Home Learning

I finished high school and attended two different universities, but when it comes right down to it, anything that made a difference to my being able to earn a living I learned right at home. Oh, I learned to type at school, I learned science and a little sports but when I left school I already had the basic building blocks of being able to turn my hand to different things.
 
My dad had apprenticed at age thirteen as a typesetter at a newspaper in Finland where his sisters and some cousins were also typesetters but he left at age 15 to apprentice as a mechanic on those exciting machines, motor cars. When he gave notice at the newspaper, his boss said "Don't leave. Here you have a career, anybody can be a (shudder) driver". Their loss, my gain.
 
When he came to this new country, he turned his hand to something different. The first job, and almost the last, was as a chokerman on a logging operation in Honeymoon Bay
on Lake Cowichan. That job lasted until a choker hook slipped and broke his jaw. No Workers' Compensation in those days so it was back to Vancouver, with his jaw wired shut, to recuperate in a boarding house owned by Henry Lane, another Finn, on Heatly Street and so there it was that we spent our first night in Canada when mom, my two sisters, and I arrived.
 
Dad then worked in a sawmill, a foundry, hauled peat from Burns Bog, and finally started to build houses with another Finnish friend, Niiranen. As his skills grew, he was able to join the union and take part in some of the large commercial projects then taking place on the lower mainland. In 1956, dad bought 2.5 acres of bush with a small house on it, for $1500, in Coquitlam, at the end of Austin Road. The property was subdivided and we started building houses. Niiranen came to show us how to cut the rafters for the first hip roof. I really learned building skills there.
 
Carpenters, then, didn't wear a leather apron with pockets as now, but wore carpenters' coveralls made by the Great Western Garment (GWG) Company in Winnipeg. If you were right handed, you had to learn to hang your hammer in the loop on the left side of your body because your left hand had to hold the cloth loop open. Carpenters now just drop their hammer into a forever-open metal loop. A sure give-away to a newby on the job was, other than brand new coveralls, that he couldn't put his hammer away correctly.
 
Houses in the 1950s and early 60s were still being built with shiplap lumber. This was 6 or 8 inches wide and as it was often applied at a 45 angle, every board had to be cut with a hand saw to land halfway on a stud or rafter. The board was then nailed with two 2 1/4 inch nails on every stud. Two carpenters working together got into a hammering rhythm and a proud moment was when I could keep up with the old man.
 
From the time that I was tall enough to peek under the hood of a car, I was "helping" to adjust points (cars don't have any points now), change plugs, oil, or rebuilding engines.
This all became a focus for a short time when dad leased a Royalite service station in Mission, B.C. In those days, cars had to be tinkered with to keep them running. Carbon built up on ignition points and spark plug electrodes and in time would make the engine miss on one or more cylinders. Nowadays, with no points, unleaded gas, and computerized, optimized timing, spark plugs often last beyond one owners ownership of the vehicle. I can't remember when I last changed a plug on a car.
 
Those were all concrete skills that I carried with me when I left home. Yes, I got some university courses and, for a time, worked at being a scientist and a teacher but eventually came to rely on my "fallback" skills. Not so bad looking back.