Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #18 - Fred Murray

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

He was born in 1943, originally from Capetown South Africa. Initially he became an electrician  working for the Ford Motor Company, but one day he went to a chiropractor and fell in love with the profession. Still to this day at 77 he is still actively working. We discuss immigrating to Canada in 1971, what living with apartheid was like, rolling blackouts & the search for his biological father.   Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

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the room and all that my signage been through read and write and they treat me just perfectly Gartner management is a Lloydminster based company specializing all types of rental properties to help meet your needs whether you're looking for a small office or a 6,000 square foot commercial space give Wade Gartner a call 7808808 5025 if you're heading in any of these businesses let them know you heard about them from the podcast now let's get on to that T bar one tale of the tape Originally from Cape Town South Africa. He was born in 1943.

He immigrated to Canada in 1971. And even to this day, at age 77, he's working full-time as a chiropractor. He's a father, husband, and community pillar. I'm talking about Fred Murray. So buckle up. Here we go. It is October 18th, 2020. I'm sitting across from Fred Murray.

So once again, now that we are recording, thanks for a couple of time. coming in, sharing a little bit about your life and everything else. Yeah, you're most welcome. And it should be an interesting conversation. Yeah, well, we were just having a chuckle. I thought I was recording, but I wasn't. So from what, you know, what you just said to me for the last 15 minutes where we started recording, man, I think there's a lot to talk about. Growing up in South Africa, you're born in Cape Town?

Born in Cape Town. Okay. Area of Cape Town called Sea Point. Well, no matter who they're. guest is I'm always fascinated about their earliest memories and you know growing up what they can recall you know you're born in 1943 March the 6th 43 so that's a you know your memories of your first a or your first memories are your first memories are a a little bit foreign to anyone my age heck young people

anyone who stumbles across this in the years to come right but on top of that your South Africa you're not sitting in Lloyd and I've heard a lot about Lloyd I've had a lady on from India. And so I'm just, you know, Zui Said. I was trying to remember. I was like, ah, there it is. It was sitting on the tip of my tongue. But anyways, going to you, South Africa,

what's one of the things that comes to mind when you go back to your childhood in Cape Town? Very, very memories. First of all, I started right off in boarding schools. school because my dad was a lighthouse keeper so he was always moving and he'd move from one lighthouse to different different lighthouses so there was no stability in the schooling system you were always having to change so I ended up in a Catholic boarding school called the Salesians where I spent eight years and actually I left school in what here would be grade 10

two years ahead of time. So I didn't qualify with grade 12 or graduate as you would in this country. So I ended up doing completing my studies at night school. At the same time, I was studying to be telecommunication technician or electrician. So I was doing both. So I was doing an apprenticeship and night school in a place called, Port Elizabeth. This is when I'd finished schooling in Cape Town and moved to Port Elizabeth to start working. And I was working for the government as an apprentice. It was a five-year apprenticeship,

which you were able to challenge after four years. And you were tied in by contract. You couldn't leave. Like in this country, it's very, very different, a very different system. You look for a different employer almost every year. I did the four years and I spent four I spent six months at a time in a place called Port Elizabeth which is where I did the practical and where I eventually met my wife and I spent six months of the year in a place called Carl Fontaine which is halfway between Johannesburg and Pretoria it was a government run college and so I spent six months going back and forth for four years and I I challenged the trade.

I challenged the apprenticeship and I passed after four years. So it cut my apprenticeship time down by one year. So I had started three months before my 16th birthday and I was fully qualified electrician at the age of 19 before I turned 20. I stayed on with the government working in the electrical field doing, telephone exchanges, not really radar at the time, but direction finding for aircraft. I worked on tugboats doing echo depth sounding. I could repair switchboards and telephones.

At that time, of course, we were still building the radios with the tubes in them and so forth, which I did. I did cable work. I was splicing 1,200 pair cables and doing. overhead telephone lines. So I had quite a variety of things, which was good because it helped me to learn how to use my hands. So I spent six, I spent the four years there,

and then I spent about another year, year and a half, with a technician assisting him. And then I was given an opportunity by the government to go into the electrical drafting department, where I spent nine months to a year. I wasn't totally happy with it. I was confined in an office and I'm an outdoors person. But then I was given an option to be hired on by General Motors.

They wanted me to go into their design department, designing stoves, fridges, etc. But the same day, that afternoon, I was contacted by Ford Motor Company and they wanted me in their product design department. And I looked at the two, I thought, well, I'm going to Ford, which is what I did. And I spent three years with them. And my position there was that any changes in the Ford vehicles that were being made either in Germany or England or Australia, all came through me. And I had to ensure that those blueprints would work with our existing vehicles, and that there wasn't any major modification required

to incorporate the changes in our models in South Africa. And I did that for about three years. Wait a second. So you're saying any change to a Ford vehicle came through you? Did I hear that correct? At that time in South Africa, at the Ford Motor Company, all the changes in any kind of facelift or major model, the blueprints would come to me

and I would have to verify that those parts could be vended out locally and that they would comply with our specifications and that they could be used in our vehicles and how to incorporate them. The engineers did the actual redesigning if necessary but they had to pass

they passed through me. So that was kind of interesting and I got to go down the assembly lines and got to, in a sense, inspect some of the changes to look at some things. And there was some interesting things, some interesting criminal stuff going on where employees were walking out with batteries

and getting their cars fixed. I remember one case where a fellow was working in the assembly line and he ended up one morning pushing his car into the factory and they all thought he was going in just to get some work done on his car well he had no engine in his car and he ended up putting a new motor in his car

and driving it out which I thought was kind of interesting and then guys would go down the factory and they'd look at batteries and they'd take a screwdriver and make a scratch in it couldn't use it so then they would be able to take them out so there's little things that used to happen

which was kind of interesting I was never that lucky because I couldn't get money I would never have done that anyhow but just to witness that these little things were going on was kind of interesting all that it reminds me of is the Johnny Cash song one piece at a time you know what I'm talking about

where they take one piece of a time off the assembly line we had one guy and one fella I know of and my memory isn't 100% correct but as far as I can remember, he used to walk out with his hat on, and he would have small components under his hat, like for a carburetor. You've got to give him points for creativity. Creativity, for sure. So anyhow, I spent those years with Ford Motor Company,

and I had back issues. ended up seeing a chiropractor there and he was an old time back in the years when you could get a piece of paper to hang on the wall after six months so you took your chances and a very, very nice man he was quite comical

I would sit down and he actually convinced me to start dating his daughter which I did but I couldn't take her out unless I gave him an opportunity to adjust me on the floor in his living room that kind of thing. You'd go into his office and behind his desk was a refrigerator and he'd sit there talking to you and asking what was wrong and he would turn around and he had this big, big knife, like a hunting knife,

stick it in, a big piece of bologna would come out and he'd cut up a piece and give it to you and that kind of guy. He was from Texas too. So I became very interested in it at that time. And I battled on. What was it about it that, you know, up until this point, you're an electrician. You're working on, you know, vehicles. You mentioned sonar and boats and cables and everything else.

Chiropractorily is not exactly an electrician by any stretch of the imagination. What was it that drew in? What was it through the – well, first of all, I had problems with my back, so I needed treatment. And I started to recognize that this individual with just six months of training, mind you, quite a bit of experience, was able to eliminate a lot of my back problems. I became interested in it. And this was back in about 60, 94. Now, when you say in six months, do you mean, do you mean what was intriguing about it was,

It was a short period of time to learn something that was beneficial, or a short period of time to learn something that could make money. Or both. In the end, both, initially beneficial. I honestly believe that most people or most students that got into chiropratic, especially years ago, got into it, I think for the challenge to be able to, to help somebody else. And the end result was,

the financial side was... I mean, you can't... You need money to survive. Sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Carapagia is a business, like any business, so... But you have to be happy

and you have to be... You have to be anxious to get up in the morning to go to work. Otherwise, it's not fun. There's a long life. Yeah. For me, even now at my age,

I'm absolutely having all kinds of fun in the clinic. I work from 8 to quarter to 5 every day. I did for a period of four years. I went semi-retired when I was 60, and I worked from 8 to 12 and golfed with Louis, the Greek, and you probably know Louis from Louis' place. And we golfed every afternoon. I'd golf 9 or 18 or 27.

And then a number of my patients said to me, We're quite happy with the service we get here, but we kind of like to see you. I said, fine. What's the problem? Well, you're never there in the afternoon. That's any time that we can get there. So I went back to the office after four years and said, I'm back in full-time. So from then, I've been full-time ever since, other than the fact that I've been going away for four months in the winter.

So 77 right now, working full-time. Yeah? What's wrong with that? I don't think there's anything wrong. Let me be very clear. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I actually think that's pretty cool. But I would also say this, that most people would think, 77 am working full time.

Man, I don't want to do that. I want to be retired. I want to, by 55, I want to be on the beach somewhere, feed up, and whatever else. So I would say it's very bucks of the trend, so to speak. Yeah. You have to realize that if you get one person well, in a day, you go home and you say, yes, I did it. And especially if it's been, and I'm not knocking any professions,

but when somebody comes to you with what may have been a medical type profession and they've had no results and all of a sudden under chiropractic care, they get results, you go home, got that one. Do you have your failures? I've had thousands, tens of thousands of failures, because I've treated hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Have I hurt anybody? Yes, I've hurt somebody.

There's no way that you can treat the number of people that I have over the years, and not through error, but just through bad luck, the person was hurt. And did they come back from it? Yes, they did. It's just that at the time they were sore, and when you worked with them, you made them a little bit more sore. I've never buried anybody, which is always a bonus. That's why I'm happy to be a chiropractor.

But no, for me, when I go down to the office, and I was just saying to a friend of mine last night, today this morning, I said, you know, I'm really having fun down there. Why wouldn't I go to work? Well, it isn't work, then. It isn't work. It isn't work.

There's stress. I mean, we're always understress because there are injuries that we as chiropractors, can produce, can create a stroke. There's been one that's been linked with an neck adjustment. This happened back in 94. And have there been some since then? Yes, they have been.

But how many people are under anesthesia? You know, I'm just going to say this in the, I don't mean this to, well, not sound rude. That isn't the right way, but you don't seem 77. You seem younger. I'm just lucky. I think it's just,

luck? I don't know. I don't know what it is. You know, to be very honest, I'm the biggest garbator in town. I eat the worst foods, or I eat good food from my wife, but I'm always snacking on chips or peanuts or something like that. I don't drink heavily. I have a drink here and there, but when I'm done with this, I'm going home and going to have a stiff rye. And I don't necessarily practice what I preach to my patients with respect to exercise. I don't exercise adequately and it's showing up now in my back because I have a really bad back. But I've just been lucky. I've had no major injuries in my lifetime, which helps age-wise. Staying active as you are though at 77 has to help, no? Well, yeah, if you get up, you get up every day and you, you

you go to work as opposed to sitting at home and reading a book or watching TV, yeah, there's a big difference. And, you know, when you see people in pain the way we do, the way I do, the way we do in the clinic, and right now there are three of us there. There used to be five chiropractors in this clinic. when you see the people in pain it almost makes you feel good when they get better and makes you feel younger it's like I don't know how you explain it but there's just something about

going to work and somebody says gee I'm glad to see this Moindach yeah I've got this and I've got that and got the next thing and they walk out not always they don't always walk out cured sometimes they'll be back 10, 15 times. But I think it's the challenge that keeps you young, the challenge to be able to accomplish something

that somebody in a different field hasn't had the fortune, a good fortune of being able to pinpoint. And I've always felt, and I may be wrong, and there may be some controversy about this, but I've always felt that if another profession, whether it be physio or medical or massage, can't find a problem, and there's nothing on MRIs, there's nothing on CT scans, there's nothing on ultrasounds, there's nothing on all the lab work, I start thinking nervous system because the nervous system controls everything. So that's basically what we work with when we adjust a patient.

We're correcting a malfunction in a joint to optimize the function of the nervous system. And when the nervous system functions optimally, you're going to have reasonably good health, within reason. So that alone keeps me young, knowing that I can do that for most people. not for everybody we we get probably 80% of the people better 80% of the time and those are good enough odds for me to keep me motivated to go down to see how many more I can help because I in our clinic we have right now we have Dr. Atkinson Dr. McKechnit who are now my bosses because I sold the practice to Lee back in 97 and I just work for them now um They run very, very busy practices.

They get phenomenal results. The patients are all very happy. And we have quite a large cross-sector of different conditions that come to us, from headaches to sore back. And I can go through a whole list of mile long. I'm not going to do that. But a lot of those have been elsewhere to other health care professionals and haven't had results. or very minimal, and then we're lucky enough to be able to change them.

And that's what keeps our clinic busy and all the other clinics, because there are a number of other clinics in Lloyd Minster. So I think that's my reason, my answer to why I appear young, because I feel young, although, like I say, I do have my own issues. but um just once again it's just uh i mean it is a badge of honor a feather in your cap i mean it in the best possible way just at 77 you uh working full time which is i would say quite unusual most people in their 70s don't work full time now and once again i i give a feather in your cap i think it's super cool okay i think uh the way your brain's firing right now is it's it's

It's cool to watch. It's very on top of things. And part of that is keeping your brain focused on solving people's problems, right? And that challenge and keeping the mind active. And I assume, you know, something that I've enjoyed about sitting across from people is I can see myself doing this right here for the rest of time. This is a lot of fun. It's going to keep you young. That's right.

And most people, I shouldn't say most people. I just, you know, up until I stumbled upon this, I would have never known it was here, right? And so if you never find something like this that you want to do until you're 90 or whatever the age is, then you live by the set of principles the world gives you, which is you work a job, you earn a lot of money, you hope that's enough that by age 60 you can retire, and then you can go live what life you want to live. Instead of, you know, you change occupations. And then, you know, and you went to school for one, and then you stumble upon chiropractic.

All of a sudden, boom, you switch. and now here you are at 77 doing what you've loved for going on 50 years next year. Like that's impressive. Yeah. But getting back to the issue of being 77 years of age and still working, I'll give an example. You know as an individual. I went to a funeral some years ago. Dave McCar was there.

And I walked and he said, are you still practicing? I said, yes. He said, why? I said, why are you here? He loves his work. I loved my work. And that was the only answer I could give him. He asked, why would I be working?

Well, I'm working for the same reason that he's working. Because that was his choice in life. That was his vocation in life. That's what he loved doing. And he loved assisting his sons in the business. And so he was there. And I think if you look around Lloyd, there are a fair number of people in my age bracket, close, maybe a little bit younger,

maybe even a little bit older, who are still working and are still very, very happy working. If you're working at a job or in a position where you have to work because you need to make a living and you don't like it, you can't wait to retire, but when you like or love what you're doing and I'm okay I can live with my age at 77 I've got enough financially to last me until I die because what's my age limit going to be

85 90 at the most so do I have enough for another 13 years yeah I have so I don't have to work there do you ever think about that another 13 years yeah I do Up until a couple of years ago, I wasn't sure where I was financially,

because I'm not a financial person. I've always said to my accountants, and I only had one until just recently. He used to be in Vermilion, and then he sold out to McDonald's partners, and then he moved to Lethbridge and then to Calgary. And I said, you know, Bob, Here's my books.

You take, you know, I'll do the synoptic for the year, but you figure out what I've made. I have no idea. I've got an idea what's coming in, but I have an idea what's going out. And I've always said to my financial advisors, you know, I'll make the money and you do the investing because I have no idea how to handle it.

And that's the way it is. I had no idea. Maybe it was a bad thing. I have never had a budget in my life because I've always known that at the end of the month I could pay the bill. So I have never sat down

with my wife and said, okay, we've got $5,000 a month to do this and this and this and this and this. We've just spent what money we needed to spend at the time and at the end of the month

I would look at the bill usually a credit card and I said, okay, I've got one bill to pay and I knew I could pay it. But I never sat down to figure out for sure where that money was going and whether I could afford to do it. But we were never big spenders. I drove my vehicles for 9, 10 years. I've just now left a 20-year-old Volvo down in Florida because I can't go back for it.

And it's an immaculate shape. And I would drive it another 20 years. The car I had before that, I drove only for three because my son out gone. he got too tall, he was bumping his head against the roof of the car. And the year before that, I had a Ford O'Connorline, which I drove for 10 years. And before that I had a Ford Mercury Station wagon that I bought in 1976, that I drove for 15 years. I just, I didn't have the need to buy cars. So it's not like I was spending lots of money.

I was spending money just to live and kind of enjoy life, a decent standard of living, that's all. Is that something that you learned as a young kid or anything, that you know, you don't need to have the new next greatest vehicle, car, whatever it is? For me, a vehicle was a means of getting from home to work or from home to wherever I wanted to go. Sure, it's nice to have a fancy car, and I bought a fancy car. When I bought my Volvo, S-70, I mean, that was a luxury car back in 2000. And I really enjoyed it. Now I'm driving a Honda CRV, which is an average car. It's a pleasant car to drive and probably will be my last car.

I have no desire to buy more cars. I'd rather spend them on vacations. And to me, it's more important to, I would love to see the world. And I've been to China when I was doing acupuncture. I went there in 1991 for two weeks. I went to Beijing and Shanghai, Beijing, and then on to Hong Kong. Hong Kong. In 1966 I went to Rio de Janeiro for, well not just Rio de Janeiro, I did a cruise from Cape Town to Rio to Buenos Aires and Montevideo and back. It was a one-month cruise.

I've spent basically four years in the States and I've seen probably half of the Western States. It didn't spend a lot of time in them but I've traveled through them. I haven't seen much of Canada but I do love to travel. I've been to England just for a short period of time because my cousin used to live there. I would love to travel. My wife isn't a traveler, so we'll compromise and we'll travel within Canada. There's lots to see in Canada. But no, to me, vehicles were never important. Not like it was a status symbol. It was just transportation. It's nice to drive a nice new vehicle. But But, you know, when you drive a vehicle out of a showroom, you've lost 30% right now.

And to me, it didn't make sense if what I had would get me where I wanted to go in a reasonable comfort and a reasonable economy. I was quite happy with that. Can we flip back to South Africa for a little bit? Sure. You grew up in apartheid. That is something that is very foreign to this area, Canada. What was that like as a kid or even a young man? It's one of the reasons why I'm here today

because I didn't agree with it. I couldn't agree with the fact that when I was 19 years of age and a fully qualified telecommunication electrician, that I had a 19-year-old and a 63-year-old African gentlemen both working for me as laborers and between the two of them they had three wives. One had two, one had one at one, obviously.

And they weren't making one quarter of my salary. And I observed other electricians because by then I was an electrician. I observed other electricians. There was never a request to do something. It was fetch this for me, fetch this, you know, get that, get this, you know, you're effing so on. and I just couldn't accept it because he had brown skin

that he was any different to me. He wasn't as educated, that therefore wasn't as qualified to make the living that I was making, but he didn't have the opportunity in the first place. So that bothered me. I just, I never felt happy with apartheid. The fact that you could have a black and a white policeman, policemen on patrol together,

And if a black policeman found me drunk in the streets, he couldn't touch me, he'd have to go and call the white policeman to come and arrest me. Or if I was walking down the sidewalk with my little, if I had a grandson at the time, if I was walking down the sidewalk and there was a black lawyer or a doctor walking towards me, he would have to step aside for me to walk by. just didn't sit well with me. Some of the cruelty, the inhumane way in which they were handled, some of the farmers, unfortunately they're getting their fair share in return now, unfortunately, but they would treat their black laborers on the farm terribly. They would hang them up in sacks and beat them and stuff, and it just, that wasn't me.

I wasn't raised that way. I think maybe a lot of people felt that way, but I was raised in a Catholic boarding school and I believed in the rights of all human beings to be equal. It doesn't matter what color you were. So that was part of what persuaded me not to go back to South Africa when I graduated.

Just because I didn't, I wasn't happy with that. situation, plus the fact that I had been banned, although I could have gone back. I just didn't want to go back to that apartheid system, although today it's gone, but today the country is in worse shape than it was under the white rule. The country is in really bad shape, and you can research that as much as you want to. The economy, the violence, the murder rates. I have a when I went back home

four and a half years ago I went back and I made the mistake of bringing back a front page, full page newspaper. The front page in full color of one black man stabbing another one to death.

This was front page. And this was almost every day you would hear of this. Today I can confirm it, but I get this from other sources. The vast numbers of farmers who are being murdered, them and their wives, and quite brutally, and the land being taken away from them and just being left.

So now the crops are gone, the cattle are gone, there's no food, and the infrastructure is going to ruin. When I was there in 2008, I would drive the highways and there were big potholes. They have a system of power, electricity, that isn't adequate for the country. So they have a system called power shedding, where they will all of a sudden, say, in an area of Cape Town, cut off all their electricity for three or four, five hours so they could put that electricity somewhere else, and somebody else would have a chance to use it. And I can see they're getting better right now because there's just no money there.

They're not building new, as far as I know, they aren't building new power stations. They're using old existing power stations, which isn't adequate because the population has expanded significantly since I left. Don't quote me on the figures because it's going back a long way. But I think when I left South Africa in 68, the population was around 32, 35 million, of which 8 million were, I believe, white. And today the population, I believe, is about 45 million, of which may be 4 million or white.

so the population's increased but the power sources haven't improved adequately so what you find people doing now is they will have an LED light system in their home that's plugged into a power source all the time it's always being charged so when the power goes out they've got lights until the power comes back on but if you're in the middle of a meal tough luck or if you add a moment mall and you're purchasing some goods the power goes down they shut them all down and this rotates all the way through the country it's a continuous thing so the country's in in tough shape but yeah getting back to the apartheid system I was never never comfortable with it and

it was one of the reasons what probably the main reason why I didn't want to go back I actually lived where Mandela was in prison for 27 years. I lived on Robben Island for four years before it became a penitentiary. When my dad, before he was even in the lighthouse system, he was working for a type of a grocery chain, and he was stationed on this island, which is about seven, eight miles off Cape Town. And I never lived there.

Well, I lived there, but I was going to boarding school at the time. go home once a month on a tugboat which would take a few hours and spend a weekend and then go back. But yeah, that was the apartheid system. If you go back now, the apartheid system is, it's gone. But the crime rate, the violence is still there and it's now very much, although there's a lot of black on white, I think there's more black on black because there are so many different tribes or like you've got causes and you've got a whole number of different what is the term not like different races but different tribes of cultural backgrounds and they all speak different languages different dialects what I hear you know when

you're, is I just, at times you forget how lucky we are to be where we're at. In this country? Yes, yes. I hate the cold and I hate Nobody loves minus 40. But I would rather be here. And deal with the weather climate or the climate than some of the

nasty things humans do to each other. Yeah. Although, you know, to be very honest, I could go back. If I didn't have family here, I could go back and and hopefully die peacefully. Just to enjoy, especially Cape Town, because it's got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I love Cape Town.

And I would go back for genealogy reasons as well because they have a huge, a huge cemetery with over a million graves there. And when I was back there four years ago with my sister to spread my mother's ashes, We went into the cemetery and they've got piles and piles of archives and of registers of all the burials. And I was able to find my grandmother's entry in there, but she'd been cremated. My mother was cremated, so I thought we would sprinkler her ashes on her mother's grave.

Well, there was no grave. so then I and I knew who my grandmother was and I knew when she had died so we went through this information again and found her grave site with the help of a I don't know what they would call him in the cemetery but like a caretaker

but he knew where all the different sites were based on a numbering system they knew where to look so he took him took me into my great-grandmother's gravesite and it was just a concrete form. There was nothing in it. It was just dirt. And I said, no, I'm not going to bury my mother here. And so then I took, then my sister and I took it to C-point where, as a young boy, when I wasn't in boarding school, like on the holidays or on the weekends, every once a month, I would play in the rocks in the little,

the little cove, and I can picture it very vividly. And I knew that my mother had been raised in that same area as a young girl. And I said, let's just go and sprinkle our ashes in the ocean there. So we went down and we sprinkled their ashes. And I've got pictures of it. That to me, to me, was beautiful to do. But getting back to the apartheid system there,

this gentleman that worked with me, and I've still have these. contact number in South Africa and I can contact him for information and he'll go and look it up for me. Very, very nice young man called Selwyn. He was very much involved in genealogy as well. He didn't do it himself but he knew a lot about it because he was working with it and in fact one of the researchers I had there doing some research for me actually used him to look up grave sites and death dates of dates of death and burials in the cemetery.

But while I was down there, I went to my biological father's grave, and he was Jewish, and they aren't buried in the same cemetery. They have separate cemeteries. So my half-sister on the Jewish side had her husband take me, and I went there. And so different cemeteries, but I'm digressing slightly a little, slightly, there. I've lost track of where I was going, but I could very easily go and live there. Just a spectacular place to live. The people are having it the hardest right now are whites, obviously, because there's now a reverse discrimination. My sister, my half-sister who is still

alive, her daughter, my niece, her husband lost his job. I'm not sure. Three or four years ago, he's now 57. He will never find another job down there. A white man of 57 is just not employable. So it's getting to be very tough for a lot of people. There was a medical doctor here in town. I'm not going to mention her name, but she went back to Cape Town and she loves it, loves to sail. but I just heard the other day, and this may not be factual. One of my golfing buddies was saying that either her husband or someone else, I'm sure as a husband, may have been,

their son wanted to come back here because there was no opportunity for him. Advancement, that kind of thing. In the country. The people that are okay would be people like my brother-in-law, who's a retired medical doctor who has all the funds he needs. He has a beautiful home. He's remarried.

My half-sister on the Jewish side, her son is a lawyer, one of the top legal companies in South Africa. In fact, one of the top ones in Africa. He's got all kinds of awards. They can live very well. do they realize what's going on yes they do but I believe they choose to live there because they have a good high standard of living still but the average person doesn't live well

so it's just you know I mean we're in the middle of this COVID-19 thing and here in particularly in Lloyd things have not been exactly booming I mean you've been here in a lot of years. I mean, once, I don't know, what is it, 95, 2000, somewhere in there, things start to take off and we see the expansion of Lloyd just go and go and go and go and go. And right now, as it sits right now, things are, yeah, they're pretty dismal. There's not a lot of positive, cheerful people sitting in Lloyd Minster. There's been a lot of industry clothes and a lot of companies go bankrupt and people losing

jobs and I mean but that can be stretched to the entire world right now everywhere yeah as everything's been shut down and businesses are being kind of tied down and not allowed to open because of you know fear of spreading this COVID around more getting worse etc etc but in saying all that we don't have the violence and well and once again the apartheid we don't have the history of that here. Do we or don't we? When you look at the Native Americans, Native Americans, you know, in a sense that is still apartheid. Although we all live in one country, we all supposedly have the same rights. I mean, if I was a First Nations person, I could go into a store or get on a bus and sit where I light. Back home, if you were black, you sat at the back of the bus, those kinds of things.

There were special toilets for blacks only or whites only. In this country, anybody can go anywhere and eat anywhere. But they're not really treated equally. And the issue I have as, I'm Canadian, I got my citizenship within seven years, so I could vote because I believe voting is extremely important. You've got yourself, you were born here. I'm naturalized, and then you've got your First Nation. You've got three classes of Canadians. Why wouldn't it be just one class? Why wouldn't we all be just the same and all live wherever?

Why would we have... Why do you need the distinction of different? Why do such a large number of First Nation people live way up north in squalor, in plywood shacks? On the other hand, and this may get me into trouble, I dislike the treaties. I dislike the fact that because our forefathers 300 years ago said something that we are now tied down to it. I would like to see every person in this country, whether they're First Nation or like myself or like yourself,

all be exposed to the same standard of living. No, we can't all be the same standard of living, but the same opportunities and live in areas that are more pleasant to live. You can't tell me that a First Nation person living up in Northern Ontario, in places where you have to boil water and where the water is brown and where you freeze into death in the middle of winter, you can't tell me they're happy to be there. Why would they be integrated into society in the bigger cities

or even the smaller cities like Lloyd Minster? Those are questions that I've had ever since I've been here. And it's kind of a similar situation to the apartheid system, but not as severe. The only difference I feel, and this was a feeling I had in the States when the apartheid system was still in effect, the blacks back home knew they were nothing. They were told that, they were raised that way by their parents, And they knew where they stood in society. In North America, they told they have equal rights, do they?

I don't believe they do. They don't have equal opportunity. I can say that my wife's from Minneapolis, right? So I go back to us as just people. get outside our bubble and go experience the world and see different things. Then you can see it. It's why when I ask so much about apartheid, I have no idea about that. And you're not far off on Native Americans.

I hadn't really thought about it that way because we haven't really given it a label, I guess. But, you know, I think, I personally believe, and I've been thinking a lot about this more and more and these conversations spurred on more and more is I can't really do much to help what's going on in Minneapolis, where my wife's from, or what's going down in South Africa, or what's on the other side of the world. It don't matter how bad it is,

because I'm just Sean Newman from Lloyd Minster. I can't do really jack squat about her. But what we can do, you know, is we can impact what's going on around Lloyd Minster. And, you know, I'm trying to, to maybe open my eyes a little bit more and see some things. But we can start, you know, I think maybe a good way for the world, all the people in the world, is if you really want to do something, do something within your bubble to help make

it better and affect the things that you can affect. Stop trying to worry about what's happening in, you know, the huge thing right now is Black Lives Matter. I'm here to say I'm like yeah okay but I still can't do anything I don't feel like I can do anything about it but we can certainly do something about what's going on in Lloyd Minster

Exactly You can address the issues in your own community And then expand the community from that point That's right And what you're saying is I just said Oh I didn't get to live in a part of it And you're saying well actually What's going on around here

Or around Canada is well, Native American rights and separating it all out and we have our own little divisions created. It's very interesting. I hadn't really thought about it. You've given me a thought today.

Something else to dwell on later on and investigate. Well, I like thinking about things. I like talk. I learn by talking with people. It's a very, I don't know, maybe lots of people are like me. I'm not sure on that. Lots of people like to read.

Some like to experience. Some like to. But even if I experience something, then I've got to talk about it. Right. Right. Because then you can kind of... It's nothing better than conversation. Yeah.

You get together in a group and have a good conversation. There's nothing better than that. As long as people are open to the discussion. They're open to discussion. They're not all going to agree, but they have to agree to disagree. Yeah, which is fine. Yeah. I think some of the best learning moments I've ever had,

I've come out of the discussion, and I've been pretty mad, pretty mad, or like, oh, that's stupid. And then, you know, you think on it because I respect the person I'm talking to, right? And I always go, you know, if you respect the person you're talking to, they obviously have thought of their beliefs. They're not just, you know, saying something for the most part that's just off the cuff. And you got to think on that because if you respect somebody and respect what they're saying and it doesn't align with your values

or the way you've been brought up or the way you think. Gee, that spurs on some good moments in your life. Yes, it makes you think. It makes you think. And the more you think, the more you get into conversations to try and resolve those thoughts in your mind.

I, I, just last night, I was out having coffee with some of the golfing buddies. And of course, American politics comes up, and any conversation you get into today, the American politics comes into play. And I have my views,

and they have their views, and they outnumber me three to one. I'm going to assume in this world, then you're not a Trump fan. You're assuming correctly. Okay. I agree that he was probably a very, very smart businessman.

He's not a politician. I don't agree with a lot of things, but it's not my problem. It's the Americans' problem. But in the end, it ends up being our problem as well, because we're joined at a border, and what happens down south is going to affect us. It's going to affect us here. 100%.

And we've seen all the evidence, all the tariffs that have been placed on our goods and just his dialogue and the way he speaks. And I hate to get too political because that's not the intent. But yeah, we have to appreciate other people's thoughts. So these other friends of mine firmly believe that he should win the election,

that he has to win the election for the good of North America. And I say no. And we carry on. We have chuckles and we have our coffee and an apple fritter and we go home, you know. And I think as long as we can do that, that's great, but some people can't do that. They will hold grudges and they'll get into fights over situations like that, which is not going to resolve the issue anyhow. But if we can resolve what's going on in Lloyd, and we have some issues in Lloyd, and then if we can expand from Lloyd into Alberta, Saskatchewan. But that's not going to be you and I.

going to be the communities that have to do that. You and I as individuals who won't do it. Politically, the politicians may be able to, with the right leaderships and with the right politicians in place. And then we get into the political thing of who is a right politician, who do you vote for. I've voted ever since I came to this country one way and I won't change, only because that's the way

I've always voted. And I vote for probably not correctly. I vote for the party more than for the individual because I'm just that way I am of this political affiliation and yet

what I feel here my political tendencies here are exactly opposite to the states. Where I would be conservative here I'm actually liberal in the states because I like the Democratic Party. So how do you, I don't know how you validate that difference and I

think mainly because I don't I don't associate politics with left and right. I just look at issues and I don't consider them to be right or left. I just consider them to be is that something I can get along with or isn't it? Do I like that person or don't I like him. Whether he's Republican or Democrat, if I like him individually as a Republican, fine. If I like the Democrat,

that's fine too. I've got lots of friends here, I've had lots of friends here over the years who were of one political affiliation here in Canada and I'm of the other. And we've been friends for years and we've golfed for years.

and I think it's just a case of saying, okay, that's your opinion and this is my opinion. Now let's get on with life and forget about the conflicts. Politics is a tough one. Politics and religion. Yeah, isn't that the truth? And I've had them both, you know, from my childhood where I was raised

and going through the three different religious affiliations, being Anglican and then going to Catholic Church. and then converting to Catholicism and then finding out that my biological father was Jewish that's quite a bit to deal with but it's been interesting it's very very interesting and uh...

What have you learned if you don't mind me picking at that? What have you learned then from having Anglican, Catholic, find out your dad's Jewish. What have you pulled out of there? I assume,

you know, from talking to you, you're, you seem like a guy who doesn't just go, oh yeah, that's great, and walk out the door. Seems like you do a little bit of digging. Well, as I said, I was raised Anglican Church of England. Went to Catholic boarding school for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. And I did very well in the Catholic school,

had very, very high grades in what's called catechism. and they would never award the first prize to a non-Catholic so I was never given the first prizes even when I was top of the class in that specific category there was something in the Catholic system in the boarding school which attracted me to

the religion, the religious aspect of being Catholic and believing that the Catholic Church goes right back to Christ as opposed to Martin Luther King. But then the Jewish faith goes back even further. So who's right, who's wrong, and it doesn't matter as long as we all believe in one person and treat each other the way we should be treated. But for me, it really wasn't a big decision. I left school, and then when I was still an apprentice, I walked by the cathedral where my wife and I eventually ended up getting married,

where I was converted first of all. And because of the way I was raised in the school system, we were in dormitories and all I had to my name was a little metal cabinet here with a curtain in it and my underwear and my socks and my change of clothing was in that's all I had and we had a priest who slept in the same dormitory as we did and we were working up every morning at 630 in the morning with a clapping of the hands and a Latin prayer and then we would have your face wash and the usual things you do in the morning morning but you were always with either a priest or a brother you were taught by priests after we were given half an hour to get

dressed in the morning we went to mass immediately afterwards at seven o'clock at quarter to eight we had breakfast and we couldn't say a word until the police the priest clapped his hands then you could speak and at 8.30 we went to classes and so Everything was very, very regimented. But it didn't bother me. It really didn't bother me. I developed an attraction to the religion, the services, the mass, although I could never serve there because I wasn't Catholic at the time. And then when I left school for four years as an apprentice, every day after school, after working, I would walk by the

cathedral and there was always a mass going on at five or five thirty and I would walk in and go to mass in my dirty old pants and dirty hands and stuff and I would go up and take communion. In fact, one day I walked up and I was called out. I was an electrician at that time and there was a, what we call a nuptial mass going on. It's a when two Catholics get married, they celebrate the mass at the same time. And I walked in there, all dressed in their fine clothing, and I'm here in my work clothes. I sat at the back of the church, obviously. And part of the mass is communion, and the bride and groom went up first, and then the wedding party in everybody else.

I walked right up in my dirty old clothes and took communion. Because I felt at home with that. I wasn't aware of my Jewish background at the time although my family all knew my sisters my brother their spouses my uncle and aunt my cousin all knew that I wasn't who I was or who I thought I was

but getting back to the religion I felt so attracted to it that four years after I went to the priest, I said, I'd like to become a Catholic. And he says, well, we have what's called R-C-I-A, where if you're interested in becoming a Catholic, you can go to the Catholic Church and you go through weekly classes of tuition and studying of the Bible and learning about Catholicism, the mass confession, and all those kinds of things they go hand in hand with the Catholic Church. And he says, well, we're in the last leg of this last session.

We've got three more weeks to go. You're welcome to sit in, but you've got to take six more months afterwards. I said, I'm not doing that. I said, I want to become a Catholic now. He says, well, just come and take these three weeks with us, and we'll talk about it later. those last three weeks one week was spent studying all the vestments and and the items that you would find in the sanctuary and the vestments that the priests would wear and so forth and the last evening he said okay I want to get an idea of how much this class has learned as a class

so I'm going to give you an exam and he says you can sit with one another and and I knew nobody there I sat by myself and I took this exam and I answered the questions. And he was picking up the papers and 76, 84, oh, very, very good and whatever. And he picked up mine and I had 96 and his eyes went huge. I said, I've been in a Catholic boarding school for eight years. He said, okay, you're in. And so I went through with that class and became a Catholic. From that point on, I practiced the faith and believed very strongly.

it. And then when I came here with my interest in genealogy and having known, thinking back to the day it was of the war, the fact that my father hadn't been home for nine months, that he couldn't have been my dad. I then started thinking, okay, where's my father? Where's my biological father? My kids knew I was interested in genealogy, so they got me the genealogy package and this goes back 16, 18 years ago. And I had two documents. I had my birth certificate, and I had my name alteration certificate.

So I was born William Bell Shaw-Murray in March of 43, and in August of 43, it was changed to Frederick Robert Murray. And that didn't even ring a bell, because I thought, well, okay, Frederick was my uncle, and Robert was my dad. the man that was raising me so I thought nothing further but when I came over here so I think more and more about it and then I started investigating and the issue of who my father was came to light when I I went down when Lee Atkinson was studying college in Davenport Iowa and my uncle was living there at

the time and I wanted to get his wife's side of the family so I went down there and I said you know Lionel I don't believe that Robert was my father they said oh yeah he was your dad Robert was your father he was adamant about it and unbeknownst to me unfortunately this gentleman was dying of brain cancer and and he actually wanted to move up with us in Lloydminster and I said like we we just can't do that anyhow he called me in July of the following year and he said you were right Fred he said you your dad wasn't your dad. Your father was a Dutch Jew. And he says, I think the name was Lipschitz.

He said, but give your cousin a call and she was in England. She'll know more about it. And I said, why would she know and I don't know? So I emailed it and I said, Diane, what's going on with this? I said, what's the name Lipschitz and what's this with my father being Jewish? She said no, the name car comes to mind, but she said, you shouldn't be doing these things by correspondence. You should be talking to individuals. Give your sister a call in London. She's the only one that's alive today.

Give her a call and chat with your sister, June, I think. Now, this is getting complicated now. You know, gone from my cousin to my sister. So I called her up in London. And I said, June, what's with us? She says, well, let me check with Yvonne. And Yvonne was the oldest of my three sisters, but she was two and a half year younger, and I'm thinking.

Now I'm really getting confused. She said, let me check with Yvonne first. So then she gets back to me, and she says, maybe you should speak to your aunt, to Vicky. Vicki was my aunt and she knew my father so I'm really confused because now I know that

everybody knows who I am and I don't know who I am so I call my aunt and she's this outgoing bubbly vivacious type of individual she's just passed recently and

we could sit and chat for half an hour on the phone if I phone my mother I would speak for five minutes and I'd be done. But it was just a difference in personalities. So we spoke for about 10 minutes and I finally said to her, I said, on Vicki, I said, does a name car mean anything to you? How do you know? Was the reaction. And I knew I'd hit the nail on the head right then. So I said, I'll never tell you, meaning I would never tell her while she was alive or while my uncle was alive. And I had really thought about the fact that he was Dutch.

So Carr wouldn't be C-A-R, which is what it would be here. It would have been K-A-R-K-R. And then she told me the story. She told me that your dad was, you would pronounce it Vand-A-R. We would pronounce it Fand-a-Kar. And that my mother had had an affair when her husband was up north in the war.

Had met this man and he was a great dance, and my mother used to love to dance. She went out with them, and of course, this is what happened. But my mother still didn't know. I was onto this, but I knew my aunt would contact her because they were in contact all the time

from England to South Africa. And my mother was in the home at the time. Following morning, about 6.30, the phone rings. Oh, hi, Mom, how are you? And I could tell right now by a tone of voice that there was something going, on. I said that you don't sound too good. She says, no. I said, why? She said, you know. I said, no. You tell me why. And I insisted, and she finally broke down and told me what had happened. Then she

wrote me a long letter, a 16-page letter, and everything else. And I've kept all those records, just because it's genealogy. And she admitted to her having an affair. And I heard two versions of the story and I finally found out the correct one. The first one I heard from her was that when my when her husband came back from the war I was there but my sister this one who's still alive June went into the archives in Cape Town and found records quite personal where my mother actually sued her husband for divorce and all this kind of thing and and But the fact was that he'd come back on furlough from the war for a few weeks or a month, and he noticed that she was pregnant.

It must have been pretty difficult for him to then go back to the war, knowing that his wife's had an affair, and he's going to come back to somebody else's kid. Anyhow, when he came back, he gave her two options. He says, you either give him up for adoption, or you change his names. So they changed, my mother would never give me up for adoption, so she changed my name to Frederick Roberts, so that's where it ended up. And now I knew the name, Van de Karr.

And so this was, let me see, 2008, we went back five years before that. I found out, so 2003, just before that, I got an inclination of what was going on. So I contacted my sister, who was now dead, married to the medical doctor. And I said, Yvonne, I want you to look up in the Cape Town telephone directory for the name Van de Karr. Unfortunately, his wife was alive. He had passed in 1995, so there was no way I would ever meet him again.

Got his wife number, and finally, after about four months, I plucked up enough courage to phone her. And I said, look, this is who I am. I apologize for the shock that this might be to you, but I have some questions. And then we spoke for about 20 minutes, and the only positive response I got from her was, yes, we are of the Jewish faith. She said, but give me some time to think about your questions and I'll get back to you. Well, I waited a month. Now I'm anxious to find out what's going on.

So I wrote to her and I got a letter back from a lawyer, eight and a half by 14, typical legal document. And I went to Wally Moskull. I think you know Wadi, the lawyer, we're good friends. And I showed her to him. And he says, that guy must have taken all day to write that letter because he hasn't missed crossing a T or dotting an eye. And I responded to the letter.

And I believe, I have a fairly good grasp of writing and responding to remarks. I might not be able to think quickly, but I can certainly sit down and come up with answers. And I took this letter and sentence for sentence, paragraph by paragraph, I refuted all the statements. And one of the statements was the family has told me to stay the F out of our lives, because you're claiming to be the illegitimate son of Mr. van der Karr, and you're now residing in Canada. In other words, what am I doing?

And I think I never did pose a question to them when I met them, but I think they were thinking I was coming after my inheritance. I didn't need it. So I refuted all those things, and I remembered my aunt had said to me when I spoke to me, you look just like your dad. So after I typed up this letter on the computer, I went into my photographs,

and I took a photographer when I was 8, when I was 12, when I was 43, and 57, I think it was. Just put them on plain white bond, stuck it in with a letter. Just like that, it was like by return of mail, full of apologies. You have to forgive this boisterous, litigation lawyer and he apologized for everything and it ended up being my nephew, my sisters, my half-sister's son. And so then I made plans to go back in 2008. And so obviously I was going

to go to Cape Town. I was doing Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, East London where we had family. and I also had family in Cape Town so I had made plans to see her and I said well send me a picture of you because I don't have a picture she says no I know what you look like and so I arrived at the airport in Cape Town and I'm looking around the airport is

getting kind of quiet and I'm looking over and here's a short little girl and she's looking at me and I said Isette and she came running over and she just grabbed me and the tears just flowed and she just hugged They had an idea for years that there was another brother out there. And I think the reason why it was so emotional is that her father, my father,

when he was married, their first child was a boy, that they lost three months from meningitis. So I suppose the mother always resented the fact that her husband had a living son and she didn't. And so she forbade her kids from seeing me, but this one daughter said, I want to see my brother. So we got together, and we had a good reunion, and we sat down, and I did my genealogy with them.

And it was kind of humorous. I'm still wearing the same glass. Well, no, these are different glasses now. But I was wearing a pair of glasses and my chain that I wear here. And I was typing on the computer, and the one kid said the other, the sisters, my niece said to my nephew, he's got dad, look at his hands. He said, look at the chain. Look at the glasses and everything was, you could sit, you knew there was a genetic link.

He was a past president of Rotary. I'm a past president of Rotary. He had a massive stamp collection for which he'd come over to the States on a couple of occasions. I still have a collection but I don't do anything with it anymore. All these things were so similar.

The facial features, I can show you a picture of my dad right now and I looked just like him. So it was kind of interesting. And then from there, we became quite attached. Mostly via Facebook, I kept track of them and their families and the birthdays.

and the bombets, and the Jewish holidays and so forth. So that was very interesting. So it's been kind of an interesting life from childhood until I came to the States and then going through college in Davenport, Iowa, and going to college full-time and working full-time.

I started off to make, a living I was working for Firestone retreading tires until my hands were so raw I couldn't I couldn't turn the crank anymore because there was nothing it was just a solid piece of metal that you had a crank to to re-tread the tires and I got this job at the John dealership Don Joe dealership is actually their main main head office in East Merlin and I worked there as a janitor for three years so I've got been through a number of different occupations, professions, which has been kind of interesting.

That was a, that's something of movies made off of almost. Just the fact that you're in your 60s and you still, you've got an inkling, but nobody will tell you about your father. That is, I'm sure that had to have been an interesting couple of years for you. Maybe interesting isn't the right. word. I'm not sure what the right word would be. It was disappointing that I'd never had an opportunity to meet him because four years before I left South Africa, which would have been 1964, all my family, all my

family, brothers, sisters, my brother, sisters, uncles, aunts, their spouses, they all knew I was a half-brother, but I wasn't a full-load relative. No one told me. My mother had put the fear of God into them. They said, don't ever tell Freddie. Still, you think a lifetime, they would have... So obviously, in your mother's eyes, she was saving you some sort of pain or something. Yes, yeah.

She didn't want to lose me. She thought I might feel bad about it. It goes on every day. It's not just our society's been going for... generations, you know. Thousands of years. You've never stopped that, you never will. You know, it would never have changed my love for her or my family.

I was very disappointed afterwards, finding out that they had withheld that from me because I would love to have met my father. But right now, it's in the past. I can live with it. I have no, I have regrets, but they, they, They don't affect me adversely.

I get on with life and it's enough. My mother's gone now, my father's gone, and two of my half-sisters and my brother on my mother's side are gone, and my brother on my father's side is gone, and the one other half-sister won't ever meet me, so I had two half-sisters left out of eight kids. but I have a very, very strong attraction still to the existing half-sisters, although obviously the one I grew up with is a much stronger attack.

It has to be, yeah. And we've met, I've met her in England, and I've been back three times now, 2008, 2011, 2014. But yeah, it's been an interesting, I've had an interesting kind of a life, upbringing and uh yes you've had an interesting ride i haven't asked yet about

Lorraine your wife now if I rewind this conversation back is the is your wife the guy daughter that gives you or is that not a part of it there's a chiropractor that makes you go out with his daughter no no no

that had nothing to do with that thank goodness no thank goodness no I will show you a picture of my wife and she is gorgeous. She is a beautiful lady. Okay. I have it right here with me. How did you meet your wife?

I went to dancing school. I danced competitively. You dance competitively. And I go-kart raced as well. And when I came to Lloyd, I taught dancing for Lakeland College. Really? Yes. for one year.

What type of dance we talk? Rumba Samba Jive, Chacha, Fox Struct, Quick Step, all the ballroom dancing. I was never into the Western style of dancing. I don't enjoy it. I like to... You like being close.

I like being close. Yeah? I like to be able to lead. You can't lead if you're five feet apart. I like to be able to... Yeah. So, yeah. I danced for...

quite a number of years and we go and there were some weekends where I would go-card raised and a fellow that I lived with for a number of years he was divorced he was an Englishman and he divorced his wife and she went back to England I lived with him for a few years and that's when I met my wife we took dancing lessons at the the Murray School of Dancing, wasn't MacMurray, which was Murray, School of Dancing. And he and I owned a go-kart together, and we would choose which races we wanted to participate in. When you say go-kart, do you mean a go-kart or like a car? Go-kart.

Like a go-kart? Yeah, yeah. At 70 miles an hour, yes. Okay. Carry on. So we would race for three or four hours, like from one to five in an afternoon. And at that time, we were living in a city called Port Elizabeth. Making money on a gold car? No, no, no.

Spending money. Just enjoying having a hell of a blast. Okay. And we'd go home and shave and shower and shampoo and everything else. Get in a car and drive two hours to East London and participate in a ballroom competition for four hours. Great life. One lot of prizes.

I mean, in those days they gave you little cups. like that. But who cares? It was just the fun of being active in different sports. I liked to fish, but didn't do very much of it. No, it was a good life. It was a hard life because of boarding school. Boarding school was tough.

The food wasn't good. Very, very strict. And in spite of that, I converted. but growing up and working as electrician and getting into other things like this go-car driving and racing and dancing found very, very interesting. And then working for Ford Motor Company,

all of a sudden I got this inkling or this desire to change occupations or professions and never look back, never look back. Just the one thing I, no reflection on Lloyd but I always made myself a promise I would never live away from the ocean or in a small town

and I ended up in Lloyd's Lowe and the big whoops and I really big whoops and I really had to apologize for you and never really sat down with my wife and discussed the move I just said look you know we're going to Canada I didn't know where the heck Lloyd missed

Back in those 50 years ago, you could look at an old map of Lloydminster, and the border would go right through, and another map would look like Lloydminster was a little bit more on the Saskatchewan side or a little bit more, so I didn't know. And the population was under 8,000 then. And if I remember correctly, I may be wrong, but I think the only lights was at 16 and 17. And the city limits was at 59th Avenue, and there was nothing south of the highway except Ray Nelson's. home where French a village is now and we moved into what

was then called the colonist apartments which is across from the hotel there days in. There were two long apartment buildings. They pulled the one down which became Midwest distributors and finally

Harley Davidson and we lived in the one. We lived in the one for about three months and then we were we moved into an apartment where the high school was, there's a road that runs north, and on the west side there's a row of white apartments, which is now, I think, they converted them to condos.

Wally Moskill lived in there, there was a vet who lived in there. Anyhow, we moved in there for a couple of years, and then we bought a home on 58th Avenue. It was the last home built in that area. 58th Avenue before the rapese plant was even built. And we were there for six years. My best investment ever. What did you guys think? You and your wife, she's pregnant.

You're coming up to the Great White North to Lloydminster. I'm sure there's a little bit of excitement there. But, I mean, what did you think of Hoffman and Lloyd Minster back then? What I think of Lloyd Minister back then? Or just the entire journey to Lloyd and Lloyd. Well, that was an interesting one, and I regret to this day that I don't have the piece, the letter. A few months before I graduated,

there were a number of Canadians who were obviously coming back to Canada. One of them used to be a radio announcer in Edmonton, the name of Lloyd Banks. and he had started chiropractic a year before I did and then dropped out and when he came back I was in my second year and he came back into the second year he and a number of other students were taking the Canadian boards in Toronto at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College and I had prepared from a final exam because we were into the final exam at the time,

ready to graduate. They said, I'm coming up and take the exam with me. So I went up and I failed by a chem. So obviously I couldn't get my license here. And then I realized that I wasn't going to go back home. I wanted to go to Washington State. But there was an opportunity with Dr. Berg at this clinic because he was looking for somebody,

so I thought, well, what I should do then is take the remake in Vancouver. So the process was I wrote to Ottawa and thank God I got hold of a bureaucrat who was kind enough to

follow the law but at the same time post-script in his own handwriting and he basically said to me because I'm an illegal alien because my passport had expired and I was still in the States

and my passport expired the day I graduated which was June 19th and my wife's visa which was a student a visitor's visa tied to my student visa they both expired so when I applied to immigrate to the states, I was illegal.

So they gave me three months to immigrate, get the heck out of there, or be deported. So I wrote to Ottawa, and this bureaucrat wrote back to me, and he said, because you're there illegally, it's going to take nine months for you to be able to immigrate the states. But if you go back to South Africa, you can get back here in three months. Well, I wasn't going to go back to Southwick. I didn't have the money anyhow.

And I couldn't be in the States because they would deport me. But at the bottom, after his official signature, he said, call me at this number in his own handwriting. So I called him and he said, if you can make it to a Canadian embassy. And he would say nothing more. I said, do you mean if I go to a Canadian? He said, if you can make it to a Canadian embassy. So I contacted the Canadian Embassy in Chicago

and I said, what do I need to get into Canada as a visitor? They said, you need to have sufficient funds to last the duration that you're going to be here there. You have to have a reason for being there and you have to have proof that you're leaving. So I phoned, I contacted Dr. Burb

because I knew he was looking for an associate because that was the only clinic in Lloyd. And I said, look, this is the predicament. So he went to what you probably don't know Roy Jones. You may remember Roy Jones. Jerry Doheim took over from him, the travel agency, across from what used to be the old service credit union on 50th Street, just down from that furniture place now.

There was a little place in there. And Orvalberg had gone there, and he said, I won two-way tickets from Montreal to Johannesburg. And he sent those down to me. And I had evidence that I needed to do a remake in Vancouver on a certain date. And I had enough funds to last me that period of time. So within 10 days, I was in, I was here. I came up with my big boxes of big cardboard boxes of clothing and stuff.

And then he picked me up in Edmonton on August the 7th and drove me to Lloyd and we're going through this windy gravel road through all these little towns of Minburn and Manville and Vigerville and it's all unpaved and I think, oh, where are we going? And we land up here and I'm looking around. This is Lloydminster. This is where I'm going to be living.

But, you know, I moved in and being the only clinic in town, we were so busy here. I had no time to think about what Lloyd Minster was and what my thoughts were. were. And that's the way it stayed, and I watched the city grow from the way I've just described it to where it is now, and I live down the south end by the Salvation Army Church now. And there was nothing down there, nothing at all. Do you ever think what would have happened? Or maybe you had a plan, I don't know, you're sitting in the United States. You got three months

to either become a citizen when it ain't going to happen. Get the heck out. You gave me a third option, I forget it. Or be deported. So what happens if he doesn't write on the bottom call me here? Like, have you ran that play by, like what you would have done? Yeah, I would have been obligated to go home. Now, the only thing that may have kept me there was the fact that my wife was seven and a half months pregnant. Why didn't you want to go home?

Because the apartheid system. and plus the fact that they had denied my degree although by then it was legal but no it wasn't legal at that time but I could still go back and practice under the grandfather closed and I said no I'm not going back to that kind of situation you'd never met the guy from lawy who buys you the tickets

no didn't know him from a hold in the wall man that's a lot think about that a guy from Ottawa writes his number on the bottom of a sheet says, call me. Then a guy you've never met buys you two tickets back home.

Which he turned in later. Once I got back here, you turned, yeah. But still. It just, that's very interesting. That's why I regret that. I still don't have that letter

because that would be a very, very valuable letter to me, for me to look back on, although I remember it very vividly. And in a sense, I'm probably glad that it happened that way. I would hate to be living south right now. I think it's just a mess there. Although it's a beautiful country, I think the state is a beautiful country.

And I would have loved to have gone to Washington State. That was my plan to go to Washington State. And I had the requirements. Down in the States, you get your degree. You take state boards. Here you take provincial boards. Down there you take the state boards, but you also have to take what's called a basic science exam,

and it's comprised of the six basic sciences, anatomy, physiology, hygiene, bacteriology, pathology, and biochemistry. And you're given four attempts in one calendar year to get all six. And if you get all six, you're qualified to practice in 39 of the 50 states. I was in, I was halfway through my course. I was just going into my junior year, and I passed the basic science exam already. So I was just waiting for my piece of paper that says,

Doctor of Chiropractic, and I could have gone into practice anywhere in any one of those 39 states. But I would still have to take the state board, which was just a practical. Anyhow, I came up here and I, for the next two months, what I would do in the clinic was because I couldn't practice, but I could read the x-rays, I could analyze the x-rays, I could do case histories and stuff like that. I couldn't come up with a diagnosis and I couldn't treat, got through the exam and

went into practice. And from that point on, we were so busy that, I had no time to think about Lloyd Munster as a little, little Hicktown. Because, you know, I'd get up in the morning and go to the office, and I'll be busy until... And the numbers of people we were seeing would blow your mind, and you would say, well, there's no way you can treat that many people in a day. And we were, and it was every day, every day, every day, every day. Plus, I became so involved.

I'm a past president of Rotary, of K-40s. I'm a past telemarical chairman through the kinsman. I was on the exhibition parade, fundraising chairman, and the Alberta Winter Games in 82 with Vic Juba, did all the fundraising for that. So I didn't have the time to think about where I was living or how much I, in a sense, disliked where I was living because I'm in this one whole town away from the ocean.

It was only after I retired, I didn't retire, after I sold my practice to Dr. Atkinson in 97, and my practice cut back a little, and he brought Dr. McCackland in, and then my numbers dropped, which was no problem. I didn't have the need to see those numbers of people. I had no desire. It was only then that I started to think,

oh, now the winter coming up. I didn't even notice the windows back then, because I was too busy. But then, of course, later on, I'm now older. You feel the cold more. And I'm not as busy, so you've got more time to dwell on, you know, the minus 50 with the wind howling and the snow is six feet deep. Can I ask one more question here before I let you get out of here?

Yeah. I'm really curious. You talk about how busy you were and that you didn't have time to think. And yet, that isn't just your work. you mentioned you're the president of like four different organizations. You're on the board for the summer games. You're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You just list off all these volunteer positions that you took to.

Was that something that you always wanted to do? That something Lloyd changed you into doing that you did back in South Africa? Was that always, what was that? That was something that arose out of necessity. when you come into a new community the only way people get to know you is when you become involved

so I was invited to join Lions but I opted to join Kinsman and from there just went on I was deputy governor and I became telemarical chairman the second year after

telemyrical I was on the board the first year that it was actually produced And after that it was just something that I enjoyed doing volunteer work. Right now I've learned to pronounce NO. I won't take on any more volunteer work. It's time for the young people to do it. And we honestly felt Vectuba and the board that ran the winter games was

we had hundreds of chairman for different. reasons for different committees. We figured we had the well enough training that they would get involved in the community and run other things and it just didn't seem to happen. The main reason being that things started to go downhill afterwards economically. In my day, when I first started here,

you didn't have to battle for living. You didn't have husband and wife both full-time jobs. Today, people are struggling. They haven't got time to volunteer and give, they're too busy trying to make a buck to live. But the volunteer aspect of it was always enjoyable. I met a large number of very good friends, still very good friends with Vig Juba,

a number of people that were on the board at the time. Appreciate it the recognition by virtue of the fact that my practice grew well and the recognition that you get by being involved the city recognizes you and the kinsman club and the rotary clubs and so forth so it's it's it's very interesting that makes a lot of sense that you got a network

and that by being involved in those you meet the community You know, you say that people today don't have the time. And I don't know about that. I think people tell themselves they don't have the time. Well, but be honest with yourself. And look at that comment you just made. When you are preoccupied making a living to support your family, you don't have the time to volunteer for some of these things.

That extra time is the time that you could spend. making some money. But the other thing is, a lot of families today have too many toys too. So they have to work to pay for the toys. Although they're selling them now because they can't afford to own them anymore. But back in my day, you were able to volunteer

and it was fun to volunteer and you had the time. And my motto back then when I was in Kinzen, Tuesday nights, nobody asked me for a report. Even my accountant never said, can we meet on Tuesday night? Because Tuesdays, that was my night out with the guys to go out and have a meal, have a beer, play some Liars Dice or Mummy Peg, and then go home. And that was my break once a week. But the kids a day can't do that.

Why? Because a lot of them have too many toys, a lot of them don't have jobs. Well, right now a lot of them don't have jobs. But rewind the clock a year. Everybody's got jobs I think they can I think they They tell themselves fantasies on why they can't

And I think there's too many options out there now To flick on the game To travel to Mexico to do whatever I don't have enough time I listen to you talk about how busy you were And how many patients you were seeing every single day And yet you're still found a way To do all that extra

Well, you know the saying You give a busy man a job to do I don't know I... Okay It gets done Because you've only got so many hours So if you've got a job to do

You make sure you get it done now You don't leave it until tomorrow Because by tomorrow there's two more things to do So The thing The common thread And This is why I enjoy the groups

That I volunteer with Is it's fun And we have a good group of people That you want to go hang out with and enjoy it. And what I find to be a common threat above, with all of these that I do, and with a lot of the archive interviews

sent around people who are good volunteers for the community. Now, there's some other things that come into it too, but a lot of them are good volunteers. And what you all say is that you enjoyed it and you enjoyed the people you did it with. And I think to get people out volunteering, it's no different than anything. If you enjoy it, you'll find.

time for it. Yeah. And if you get the right people around where you show up and it's a fun time, it's a social outing. But you know, if wakeboarding or surfboarding on Loon Lake is more enjoyable than volunteering, you're going to go wake surfing or wakeboarding. Yeah, I get the, I get the argument. I do. You're saying now there's maybe once again go back to it, options. There's a lot of options to take your time away to go do this, that, or the other thing. I just, I think we have an easy cop out right now of, uh, we had. There was a lot of money. There was a lot of money in this town, which meant it used to be, and I don't, you know, maybe I'm speaking on something I don't know fully, but it used to be, it feels like

that, uh, if you wanted to save a buck, you volunteered and that way you could save some money for the organization that parents didn't have to pay or community didn't have to pay or whatever. And then when the money came, go, well, listen, can I just pay a hundred bucks and we make this go away? Well, if everybody pays 100 bucks, that's a lot of money and that covers whatever.

Yeah, sure, that makes sense. Okay, and boom, and now, but as the money dries up and you want things cheaper, what do you have to do? You have to volunteer. You have to find ways. And how do you enjoy volunteering?

You do it with people, you enjoy being around them. You find, oh, pretty quick, the people that volunteer, there's some pretty interesting individuals there. and you actually enjoy it and pretty soon Tuesday night or

I don't know we got an event coming up in a month and it's one it's gonna be busy but man it's a lot of fun and there's enjoyment that comes out of that and you sit around with people you enjoy being around with

and you're all pulling the same way and that is enjoyable and I just there's a ton of people that do it but there's a lot of people that go I don't got time and it's such an easy cop out that sucks no there's a lot

one of the groups that through Kinsman I got to know the city commissioner of Blair Brosefield. He was like an uncle and aunt to my kids. Alec Robinson, who was a lawyer. We were involved in kinsmen. May long weekend, we had our trailers hitched up to our cars, and we were up to little fishing lake,

and we grabbed the first campsites. And that was tradition. And we went up every weekend, and we volunteered during the week because we were still in kinsmen. and Alec was on the Telemirical Foundation board with me. He was my treasurer.

And that's how you develop your friendships by volunteering and then you socialize as well. And that was, it was good. I just bring it up because it is,

you know, this is, I don't know what you are now. Number 17 of these I think I've done. But I've done Vig Chuba before. I've done other ones that weren't called the archives that are your generation essentially and I love hearing how much he has volunteered and that that's the no word is a is for people like yourself that volunteered a lot of their time it's a good word to use because when you know somebody will do anything right especially if it's

got volunteer and it'll help the community man you can get a person to do an awful lot it's hard it's hard to say no yeah big juby didn't say no often enough but then he didn't have a family and that was his life. And I've known Vic and Anne very well for 35, well, since the early 80s. Yeah. So, yeah, Vic was a great man, great volunteer, Mr. Volunteer. Well, I appreciate you coming in, Fred. I appreciate this is, this has been enjoying. Yeah, very enjoyable. Yeah, it's been fun getting to know you and, you know, just hear your journey here and some of your thoughts and pick your brain. It's really enjoyed this. Not much to pick there, though. I don't know. I think there's been quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed it.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. You're most welcome. Hey, folks, thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time. Hey, Keeners. I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

That was a lot. That's a guy who has seen a lot of the world and really appreciate Fred, you know, open up. And the archive episodes are so much fun. Like, I mean, you're getting to hear about a person's life and where they've been and the things they've seen. and from a guy coming and immigrating, you know, from a country that had an apartheid to here and everything in between. Just super, super interesting story and so happy I got to sit down with them. Now, I got to give a shout out to Christina Kohler. I hope I'm saying that right.

She said, hey, Sean, I recently started listening to your podcast. I'm really enjoying it in the way you have meaningful conversations with your guests. I don't listen to too many podcasts, but yours is worth the time. Keep up to great work. So thanks, Christina. I hope you continue to listen. And to all of you who are still sitting here listening to me after the episode is done, have a great week.

And we'll catch up to you Monday. If you're the champ, he's probably out on the golf link somewhere. Who am I kidding? Like he's sitting here, he's probably giggling to himself and cracking a bud light. Well, crack a bud light for me, champ, all right? We'll catch up to you guys Monday.