Retirement? Preferring to wear out, not just rust out, I prefer to call it re-directment. Do you remember the slogan "FREEDOM FIFTY-FIVE"? It was used by an insurance company to sell us insurance.  But how realistic is such an idea?

In my father's day--he died, at 64, in 1944. I was 14. Only the really rich could afford to even think of retiring. Most people's idea of retirement was having children who would be willing  to look after them when they could no longer do so for themselves. This was the kind of retirement my father had. Never the less, I am proud to say that he died without debt and in the house he helped to build.

Though father  had very little formal education, he could read and write. He spent his life as a fisherman, a carpenter--once worked in the American navy yards, in Boston, Mass.--and a miner. He had five sons and three daughters. I was number seven of eight. My younger sister and I are the only ones left.

FROM 1930 TO 1938 THE KINGS LIVED NEAR THE OLD NUMBER ONE MINE

What a sad time it was when our oldest oldest siblings-- a brother and a sister died in the prime of life. Our oldest brother was newly married and a daughter just a little younger that I. This made me a very young uncle. My oldest sister not only lost her own life but the lives of her husband and two baby daughters. This all happened when we struggled to live together in Old Number One. TB was rampant in Newfoundland in the 1930's.

Not long after that, our mother died. She was only 50. Again it was TB. Our father must have suffered dreadfully. Perhaps this was one of the reasons I never saw him in church. Not long after that--and after losing an eye, father became incapable of holding down a full-time job. We then lived on the northwest end of Bell Island in a grey-shingled shack-like semi we rented from DOSCO--an iron-ore mining company. The drab, and out-of-the-way, place was called Old Number One. It was called this because it was near the first mine--a surface-mine--of the company.

But, despite the stress he must have had in his life, as head of the family,he inspired us to think about eventually buying land and building our own home perhaps in a better place. We--Bill, Rec, Ern (I was a little young to work in the mines and Elvia was just about ready to get married) all agreed, that despite the shortage of ready cash, to pool what cash we could make. We scraped and saved what we could and purchases a double-sized lot for $500.00 from a Mr. Gilliat--an executive with the mines. The land was on what we called Court-House hill, The Front--facing St. Phillips, which was on the mainland, not far from St. John's.

To get the job done tt took about three years. In the summer of 1938--I was 8 and helped (I was good at sawing wood and driving nails) in any way I could--proudly, we moved into our new home in one of the prime areas of Bell Island. As I said, it was called The Front. It was near the Bell Island beach and the Dominion pier. There the ore boats were loaded. From the pier at the beach the Maneco, a six-car ferry, went from the beach, it was 20 minutes (three miles) to Portugal cove. From there it was nine miles to St. John's.

Our move to The Front was a wonderful one. I made many new and interesting friends--Cec's father was captain of the Maneco. It was also wonderful in that our house  was within walking distance from the United Church and its four-room school. I started to go to church and to school, regularly--most enjoyable. 

NO FREE MEDICINE AND HOSPITAL CARE IN THOSE DAYS

Never really well again after he lost his eye, two of his children and mother, my father's health, as I recall, began to go down hill. I think he had had silicosis (miner's lung, which became cancer) for some time--beginning in 1940. Eventually, his suffering increased and he appeared to be in constant pain.  All the company doctor told us he could do was prescribe morphine pills--the only medical care available for poor people with costly serious and costly kinds of diseases like cancer. With little or no other care, except from the family, one afternoon, in the fall of 1944--the war in Europe still raging--he died alone in his room in the house that he had helped us build. BTW, I suspect that that afternoon, father decided to end his pain, and the pain we all felt in seeing him suffer so, by taking all the morphine he had left. No pills were found in the bottle beside his bed. One of the facts of life then was that lack of affordable medical and hospital care took the lives of many people.

I loved the church, the school, my new friends and the opportunity to be an avid Boy Scout. As if it was part of what some call "an eternal plan, the Scout troop was led by our minister, the Rev. Reg Rowsell, who came in 1942--a great human being. It was his because of his inspiration that I decided to see if I could qualify to become a minister of the United Church. With enough money--that is, a little over $500.00, which I earned picking rock out of iron ore--to cover the costs for one half year--in September, 1947, I boarded an ore carrier, the SS Wabana, and landed at North Sydney, Nova Scotia two days later. From there, by train I arrived in Sackville, New Brunswick the university town of Mount Allison university--the same school the Rev. Rowsell had attended.

Me and retirement? I lucked out, again. It just so happened that I when I became a student minister (1947--1953) it was at the very time that the governing body of the United Church--the General Council--finally came to the conclusion--one similar to that already reached by teachers in certain areas--that, no matter how hard we pray: The Lord will not provide pension benefits. We have to be wise enough to raise the issue and work to get the system in place, for ourselves. When we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Later, all ordinands, as a requisite for ordination, were required to belong to, and pay into, the pension plan. Churches which called ordinands to serve them we also required to pay into the system. Of course, I am thankful for this system

In my opinion, the success of this system, prompts me to ask all kinds of questions. Here are just a few of them:

1. What about people, in general?

2. Is there a way of having a Canada pension plan better than the one we now have?

3. Could it be that a complementary community currency (CCC) system could be one way of improving the present system? Check out www.torontodollar.com and the work of Thomas H. Greco.

What are your questions, and suggestions?