In conversation recently with a persistent critic of my policies, endeavours and actions, I was told that I was constantly trying to get a social club type business going, in a critical way. It has ended up just like that. Pretty well crippled most of the time, I would like to have a place to hang out and work, maybe even play some music. Might get to smoke Hash or, I do make Lebanese Style Hash, it would be fun to perform with the Starharvester and the heated press. In any case, I am still hoping to put in twelve thousand square feet of something under the building, as street level is two stories below the majority of the land when a building replaces the three little old houses I own in Victoria BC on Hillside Avenue where it is zoned for condos and commercial development.
I NOW REALIZE HOW CLOSE I CAME AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN. MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES VINCENT COLLARD HAD BEQUESTED ME $10,000, JANUARY 1964.
THE OLD AIR FORCE OFFICERS CLUB WAS FOR SALE. IT HAD A DANCE HALL, A LOUNGE, A DINING ROOM, A COMMERCIAL KITCHEN AND IN MY UNIVERSITY TOWN FREDERICTON NB, ELEVEN SLEEPING ROOMS.
MANY SUCCESSFUL MUSICIANS STARTED THEIR WORKING CAREERS AS MUSICIANS JUST LIKE THAT. THERE WAS THE FAILSAFE, SLEEPING AND DINING, TO PAY THE BILLS IF THE VENUE DID NOT EARN MUCH.
MY MOTHER SAID THAT I WAS UNDER HER AUTHORITY AND SEIZED MY PATERNAL GRANDDAD'S BEQUEST TO ME AND GAVE ME NOT ONE CENT.
I was attending University of New Brunswick and I literally starved that following spring as I did not live in Residence that year. The next year I refused to cooperate when I was told to help things run smoothly with the Knightly Herald Newspaper I edited, not the main student paper, a student's voice rag where I printed or wrote whatever was on student's minds. I told Colin B. McKay the University President without swearing that I would not be censored. I was thrown out of UNB,and my transcripts were stamped "NOT RE- ADMISSIBLE" which I would find out in August 1965.
I arrived at my CNR job in May of 1965 at System Headquarters in Montreal Quebec where I was to be an assistant in the Engineering Offices and was told I had changed courses and was not wanted anymore. I was given a punishment job I think, I loaded box cars with freight right into outdoors in the Montreal winter. Mother had stolen my money or I would have been warm and cosy still in Fredericton NB running my Inn and in school or not, I would be there at a centre for art music and discussion not outside loading freight into boxcars at -20*.
I quit the Bonaventure Freight Terminal in February of 1966 and I took the train to British Columbia. I went to the offices of the Northern Construction Division of KBR BRJ Halliburton and I was hired as a Recording Technician. We laid out work and made sure quality standards were met so as not to cause IPEC owner inspectors to find flaws. Mica Creek Dam is now Peace Power and the electricity in British Columbia mostly comes from the project I worked at.
{ Assisting in the Engineering Department was what I was supposed do at the Canadian National Railway System Headsquarters in Montreal but Authoritarianism ruled and punished and a highly trained man was demoted to labourer. I think only desperate uneducated men had to work there at that freight loading job where you freeze in winter in Montreal Quebec.}
I ENDED UP DOING A LOT OF WHATEVER THE CHIEF ENGINEER, I THINK, JOHN ABERCROMBIE, NEEDED DONE. Most importantly, I mapped the Powerhouse roof and rock bolt system with torques no less. This was done from a Giraffe (on a rock shelf) at up to 180 foot heights above the Powerhouse floor. I produced an 8 foot long map. I knew underwater grouting and rock bolt installation and survey and map making. The chief engineer said to me:
"I THINK YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON BESIDES MYSELF WHO KNOWS WHAT WE ARE BUILDING". That was the largest earthfill dam in the World at the time, complete with spillways, penstocks and powerhouse.
There was a 50 Million Dollar lawsuit where my reports lined the cases in the hallway at the Supreme Court in Vancouver BC and in the Peasant Prejudice made real of the courtroom it was said that day when I was there with an insurance claim, that I was "accident prone". The CNR was getting rid of me. I was a passenger in the automobile accident I was claiming for. Tunnel and Rock work is the most dangerous occupation there is.The evidence that I did it was right there at BCSC. I am outraged to this day to have a bunch of stupid old men give me nothing for losing my Industrial career in an accident in 1970. I got only about 25% of my loss of wages. I guess "accident prone" would attract accidents like tractor beams in Star Trek. That makes any accidents fraudulently my fault as "accident prone".
I would have preferred to be running the Inn in Fredericton. I ended up freezing and working hard, even working at the Jewellery Factory, hard dirty work, the CNR was better, but the Inn would have been Luxury with accommodation for me right where I worked, and meals not cooked by only me for forty years and a Social Club and discourse with intelligent persons.
Authority is poisonous to Art to Music to Social life, always seizing property, setting absurd rules and pretend violations, with people even exaggerating about the sounds in the air. The problem is the disposition of anyone in control to shut it down on Art, Music and Social Life. You might wonder how my mother seized my inheritance which would have bought me the desired business I was never able to achieve: Mother kept all of my mail even when I was forty years old, I had no documentation. My inheritance notices went to the family address. Mother would say I had no address (great, what homeless, crashing?) when I did and she and my brother Andrew and sister Joanne kept my mail, some of it for Thirty Five years, until after Mother died.
I have endured a lifetime of Authoritarian abuse, continuing to this day with abdictation and ignorance and continuing attempts to seize property or money by creating imaginary offences with real fines and raids on my home and business characterising and being the whole of my relationship with Authority which too many people think they hold over me. I have objected to this atrocity in a series of blogs. CAPRICIOUS JUSTICE@blogspot.com or go to Lindon Collard.com.
STILL, IT IS PROBABLY THE THEFT OF MY PATERNAL GRANDFATHER'S BEQUEST TO ME AT EIGHTEEN THAT CUT ME OUT OF BUSINESS THEN THAT DID THE MOST DAMAGE. MY MOTHER PUT MY $10,000. IN A BANK ACCOUNT WHERE IT REMAINED UNTIL MOTHER DIED IN 2000.
