My name is John Speers and I was born in Northern Ireland in the county of Armagh, that’s about 30 miles outside of Belfast in May of 1944. My father was born in Ireland and his father was born in Ireland as well. Their family immigrated to Canada in 1920 and my grandfather, he was a shipbuilder at Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast, Ireland and he started there when he was 11 years old and he retired here in Canada at the age of 72 so he spent a lot of time in there. One of the highlights in there was that he worked there at the time when the Titanic and the Olympic were built. He was working on the Olympic, which was a sister ship of the Titanic, and they had some problems on the promenade deck with Bay Windows on the Titanic and he was doing the same job over on the other ship and so they brought him over to help this guy straighten out the windows on the Titanic. He was also offered a ride on it [The Titanic], on its maiden voyage, which he didn’t accept; otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.
Him [my grandfather] and his family of 5 boys and 1 girl immigrated to Canada in 1920. My father, he also worked a little bit in a shipyard but he met and married my mother who had come out here from Ireland on a Salvation Army sponsorship, they met and married here [in Canada]. Shortly after that my sister was born, that was in the early 30’s. They went through the depression here and then after that they returned to Ireland because her father was not well, and was on the verge of dying. She had to go back there because the farm was being split up amongst the youngsters and there was all sorts of paperwork and stuff to do. So my father and my sister and my mother took the bus from here to New York and then back to Ireland. Shortly after that, in about 1937, the Lusitania ship sunk in the Atlantic Ocean and my mother would not come back…she didn’t want to get sunk!
So they stayed there during the war, and it was in 1944, during the war, that I was born. Then in 1947 we immigrated back to Canada; the war was over and my mom didn’t mind going on the ocean anymore. So I remember a little bit about the trip, about Ireland, about the area we lived in. We managed to get down there, to Cork, where the boat was leaving from. I was afraid of boats, I had a very bad scare when I was out in the yard one day and one of the spitfires came roaring down to treetop level and screamed right over my head my mother said I went a little bit crazy. So I’ve always been frightened of really loud noises and boats make loud noises. In order to get me out to the boat we had to take a tender out there and my father told me it was a water train to get me out there. But when we were walking up the gangway the whistle blew and I knew then that it wasn’t a water train, it was a boat! Anyways, it was a rough crossing; I remember being strapped into my bunk. I also remember arriving in New York harbour, watching all these little people in little cars running around on the streets. Then we got off the boat and we were going to take the train to Montréal so we got into the Grand Central Station and there I remember seeing the first person I ever saw with one leg and I couldn’t figure out where this guys’ leg was so I ran over and looked up underneath his coat to see where his leg was, not the best thing to do…but I remember doing that.
So we went to Montreal and came across Canada on the train [to Vancouver] and my Grandfather met us here and we lived with my Grandfather for about a year while our house was being built in Lynn Valley [North Vancouver]. We moved to Lynn Valley and I spent my elementary and junior high and senior high years living in Lynn Valley and I went to Lynn Valley School from grades 1 to 6; after that I went to Sutherland High for grades 7,8,9; then I went to North Van High for grades 10,11,12. North Van High has since been knocked down; it is where the Provincial Courts are now on 23rd and St. Georges. I had a happy time growing up in Lynn Valley; joined the boy scouts, did all sorts of other things, rode my bike all over the place. When I was in Sutherland Junior High in the library one day and I picked up a book about amateur radio and in it was a diagram to build a crystal set so I managed to scrounge all the material and build this crystal set and it worked! So then I was bitten I knew what I wanted to do…I was going to be an electronics technician. Not many people in grade 7 knew what they wanted to do, but I did! The problem is that you had to get really good marks and my marks in high school weren’t the best…I wasn’t the best student. The end result was I decided to go into the Military…into the Air Force so I went through all the routine…all the tests and everything else. When I eventually arrived down at the depot where they were deciding what we were going to do they guy said to me, “well you don’t have very good school records,” we were learning different things about the air force…we had to law…the laws of the air force and all this kind of stuff. He said if I didn’t get good marks then I wouldn’t be going to electronics school so I made sure I got good marks…I studied there.
I eventually went to Clinton, Ontario where the radar communications school was. I spent about a year and a half there learning electronics and I eventually became a radar technician. Then I was sent out to Baldy Hughes in Prince George. Again the thing was that if you got high marks you would get a choice of posts so I got the second highest mark in the class so I had one of the choices, but it wasn’t a choice of anywhere, it was a choice of what was available which was kind of disappointing. I wanted to get back up to BC, so I choose Prince George. I spent about a year at Prince George and then they sent me down to Jericho Beach in Vancouver and I spent a year there doing electronics work. Then I finally ended up in Holberg at the northern end of Vancouver Island. We spent 2 years there and by that time my military career was at an end…I had spent my 5 years. I decided I wasn’t going to stay there; I was going to get out. Mainly because I hadn’t done anything, that had been the only job I ever did, I didn’t know what it was like to get a job out here or anything so I had to try.
I got out and within a year I got a job with Northern Electric Company on the DEWline in the Arctic in 1968. That was a Distant Early Warning line that protected Canada from the Russian bombers. That was in 1968 and I spent the next 4 years up there. It was a very interesting job…I did a lot of flying around in an old rickety aircraft. Some interesting things happened to us…one time some jet fighters had to ditch into water because they ran out of gas and I was one of the people that were on duty and I had to pinpoint the last location of the last blip I saw of them. They were picked up within two hours, so that was great, there was only one injury…someone had a broken arm. After 4 years in the Arctic I decided not to go Back to the DEWline I had met my future wife so I decided stay in Vancouver.
So I got a job doing electronics work at Mortifee Munshaw which was a photographic company and spent a few years there until they decided to go on strike on January 3rd in 1974 I arrived at work and they said we were on strike. One of the things they said was that we didn’t have any medical coverage anymore; it would have to change and do something else. At that time my wife was pregnant…we were going to have a baby. Later on that day when I was walking the picket line my Dad drove down there with my wife in the car and said “do you want to take her to the hospital, she’s ready.” I didn’t (thought we didn’t) have any insurance but I took her down to the hospital and then I rushed home and phoned the government offices and they said, “ok pay $10 and your covered by this BC Medical.” So I did that but I later found out that we were covered for another month so we had double coverage for that time.
While they were on strike I delivered newspapers in the morning to try and supplement our income and then I saw this job advertised at Lions Gate Hospital for someone to repair the hospital pagers. I applied and got the job and it wasn’t exactly, I didn’t repair any pagers at all, the guy that was there he did a lot of work on the medical electronic equipment; heart monitors, ventilators and that kind of stuff so he was training me on how to deal with that kind of equipment. The job was only supposed to be for 3 months but I spent 6 months there then they advertised the job for full time position. The problem was they just started a course at BCIT and the government had sponsored this course and was giving people money to take the course so they were actually bribing people. It was a course in medical electronics. That result was that they advertised the job but I didn’t get it because they gave it to these people that had taken the course. So I didn’t know what I was going to do, but through my contacts in the medical field so far I got a job at Shaughnessy Hospital which was a military hospital at that time. I managed to get a job there repairing televisions and intercom systems and all that. I spent a couple years there and the fellow that did the same job, medical electronics, at Shaughnessy, I worked with him all the time and then he left a couple years later. So I applied for that job and this time, because I had a little bit of experience, I got the job. For the next 30 years I worked in that field until I retired. I spent a few years working at Shaughnessy Hospital, then the new Children’s Hospital was built on site, so we moved in there. I spent 18 years working at Shaughnessy and Children’s and then the guy that beat me out of the job at Lions Gate Hospital years ago left to go to Langley. So I applied for that and this time I got it in 1992 and managed there the rest o the time until I retired in 2004. After I retired my wife was wondering what she was going to do with me now that I was hanging around the house all day…so I got interested in lawn bowling. I also curl and coach curling and lawn bowling. I so some of the projects at Silver Harbour, one of them is the Digital Storytelling course and one of them is this [Global Voices Oral History workshop] course. I’ve had a pretty fulfilling retirement; I don’t know how I ever had time to go to work before! So, I guess that’s pretty much about it.