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was super embarrassing to me, especially when he talked

about religion. It embarrassed me that my parents were

religious. I didn’t want to be religious. I wanted to fit in.

And people who were religious were weird, right?

Our house was a non-stop train station, always full of

teenagers and prayer meetings. And music! Dad played

piano, and music was a big deal in our house. He’d make

us sit around the piano at night and sing in three-part

harmony. My two sisters were both good at the piano,

too. I never learned how to play it. I was in choir, though.

In fact, I was the leader of the junior choir. Crazy, huh?

Even though I wasn’t very good in school, I did like

band class, and my teacher took a shine to me. I played

trumpet. I wasn’t good at reading notes because of my

dyslexia, but I was good at playing. I played my trumpet

at events, weddings and church services. I’d wail away on

it and people loved it. Who’d a thunk? I always say it’s a

good thing I wasn’t good at playing the guitar because I

would have been in a rock ’n’ roll band and it would have

all been downhill from there.

There was lots of music around the Luxury Freeze, too.

Buddy Holly. The Everly Brothers. Little Richard. I remem-

ber hearing Elvis Presley sing “Don’t step on my blue

suede shoes” in 1956 and being really blown away by that.

Maybe that’s what drew me to shoes in the first place.

Then, in 1958, there was a fire at the Luxury Freeze.

Even though my dad got plenty of insurance money to

rebuild, the energy just went out of him. Two years later,

he sold it, and my family moved out to the suburbs,

to South Burnaby. At the same time, he went through

something of a religious awakening. It was good, and

not all that good.

Around 1961, my dad went to Bible school. And then

things kind of went sideways for him. He got sick with

rheumatoid arthritis and ended up on a disability pension

for the rest of his life, which made him bitter, especially

having railed his whole life against low-lifers on the

government dole. Meanwhile, he was determined to

become a minister and thought I should be one, too. It

was the 1960s, though, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, right around then, in my teens, I decided I was

going to be bad. I wasn’t super bad. Mostly, I had this

dual life of being Mr. Cool and Mr. Christian Kid. I wasn’t

good in school—I couldn’t add two and two and get four.

My grades weren’t good. I raised a ruckus in class. I was

the class clown. Disruptive. A tough kid. Sometimes I’d

even pick on kids on the way home from school, but I

wondered even then why I did it. Like I said before, a lot

of my life was me not thinking I was good at things, then

finding out later that I actually was. I didn’t do sports.

Sigurd sells the Luxury Freeze

and the family moves to South

Burnaby.

In high school, John discovers

that he’s a terrible student, but

a snappy dresser who was into

cars and good at band. Later he

realizes that he has a sort of

dyslexia that makes classroom

learning a challenge.

Fire devastates the Luxury

Freeze; his father rebuilds, but

loses his passion for it.

1958 19621960

Sigurd goes to Bible school;

John decides to become a

troublemaker.

1961

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