Out from Barry’s Bay to a different world
Author John Meissner recalls his time in the Ottawa Valley in the 1970s.
Out from Barry’s Bay to a different world
By John Meissner
This memoir continues the author’s story of his move to Canada in the 1970s and his time in Barry’s Bay. The first installment was published in the April 2025 Glebe Report.
It wasn’t the 50-hour work weeks at very low pay that cooled my ardour for the glamour of being a writer-photographer at This Week in the Madawaska Valley. My very promising career was sidelined because I couldn’t earn enough to pay for repairs on my car, which was being pounded to pieces on the backroads as my job required. There was no stipend to keep it alive.
So, my wife Chris and I moved to an old brick farmhouse in Cobden. A service job delivering library books to housebound senior citizens brought in enough money to pay the bills. I started making and selling candles. Our rent had increased from $40 to $45 a month, but we had an additional amenity – running water. We still had to use the outhouse out back. We were okay with this. We maintained our sense of adventure and would not be laid low by petit-bourgeois adornments such as flush toilets.
We could still be heroes in our own Odyssey until a simple twist of fate tripped us up – Chris was pregnant. We knew how it happened but hadn’t been paying attention. In a matter of a day, our whole outlook changed. We didn’t mind being poor, after all, we had books (!). But now things were different, the future was not what it used to be.
I had no immediate job skills apart from my aspiring identity as a writer. In the spring, after exploring options, we enrolled at Trent University. At this point, I had to agree with the common wisdom – one could not have children and be an existentialist. The distraction from the central object – oneself and one’s own existence – forced us to retool and change our identities for parenthood.
In late April, 1973, Chris went into labour. In the smoke-filled waiting room at the Pembroke General Hospital, dads smoked cigarettes and when new births were announced, the men handed out cigars and congratulated one another for their prodigious good fortune.
Josh was born on May 1 and was a healthy boy. Mother-in-law Dorothy visited us from Minnesota, and she was terrific. She had been there before and knew all the ropes. She did the laundry and diapers using the large pink, square, wringer Maytag washer (we named it Big Pink). Dorothy then clothes-pinned the doll-sized T-shirts on the line in a happy, nostalgic haze of past children and grandchildren. Chris was hormonal at the time and feeling quite blue. Dorothy said, again in happy nostalgia, “You are going to worry about him (baby Josh) for the rest of your life.” At this, Chris didn’t just weep, she howled and required some time to recover.
I rented a large Budget truck to move our household to Peterborough. After first and last months’ rent and gas, we had $20 to our name. Financial anxiety caused my digestive system to collapse. When we moved into our new apartment using the truck’s powerful hydraulic system, I learned that we moved Big Pink with a full load of water in the laundry.
Once in Peterborough, I had to find work quickly because we were at rock bottom. I secured a job as a night watchman. The DeLaval factory made dairy equipment. For 15 minutes of each hour, I walked through the factory. The rest of the time, I sat in a little booth, studying for my classes.
Baby Josh was enrolled in the Trent Coop Daycare. We spent many hours doing our share of childcare and cleaning to help protect adorable but drooling babies. We were also living on our first good income – I was a member of the International Machinists Union. We were thrilled that we could buy whatever food we wanted at Food City. In the past, the best we could find and afford was three pounds of bacon-ends at a general store for one dollar.
At one point, a job was posted at DeLaval, for the second-lowest paid job. Winning this job was a higher-paying slam dunk. But it would have required me to drop out of classes, so I decided not to apply. I had been brainwashed by my educated family. It was a reluctant but not bad choice as the plant closed five years later.
When we graduated from Trent, we marched out in procession to the song from the movie The Sting as our backdrop. At the time, we felt that we had put one over on . . . somebody. But we hadn’t. We did the time, but there was no crime.
John Meissner is a retired psychologist living in the Glebe. He migrated from the U.S. to Canada in the 1970s.