... and I don't think that- I don't think leaving Belleville makes much sense. It's a beautiful city, it's- it's well located, as far as being in-between major centres. You're talking Toronto, or Ottawa or Montreal even. You-know, if you need to go into The-States, it's fairly close to The-States. And it's ah- it's growing up on its own rite with ah- you-know, we've just got a theatre downtown called the Empire-Theatre, and it affords a lot of cultural opportunities for- for those that live in Belleville ...

Interviewer: You can climb on the statue and sit on Lester-Pearson's lap if you want to. I had- like tons of kids who did that, like they loved sitting on Lester-B-Pearson's lap. But you can't- you can't do that in The-States, that's like- Speaker: The-States is so weird someti-- it's so- yeah. Interviewer 1: (inc), it really is. Speaker: To be fair, I think that like The-States has- has had a bit more security issues than Canada. ... I'm pretty sure we haven't had like a leader of our- of the country assassinated in such a weird way as Kennedy was.

Interviewer: You should find out where he- where he roams and sort (inc) yourself. Speaker: But he does everything, he'll show up into like- I don't know of- about Canada but all different places all over the-States. Interviewer: Oh so he goes to different cities and-stuff, I-see.

But yeah mom and- um my- like our grandmother came actually from the States. She moved here when she was three or five or-

Yeah, so he's like owner, operator so he kind-of works. If he wants to take a month off, he takes a month off. He um, he works down in The-States so I-mean he isn't- he's not (inc) where he goes to do that and then my mom works- has just done factory work out of Lindsay.

And now she's back in Belleville, like we're all living together again, and um, I used to do a lot of traveling, like down to the States, but nothing so much inside of Canada more so Ontario.

Ah Mick's in- He was- he was born actually in Canada, but he lived in The-States because his father- brother James all went down to Los-Angeles, he was a contractor- I think he did a lot of the work in the- on the- in the ah- ah the airport down there, but Mick was Canadian he came up and joined the forces up here ...

We would bring in ah small appliances by the car-load, train-load from The-States. You-know Dormar-Food-Mixers and-all-that-kind-of-thing and swing away can-openers and- it was interesting, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do.

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.

Yeah, nothing really against its-- Florida itself, I just- I wouldn't want to live in the-States, like- I would probably- actually, no, I would move to Florida for a job, but I wouldn't just move there for like, "I'm gonna-" like, "oh, it's cool, I'll live there."

Actually, because of my time in Florida, I-think because I was living in the-States so close to when I went to South-Africa, a lot of them thought I was American. A lot of them did, until they actually like, compared me to an American, like when we had Americans right- like even Americans closer-- like from Michigan, like closer to Canada.