MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Dad eventually got a job with the MNR). They came after me three times before I went to work for them. I was supposed to be Fred Musclow's helper. I went and told Fred I'd be with him the next day. It didn't work out that way! They gave the job to Manlio Spessot. Spessot got the job and then they gave him two months off. Geeze! That was Jack Russell and Pete King that did that. He (King) would be waking down the street and he'd see me on one side of the street and he'd cross over to the other side after that!
Hally Coles at Bisco got me the job. I went into the office to see Hally Coles and Pete King was there, Coles says, "This is that guy you turned down for that other job. You know him". "I don't know him", said King. Then Pete King got transferred to Espanola. He came back here for a Christmas party and he said to me, "Oh gee. I put your name in to come with us to Espanola". "No thanks", I said, "No way. You turned me down once. No way will I go. To hell with that!" That was Pete King that did that. I wouldn't go!
I stayed with the Ministry steady for eight years and they used to hire me back every year after I retired, for about fifteen years. They laid me off in the fall of the year I broke my ankle (1993). They cut my wages then!
Vacation Alcapuco 1981
Dad suffered a major accident in 1993 while working with the MNR. He was working at the MNR Hanger at the Chapleau airport which was being painted. After he had finished his own work, he decided to climb up onto the portable scaffold to help the painter. The scaffold was not braked and at one point it moved, causing dad to lose his balance. He fell head-first to the cement floor. While his face was damaged as he hit the floor, his foot was caught in the cross-bar, saving further damage to his head. His ankle, however, was broken. After that he went on health-leave, causing the Ontario government some rather hilarious confusion when they went to pay his compensation cheque. Queens Park was concerned that the Chapleau MNR office had made a mistake applying for compensation for an employee who was 79 years old!!! They were assured that Henry Corston was 79 and dad received his money, but was retired by them after that discovery. He lived for another 5 years, suffered some diabetic related strokes in the last couple of years of his life, passing away and “slipping out into the mystery” early in the morning of December 17, 1997 in his 85th year. St. John’s Church was filled to capacity for his funeral.
As I taped as much of his story that I could, sitting together on the deck of “Chicken’s Roost” on Mulligan’s Bay on that summer’s day in 1997, he had recently suffered a stroke and was tiring and the story ended as recorded above. His final comment of his story was simply,
Crazy world!!!
Chicken & Frances, 1997
(corrected and updated, June, 2008)