making that decision.

Many years ago I used to work for one of the biggest megaload contractors in eastern Canada, Lackie Brothers.



They had a lot of work taking big loads up to the Bruce Nuclear development.

I don't have any use for nuclear power. I think it's stupid to pursue energy sources when you haven't figured out how to deal with the waste from your energy-producing process. But again, me refusing to work on anything to do with nuclear energy is hardly going to slow down the development of the Bruce.

The theoretical socialists would of course point out at this juncture that if none of the overalls crew went to work, nothing would happen.

That's true in the long run. In the short run, the kids you feed need three meals a day whether daddy has a job or not.

So you fold up your principles and stuff them in the back pocket of your Big Bill coveralls, and you go to work.

I'd like to say that Lackie Bros. was a good gig but I'm not so sure. I came along at a time when the elder Lackie who had started the company was giving way to his offspring. I never saw any evidence that the offspring had any interest in the business other than storing their boats in the fenced yard of the shop on Centennial Ave. in Kitchener.

That's the shop where I worked.

Lackie Bros was what's known as a closed shop. You had the Ironworkers Union representing the outside guys, the Ironworkers Shopmens local representing the shop guys, and if I'm not mistaken, the Teamsters representing the drivers.

The shop was located in Kitchener, and had a lot of folks of German descent on the floor. There is something about the German attitude that looks askance at questioning authority. They just want to follow orders.

I'll never forget the day this German guy asked if he could leave early for his daughter's fourth birthday party. Most guys would just have left without bothering to ask. This guy asked, and the weasel who was our shop floor boss told him "no".

I saw that middle-aged man cry because his boss told him he couldn't go to his daughter's birthday party.

This was a completely closed union shop where one would presume that the union called the shots.

It doesn't work like that.

The machinery of intimidation works across union lines. The same kind of anti-authoritarian attitude will challenge authority in either environment; the difference is that in the union shop he will likely keep his job after that challenge.

My quibble in the shop was that the stewards had pretty much become management bumboys. They'd be writing their own overtime tickets and look the other way when that management weasel was pushing around some of the meeker guys.

I remember going at it with the shop steward over an issue that touched me personally. The outside guys were a bit slow, and some of them were brought into the shop just to keep them busy. I found myself welding flanges onto the end of a pipe while an outside Ironworker was welding the same flanges onto the other end of the same pipe.

At the time the Shopworkers rate was twelve bucks an hour, while the outside guys were making $20. That didn't work for me.

I took it up with the shop steward, an affable enough guy who spent 100% of his time building Lackie their own custom-spec floats. He was accustomed to writing as much time and a half and double time work for himself as he felt like doing.

Like I said, nice enough guy, but he could not see my problem. At the end of the day his concluding remark was, "well, we're not going to tell the boss how to run the business."

Well, that was enough for me. Remember, this was back in the day where if you could read a blueprint and run a bead you were pretty much golden to a lot of employers, so instead of staying and fighting the good fight I left for a job at Dick Cheney's Dresser Industries for a bit more money.

That's what you do when you have a family to feed.