Happenchance

By Rodney Gascoyne

13: Moving to Canada:

We had wrapped up most of our possessions and shipped them to Regina. The things we could not or should not take were either sold off or given away. Luckily the house sale was to be completed the day after we set off to visit family to say goodbye. When we were ready to fly out I drove to Gloucester and returned the company car. I learned that the union had still not resolved matters and so the staff were still in the dark. On the other hand, my solicitor was able to hand me a bankers' draft for the net funds from the sale of the house, and he had also had this converted into Canadian dollars so we could start afresh with cash in the bank.

The night before our flight we took the heavy bags to Heathrow and placed them in Left Luggage and then returned the following morning with just the overnight bags. The flight went smoothly although my wife did not like flying and we often had to hold hands to keep her calm. We landed in Toronto and went through Immigration where we became Landed Immigrants. Years later we took out citizenship too. We had been cleared already by the High Commission in London after medical tests and interviews. We then had a few hours to wait before taking the evening flight to Regina where we landed at about 9.30.

We were met by my new boss, the Auditor, and his wife and they first drove us and the baggage to the Motel we had agreed to start life in. They then invited us to come to their home for a welcome drink. This we did. The weather was remarkable because in late April most years snow would still be on the ground and sub-zero temperatures quite normal for another few weeks. That year the snow had all melted and it remained warm till the summer heat began. On our arrival it was in the 70s and so we were happy to sit in their back yard having drinks as we accustomed ourselves to our new surroundings. When we did get to bed in our motel it was twenty six hours after we had got up that same day for our flights. We were all exhausted but could sleep in the new few days as we needed. Next day we looked around our new home and area in the daylight.

We had already fixed up for some house viewings, from England, and so we began to look around when the agent turned up. We also made a quick decision to buy a car, a beautiful 1978 Chrysler Cordoba that only had 5,000 miles on the clock and had been driven by the proverbial little old lady to church each week. Well almost. It proved to be a great buy and it lasted with us for many a year. This made us mobile very quickly and we got around town a lot to see all there was. 

The house hunting went well too although my wife and I differed again in what we liked and wanted. After a week we found a great house on one of the main streets immediately opposite the Legislative building. It was only 40 years old but was architect designed and built with much gum wood and brass fittings. I loved it and my wife was OK with it which was the closest we had been to that point. The owner was moving out of town. We managed to make a deal to rent the house for one year and then to buy it using a mortgage from the seller at an advantageous interest rate. I feared the value could rise and so wanted to lock in the deal rather than leaving purchase as an option where the price would get fixed later. We were able to get a moving in date that coincided with the two week limit the office had agreed to pay for the motel suite.

In almost no time at all we had a house of our own and a car and were able to fill the house with the new furniture we needed to buy locally while we waited for our possessions to arrive by container via sea and train. I started in the office and began to learn their ways and the children immediately settled in well into the local school just a few blocks away. Everything seemed to be going well and the weather was getting warmer all the time; a much nicer summer climate that we were used to in England. In the winter, of course, it was also different but in the wrong direction although that first year we learned that we had the mildest winter in ages. The following winter was then one of the worst they had had in years. 

We liked the surroundings and that we could so easily move around the city and to any place with ease, and without jams, and then park openly for free. Five cars in a row were seen as a jam in those days. This and flat landscape were totally new and welcomed by us all. We were happy. We all found that we were far more active there than you could be in the summer or the winter in England. The average sunshine hours there are one of the highest for anywhere in the world. 

We skated on the lake and skied in the park, opposite our house, all winter, with the sun shining and little wind it was really warm, and did many other things together then and in the summers. I used to love snow that 'squeaked' and showers of ice crystals, but the downside was 'cottage fever' when you began to get fed up with a long winter spell, where temperatures would not rise above -25^oC for weeks on end, and the wind-chills remained very high. Then in the spring when it was wet, we got to know 'gumbo', the prairies mud that would stick  like glue to everything, and you would be walking four inches taller than normal with 'gumbo cakes' under your boots. 

I took up curling, winning a few trophies in the annual office 'Bonspiels', and a few games of ice hockey on an open rink, once at a frosty -35^o, arranged by the office social club, as well as softball games in weekly, summer sessions where my son occasionally joined in too . The children got into many clubs and activities over time and always led a very active lifestyle. Both joined first a local marching band and then later the army cadet force that gave them great pleasure for many years, but required driving to practices and events at what seemed all hours of the day and evening or at weekends. Our daughter took an interest in gymnastics and so joined a local club with excellent gym facilities. Before long I started to help out too, with the younger boys, as they were short on instructors. This kept up for a year until I strained my back demonstrating a manoeuvre, and so had to take it easier from then on. We were also much happier with their schools, far away from a 'comprehensive' system.  

Over time we explored the province and the prairies more. It is such a place of extremes; flat landscapes of waving corn or flax that stretched to the horizon and then a few more hundred miles too; straight roads for ever - you almost felt at times, on the TransCanada Highway or elsewhere, that you could lash the wheel, set the car on cruise control and take a nap; dust storms that could blow up out of nowhere and restrict visibility just like a yellow snow storm; blizzards in the winter that covered the area in a a deep mantle of snow, blown into deep drifts, and obliterating everything in a white fuzz; summer pestilence in the form of mosquitoes or mayflies, or worse, grasshoppers that would fly up in large swarms as you approached and covered the front of cars in a nasty mash; the most beautiful sunsets and dusks you will find anywhere in the world and the biggest harvest moon I have ever seen, hovering on the horizon with its yellowy-orangey-silvery glow as if out of a science fiction movie; or dangerous winter weather at -45^o or worse, plus wind-chill, so that you wanted to stay in the city, even though people occasionally died of exposure within its limits and only a few hundred metres from houses. 

On the roads on a cold winter day, you would not pass a parked car on the highway without checking to see if someone was in trouble and needed assistance. Everybody watched out for each other and were the most outgoing and friendly people I have ever encountered. Most of them never needed to lock the doors of their houses unless they were away. This stretched from the great lakes right up to the foothills of the Rockies but did not extend over the southern border. It is the harshest and yet most enriching environment you will find and so annoying that these values are so intertwined and mixed the whole time. You never knew what to expect and by the time you were used to the latest conditions, they changed again. The best and the worst of nature.

I knew that I needed to do some academic work to convert my English CA qualification into a Canadian one too. This I set about doing that summer by signing onto a Law class at the University of Regina. I passed this with ease and next, closer to Christmas, went to Saskatoon to work on a course in Tax with the University of Saskatchewan. This was very much harder to pass the ultimate exam because the course was only a revision while we had been led to understand it would teach us everything about the subject. We sat up nights and weekends making up for this difference. The final part was a written exam for the local institute on the subject of Ethics including the local rules for members. After having satisfied all these I was then qualified locally and could now change my FCA for a CA, in Canada at least. This also allowed me to be promoted within the office as initially they could only offer an unqualified position.

The office was the external auditor for the government of the province and so we audited the books of all the departments as well as agencies, boards and the Crown Corporations. These were companies set up and owned by the government to run essential and some other services. They were established over the years by mostly social democratic governments. This gave us a good cross section of industries and types of business that made the work interesting. My first few audits were the Department of Renewable Resources, which collected  taxation income from the land uses that formed the greatest part of the government revenues, and the new Heritage Fund. 

There was a big legal battle going on then with the federal government in Ottawa over the abilities of provincial governments to raise taxes in certain ways on oil, gas and other natural resources found in the provinces. I read the complete decision and opinions when the case was concluded, and saw quite clearly how the Supreme Court of Canada could be stacked with sympathetic judges who would support a federal government that wanted more central control. That case, the national energy program that allowed Ottawa to grab a large share of royalties on western oil and gas, and the abolition of the Crow Rate on the transport of prairie grains, were the main causes of a growing western alienation that was very easy to understand.

That winter I was also given one of the largest crown audits to run, that of Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI). In addition to normal insurance and the monopoly on all motor vehicle coverage, they also maintained the drivers' licenses and records for the province. That audit presented me with my first office problem, after I was overruled on serious adjustments I asked for in connection with reinsurance deficits I foresaw. The manager concerned then almost immediately resigned and joined SGI! The deficits did arise and were mishandled in the next two years, mainly due to a change of Government after an election. These two big audits took up much of my time that first summer and winter. I headed up staff of up to 8 assistants answerable to  managers who knew the jobs from before. 

Later that summer my mother came out for a few weeks to visit, followed by her sister the year after, as well as my wife's step mother and half brother at different times. We hosted them all and took them on trips around to see the countryside and to experience Canada, particularly the Rockies and the sights and cities between there and home. 

My wife's father had relatives in Salt Lake City, who were Mormons, and we visited them on a long camping trip using a trailer we hitched to the Cordoba. We drove South to see the Little Big Horn site of Custer's last stand in Montana, and that evening we had to pitch camp in the teeth of a thunder storm and all got soaked. The next morning we dried out the tents and camping gear and then drove on to Yellowstone Park, using the tight, mountain pass route that rose through a long series of hairpin bends to cross the divide at 10,000 feet, en route to Cooke City, Wyoming. 

That road was far more adventurous than I intended but the map and local signs gave no warning. As we rose higher, we had an almost vertical drop on the outside road edge and when that became too much there was an awful silence in the car till we eventually crested the pass. I did not admit to the others that I was none to happy with the drive, with a trailer, either, as on some bends we took up the complete road width and were lucky not to meet other vehicles at that point. That taught me the difference between the passes of the American as against the Canadian Rockies. Those to the North had been eroded by glaciers in the Ice Age and were carved out fairly low, while the US terrain was only wind and river eroded and the passes remained far higher and closer to the peaks. Our valleys tend to be mostly U-shaped rather than their V-shaped ones.

That night we had a further adventure. We camped on the edge of Cooke City and were turned in when our daughter wanted to go to the washroom. She came back in a hurry to say there was a bear nearby. We laughed but got up to check anyway. When we looked out, a large female black bear was moving away from our area  and heading for the garbage bins at the restaurant. Next morning at breakfast they told us that she was a regular visitor and was called 'Night Train' as she came for food for her family daily. Lucky for us the cubs were not with her when we saw her. In the park that day we saw the usual sights including moose, other wild animals and the geysers and hot springs. We eventually took the western exit and headed for the highway to Salt Lake City.

Our family put us up for a few days and made sure we saw all the local sights and places in and around the city, including the lake itself and listening to the Tabernacle choir at the main Mormon centre. Eventually we set off back home again using the highways to the north, and even 'camped out' overnight in a log cabin and a teepee on the way back to Canada. Other plans to have family visitors from England got turned round and instead we all went back for a month in the summer of 1982, half the time in the north, the other in London. 

The second winter I was assigned the audit of SaskPower instead of SGI, an even bigger crown enterprise and this job was also very challenging technically. They then supplied the complete electrical and natural gas energy needs of the province. Previously on audits, I had always found it very helpful to fully understand the nature and factual basis of their operations. To help with this, I arranged for senior audit staff to visit a number of sites around the province, including the electrical and gas distribution systems, and the underground gas storage caverns. A major visit was to a massive new power station that had just been started up, and the accompanying open-cast coal mine, close by, that had a most enormous drag-line system to remove the overburden and extract the coal seam. The coal was then carried by trains to a stockpile on the generating site. These visits were very important later for audit issues I raised, and in quantifying changes we then had them make to their policies and accounting treatment for these assets and operations. 

Another such visit had me going to the far north to check on their practices near Lake Athabasca, close to the 60^o North parallel. The flights north involved multi-hops by a turboprop aircraft, eventually landing at Uranium City. In the afternoon I visited a band reserve nearby by float plane to check their local generators and supplies. That evening the local manager showed me the town and a new housing estate that would be inhabited soon. The Canadian federal government had just built these new houses to accommodate families for a new shift that had been announced would soon be opened at the local, government owned, deep-level, uranium mine. I found it interesting to see the nature of a frontier town in the middle of the Canadian Shield and wilderness area, that is remote from any other part of the country and also very far north with heavy winter weather. Other than the airport, the overland contact with the south was by river barge in the short summer, along the Athabasca river from Fort McMurray in Alberta, or by long range winter roads over the tundra and lakes after the freeze-up. 

The next morning we set out by float plane again for other settlements along the main lake. The plane could carry just four people including the pilot and, as it was late October, we were in the last few days of when they could use floats to land on water. Soon they would replace the floats with skies and continue for the winter by landing locally on snow covered airstrips on land. Each time we landed, the pilot had to get out onto the floats to kick down the rudders that had frozen up in flight. Only then could he easily steer the plane ashore to the beach or landing stage. 

The next takeoff, though, was a bit of an adventure, as I sat in the co-pilot seat. We had landed at Fond du Lac to check out the reserve supplies for the winter. The wind was rising as we set off again and as they were westerly winds, they now had a long stretch of open water to work on. The waves were fairly obvious and getting bigger as we turned into the wind, and waves, for takeoff. We tried twice to get airborne but seemed to get sucked down by the waves. The pilot had little choice but to make another attempt and so we revved up even more and then started to bounce along the water, hitting each wave crest with a heavy thump. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, we gained air under the wings and slowly lifted off the lake. 

There had been silence among the three of us during the last two attempts. Later the pilot admitted, while we were heading east at 500 feet for the end of the lake, that he too had been worried and those were the worst conditions he had had to deal with for a long time. Luckily, we landed next on the river, around a bend that protected the water from the winds and waves on the main lake. From then on I was relieved that the remaining flights, locally and then back home, were all made in the larger turboprop, although once that pilot aborted one remote landing, took a circle and then landed from the opposite direction! Up north I gathered they looked for windsocks to get details of local wind conditions before landing on rough gravel runways. The two days on that trip involved a total of thirteen takeoffs and landings, including four by small float planes.

A few weeks after returning from the far north, Ottawa announced that they would close down the Uranium City mine the following summer, as newer, open-cast mines further south, could produce  needed ore for far lower cost! The town 'died' and was reduced to a shadow of what I had seen. Those new houses would remain unused and were soon boarded up permanently. What a waste.

That trip proved again the benefit of visiting sites and further changes were made to Head Office details and their accounting treatment for what I had then observed as the real facts in those remote corners of the province. Previously in England, I had had the chance to visit other major industrial complexes, to better understand their operations, including; going 700 feet deep in a coal mine and even visiting the work area, experiencing the noise and dust at the coal face as the big machines gouged out the coal and conveyors carried it away to the surface; visiting a Steel works to closely watch blast furnaces and converters work on the heated metal and then deliver it for other work, forming and rolling, elsewhere in the plant, via open rivers of molten metal; checking fully on the furnaces of molten glass and the bottle making plant at Rockware Glass; or heavy engineering sites for oil refineries, chemical plants, deep-sea oil platforms, or large machine shops where metal and pipes of all sizes and shapes was worked on and made to bend to man's designs.

Back then the office had a reasonable education budget and so we could participate in worthwhile courses at home or even further afield. The first interesting one I requested was a detailed look at computer auditing, a subject I had started to study more widely and dealing with topics I had already begun to address in the audits I controlled. It was recognized that this could benefit a lot of the staff and so it was arranged as an in-house local course rather than me travelling. After this course I realized the full potential and need for such work and began to lobby for greater ability to perform these techniques in the office on all audits. 

Special staff  had previously conducted Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (CAATs) with the aid of a rather antiquated data entry terminal, mainly taking samples from the payment files at the Department of Finance. I advocated that these techniques be used in far more placed and to accomplish more technical tasks. After the completion of the SaskPower audit I requested that I be able to work more in this field. The office was already considering a reorganization of the audit staff and these requests fell in with their plans. In April 1982 I was attached to the man chosen to lead a new computer auditing section. Later these positions were formalized and I had the title Assistant Director of Computer Auditing, a position I retained till I left the office some years later.

The Director and I flew to Edmonton to talk with our opposite numbers in Alberta and to get ideas on how they ran this function and similar issues on their audits. Later that summer I was able to go on a training course that changed my whole outlook. It was run in Denver by a major audit training company. It was about auditing operating system components for the major IBM mainframe hardware. It introduced me to the whole area of technical auditing of the operations and security of computer processing used by large enterprises. I used this to extend the major government audits involving large mainframe configurations and in identifying areas of control and security that were important to the provincial government. We started to report on these issues to the management of Crowns and Departments as well as to the Legislature. In response to these letters we started a dialogue with management on these control risks and how to address them.

That fall I also attended the first of five consecutive annual, audit and control conferences by that same training company, the last two of which I was a guest speaker on particular subjects of topical interest. When funds were available, I also attended other courses that added to these areas and extended my own education, abilities and issues I could address. Some of these were specific to the hardware and software that began to be introduced into processing centres as a result of our dialogue with auditees. I attended other related conferences and it became necessary to travel to a number of audits all over the Province.

Much of this involved a fair amount of travel within Canada and the USA. Before coming to Canada, I had only experienced about a dozen flights, half of them on that course and holiday visit to the USA in 1969. In the next six and a half years I added a further one hundred flights almost all of which were office related. This also highlighted the other feature you had to eventually realize about Regina. How isolated we were there, about 400 or 500 miles to reach somewhere bigger.

This work was very interesting and had a number of rewards. At SaskPower, whose audit I continued to be involved with for computer audit aspects, I had the chance to meet and work with their main computer manager, who was considered a genius in the industry. I leaned a lot from him and watched as he continued to nurse an ancient ICL computer that was nearly 25 years old. It was one of only two in Canada and they eventually bought the other one as a source for spare parts. In hardware and software terms those were very antiquated systems. I also monitored matters as they slowly transferred their operations over to more modern IBM options.

Most of the government based computing was carried out at central processing centres that I had contact with for many years. I covered the Crown Corporation that ran this work and wrote many reports to their management on control and security issues. I suggested that they change from a reactive to a proactive approach, when dealing with the slow adoption of new standards by their clients, as well as the possibilities of covering contingency issues in-house instead of using an American disaster centre. Over the years they changed many practices and methods. I was glad to see them implement a number of my suggested approaches. Some years after I left, I learned that they had started providing disaster recovery services to other crowns and major computer centres throughout the four western provinces. Later still, they became the Head Office of a major national network that provides outsourced computer resources and services from coast to coast.

I managed to get one trip back to England in March, near the year end, when I needed to use up my holiday allowance or lose it. The office had introduced a flexible hours method and this could build up many excess hours that had to be taken or lost. Other travel around the country and the US became easy for the annual family holiday too. One March I took my daughter to Victoria using "The Canadian" cross country train service through the Rockies that used to stop in Regina at reasonable hours. Later they changed the timetable and it came through at night and even later, less often than the old once every day each way. Another year we all drove out to Vancouver and the island, using a tent trailer hitched to the Cordoba, and spend a sunny and hot two weeks there and driving through the Rockies. In those years I was able to see a lot of the Province and also much of Canada as well as a few parts of the US. The scenery was always spectacular.

The marriage started to show some signs of strain a few years after arriving in Canada. After a visit from one of her family, my wife suddenly said things that did not make sense and were the first statements of dissatisfaction and a desire to get away on her own without having to share decisions and choices with me. She spoke automatically of the children having no choice in the matter. I got along fine with them and their lives were largely going the way they wanted and they were happily ensconced in their respective schools and hobbies. This arose again some months later but seemed put aside when I said I wanted to make some changes to the house. She had said she was looking to move out and find her own place and just leave me and take the children. My ideas for changes involved a new kitchen and adding patio doors direct out to a new rear deck. I told her about my plans, that I would do even if she left, as it made the house much nicer. She then took an interest in the plans and wanted to make the decisions for what we would do. I let her and we had the work done and things seemed to settle down again for a number of years. 

At her insistence we still retained a listing on the house and a year later we got an interesting offer. The house was extremely well built with larger than needed steel beams in the basement. Because of our excellent position in the city and being opposite the Legislative building, we occupied a large prime site. An architect wanted to strip off our roof, add another floor plus many other attachments and reworkings of the inside to make it into an up market and high priced luxury residence. We pushed his offer price up as far as we could and signed on the dotted line. Out of  interest, I reckoned that his workers had started to remove the roof the day before the contracts were completed, but as that happened on time, we had no worries. 

Initially we rented a house to give us time to find what we wanted. The work on our old home went ahead and the changes were enormous. Months later the house sold quickly but not before we had the agent show us the results and take a tour where we could take photographs of the new insides. After two months we found a house that neither of us disliked too much and so we moved into another house of our own in another nice area, close to the best local high school.

My wife had not mentioned any ideas of leaving for a while and so it seemed that matters were back on an even keel. Family life seemed to get back onto a normal footing although I doubt the children knew anything about her earlier plans to move out. Through all this time their interests and concerns remained the same and largely happy with their lot and friends. My wife was having some run ins with our son but this did not really involve me or our daughter much. 

In later life he was able to talk about this time with a very mature insight and understanding, and confirmed what I thought at the time, that his arguments with his mother were caused years before, over choices she had made and he did not like, before she and I had met or wed. I like to think that I continuously projected a realistic and high level of expectation for the achievements of both the children. Later, in their twenties, both started to make real personal efforts to seek and follow challenging goals for themselves. I am proud of them and that they largely achieved this, and that each attained knowledge, skills, interests, work and pursuits that matched what I always saw as their real potential.

At work I had introduced a new office automation, networked process that computerized much of the office administration and this also included a better way for us to run the far greater numbers of CAATs that were now used every year. All the secretaries became part of that CP/M network too which I ran before IBM and Novell had produced their ideas for easy networking for PCs. 

In those last few years, the office was becoming more and more political. My old Director had been let go in a strange situation and run of events that made it look rather managed, but not by him. His replacement was a woman who was known for following directions from the one senior person in the office, not the Auditor,  who now really seemed to be driving the overall agenda in an odd way and with very questionable methods and motives. Awkwardly, she was little educated and little experienced in the technical aspects of the job and seemed not to listen if you tried to help her out. She was following an agenda that was not hers and I doubt she understood it either. Although there was a project to update the offices procedures and office audit manual, and I started to produce in-house prints of the manual we were to have printed, there were many other matters I could not get accepted and included, for academic issues that should have been added in accordance with current, national and international professional developments at that time..

Far worse, though, were other changes. My work on the Finance audit was taken over by her just as they started to think of introducing a totally new payments system. She also juggled other audits but I did not find that a problem. I retained most of the largest and more complicated audits for computer issues and continued to raise management reports on my main findings. After a year, I was beginning to get messages from staff in Finance that the new system was in chaos and a mess without proper controls and even adequate reports for its users. The more I asked about this the more I was told it was not my concern. Near to implementation, these warnings got even more vocal and it appeared that my new boss had worked on the system but had given it a clean bill of health for our office. This approval might have been required and provided to Finance in writing.

Soon after its introduction, verbal reports started to emerge from all quarters of the Government about its inadequacies and how it did not give departments the information they needed to control their budgets. This chorus rose to new highs and we heard that some emergency changes and improvements had been made that summer. The main problem for the office, though, was still to come. Our audit manual required all audits to identify, document, evaluate and test the adequacy of internal controls in all major and significant financial applications run by the auditees. I was one of a number of senior sign-offs on audit files, after I had reviewed the work and the evidence in the file, who had to state that the audit manual and office procedures were appropriately followed.

The first few such audits of departments and others using the new Finance payments system came across my desk with little to no such information or work having been carried out. I made a long list of items in my reviews identifying what was required. This also meant all such auditors needing to be given central details and assistance from my boss as to how the new system worked and how they were to document and test it. This information was not forthcoming and instead they were told to make a few simple tests, that in reality had no useful audit purpose, did not cover the requirements and had satisfied none of the professional staff. This was pointed out and I identified the minimum required and that this should come from my boss rather than each team gathering it for themselves in the field. Again no useful changes or new data. When I was asked to sign off  files, I said why I could not. Eventually my boss ordered me to sign based on information and tests she said were adequate, but which convinced none of the managers or senior staff. It appeared to all as a cover up for failure to understand the system and insist on early system changes, due to lack of adequate knowledge and actions by my boss and the man running the office.

I talked to the Auditor himself and said I could only sign off as told if I could state the restriction over the missing information, evidence and tests I could not attest to. He seemed to understand and said he was happy with that. Soon afterwards I signed off files with those stated qualifications, using the exact wording agreed with him, and took a month's leave in England with my daughter.

Earlier that year my wife's father had become ill and the family there thought she should come over as soon as possible. While we were debating this and how and when, the same morning, her half brother phoned again to say he had booked the flights in two days time and the tickets were to be picked up at the airport. On the morning I was to drive her to the airport, the half brother phoned and I had to tell her she was now on her way to a funeral as her father had died that night in Newcastle. She spent three weeks there in all, using much of the holiday she was due for the year at a full-time job she had recently found. This then messed up our original plans for a family holiday back in England that summer as she was out of paid leave entitlement. 

Come the summer, our son went to cadet camp on Vancouver Island as usual, and by his choice, and so it was only our daughter and I that went to England. Before that though, and arising out of the trip for the funeral, my daughter and wife said that they would rather return to live in England, as they missed the family, and so would I use the chance to look for a job there while on holiday. With the atmosphere the way it was in the office I was not too bothered by this, although my own feelings were that I would rather stay in Canada. Our son said that he wanted to stay, on his own if it came to that. By then he was 20 and working so I felt that he should have that choice.

We set off for England and I had already set up some interviews beforehand. We again spent half our time in the north and half in London. It was here that I was offered a job as Computer Audit Manager with a large, national firm of accountants, in the City of London. I said I needed to go home and consult my wife first before I could finally accept but I was otherwise keen. We finished our holiday, including looking around for a school for her and a home for the whole family in London, whether our son decided to stay or not, and set off back to Regina. 

Monday morning I went into the office with my letter of resignation in my pocket, as we had discussed the offer of the job and my wife and daughter enthusiastically agreed I should accept. Our son said he would probably stay but there was no urgency for him to decide because we had much to do before any of us left for England. It seemed, though, that with leave still due I could get released from the office by the end of August in accordance with my contract. Our daughter and I would leave at that time so she could start the new school year on time in London and my wife and son could finally decide when they would follow after the house had been sold. I had already phoned London earlier in the morning to say I was accepting the job.

On arrival in the office I was asked to see the Auditor and was told he was going to release me, as he could under the contract with all staff. He gave no reasons and he was not required to do so, although  it was not 'for cause' because I had received a clean rating a few months before. I said I would consider the package before signing agreement. I returned to my office and read through the letter and details. I knew that this was the handiwork of the man now running the office as in effect I had challenged him by showing the decisions of my immediate boss, and him, to be misplaced, inaccurate, inadequate and technically wrong. I talked with a few of the senior staff but their natural tendencies were to keep their heads low. I told none of them about my new job. 

Later I returned to the Auditor's office and said I was disturbed at what was happening in the office and asked if he was aware of what really was going on, and what  was behind this letter. He did not want to discuss it, so I left it at that, not to upset the friendly relationships I had always enjoyed with him and his wife. I signed the release and left with the large cheque they had offered. It was according to the contract and so not a legal issue. I wanted to have it cashed though before anyone knew I had a new job and had come to resign that morning. If I had, I would have left with far less money and an extra month's not too enjoyable work. As it was, I was now released.

I went home with a smile on my face and told my wife and children all about it when they got home. I now had far more time to plan the move than I had expected and even had a few ideas I could conclude before leaving. One was to arrange consulting work with SaskPower for some joint work and training with their auditors that was in the pipeline before I went on holidays. 

I started to phone the airlines to see how we would get home and even booked tickets for myself and our daughter for late August with WardAir via Saskatoon. For cheaper rates I booked them as return flights. I requested a few firms to come and give us written estimates for the shipping of some of our possessions home to London. We would again need to sell the cars and electrical equipment and such items before we left. Our latest car was a mini van and that sold quickly when I left it with the dealer on his lot, on a commission basis. I wanted to hang onto the Cordoba till the end. The car my son drove might still be needed too.

About two weeks after I had returned from London my wife dropped the bombshell. She and the children were going to stay in Regina! They obviously had no choice in the matter and must have been told they were not to question her decision and that no arguments could be heard. They were also told to keep clear of me and not speak about it, which made matters far worse. I was horrified. Initially I though this might blow over but she remained steadfast. I learned she had a woman friend at work who was offering to sell her house, as she was moving out anyway to live with another friend. 

In the months earlier that year I was aware of her friendship with a few women at her work, reminiscent of some friendships she had when we first met but which she dropped when we married and she moved to my area and house. The general atmosphere I detected whenever I met them was that they were all into female independence and were generally anti men and marriage. Under this influence, her current decision could be better understood and was a reawakening  in my wife that she did not want to share decisions and control of her life, and by necessity those of her children, no matter what they wanted and their age at the time. The children told me many years later that they had no choice and knew nothing of it before they heard it at the same time I learned. They did not like it but had no choice and had to accept it against their will. Initially this caused a rift between them and me, but each of them got back into contact later when they could and we repaired the damage done in the early weeks of the separation. 

I had already accepted the new job and this was well paid. There was no real option to drop it now and look for local work in Regina. It was a small city and I had outgrown most of the ideas used in the offices and businesses as much as I had outgrown the academic thinking of the office I had now left. If I had stayed it would almost certainly mean moving to Toronto or some much larger city anyway. There was also the possibility that after I left for London my wife would have the chance to try it alone and maybe change her mind and follow me there. I carried on hoping for this as did my daughter in her letters to me soon after I had left. She was trying at my end to get me to keep trying to reconcile with my wife and I guessed she was trying the same at her end. At her insistence I continued to write hopefully to my wife and only gave that up when I received no replies to most of them after a single letter. I had left with the minimum of furniture and left her the two cars and all the household items we might have sold. She had also demanded a sum of money to pay the deposit on the house she then bought from her friend and to meet her other needs. That house turned into a big problem later and needed much work doing to it, even though this did not improve it in any real sense. That maybe explains why the 'friend' was so eager to sell.

Just before I left, I made one last trip to Vancouver to see the 1986 International Expo. It was a magnificent event and a great show and made me even more aware of all the benefits and grand sights that Canada held. On a camping visit to Victoria the year before, I had the pleasure of sailing in a Pacific race one afternoon, on an American training schooner, in a local 'classic' regatta, by invitation of the ship's owner. I also camped on Long Beach near Tofino, exploring the remoter forests and coast  and then took the steam train "Royal Hudson" trip to Squamish.  These and other trips on the west coast gave me a wonderful vision and a love for BC as she then was. A week later my wife drove me to the airport in Saskatoon to take a lonely flight back to England. 

Within a year, the office in Regina got into all sorts of problems with the Government. Some of the wrong professional actions and decisions taken by the leading senior man, I had been fighting against myself, caused an eventual head-on confrontation with the Cabinet. As a result, they changed some laws and took away the audits of crown corporations and gave them to private firms of accountants. This meant that the office had to be seriously reduced in size as their work was almost halved from when I was there. The people let go on that occasion were again those that had somehow challenged the demanded order of thinking and who were, coincidentally, the brightest and most capable people there. Not surprisingly, after that there was no-one left who was likely to question the opinions of the man who was really running the office. Later when the Auditor did retire, his suggestion for his successor was not taken, and the Government, for the first time in history, went outside of the office and province to recruit a new man for the next ten years. This was not surprising to me or anybody who knew what had been really going on in that office.