Sunday, 16 January 2011

I have long been fascinated by the wonderfully diverse and complex lives of the people I have encountered through the course of my pilgrimage of grace. I love to reflect on these lives still being lived, and to celebrate their uniqueness and their richness.  In some instances I reflect on people only recently met, and in others, it is matter of renewed acquaintance.    “Ex pat” Newfoundlanders are prominent in my reflections, and they are to be found in every nook and cranny of the world.  There are many  who make us particularly proud.

In Toronto parlance, the West Coast [British Columbia not Corner Brook] is often called the “Left Coast’. Our own ‘La La Land’, lotus country, the home of radical unions and sometimes equally radical ‘alternative’ life styles.  It is a truly glorious place, with all the gifts of the biggest of seas, and the awesomeness of the mountains.  It is understandable that Newfoundlanders would migrate to such a place.

I recently became reacquainted with a rather successful Human Resources and Labour Relations Specialist who successfully juggles 2800 BC Trade Unionists, three different Unions, and who in the past eighteen months negotiated not one but seven challenging Collective Agreements.   His personal evolution has taken him through most of natural resource rich Canada, from Labrador and Hibernia,to all over the Great White North, and thence to the most challenging Union environment of the lot, British Columbia.   His has truly been an exciting and challenging  life well lived, but it is  also a personal  journey he would probably never have embarked upon if at one point he had not been fired for insubordination.     A family man with a wife of forty plus years, two children and now four grandchildren, he is still plugging away making a difference.

we know him as that fellow who joined us from Topsail. He is our own Harold Mercer, and he is still living and loving on Vancouver Island in BC. I celebrate him!