A new final chapter or maybe not... 

About a month ago I dropped in to my office to pick up a revenue cheque. As I was driving around the block looking for a place to park, I noticed the entrance to a new parkade beside the main doors of the tower wherein my office resides. Immediately I thought that this was a beautiful coincidence and boded well for the future…

Well, I managed to quickly find a space and went up to reception. My first comments (to a new/unknown receptionist) were related to the surprising discovery of the parkade. There I was politely told that we have had that facility for about three [3] years (it was finished during the early months of Covid-19). While she looked unsuccessfuly for the envelope, from another office emerged a familiar face who greeted me warmly then had a conversation about when I last actually visited the place. Turns out it was more than four [4] years ago. Obviously working remotely has a debilitating impact on memory cells if nothing else!! After picking up the found envelope, wishing old and new friends well, I decided it was time to do a little bit of reflecting. If I could survive four [4] years without even showing up at an office why would I keep it, even if there is a handy parking facility right beside it?

First thought – it was about the same time, more or less, that I lost my little suite in the basement of a townhouse in a wonderful neighbourhood by the river (in Edmonton). While CUE has been good to rent me a little cabin/house on campus, it does not provide year round options nor permit storage of clothing and other residential accoutrements!! This means that any non-teaching trip (in autumn & winter) requires at least one checked suitcase (the cabin during the conventional fall & winter semesters is used to house grad students).

Second thought – I have no plans to quit teaching voluntarily any time soon. Even with the new scheduling constrictions, I’ve managed to re-design my signature course at CUE such that I am enjoying the gig once again at a very positive level (and the two-cohort on the same week system has helped mitigate the expenses, thus making things more than break-even economically speaking). Besides I have some new learning moment ideas in the winds that wouldn’t require additional time in Edmonton. Moreover I am not planning on relinquishing my EE Seasons’ Tix either as I now have several game-by-game buyers to cover the ones I can’t attend later in the season.

Thus it has become rather apparent that this new fiscal year (which started on July 1st) should see a new approach to the corporate world where I still live on the fringe.
• I am closing my Edmonton office (except for official legal registration & annual financial reporting) and will transfer all operational activities (including corporate banking and official postal mailing) to my office in Penticton: Unit #116, 1675 Penticton Avenue, Penticton, BC V2A 9E2.
• This will take some time so I am targeting January 1st, 2024 as the date when all correspondence of a professional, corporate (& even latent personal) nature shall be directed to the Penticton address.
• Due to commitments made to this spring/summer student cohorts the Edmonton phone number will stay in effect until June 30th, 2024. At that point, anyone in the greater Edmonton area will need to use (as does everyone else who now resides outside the Okanagan) the toll-free system: 1-866-4-ethink (which numerically is 1-866-438-4465).
• As for e-mail purposes I will be relegating ethink@telusplanet.net to informal personal use and other related issues, while retaining gws@e-sinclair.com and gws_inc@telus.net for corporate activities.
• My academic emails will be confined to academic and designated users as at present.

And so as I did over fifty years ago, the corporate me is moving out of Edmonton to the Okanagan. While I always will have a unique feeling for Alberta’s capital, when I think about it the main attraction has been a combination of the UofA (including it’s FacClub, now University Club), teaching moments at UofA, CUE & even NAIT, and the EE CFL Club. All these I will retain, as I did way back in the day. Will there be enough savings to facilitate buying a boat? Well, it didn’t happen fifty years ago, so I am not optimistic it will happen now! But at least communications should be more straightforward (for whatever that is worth!!). I do think though that I may take a lazy road trip at the end of school this summer just to refresh my memory bank of some of the places that did make Alberta such a home even when I wasn’t here…

Now though, it’s back to work… I have courses to wind up this month!

Enjoy your summer,
g.w.