Andrew Wyborn built this house with his bare hands 150 years ago, it is my responsibility to make sure it is here 150 years from now. Years ago we had a minor earthquake, over time the ice got in and started pushing out a corner stone. Fixed that up pretty quick with some help from a friend, then it was time for a real Latvian sauna; wood burner, oak leaves, the gargoyle came with the place. He's always back by morning. 

Just one little corner stone, the foundation is solid. I have been feeling a lot better lately, an hour of hard labour; not too bad for 70.

 Nicely done with a little help from a friend. Repointed the entire corner while we were at it. I could not find any old brick to match the patina, time will take care of that.

This used to be the kids hockey rink, it was re-purposed as a sauna.

Oak leaves have been an integral part of the sauna tradition since ancient times.

 A real Finnish Sempo wood burner. Nothing comes close to a real sauna at the end of a hard day of work.

Grendle, he's always back by morning

By contrast to where I lived in the 60's.

The Colonnade 131 Bloor St. W
A sports car, waterbed and a stereo; it was the sixties
I was the Manager of the Colonnade Camera Centre, it was a short trip to work everyday; I lived in the building.

I love the country, but I do appreciate the action in the city.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmMQJ386Jv4

Along the way our son Alex taught himself how to use state of the art animation software; this was his project. An insight to explain the success of our products; ten years ago. Alex went on to learn CAD programs and designed some of the top products on the market today. We are very proud of Alex, we are very proud of the accomplishments of all our kids.

Suzanne and I are very proud of our kids and their company Shark Trolling Products. We attended the King of Kings pro tournament at Bluffer's Park in Toronto to meet with The Shark Pro Staff Teams from Canada and the USA, and to officially launch a new product. It was a huge success, we met old friends and made many new one's. Shark products have dominated world class pro tournaments for the past 15 years, but this new product has gone viral on social media and is on the skyrocketing on the water with our customers. With over 40 pro teams competing in Canada's biggest pro tournament, most of the fleet was equipped with Shark products. It's been a tough road over the past 15 years, plenty of blood sweat and tears, and I'm sure there is plenty more ahead. We would like to thank all our friends from around the world for supporting us along the way; we could not have done it without you. Sadly the main event was cancelled due to weather, but everybody had an amazing time and got out on Lake Ontario for the pre-fish day.

40 years later

I spoke up about this tragedy 40 years ago at great personal cost, 40 years later I am still pounding this topic: mercury contamination in Ontario. Oct. 26, 1974, the day Suzanne and I got married, the same day the students at the Art Gallery of Ontario staged a protest  on the front steps of the AGO. They dumped a load of dead fish on the steps to protest Reid Paper sponsoring an art exhibition. At the time Reid Paper was dumping raw mercury from their paper plant into the Wabagoon River system in northern Ontario; right next door to our family cottage.  40 years later the paper mill/Ontario government is still dumping poison with impunity.

There was an awkward moment at the reception at Suzanne's parents home in Toronto, we were meeting all the guests having a wonderful time. The neighbor and close friend of the family approaches us to wish us well; Thank you Howard I replied. Howard was a high ranking executive at the paper plant, he was just being kind and generous when he offered to let Suzanne and I stay at his villa in the Bahamas for a honeymoon retreat. I thanked him and declined his offer, explaining we intended to go up north to spend our honeymoon to do some hunting and fishing, near the Wabagoon River system.

The awkward moment: I said to him; “Howard, that protest at the AGO today, your company is pouring so much mercury into the river we are having to send our native people to Japan to get treated for Minimata Disease (mercury poisoning) because we don't know enough about it to treat them over here. I told him I would be grateful if he would just stop poisoning the lakes in Ontario. His face went beet red, by this time a number of other guest started to pick up on the incident. It was ugly to say the least. I spoke up when it counted, I'm still speaking up about it now. Most of my friends know all about this story, I could have kept my big mouth shut and gone on to benefit from the family business connections; I just couldn't stomach it. Nothing has changed, big business always wins, and the poor pay the price.

Old Pictures

I'll sort them out later, and try to remember the story; old memories, new questions.

 Erik painting the Nozxema girl in 1965, she morphs into a live girl on the TV commercial. Erik was rated as one of the top commercial artists not only in Canada, but also internationally for over 30 years.

 Hunting with wolves; Suzanne with Poncho and Ringo.

 After the storm

 The boyz

Back in the day it took a mainframe computer and our custom software to produce a Ray Traced graphic image of a glass prism. Your cell phone is a thousand times more powerful than the mainframe; it cost a cool million.

 Poncho and Ringo

I took this picture from up in the rafters in Studio 2 at TDF Artists Ltd. Little did I know at the time Suzanne was one of the dancers in the picture. I did not meet her until a couple of years later.

 Winter burn at the cottage

 A view down Yorkville Ave, staying focussed. We produced corporated presentations for Fortune 500 companies and their ad agencies. Over 40 international agencies.

 Layout for balloon ad

Back at the lab

The Honda shoot

 More hot air at Toronto City Hall

It's a long story

I captured this moment in time, Father Goose takes flight for the first time. He continues to soar.

We have the pilot, first flight, and Mike "The Kite" Robertson (7 times World Champion Hand Glider) but who is that guy holding up the wing? Is that you Ron?

Lighter than air; Blackstock 1975; the Lishman farm.

I have had and still am having the most amazing life I can imagine, but I have had my fair share of tragedy; three high speed accidents involving three family members. All the other guys fault. One accident accident and two drunk drivers.  We survived the car accidents, but we barely survived the evil monsters we encountered after our accidents, the people we trusted to look after our interests in our darkest hour.

I'm an old school guy, I don't go looking for trouble, but when it comes my way, I deal with it. In this case I concluded there was no point going through the system; it is rigged. Social media is the new court in town, the court of public opinion. In that regard I started Roadkill 911, basically a diary of the dirt and deception I encountered along the way; emails, secret video's, the usual. In case I needed it one day; like today.

When we went into the settlement meeting, the only thing that was on the defence table was a one foot stack of my blog Roadkill911 printed out. They thought they could intimidate me and use it against me; slander, libel, etc. bad move. That only works if the info is not true. I won, they lost; I guess all my stuff was true. I decided to go the social media route so the tens of thousands of other seriously injured Canadians could have a hand book on how to deal with slime. I have about 60,000 page views on my various blogs (I keep stuff separate) Also over the years I have posted about 4000 times on various news feeds relating to the above. Folks liked what I had to say, I got “top comments” often.

I have fought many legal battles over my life, won most of them; this is the biggest thing so far. I'm going after two law firms, a bunch of doctors, and a government agency. They all were in there like a bunch of vultures when they thought I was done. I surprised them and made the most remarkable recovery my horrified doctor had ever seen. They should have read the reports about my so called brain damage, my ability to kick lawyers butts has remained intact. I like to keep my facebook reserved for general interest stuff, so if you or someone you know has been in a serious accident, you might want to check out Roadkill911, for the hell of it. I'll let you know how it works out.
http://roadkill911.blogspot.ca/

Back in 1992 a drunk driver smashed into Suzanne's car at the end of our street in North York, it took years for her to recover. She never fully recovered to where she was before the accident. We hired the services of Thomson Rogers in Toronto. The best law firm in Canada; no doubt. After a long and protracted battle, we won the case, a fraction of what should have been awarded. The narrative did a 180 at the settlement meeting, a lot of last minute unforeseen BS.

Disappointed we asked the lawyer: "why did you do that" ? "Tooooo Bad" was his reply. It was like that scene in Back to the Future when the guy called Marty chicken. I responded in kind. We walked across Bay St. into the front doors of Lang Michener; they are really one of the top law firms in Canada; big. I sure did like that guy Clive Elkin, he went after them like a pit bull, but really cool. Before you know it, they were spitting out G notes like they were going out of style. For my part, I modified a software package to do a forensic accounting of everything that happened on the file for 5 years. I pressed the print button and out came what I wanted; the dirt.

Apparently there was something wrong with their computers because boy o boy we had lawyers claiming to be in three different places at the same time.  My little program caught everything. Toooo Bad. They issued a certified cheque,  I decided not to take further action; apparently they are back for more. You may ask: once bitten twice shy? Why the hell would anybody go back for seconds after something like that? Good question, I was bamboozled; again. I fell for it. "Oh all those guys are long gone, this is a whole new thing". It turned out to be payback; an episode out of a Stephen King novel.

One might think they would have learned their lesson, messing with me; apparently not. This time around the matter is far more serious, I paid them a quarter of a million dollars; not sure I got my monies worth. As usual I have been busy building my case, I always win. I don't go looking for trouble, but when it comes my way, I deal with it. I'll let you know how this works out; I'm not done yet.

My People

My People: My Latvian Connection

https://www.facebook.com/CristianoRizzottoVidalPessoa/videos/665889130216628/

My late father, Erik Dzenis was a founding member of the Latvian National Federation of Canada. That's Suzanne and I in the back row center at my parent's memorial service at Latvian Canadian Cultural Centre 2014