Oh Ian's today they're having a steak barbecue at the Bingo today. ... Yeah I was going to go but my daughter phoned asked me for- for ah supper so ah yeah. ... Yeah. But I mean you get a nice steak supper- ah steak and a baked potato and a bun and coleslaw, ten bucks. You can't beat that.

Like he hear-- he- he was- got- my dad was involved in clubs and-everything-else and ah his job and so- but he kept hearing my mother nagging about it all the time so finally at supper time one time he said to me, he said, ah "Son we seem to have a problem. Your mother doesn't agree with the times you're coming in."

Interviewer: Ah I've heard some people ah- have you ever gotten the itch? Speaker: The edge? Interviewer: The itch? Speaker: Oh the itch, ah probably. Interviewer: Yeah? Speaker: I probably have- yeah most definitely as a child. I don't sleep- I don't ah- I-don't-know why I said sleep- I don't- I don't swim in Lake-Nippissing, so well- no, I don't like how warm the water is (laughs). It- and I know it's just because it's shallow but it's like I just don't like the thought of like the sewage plant just being like just (makes sound) down there, not too far.

Ah, I really liked it. Other than Lake-Nippising kinda sucks because of the itch that it gets and the shadfly season, so…

It's got to be somewhat, because they ha-- were like- biologists of some sort were talking about somehow actually taking those snails out of this lake just to stop the itch but they realized that they had to leave them because it's part of the ecosystem or-whatever.

Mm. Oh gosh, the itch is just basically, if you- in Lake-Nippising specifically, if you play around in like the soil- n-- not the soil, the sand and the dirt and-everything um, these little organisms live in there and they'll bite you and they're these little bites that you get all over you and it's basically like getting um like chicken-pox or um, anything-like-that.

...so you just don't bother going swimming for like two weeks during shadfly-season and then the itch comes- you get like one week grace period and then the itch comes.

And of course the more you scratched it- the worse it got. So if you put the calamine lotion on it would take the itch away so you wouldn't scratch it. And leave it alone. But I- my- I don't even think my kids, my kids ever got it. I don't think Joe and Curtis ever got it.

Um maybe after I get back from New-York I'll have the itch to travel more but for right now just going to New-York. And I wo-- I paid for the trip by working over-time hours at the hospital so we've have a lot of computer switch-overs in the last couple of weeks and a lot of changes with the new hospital being built.

No, no I don't think so- no, but then on the other hand you- you-know you always manage to get the itch over here too, but that's- that- I mean that's curable, all you got to do is rub yourself down really well with a towel, which you can probably do with these fleas too. Ah but I know the M-N-R out there, they're taking um nets and they're dropping nets down and bringing them back up again to see how many of these little creatures that they can bring in.

I've noticed in the States though, when I go to the States a lot of people say- instead of saying "Where is it?" they're just like "Where is it at?" instead of like- why are you adding the "at" at the end? Where is it, where is it at?

My grandma lived here most of her life and then um, my stepmom grew up in North-Bay as well but she went to university in the States and ah, my step-dad was- I think he was born in North-Bay but moved to Toronto as a young adult or the other way around and then was- sort-of went away for university and-stuff but o-- like came back and ended up here so.

And he's written a couple books from prison about like against the death-penalty and ah one of his books is All-Things-Censored because he had been on- he was supposed to be on a radio-show called All-Things-Considered in the States but then they didn't let him- didn't let the show actually air. And it was supposed to be more like a left-wing show.

If I had have kept my union-dues up, I could have got back on somewhere else but I didn't bother. No, stuck around here most of my life. Pretty well all my life. That was the only time, you-know. Like I been out- I been in the States like Pennsylvania and different places. Ah I've gone out west several times. Went out to Fort-McMurray three different times, not working but visiting. So, the only place I haven't been is east-coast.

... like- like Canadians I think really have ah stigmatized the word "north" in a negative way I-think you-know. And ah having it as part of our city name I think has held us back you-know I-think- it's not like that in the States though. In the States when people hear "North-Bay" they picture something totally different, they think of like some sunny, pleasant vacation land or something-like-that you-know-what-I-mean? That's how they think of it, you-know yeah. ... Because there are places in the States that are called North-Bay. Interviewer: North-Bay California. Speaker: Yeah and they're all in warm places, there's one in Florida there's one in California (laughs) you-know-what-I-mean so people there "Oh North-Bay, oh yeah."

... I've talked a lot just being on different in-- internships and-stuff that I've been on- marine-biology internships. I been talking to a lot of people, whether it be from the-States, England, Australia, anywhere, and I was actually really happy with the level of education that I got.

Well, 'cause, I got sick after university, I ended up spending an entire year sick, but how it happened is I actually finished university, applied for an internship down in the-States to do sea-turtle rehab and rehabilitation. Got the internship, moved to the-States, got sick in the-States, had to move back to Canada and ha-- it took me a year to recuperate, so I lived with my parents during that time. Got better.

No, I was there ah, a day before I got sick. I got sick on the way down there. I actually ended up with like an intestinal infection. Um, we don't- I was di-- okay, in the-States I was diagnosed with Crohn's. When I was there, like I arrived and I was supposed to start my j-- like, the internship the next day ...

So I spent like, five days in the hospital in Florida. Got diagnosed with Crohn's, moved back to Canada and started an investigation of that- of the American- like what they did- like everything that they did down in the-States, the American health-care. 'Cause my doctor didn't believe that I had Crohn's, so I went to see specialist after specialist, test after test and it took like, mm, eleven months for them to discover that I don't actually have Crohn's ...

Um, so yeah, I went full-on into the internship. I stayed six months 'cause that was the longest I could stay in the-States before um, requiring a visa or- a work visa, a reason to be there. Um, this is unpaid internship. Um, worked like, sixty-hour weeks for six months.