The Long Road To Wisdom-One Story

When you collect your thoughts on some of the experiences throughout your time here, you wonder which of these experiences gave you wisdom, and which of these were meant to repeat over and over until you realized it wasn't right for you, regardless it was an experience that lead to a path of wisdom.

Today, I will share a story of my experience as a young entrepreneur in our community of Christian Island, now known as Beausoleil First Nation. There were probably more lessons than I can remember, but it was a great experience growing up in our community. Now that I am in my 60's (old fellar), I don't mind sharing these stories and think about what lessons can be extracted, or not.

My earliest experience as an entrepreneur happened when I was around ten years old, growing up in the small community of Christian Island, there were not many opportunities to make money. Hockey Pools were pretty exciting, this gave the participants a chance to win 10 bucks if they picked the right ticket for twenty-five cents.

It was my dear mother who got me going in selling these popular games of chance, she would make the tickets for me and send me out in the community to sell them before a hockey game started, she paid me twenty-five cents, sometimes fifty cents. I didn't mind at all going out 2 to 3 times a week selling door to door and sometimes it took about 3 hours to sell the whole lot.

Our profit from this was a whole $6.00, but it meant buying a few more groceries, this is when bread was still around .25 cents a loaf. I didn't like it at first, but then I started to enjoy it because I started to get to know everyone in the community and they didn't mind buying tickets, most of them looked forward to it and always had a few dollars around to buy the tickets before the game.

This was my first experience at learning how to develop relationships and learning about people and accepting them for who they were, even the ones that yelled at me when they didn't win. One of my customers always told me "If I don't win this time, don't come back here again, you little shit!" He would always laugh after saying that to me every week, and I would always be back at his house again in a few days before the next big game.

There were many lessons in this early experience, but the best lesson was learning about people and their habits, I've entered many homes and I still remember the aroma of home cooking, home baked bread, the regular soup days of some families. I always remember the smell of Chicken and Slider soup at one home on Tuesday nights.

The weekends were a different story, during the week, it was about survival and feeding the families properly, on the week-ends, it was about fun and partying times. The dynamics really changed on the week-ends, many of my regular customers were still up drinking and partying on Saturday mornings and afternoons and some would continue on until Sunday night. During the play-offs in the spring, there was a lot of activity and excitement about the upcoming games, especially if the the Montreal Canadians and Toronto Maple Leafs were in the finals, sometimes I sold twice as many tickets and people were feeling lucky!

One weekend, an important game was coming up and my mother wasn't home to make the tickets for the weekend, I knew it was important and I had to get out there and sell. It was my reputation on the line, and there were many more ticket sellers in the community, it was starting to get competitive, all my cousins were in on this little racket too.

One of my cousins, Johnny had already been making his own Hockey Pools showed me the pattern and how to make the tickets. Most times we would use the back of a cereal box to draw out the tickets in 1" squares and whatever empty card-board box was available. One time I had to use the back of a Kotex Box, that was embarrassing, but it made people laugh and it didn't stop them from buying the tickets.

My younger sisters and brother helped me prepare the tickets and tape them together and eventually I had cut my mom out the business. I thought my mom would be mad at me for cutting her out of the business, but she just laughed, and I realized that she was just doing her part to make me more independent and making my own money.

It wasn't a lot of money, but if I sold three sets of hockey pools on the weekend, I would make $18.00, that was a lot money for me. I started saving money and storing it in jars in my room. I didn't really know much about saving and what I was going to do with the money, but, I had these jars of money laying around and my sister came up with the idea that we would use the money to buy everyone in the family a Christmas gift, so that's what we done.

I spent about five years doing this little gig, I always had my own money and there were many lessons that I learnt along the way about getting up and doing something, taking action, having people behind you, developing a mind-set of getting it done at all cost, even walking through cold-winter days and evenings. There were times when I was chased by dogs and had to run home to make more Hockey Pools, but when you develop a reputation and your customers expect you to be there, there is no stopping you.

The biggest lesson, when I think back is the value you place on people and your community. I know that our community wanted more than what we had at the time, most homes didn't have running water and they still had out-door toilets. As a young person, I only seen people for a few minutes at a time, I didn't know their real challenges and problems, I only seen the surface and their smiles when I entered their homes, I didn't know what happened after I closed that door behind me.

I know that people respect and trust you when they see you doing something, and this respect is earned, not just given. As I think back on each and every home that I've entered, the characters and the families, most of the parents of those homes have since passed on, but the children who are now adults like myself have grown in many ways.

Our community has come a long way since those times in the early 70's, and we still have a long way to go. I am hoping that I can leave behind a better community and some inspiration to those who are willing to get up and do something, it doesn't happen on it's own, you make it happen.

Until next time..I hope you enjoyed this little story, and I hope that you can identify the additional lessons that could be learned just from a little experience like this and share it in your comments.

Thank-you

Guy Monague