Surgery Day 8 & 9 Kevin, Carman, and the Toews

Hey everybody.... these are pics from yesterday when I went to the doctors for my 1st follow up visit. Very good news. He said I'm in the top 1% of recovery, so that's an incredibly positive sign.

As you can tell my cheeks are very puffy, but for the most part I look fairly normal to people who don't know me. I only have to wear my 'splint' and 'elastics' when sleeping at this point, but some very good advise I have received *** is to keep them on whenever possible. Generally I do leave them in, unless I know I will be talking a lot and eating. because it makes it harder to do both and it also enhances the 'bad' part of this new look hahaha.

So that was the good news from yesterday.Today was wonderful for the most part as well. I woke up to find that my bud Kevin McCormick was able to come to Abbotsford with me. (Abbotsford is a community in the Greater Vancouver area about 50 k’s. out of Vancouver). I was bringing my Peavey guitar amp in for servicing and had asked Kevin if wanted to join me. He said he wasn't feeling too well at the time, but would call me first thing in the morning to let me know.

My son Carman also phoned to tell me his jobsite was rained out...so I invited him a long as well...











We got out to Toews Music on Clearbrook Road in Abbotsford just before lunchtime.


A little background:

Towards the end of my band Shama, I had purchased a home in Abbotsford and was mortgaged to the armpits. Unfortunately the band made some very bad business decisions during that same period of time and broke up almost immediately after I'd moved in.

I was totally screwed financially.

Not knowing what to do, but knowing that I had to feed my family, I approached a local hotel about having me play their lounge. I had never done a solo thing before, but you know... desperate times call for desperate measures***

The lounge had never had entertainment before, but with some good sales skills, I managed to make them say that they would try it for one month.

The only way I knew how to play at that time was with a band, so I wanted to make up background tapes of drums, bass etc to play along with. It's now a very common practice with solo acts (and of course karaoke), but at that time I don't know if I had ever seen anyone do it - it just seemed logical to me that it was the only way I would sound good.

Being that I had no equipment pretty much except my guitar, I went to the local music store to price out things to rent. In the store, I found one guy pretty much doing everything, while another guy who apparently worked there just sat on his duff smoking and reading the paper. Nice enough guy – but obviously just taking up space. I took note of that.

The same afternoon, I went to the local cabaret that I had played when I was with Shama and asked the owners if there was ANYTHING I could do for them to make some money.... after a time they decided that I could take the cover charge money at the door. (I guess that because Shama was such an extremely popular band, having one of the guys from Shama 'working' there looked 'cool' for the club…and because I needed money I gratefully accepted it.

I then told them that I had 'created' a job at the hotel and that I had gone to the music store to rent some gear to prepare my act and I found the two guys at the store were very nice etc.... just typical chit-chat.

Their response was something about one of the guys at the store just putting in time because he was expecting a call soon to go up north to work in a mining camp.

I had all the information I needed at that point!!!

Toews Music had two stores at that time. The one in downtown Abbotsford that I had gone to and another one in Clearbrook. (It's like the twin cities - you can't tell where one town stops and the other begins...regardless)

I found out that the owner 'Leo Toews' worked in the other store. When I went to that store, he wasn't there and, they told me, he was at home. Not wanting to lose this opportunity, I looked up his address in the phone book and rushed right over.

I’m sure he was a bit startled at the car driving up his long tree lined drive, but Leo is a very nice soft spoken man and was cordial with me when he asked what I wanted.

I had seen in their stores that they had sold Yamaha products, so I told him that I had worked in a very successful Yamaha-based music store in my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and that I would love to work for his store. I told him I promised I would make a difference to his business in a positive way.

He thanked me for coming, but informed me that he wasn’t ‘hiring’ at that time.

I told him, “Well - you will be soon… and I want that job when it comes up”

He asked me what I meant, and I told him the story about what I’d heard. I also said, ‘Not to say anything bad about that particular employee, you have ONE guy doing everything down there right now…and he could use someone like me…”

He said to give him a couple of days and he’d get back to me.

As promised, he called and said, “Are you still interested…? If so you can start in two weeks…”

So I worked in the Key Hotel lounge and at ‘the Fun Palace’ until I started at Toews.

(I apologize - I’ve digressed a lot here…but who knows – maybe someday I’ll have grand kids that would like to read about me…haha)

I started at Toews Music on Essendene Street in Abbotsford on August 1st I believe. Within six months there was some changes made and I ended up managing the Essendene store. I continued my ‘management status’ when Leo expanded the Clearbrook store to accommodate the Essendene store’s business as well.

I worked there for three years in total, and although money was scarce sometimes in the beginning, I have very fond memories of working there. For one thing, Leo was a very generous and patient boss who would always lend me things to help my family get by, or give me things out of the store to give to the kids.

By the end of my time working at Toews Music, I had decided to play music full time again. by that time, I was once again in a very good popular band (TRAMA) that was earning me much more money than the store was.
Sleep was hard to come by because I was working in the store during the days and playing in Vancouver every night except most Sundays. One night I rolled my car coming home from Vancouver when I fell asleep at the wheel. I took it as a wake up call (literally) and gave my notice to Leo a little while later.

It was a tough decision to make. Leo even offered to move my hours around to help me if I would stay on and I remember Calvin taking me aside and asking me to please stay. It was hard...I did enjoy it there...

I’ve managed to stay close with the Toews family over the years even though I sometimes go years and years between visits – but they are a great family and have always treated me like ‘one of the gang’.

Today was no exception.

Calvin (Leo and Sarge’s son) has always stayed in touch with me over the years and is an exceptionally nice guy.
Today, Sarge made Calvin promise to bring me by the house before we went out to lunch. Once we were there it was very hard to leave. Sarge is an attractive wonderful woman that has more energy than any ten people I know. She whipped up a fantastic lunch – with a very hearty soup and salmon (yay...I had salmon ****!!!) and it was great….
A wonderful time – we all felt perfectly at home there (Kevin commented a few times on that) – she’s a marvelous host.

It was a great day and I chewed today for the first time since the operation. I had a great time with Carman and Kevin, as well as a great visit with the Toews…


Take care…
Here's some more pics...

Calvin and his wife Andrea






















Sarge and Leo Toews