Chairman Maouth
Retired Staff
This can be the jumping off point for my bio.
My name is to the left of this post. But you can call me CM. I prefer it actually.
Born and raised in Coquitlam also. Lived in the same house on Foster Ave. across from the golf course from the time I was born until I moved out. Went to Mountain View Elementary on Robinson, Sir Frederick Banting Junior High just off Como Lake Rd., and Centennial Senior Secondary on Poirier near the rink.
Used to love fishing Como Lake. Lots of rainbow trout (and carp if you were into that).
I played rep soccer out of Blue Mountain Park until my coach said I needed to choose between soccer and hockey. I said "Okay, well bye then."
If I wasn't playing hockey I was going to teen skating on Friday nights at the rink on Poirier with two beer smuggled in — one in each skate. I held hands there with a girl for the first time.
I was a good hockey player and have a hockey pedigree with two uncles who played professionally — one for the Blackhawks and Blues, the other was a career minor leaguer who Don Cherry described in one of his books as "the toughest son of a bitch" he ever played against. That's probably a paraphrase, but it's close.
From the time I was a toddler I was getting hockey sticks from my uncles when they played in town: Northlands and Victoriavilles mainly. They would cut them down and I'd practice my wrist shot on the concrete floor in the basement. By the time I was 5 I could raise the puck off the ground. That same year I was allowed to start minor hockey at age 5 instead of 6 and I averaged a hat trick per game. I was the only player that could get the puck off the ice.
But I had a shitty home life as a kid and got involved with alcohol and drugs from my early teens. All I ever wanted to do was get out of the house and have fun and compensate for all the unhappiness at home. I was irresponsible as all hell and seriously f***ed up a potential professional hockey career. When I finally got an invite to a junior A team I broke my ankle during training camp and that was it. I slid back downhill and never recovered enough to make a team. It's the biggest regret of my life — putting getting high over hockey. Before I knew it, I was 20 and too old for hockey the way I had envisioned it. There is of course the possibility I never would have made pro even if I had my head screwed on straight. You guys know how difficult it is to make the NHL and I wasn't exactly the second coming of Wayne Gretzky. I was a defenceman who loved to fight and hit but my biggest weakness was my skating. If I could have improved there and had my head on straight, I may have had a chance.
Then, I totally lost interest in hockey. If I couldn't play I sure as hell didn't want to watch others play. I didn't recover any interest in hockey until the Canucks of the early 1990s.
Around 18 years old I got into motorcycles.
By my early 20s I had quit drugs. Never went back. It wasn't like I was addicted to heroin or anything. I had just enjoyed doing various drugs, mostly cannabis based. Then, I just got tired of it. It was like I turned off a switch. No more drugs. I wish I had flipped that switch by the time I was 15.
Then, I lost two people who were very close to me and I really went off the rails. I was very angry at the world and that manifested itself in heavy drinking and fighting in bars from Coquitlam to New Westminster to Surrey. Is there still a country bar on Brunette near the 401 on the Coquitlam side? It was right beside a KFC. I had some doozies there. I went through that for a couple years and to my friend's credit, they stuck by me.
Never married. No kids.
Work: I was a grade 11 high school dropout so I bounced around from job to job when I was in my 20s. My most frequent job was as a doorman/bouncer. I worked at the Cariboo Hotel, The Port Moody Inn, The North Burnaby Inn, The Brass Rail Pub and The Mr. Sport Hotel in New Westminster. The Mr. Sport was a rough place.
Interesting sidebar: When I bounced at The Brass Rail Pub, convicted serial killer Robert "Willy" Pickton used to drink there. I still remember him sitting on his favourite stool overlooking the gas fireplace. I wonder how many times he sat there either just before or just after he murdered a woman on his pig farm just a few miles away.
By the time I was 29 I was growing tired of all the conflict that comes from bouncing so I answered an ad in the Vancouver Sun for a fish farming job. Back then you needed a sport SCUBA diving ticket to be a fish farmer, so I got that and that worked out well and I advanced and eventually turned that experience into a commercial diving ticket. I had finally found my calling. I loved diving and I was very good at it. I did that for about 13-14 years until I got into a serious car accident just south of Campbell River. Emergency helipcoptered down to Vancouver for an ordeal that would eventually lead to months in the hospital, 13 surgeries, a wheelchair and then crutches for about a year. After that I was uninsurable as a diver so that career was over. Went back to school, got my grade 12 diploma and took extensive college courses in world history, American history, creative writing, creative non-fiction writing and political science. I've had a few things published, some political, some human interest, but nothing that really earned much of a pay cheque.
Now I'm just trying to get by and surviving on disability and insurance payments. I suffered severe leg injuries in the accident that left me permanently disabled. I can still walk, but not far and not often without pain. I also work on some other things to supplement my income.
WTF? tl;dr
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