[merrylander]

Public schools all the way, 1-5 in a one room school house then they added a second room so I did 6 to 9 in the new room. Grade 10 was in a two story county schoolhose but in the next county.

Quebec was odd in that Lord Drummond allowed the French their own schools and their own civil law, but the criminal code was British (Thank God). So we had a school system divided on religious grounds, not linguistic and that made things tough for a local Hugenot (protestant) French family.

I bumped into my former home room teacher a year after dropping out, he was disappointed that I had not gone back telling me that I had finished at the head of the class. Well a lot of testing later in life proved that I was not lacking wet stuff between the ears, but I had been bored to tears. Plus attending that school meant commuting by train so that I got into town too early and did not catch a train home until 5:40 at night. I did finish homework in the station but frankly it sucked.

Worked briefly for the Canadian Pacific railway, then Combustion Engineering, then casualty insurance (bleh) then went to Bell Canada and never looked back. Came here for very special personal reasons, worked in consulting, training, and international standards. I guess that work was why IEEE granted me full membership and invited me to apply for Senior membership saying something about my contributions to the discipline. Retired in 2003 at 73 because what had been a fun job became a PITA after the buyout. Never understood why huge companies buy small companies and then set about changing everything that had made them successful. The new owners decided we had to be involved in China, I said big mistake they will reverse engineer our technology and sell below market. It seems that is what is happening today, the hieir apparent to lead the government is turning inward and will make life hard for foreign investors.