Georgy

As I progress through my 12-month contract with a "McSchool" in Mytischi, Russia (a moniquer that I protest against as the particular company I work for, LL, has been nothing but wonderful during the past 7 1/2 months), I often take time to stop and reflect upon what brought me here in the first place.

It has been an overwhelmingly pleasant experience in Moscow, and even the few inevitable speed bumps I've encountered haven't been unnavigable. I have been blessed with amazing friends here. The hilariously sarcastic realism of the patriotic Virginian, Wonderpants, constrasts brightly with the rambunctious and perky Ms. Australia, who tends to speak before the thought enters her head resulting in statements like "Don't put it in my mouth, just stick it in" (while eating dinner).

Mr. Irish has his own unique brand of ultra-cultured intellectual humour, and Ms. Australia's friend from England, Gem, brings an inquisitive and open mind tempered with good old fashioned British wit.

Our little ESL crew in Mytischi is a blessing, and although we lost one of our own when Quagmire was fired, the rest of us rallied and filled the vacuum by spending more time together. Of course, for the women of Moscow, both Russians and expats alike, there was a very audible collective sigh of relief when Quagmire went to Kiev.

Soon, however, all my new friends will be leaving. In one month Wonderpants heads back to the States, Ms. Australia returns to Perth, Mr Irish heads off to a camp in Finland, and Gem is going to the UK. I won't be alone, however, as I have Katya, who is now my new fiancee.

We had a very casual engagement, when we went to the store to get pizza toppings, swung by a jewellry shop, picked out a very cheap ring together, I put it on her finger on the walk home and by the time we entered my apartment we were engaged. Our future wedding, whenever that will be, won't be anything big and tacky. It will consist of registering our civil union at the local government office and then getting our papers officially translated and certified, and then beginning the sponsorship process so that Katya can become a permanent resident and eventual citizen of Canada.

So, how did I end up in a place like Moscow, Russia, teaching English alongside Australians and Americans and Brits and Irish and getting engaged to a beautiful Russian girl?

It all happened because of a cat.

In what seems a different life, in Port Hardy, British Columbia, I had a great neighbour named Debbie. Debbie was a recent divorcee and she was incredibly kind and friendly (although that describes most British Columbians). Debbie had a pet cat, named Georgy.

While I was still with my ex, Georgy would come around and hang out with our cat, Mr. Lee. The front of our house had a view of the ocean and the Rocky Mountains on the other side of the channel, but the back had a shrub-covered hill angling up from the driveway. This hill was nearly 20 feet high, and the bushes that covered it grew raspberries, blackberries and salmonberries during the summer. At the top of this hill was an old road that had been put out of use by the construction of a newer and wider road, so it was converted into a walking path through the forest.

One day my ex and I were walking along this old road when we came across our cat, Mr. Lee, Debbie's cat Georgy and another cat all laying down facing each other in the sun. If they had had beers with them I would have been convinced that cats do indeed party.

Debby would often ask me to watch over Georgy when she had to go to the mainland or "down-island" for the night, and during sunny days when the doors were open Georgy would wander into our house, eat the cat food and chill out with Mr. Lee. For some reason Georgy (who was a girl) hated my ex and clawed her hand up once, but that cat loved me.

After my ex left me Georgy would still come around to play with Mr. Lee, but one day while I was at work Mr. Lee explored a neighbours' backyard and ran into their vicious bull mastiff, who attacked my wonderful black cat. When I got home Debbie brought Mr. Lee to me, who was just barely alive and crying. I wrapped him in a blanket, threw him into the passenger seat of my Chevy and raced to the veterinarian hospital. I sped along at over 100 km/h on the narrow twisty road, but it didn't help. In the ten minutes it took me to reach the hospital, Mr. Lee had died in the seat beside me.

This came as a huge blow to me, following as it did on the heels of my breakup, and for the next several weeks the only company I had was Georgy, who came around to find Mr. Lee but couldn't figure out where he had gone. Georgy would wait at the front door all day for me to come home and let her in, and she would wander around the house, sniffing things, and then trot over to me and look up at me with big green quizzical eyes. "Sorry, Georgy, I don't know what to tell you." I would say. Then she would nuzzle my ankle and, choking back tears, I would pet her and she would hang out, waiting for Mr. Lee who would never return.

I took to talking to Georgy after work, as I sat on my deck sipping a beer in the autumn sun, a single hamburger for dinner cooking on my barbecue. "It's just you and me now, Georgy." I would say. "I know you're Debbie's cat and not mine." I would add.

My conversations with a cat eventually developed into deep discussions about the meaning of life and philosophy. As I chatted, Georgy would sit on my lap and purr, then jump down to swat at a passing butterfly, and then spend a few minutes licking her own ass with one leg stuck up in the air like a thanksgiving turkey.

It was during my discussions with Georgy that I pieced together my plan to come to Russia. "What am I going to do, Georgy?" I asked one day. "Am I going to stay here, counting fish, single in a town with no prospect of ever meeting somebody, growing old and then dying alone?" Georgy sniffed a pebble. "That's what I was thinking." She then stared intently at something in the distance that no human could ever see, and after a few moments she turned to me, winked both eyes, and wandered into the house to eat some of the cat food I continued to put out. "You're absolutely right, Georgy! And why shouldn't I?" I called out after her. "Why, Georgy? You are brilliant!"

After that particular discussion with a cat I decided to come to Russia.

In memory of my little buddy Mr. Lee.

Fish Tales

Last night I had a strange series of dreams about my former life in Canada. These dreams brought me, with incredible realism, back to a time before I had conjured up the idea to teach English in Russia. Since I woke up I've had the memories of my life in Port Hardy on my mind.

When I lived in Port Hardy, more than a year ago, I was the Port Supervisor for a fisheries monitoring program with an environmental consulting company. There's a lot of fancy titles there but it's really not all that complicated.

Canada's commercial fisheries, one of the three largest in the world and representing 30% of Canada's gross GDP, is managed by the Department of Fisheries & Oceans, or DFO. Because DFO doesn't have the money or personnel to monitor the entire fisheries in both oceans, they contract private companies to do it. By law there must be a government-certified "observer" at every fish offload at a Canadian port to record what was caught and how much, to ensure compliance with regulations, and to report all this information. Fishing trawlers require an At-Sea-Observer on board when they are out fishing as well as a Dockside Monitor when they offload. The company I worked for provided both services.

I was the supervisor for the Dockside Monitoring Program in Port Hardy. When commercials vessels were returning to port after a week of fishing on the Pacific Ocean they would "hail in" by calling an 800 number. The hail would then be registered in a computer somewhere and on my big Blackberry-like phone I would receive a "ping" and all the hail information. I would then call the fishing plant the vessel was offloading at to confirm the time, and then call one of my staff of observers and "deploy" them to the offload. I was also responsible for hiring, training and supervising the dockside observers, as well as ensuring accuracy of information, maintaining good PR with the commercial fisheries, DFO and the community in general. I also observed a million offloads myself.

Because of my job I had to pass a series of government exams showing that I could properly identify the bulk of the Pacific fish species. Russian factory ships would park off the coast of Canadian and US waters so that domestic boats could sell their catch directly to them. These giant JV ships (Joint-Venture) took millions of pounds of fish back to Russian markets, and it was interesting when I spotted a Yellowtail Rockfish, a species native to the north-east Pacific, in a Russian grocery store a few months ago.

At one point in my Port Hardy-fisheries life, I had a nice house near the beach with a view of the Rocky Mountains on the mainland, a Cavalier Z22, a beautiful blonde fiance, a good salary and job with a great company, and a lot of power. My job was stressful, particularly at the start of the fishing season (March) when 20+ boats a day would want to offload in Port Hardy and I only had 5 observers. The trick was to not burn out my observers so I developed a system whereby I would rotate half of them for night shifts and the other half for day shifts. I would observe whatever was left and created a "mobile office" so I could keep doing my supervisor duties while observing at the dock.

Fishermen themselves are not a friendly lot, and the majority of them feel that government observers counting their fish is an invasion of privacy. Add to that the fact that we then billed them for our services and you have a sometimes stressful situation on your hands. I remember one night in late October 2007. It was 9 pm and a hook-and-line boat was offloading at the government wharf. The skipper was drunk and angry and his crew were throwing insults at me. Finally I said "If you want I can leave, and your fish can rot. Or we can stop fucking around and get this offload finished." At which point the drunk skipper grabbed a tire-iron and swung it at my head. I managed to get out of the way, looked at him for a moment, and then walked away (thus forcing the offload to stop) and called DFO.

Aside from moments like that, however, it was a rewarding job. The data collected was used by government to monitor quotas, and research groups and universities used the data to determine fish migration patterns, stocks in the ocean and other important marine information. Although far from perfect, the system is one of the only like it in the world and the company has consulted with Norway, Australia and the United States to help them set up similar conservation programs.

When my fiance and I broke up I stayed with the job for 9 months, but I became restless and bored and lonely in Port Hardy, and started to panic that I would miss out on seeing the places I always dreamt of seeing, so I decided to come to Russia to teach English. I helped train my replacement (who promised to hire me the moment I returned to Port Hardy), packed a single suitcase, caught a Greyhound bus to Victoria and then a flight to Ottawa.

Every now and again I think that I made a big mistake in leaving my job and home in one of the most beautiful and peaceful parts of the world. Today is one of those days.

On the other side of the coin, however, I have been enjoying my time in Russia and I really enjoy the company of the friends I've made here so far. Some day this will be a memory and as I'm counting fish while eagles glide overhead on thermals and the Rocky Mountains poke through clouds on the horizon, I'll think back to my time in Russia and know that this will all be worth it.

Unless, of course, it isn't. In either case, I might as well enjoy myself.

Port Hardy As I See It

Port Hardy is a small town on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Before I go any further I do have to explain the difference between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, because most people say "Oh, what's living in Vancouver like?"

First and foremost, Vancouver is a city of 2.5 million on the MAINLAND while Vancouver Island is that big ISLAND off the west coast of Canada. The city of Victoria is on the island, as is Nanaimo, Comox, Courtney, and Tofino. Port Hardy is nearly 700 km north of Vancouver!

Now let's get back to Port Hardy. Like I said, it's a small town of rougly 3500 people, yet it's the biggest town on the 'North Island'. It's part of what is called the Tri-Port Area, which encompasses the towns of Port Hardy, Port McNeill, and Port Alice. These towns are all within a 30 minute drive of one another yet they are all far removed from any cities.

Campbell River is the closest thing to a city, and it lays 250+ km to the south. You need to drive for 2 1/2 hours over a mountain range on a single-lane highway to get a cup of Tim Horton's coffee or a Big Mac...or purchase any clothes, or see a movie, or even eat at a decent restaurant!

Port Hardy itself is made up of the town and two outlying areas, Storie's Beach and Coal Harbour. Then there are three First Nations reserves surrounding the town. They are people of the Gwaksak'la band. Or the Gks'wa'llk' band, or something along those lines. There's a lot of Ws and Ks with apostrophes stuck between them.

Port Hardy was founded on natural resources and national defence. Fishing, logging, and mining used to be the main job resource in the area, but 10 years ago the huge open-pit copper mine closed down and hundreds lost their jobs. More recently Western Forest Products (WFP) closed down its Port McNeill operations and many more people lost their jobs, leaving only the commercial fisheries to support the local economy. The fisheries have had a couple of bad years due to dwindling stocks, government mismanagement, and the slumping US economy, so the money that is there is just barely enough to support the region.

Despite all this Port Hardy holds its annual festival every July celebrating it's heritage. These are FiLoMi Days (Fishing, Logging, Mining). It's pronounced "Fe-lo-mee" Days, but lately has been jokingly referred to as "Blow-me Days" (although the odds of that happening in Port Hardy are slim).

When I first moved to Port Hardy the locals warned me about the cougars. There were apparently hordes of cougars rampaging all over the north Island, devouring unsuspecting cyclists from France (perhaps the French are a delicacy?). I was sufficiently petrified to not wander around at night but after a couple of years I realized that the cougars in question didn't inhabit the surrounding forests but the local pubs. After seeing some of these beasts of prey gyrating pitifully at the bar, sporting hairstyles from 1982 and enough makeup to audition for a role in The Evil Dead, I decided it was better to take my chances with the felines in the woods.

You get the picture.

The town itself has a couple of conveniences for people either living or visiting here. There is a grocery store (Overwaitea...I'm not kidding, that's the actual name of it), an A&W, a couple of movie rental places, a government liquor store as well as three private "Cold Beer & Wine" stores, and 4 restaurants of varying quality. My advice for dining out is to go to Sporty's on Market Street. Not only is the food decent and the ambience very nice, but it's also the only joint in town that hasn't been closed once a year by the health authorities!

If you're expecting to find romance in Port Hardy then you're in for disappointment. Assuming that you're a normal person, who showers and has at least a rudimentary sense of style, have no substance abuse problems and have a job, then the available pool of eligible singles here is non-existent. You will have no problems picking up an overweight junky wearing jogging pants and gumboots if that's what you're looking for (this applies to both men and women, gay or straight).

That's not to say that there are no intelligent and attractive people here, it's just that they are all 'spoken for', or they've moved away to Victoria or Vancouver. If you're single I wouldn't advise moving to Port Hardy. Despite a great job and an awesome two-story town house on the beach, I can't hack being single in this town.


For the nature enthusiast Port Hardy is a paradise. There are lots of trails for all levels of hikers and you can find a dozen different geographies packed into the small area. For instance, as you lounge on sandy Storie's Beach you have a great view of the Rocky Mountains on the mainland across the sea (about 40 km away), a primevel rainforest at your back, and several river valleys dotted around the area loaded with elk, deer, bears, and cougars. Around the industrial fish plants you will find boats and sea lions and from the shore you can spot the occasional humpback whale or pod of orcas.

The weather is PERFECT from about May until September, but then the rainy season hits and it doesn't stop raining until the following May! In December and January it usually snows for a couple of days but then the rain washes it all away. There's none of that -40 C weather common to Ottawa and Edmonton and Saskatoon, nor does the thermometre ever go above +25 C in the summer. Personally I don't like extreme heat and the fact that in the middle of August I'm still tucked into blankets at night is very nice. The beautiful and perfect summers come at a cost, however, because after September you won't be spending much time outdoors.

The people here are friendly and despite their rough exteriors they are quite intelligent. There is a certain fatalist sense of humour common to the locals and when I first moved here two years ago I couldn't understand it but now I find that the local people really crack me up.

Living and working in a community for an extended amount of time is the best way to get to know locals and I have to give the people of the North Island a lot of respect. As a rule and not just a generalization the people of the area are hard-working, honest, friendly, and quirky. I have never felt threatened nor have I ever feared that I would be ripped off. In fact of everyone I know in Port Hardy I can say with conviction that I trust them more than I trust some of my own acquaintances back in Ontario. These people display some of the best qualities of personality and values I have come across during my travels of the world. Just don't expect good customer service!

That's the nuts and bolts of Port Hardy.