8104
8104 David “Glen” Carruthers
I was accepted for evaluation at Centralia and somehow passed
the evaluation to attend Royal Roads. Wil Bush was my lower bunk mate. I had
hoped to graduate Chemical Engineering. I was not a good swimmer when I arrived
at Roads and had to attend swimming classes every night for several weeks. I
found this really had a bearing on my studies, as I would get back from
swimming, Wil would be done his kit and studying, whereas I had to start the
routine. That time really affected my course load in studies. I failed Physics
Mechanics (Honics we called it by Dr Hone), as did most of the cadets in his
class. I wrote the second time and just missed passing the course. Looked like
I would have to repeat the year. We went to Summer training in Centralia Ontario
on radar systems and flight control. When I came up for evaluation by the
review board, I had two choices, repeat the year, or get out of the service. I
was prepared to repeat the year, but I was told the entire curriculum was being
revamped and rather than concentrate on bringing up my Physics grade it would be like starting all over from
scratch in all 13 subjects. Secondly, because I wore corrective lenses I could
not be part of aircrews which was what I wanted. It was a hard decision, but I
chose to leave the service. After making my decision I was assigned to working
on dismantling the Centralia base as it was closing down. On returning to Royal
Roads in September I was transferred to
Comox base for debriefing. Two weeks later I was in Vancouver staying with
family friends looking for a job.
Rayioneer Pulp and Paper Mill – Port Alice, BC
1. Worked on the boilers in
the plant generating station
2. Worked on the Finishing Room processing rolls and bales of pulp paper.
3. Transferred to the Roll Pit section, managing 11 ton rolls of pulp paper for the Finishing Room.
4. Worked on the docks loading pulp into the hold of ships, great money.
5. Port Alice was not a nice place, too many weirdos working there, 3 people died in accidents while I was there, it rains every single day, the air is full of caustic fumes from the plant, there was no one over 45 in the cemetery. I left Rayioneer and went back to Vancouver after 9 months, I had lots of money as there was nowhere to spend it in Port Alice.
6. Bought an old 1957 Vauxhall to boot around in for $300.00
National Cash Register Company (later known as AT&T GIS, and then back to NCR)
1. Hired on in Vancouver June 4, 1967 as an apprentice in the Service Dept working on mechanical business equipment
2. Spent 3 months on basic training in Quebec City on several mechanical cash registers. I learned more French there in 3 months than I did in the College language lab. It probably helped that there were French speaking girls.
3. Worked in Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and White Rock on retail equipment as a retail service apprentice
4. A couple of highlights while living in Vancouver.
a. A week canoe trip around the Bowron Lake system (100 miles) with my friend Claude. An amazing trip.
b. Water skiing around Stanley Park and English Bay
c. Sailing with my friend Hans off English Bay
d. Fly fishing at Salmon Lake on the Woodward ranch for rainbow trout and hunting moose there on the ranch.
e. Swimming during lunch hour in White Rock
f. Helping to build a cottage on stilts on the side of a mountain up the Burrard Inlet where everything had to be brought in by boat.
5. July 1969, sent to Hartford Connecticut for 6 months training on new Cash Registers, business machines, electronics with first release of electronic calculators, and Mannesmann Tally punch paper tape transmitters and receivers for punch tape duplication over phone lines. Watched the Apollo moon landing after I landed there in Hartford.
6. It was a strange time in the late 60’s in Hartford, race riots, 7:00 pm curfews, buildings being set of fire daily, too many wild after work parties, too much drinking, bet your job Fridays if you failed an exam, dismantling a VW bug, haul it upstairs 3 flights of stairs and reassembling the car in the guys room while he was away for the weekend, spiked watermelons, Purple Jesus parties and toga parties, shooting beers to get into a party, too many hangovers.
7. Graduated as full fledged Technician, January 1970 and got my card, with huge pay raise, what was I going to do with all that money.
8. Met my first wife Michele from Maine in Hartford, we were married in Vancouver in April 1970
9. Bought my first brand new car, 1970 Datsun 510, loved the car.
10. As I was from Manitoba and Michele was from Maine, I decided to take a transfer to Hamilton Ontario NCR office to be more central to both families.
11. The transfer actually ended up to be in the Mississauga office and I worked on the repair bench for mechanical systems.
12. After 6 months I was asked to be a bench technician in the Hamilton Office, and they needed me to work on the punch paper tape systems in Slelco steel plant.
13. Worked as Bench technician and Field territory technician on retail systems. In the early 1970’s I was sent for 6 months to Tech School in Dayton Oho for my first Computer system, processor, Drum units, Disk units, UPC wands, scanners, line printers and credit pinpads. I was involved with one of the very first retail scanning systems in Canada being developed in Canadian Tire in Brantford Ontario. Also installed/supported major retail systems in Sears, Eatons, Towers Dept stores, Hudson Bay, Zellers, Robinsons and many others. I had many subsequent trips to Dayton for training. Later on, my largest Unix system could hold 52 SCSI disk drives, these units were deployed in Walmart Head Office. My most complex Microsoft system was in Holt Renfrew.
14. In 1973 I was sent to Denver Colorado for training on automatic Electobar equipment for pouring drinks. I helped install the first Electrobar in Canada in a hotel bar in Owen Sound. I have a great UFO/UAP story from the trip from Denver to my home in Manitoba to visit family witnessed by Michele and myself in Wyoming. It was a life changing experience.
15. In 1984, my wife and I were separated, we have two children, Aaron born 1973, and Chantel 1976. Aaron is a Chemical Engineer from McMaster university and is the Engineering CEO in a Chemical Plant in Stoney Creek Ont. Chantel worked many jobs but found her niche as Manager of a Foot Clinic here in Hamilton. Chantel gave us our only Grandchild, Lilia age 7 years, a joy watching her grow up.
16. I was sent down to Dayton Ohio to be trained to lead a project on our Midline Retail equipment which we installed in Petrocan, Esso, Shell and several other petroleum companies with the first automatic gas bars in Canada using a credit card reader. I got an opportunity to go to San Juan Puerto Rico on a petroleum management project they were working on, but couldn’t get it to communicate. While there I trained their techs for 2 weeks while they worked out the programming for my recommended fixes. Another wild story, my encounter with a bi-pedal Chupacabra just outside of San Juan. No, I am not crazy, it really was a strange encounter, another life changing moment, I have been researching them ever since.
17. Experienced my first F5 tornado in Dayton, watched as it formed a half mile east of the tech school and watched it slowly advance east, It was 2 city blocks wide. The tornado wiped out a train and numerous buildings in Xenia Ohio including causing several deaths. The hail beat my new 3 month old Chevy Vega wagon like someone took a baseball bat to it. Hail stones the size and shape of hockey pucks. There were 33 tornados that night in the Dayton area.
18. After several years on the Help Desk in Retail support, I was asked to manage the group which I did for 3 years. We took on the support for 1300 Canada Post systems across Canada. Our group was responsible for support and delivering software updates.
19. I setup up one of the first Tech Bulletin Board systems for technicians to access for tech help on a Unix server using something new called the “internet” way before the internet actually became what we know today. The company was actually teaching the BBS system as the way of future in the tech school in Dayton (I actually had to sit through the demo of my own system, absolutely hilarious as we had been using it for years in Canada).
20. In 2005, while on a job in Invermere BC, I had an accident and broke my tibia and fibia in my left leg, a nasty break that plagues me still. I was off work for 6 months recovering but still working online from home.
21. I was asked if I would take on a newly created position, the Senior Technical Support Specialist for Retail systems supporting over 500 techs in the field across Canada. I set up many training classes in our school in Mississauga as well as setting up a technician course on the many different communication protocols we used in the field. My last major project was the system we installed for McDonald’s Canada, still in use today. I spent 3 weeks in Vancouver installing the wireless wifi system in 34 McDonald’s as a pilot project that eventually went across Canada.
22. I remained in this Dream Job position until I retired in July 2014 in my 48th year with the company. After travelling across Canada and the USA numerous times and living a lot out of suitcases it was time to hang up the career.
23. I met my current wife Liz in 2000, we lived together for years and finally married in 2014. We currently live in Hamilton Ontario. Liz is my rock, a great partner and I am not sure what I would be without her.
24. I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer 6 years ago, received 20 doses of radiation. Things were doing well and I was approaching my 5th year of remission, however in January 2024 the numbers started to climb and it looks like the Prostate cancer is back, has moved into my spine and damaged a couple of vertebrae in my neck. I had 5 emergency radiation treatments on my neck area in July 2024. I now am supposed to wear a cervical collar, which I do when I leave the house, but not so much at home other than while sleeping. I am on a treatment regimen for the cancer. It is good that the cancer clinic is walking distance from home.
25. Retirement has been good, not as mobile as I would like to be, hobbies are house renovations, fixing damaged photos, dabbling in IPTV, Plex server, and heavily involved with the Canadian Power and Sail organization who train boaters on safe boating. I currently hold 6 voluntary positions within the organization in the Niagara District. Liz and I had a 25 foot C&C sailboat at a marina in Grimsby for about 11 years but we sold it in 2019 as it was too much work each year and my health would not allow it any more. I do miss the old scow once in a while, had some good times on it..
26. I recently watched the movie “Blackberry” (now known as RIM) and found it quite enlightening as it was one of my last projects as well. Until the movie came out I did not know what was behind their collapse. I had met those guys on our meetings and discussions on our taking over their system support. They had huge campuses in the Kitchener/Waterloo locations. Their security was one of the most impressive and tightest I had seen in my career. To this day, as a result of this project, I hate Apple systems.
27. An interesting read on the members who have passed on, and the number that had cancer. Curiously, I am wondering what type of cancer. I have been suffering with bezel cell skin cancer due to sun exposure and have had a large skin graft to my skull on the side not covered by the pill box cap we wore. I wonder if standing for hours on a hot parade square had any effect on that.
As one of the psychologists whose forms we had to fill out at work told me. After going over my forms she said I should put this on my business cards, “Be Brief, Be Accurate, Be Gone” as that would describe my profile. I am not sure I would call this diatribe brief, and I have tons more detail I could have added to this description of my life but it is a good quick summary overview.
I often think of my time at Royal Roads, I choose to only remember the good times ( not circles, not 10 mile cross country runs because someone left the light on In the change room, cleaning the mess in your room after the Gronch struck, cold group showers, shoe polish races in the hall with your nose, Doggy button week, obstacle courses, a week of punishment parade for having a green sling on my rifle instead of white for dress parade, having a bee walking on my lips during dress parade). I am also very happy to hear from the Class of 69, we all survived that Junior year and I only had 30 circles.
Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Good memories, my life in a nutshell.
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L-R -à Lilia, Chantel and spouse Spencer, Charleen spouse to Aaron. Myself. Aaron, Michele, Liz
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