Anne's 30-Year Computing Career (Parts A - F --> from 1985 to 2015) -- by Anne Shier

My 30-year Career in Computing from 1985-2015 -- by Anne Shier Part A In 1985, while living in Calgary, Alberta, I decided I had to make a badly-needed career change.  Up till then, I'd worked for a bank, done some supply teaching, even working as a temp in an elementary school full-time for awhile.  None of it was satisfying though, so I bit the bullet, so to speak, and enrolled myself into McKay Computer College in the summer of 1985 and took my very first microcomputer course. This course was actually made up of three components:  word processing, spreadsheets, and accounting software.  I had never done any of these things before; therefore, I thought I would experience a steep learning curve in doing these things for the very first time. Amazingly enough, I excelled at word processing despite being just an average typist, and at accounting software (manipulating numbers was nothing new to me!).  Spreadsheets, however, took a bit of practice, but I did manage to master this component by the end of the course.  I graduated 3 and half months later with 91% and my first college certificate.  That happened in October 1985.	Part B After that, it was relatively easy to land computer jobs, especially with a temp agency (Diversified Temporary Services).  I worked for Pan Canadian Petroleum, Sceptre Resources (another oil company), The Society of Certified Management Accountants, Billingsgate Fish Co. Ltd. and GSL Chev City. During the 1988 Olympics, I also worked for Ellis-Don Construction (in connection with television of the Olympic Games) and later at Matsushita Electric.  Every one of these jobs gave me a lot of valuable experience in both accounting and computers. I knew then that computing was the field of work I'd always been looking for. Eventually, however, my son (who was just 6 at the time) and I decided we had to move back to Toronto, which is where I was from.  My son had been born in Calgary during my all-too-brief marriage to his father.  When my husband and I finally broke up and divorced in March 1988 (during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary), I decided finally that it was time to make the move to Toronto. That was where my family was and my son did not know any of them yet. He needed an extended family and I needed my family for support during the aftermath of my divorce.  So, in early December 1990, we took the plunge and packed up our stuff, sold my car and furniture, put most of our personal stuff on a Greyhound bus as freight, and left Calgary for good.  It had been a good city to live in as a single person and for a time while I was living with my boyfriend (before I married him), but I was truly relieved to be leaving.
Part C We boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Toronto on December 9, 1990.  This was a regular Toronto-bound bus that traveled east a total of 3 days and stopped at 8 different locations over the 3-day period.  We could get off the bus at certain stops to eat and freshen up, but we had to sleep on the bus because there was no extra time allotted for that.  So, 3 days later, we arrived in Toronto feeling rather scruffy, both needing showers badly, and a good night's sleep in proper beds.  My son thought of the whole trip as a great adventure, and in tune with his cheery attitude, I did too.  I thought maybe one day in the future, I might take a trip out west again, but next time, I would definitely stop overnight at least 3 times along the way to sleep in a hotel. In Toronto, my son was picked up by his father (with whom he was to stay in Mississauga, Ont. for awhile) and I went to live at my girlfriend Gerry's place. The reason I planned it this way is because, though I loved my family, I did not get along with my father.  We'd always had a difficult relationship and things had not gotten any better over the past 9 years of my absence. On the other hand, I was relatively close to my mother, but she always had to listen to what my father wanted and he definitely didn't appear to want us to stay with them at all. I could live with that fact though; I was used to his ornery ways by now.	Part D Gerry and I had been friends since we were kids.  She lived in a large 3-bedroom apartment with her then-husband, Bryan, and her son, David, and she told me that she was willing to rent me a bedroom for $400/month.  I thought it was the best deal I was likely to get until I could get back on my own two feet, so I stayed with her and her family for about 5 months.  I would have stayed longer, but I wasn't crazy about her husband who continually criticized me and the decisions I'd been making. Gerry also didn't like this judgmental attitude of his, but she was apparently willing to overlook his character flaw for the sake of their marriage.  After 5 months of his constant criticisms, I finally elected to look for a place of my own and work on getting my son back to live with me. Early in January 1991, I went to work almost immediately for an accounting firm, Fuller Jenks Landau, a job which, unfortunately, did not last long.  In Toronto, a recession was beginning to take a firm hold of the city and, a few months later, I was laid off from my new job.  Apparently, the partners (all 8 of them) saw my salary as just an extra, unnecessary expense that cut into their company profits.  I tried not to take the rejection personally, but it was hard not to. They weren't very nice about it when they decided to let me go.  It might have been hard for them to do what they had to do, but it certainly didn't appear to bother them much at all.
Part E I started looking for work again. Unfortunately, work of any kind was now hard to find, especially computer work, which was what I wanted.  I kept at my job search diligently for the next year and a half, but was shocked to find out that companies were moving out of town faster than you could imagine. The rents and leases were at an all-time high in Toronto and companies as well as people were finding it very hard to make ends meet.  I was no exception. Now, all I had for income was an EI cheque that I received in the mail periodically and this money was all I had to keep body and soul together for the time being. Meanwhile, I'd gotten a new boyfriend, Gil, and we started spending a lot of time together. I wanted to find a new apartment for myself and my son, but I wasn't ready to consider living with Gil yet.  We'd just met and were still getting to know each other.  Still, when an apartment became available in mid-1991, I could not afford to bypass this opportunity because I missed my son (though I saw him every weekend) and I needed to have him back living with me. He told me that he missed me too so I knew that I had to do something quickly.	Part F After I got the apartment, with Gil's help, I had to do something about my financial situation.  After giving the matter a lot of thought, I decided to take the plunge and commit to a full-time college program that would give me more credibility and an awesome skill set in computers. This is how I came to enroll at Seneca College in a 3-year program called "Computer Programming and Analysis".  It meant that I would now have to learn how to program a computer, but for some unknown reason, I felt ready to take on this new challenge in the field of computers even though I'd never programmed computers in my life. Of course, I needed to borrow the money for my college program. As difficult as I thought this would be, I managed to accomplish it fairly easily through the auspices of the OSAP program available for Ontario post-secondary students. At this point, things in my life started to turn around for the better. I got my son back finally; I was attending school full-time; I had some money (though not a lot); I had an awesome boyfriend, and I now had a future. I didn't feel depressed anymore; I saw that my experience and my growing skill set in the computer field were going to help me have a great future.  Little did I know how much my training at Seneca College was ultimately going to benefit my life.  It was a decision that turned my life around completely in ways that I could not have predicted if I'd tried.