Bruce Buntain:
CLASS OF 1968
Dartmouth High SchoolClass of 1968
Dartmouth, NS
Bruce's Story
Life
It's funny how life turns out sometimes. Just take a look at the old yearbook; life seemed simpler back then, and what we wanted and hoped for at that time often ended up getting lost in the shuffle of reality. I put down Ryerson College and travel for future plans. I never got to Ryerson, and after a bumpy start, ended up at Saint Mary's University two years after leaving DHS, managing to graduate with my B.Ed. I took a job teaching high school and settled in the Valley, teaching first at West Kings near Aylesford, and then moving down to Kingstec in Kentville. In between DHS and SMU, I worked a year for the old Dartmouth Free Press, and then a year with the Halifax Herald.
After my 1st year teaching, I broke up with the girl I had been with for 11 years, bought a '59 Vette, a '67 SS/RS 396 Camaro, a 1969 Datsun 2000 Roadster and a new Harley Davidson 1200 Sportster, got another girlfriend and a dog, bought a house and joined the ranks of middle Canada - well, not quite!
I built a large garage with a little help from my friends and started a part-time business, Red Sun Motors, specializing in Datsun 510 and 240/60/80Z cars. I also raced them (remember the old Atlantic Speedway?), getting a rep as a guy who knew those cars and had parts others needed.
I gave up the business, more or less, after 10 years when I moved to a big old 17-room house on 8 acres of land - no garage and no money to build one for a few years. Kept racing though! In particular I had a fair bit of success in ice racing, in both independently organized races and events under FIA-affiliated Atlantic Region Motorsports .
Married my live-in girlfriend after 10 years - a classic example of not leaving well enough alone. Got married, adopted a teenager, had a son in quick order. After three years of legally wedded bliss (minus PMS days), the wife moved out (we divorced but stayed friends), my daughter moved out on her own, but I still spent lots of time with my son under a shared custody sort of thing.
The 90's saw me go through a couple of girlfriends, switched schools, built another garage and had fun as an official at races and flagman at several stock car tracks, at Atlantic Motorsport Park, for MASCAR for two years & as chief starter for the Moosehead Grand Prix while it was running. At 12 years of age, my son started go-kart racing, so many weekends were spent loading the kart, spares and tools in the back of my '72 Chev truck and heading out to the races. Either that, or officiating at some track in some capacity, as well as ice racing in the winter.
I kept tinkering with my vehicles, including a '72 Datsun 240Z with a 350 V-8 Chev engine and IMSA race body kit and traveled occasionally down to North Carolina to bring back cars, mostly Datsun Zees. Didn't work much on relationships & stayed single for the most part, as women interfered with racing, although there was one exception for two years in the early '90's when I found a girl who was almost as interested in cars and racing as I was. Unfortunately, she wanted to get married a lot more than I did.
Then the new century hit. I quit my job, sold my house and cars, except for the Chev truck, my V-8 Datsun and a Datsun 510, and moved to Japan. I had met a visiting Japanese businessman and he offered me a job in Fukushima, Japan (now having problems with the nuclear power plant), and I thought, "Why the hell not?" I taught English at a private English language school for a year, then got an offer from China, so moved to Beijing to head up the foreign teachers at the oldest gov't run international primary school in China, established by Mao himself in 1956.
My son stayed with his mother while I was in Japan, then came to China with me, but returned after four years in Beijing to continue his education and is now living in Whitehorse, the Yukon. He has a daughter, Piper Lynn Buntain, my first granddaughter and just recently got married. My daughter is married and also lives in Whitehorse. Thru her, I have 3 grandsons and the oldest, at 28, recently became a father himself, so I am now a great-grandfather - how the hell did that happen? Of course, when I look in the mirror, that reminds me of how time has passed. Hey, I'm still not use to being called "Gramps". In a bit of an odd twist, my ex-wife also moved to Whitehorse five years ago, and one of my brothers has been there for over 10 years.
While in Beijing. I got home to Nova Scotia for a good visit twice a year (I got 17 weeks paid vacation time a year) to immerse myself in a familiar culture where I could read street signs, product labels & a decent newspaper (I can speak some Chinese, but learning to read is a whole other story). That enabled me to get through the many quirks of living in China.
Actually, things weren't bad there. I got paid far more than I was worth and worked a ridiculously short day, sometimes less than two hours, although I generally tried to put in a full day doing something. I had a motorcycle, a 1,800cc V-twin Yamaha Warrior, and a Jetta (called a "Bora" there) which I modified extensively, and a young Chinese girlfriend (no modifications necessary).
I also did some work as a "motorsport and automotive consultant" I lived for four years at Goldenport Motor Park, a race track in Beijing, where my apartment was a 30-second walk from the track's back stretch and where my then-girlfriend also worked. The owner introduced us, telling Sherry (Li Ming Xia) that one of her jobs would be to take care of anything I might need. She ended up taking her job seriously! Other clients included Geely Automotive, one of China's privately owned car manufacturers, March3 Racing, where I ghost wrote an F1 column for one of China's leading formula racers who was a A1 Team China driver (who apparently could drive, but couldn't write worth a damn), and Champ Car (now IndyCar), which was looking to get into China but fell afoul of bad advice (not mine) and cultural misunderstandings.
I moved out of Goldenport in the fall of '06 due to some business ethics differences with the owner, who, like most Chinese, has no ethics when it comes to making money. I got tired of being associated with business deals where the objective seemed to be to screw those involved in some way or form, but I still did some occasional work there. My girlfriend quit her job there just before that due to the same reasons.
After three years in a newer highrise about 16 kilometers from work, we moved to another apartment in an older Chinese complex with the oddities that living in a Chinese built and owned place entails, especially an older complex like ours. Not as nice as our previous place, but quite a bit larger and closer to work for us.
After leaving Goldenport, Sherry went to work for a motorsport management group and got transferred to Shanghai. I wasn't too happy, but her office was literally in the middle of the Shanghai International Circuit, so that helped make up for it, although it meant overnight train trips or air to Shanghai two or three times a month, although sometimes paid for by her company, as I did some work for them. I drove my car to Shanghai during the inaugural Chinese F1 event and had the run of the track complex for the event, getting a VIP personal pass and an unlimited track pass for my car, so that was nice. However, Sherry left her job after 8 months, having helped the company start up its promotions department, moved back to Beijing and ended up managing the Beijing office of an international company based in London and was their chief Chinese representative there.
I remained with my original employer, Fang Cao Di International Primary School for the duration of my stay. I was the very first foreign teacher they hired and it was sort of an experiment on their part. My contract was just for one year, but they ended up asking me to stay for as long as I wanted to - turned out to be 14 years! I started out as an English teacher, then got moved full-time into administration heading up the Foreign Teacher Dept as they hired more foreign teachers, now up to 15. I monitored the other foreign teachers, dealt with parents, put the fear of god (a.k.a. "Mr. B") into problem students, acted as liaison between admin and the third party company that supplies the other foreign teachers and operates the English teaching at the school, put out 'fires', etc. My titles were officially Foreign Teacher Department Director and English Department Director. I was part of the administration, but yet not, as I was never Chinese enough to see eye-to-eye with many of the ways they do things. Many parents and the PTA tended to prefer to deal with me rather than the Chinese admin and some days, my office saw quite a few visitors.
I managed to do a little traveling while there. I went to Europe for a bit, spent time in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, traveled around parts of China and spent time in Cambodia. Chinese schools close for a month to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, and the school gave me an additional week off as well, so I would head home for at least part of that vacation. Same thing during the 6-week summer vacation and again, the school gave me an extra week.
While I'm not the sort to make firm advance plans (advance planning doesn't exist in my vocabulary), I did have some things in mind. Sherry had been talking about emigrating to Canada with me when I finally decided to return to NS. She could have emigrated as my wife, but there was just one little problem - she was already married, and although separated from her husband for ten years, they didn't seem to be in any hurry to get around to a divorce. She decided that she wanted to qualify for immigration status on her own, so went through the process on her own merits. Her application was accepted in May of 2011. She had also started taking French lessons. Let me tell you, it's a hell of a thing when yo...Expand for more
ur woman can natter at you in three different languages.
This is where things got interesting. I had assumed the divorce would be moved from the backburner to a time frame more pressing, but no. You might think her Chinese husband would object to her taking their son to Canada, but no. It's a status symbol in China to send your kid (1-child policy then - with exceptions - remember) overseas for part of their education. Sherry also decided to go to a university for a business degree on top of what she already has. So, instead of "coming home with me", it turned into something else quite different and left me to decide what to do. Head back? Follow Sherry to the university of her choice? Be a father again? Life is so much simpler when you have no pressing problems to complicate things. To throw a monkey wrench into this, her husband told her that he would be willing to financially support both her and their son in Canada for their first two years, including tuition, a 100K Mercedes SUV and all expenses if she went to university. That offer, however, would be 'null and void' if she was with me. The upshot to all this was that Sherry and her son headed to Canada in August of '12 to settle in Toronto. I waved goodbye at the airport and that was that!
I got the green light from Sherry to find another girlfriend even before she left (she even offered to help me find one - I turned that offer down) and In late 2011, I met a 28 year old Mongolian gal who came to Beijing to go to one of the best universities in the city, majoring in "English Literature" and then working for a Chinese company arranging overseas study opportunities for Chinese students. She made good money, much higher than average, was quite tall at 5'8" and very pretty. For some reason I couldn't quite figure out, she took a liking to me and things turned serious, to the point where she talked about moving in with me after Sherry left. However, Aino didn't like Beijing, the Chinese, or China, and decided that she wanted to get out, so she planed to leave Beijing as well. As a result, we ended up having a casual, part-time relationship, seeing each other a couple of times a week, spending some time at my apartment when Sherry was away, or at hers. Aino decided that she didn't want to get too attached because of her upcoming plans, and she left Beijing to start her travels almost the same time as Sherry did. We keep in touch as she moves around, but I likely won't see her again.
If that wasn't enough, I met another Chinese girl, Chelsea (Xiang Ju) who expressed an interest in spending time with me, and in June of 2012, she quit her job so she could devote her time to helping me find and move into a new apartment. Conveniently, she found one within walking distance of her place. We kept in touch while I was back in NS for the summer and she met me at the airport when I returned. She seemed quite interested in helping me out with things, so a result, I decided to hire her as my 'personal assistant'. She came to the school with me when I needed her, and the rest of the time, she spent at my apartment, working on her English or things I sent her from my office.
At 29, Chelsea was a lot younger than me so I wasn't expecting things to get too serious and she didn't live with me, but was at my apartment pretty well every day. However, things took a bit of a twist here as well and she decided that she wanted to come to Canada with me when I returned. Like many young Chinese just out of high school, she was 'channeled' into taking a university degree she wasn't terribly interested in (urban planning) and wanted to take something more to her liking. She also wanted to emigrate to Canada, as like Sherry and Aino, there's a lot to China she didn't like much. She got accepted at Kingstec in their Tourism Management course with my assistance and we went to work on her student visa. It took us three tries, but the visa came through in May of '14.
That meant starting to plan my return. I already had a small business with a Nova Scotia partner. bringing in cars from the US south-west, mostly 1970s Datsun Zees and 510s for resale, although we'll bring in damn near anything anybody wants us to. Think of it as helping people with their second childhood, although my ex-wife claimed I never grew out of my first one. To complicate things, in December of 2012, along with my partner, I bought a property on the South Mountain behind Coldbrook, not far from where I used to live in the Valley. No house, but five-plus acres and three very large ex-chicken barns, which we figured would hold approximately 186 vehicles. The idea was to operate a vehicle storage business, along with a body and mechanical shop to enhance our import car business. Thus Chelsea's plan to attend Kingstec, a 10-minute drive away. When I was home for the summer of '13, I started to set things up for our return.
With Chelsea getting her Canadian student visa, we decided in May of '14 that it was time to head to Canada. I resigned my position at the school, sold what I could, and packed up everything that I could take with me or ship back. I sold my car and my motorcycle after deciding that it would be too much of a problem to ship them to Canada and I headed back home on July 15th. Chelsea went back to her home town to spend some time with her family before flying to Nova Scotia in August to join me. Chelsea started her course at Kingstec and got settled into her new life here while I got our living arrangements sorted out and our new place built while living in temporary quarters.
Things got complicated on Oct. 9th, however, as Chelsea was involved in a head-on collision on Hwy 101. After a stay in the V.G, I moved her into our new living quarters, constructed at the back of one of my barns. She had a broken left femur, right ankle, a cracked neck vertebrae, and a blood clot on her brain. The last two turned out to be less serious than initially feared. She spent 5 weeks in a wheelchair, then crutches, a cane, then back to walking without aids. She's made a complete recovery with no permanent injuries, other than a couple of operation scars. Still, this was a serious crimp in her adaption to her new home and took a mental toll at times, but she worked through it. She was quickly back to classes, at first in her wheelchair, and managed to get caught up on her work.
We celebrated Christmas of '14 together, my first Christmas home since 1999 and Chelsea's first ever. After Christmas Day, she told me she now better understands what the holiday is all about, more or less, (other than the religious part of it, which I do not take part in anyway) and she realizes for the first time how and why we look forward to Christmas, family, gift-giving, decorations and the whole works. We also managed to make it through that winter - a hell of a winter for Chelsea's first in Canada, as there's no such thing as winter in Chongqing, where she is from. We had 4-meter high drifts here and a 300-meter long driveway to clear and I had to get up early every day to make sure she could get out the driveway and off to Kingstec.
Do I miss Beijing? Well, a bit. I miss two things - my paycheck and my Warrior, and I brought the only other thing I'd miss with me (Chelsea). However, it was getting so that living in Beijing was no longer enjoyable; terrible air quality and terrible traffic being two of the worst aspects of living there, along with the dust and dirt and litter everywhere. I did enjoy my job and the kids, parents and school administration, but semi-retirement sounded good as well,
Chelsea's is now on a 2-year work visa. We're hoping that she will be able to stay here, so we are working that out now. We might get into the tourism business with Chinese school tours and private individuals who want their kids to experience Canadian education and culture, but we'll see what happens. She finished her course last year and is now working in Halifax with Ambassador Tours. We're working on a few things to make sure she will be eligible to stay in Canada.
As for me, I ended up joining with an old buddy who owns a private driving school, and am now working 50 to 100 hours a month teaching mostly teenagers how to drive and pass their driving test, along with looking after things here at the "Rodders Roost", as I call this place. I did driver ed for years when schools had the program and did some of it over in Beijing. Just had to renew my driving instructor's license, pass the RCMP background check and that was that - employed again in spite of my intentions to just retire and take life easy! I recently started working one day per week for yet another driver training company. I have also gotten back to racing, having started stock car racing again this past summer at a dirt track north of Kingston and I'm building a new stock car for this coming season, and I'm currently running in a winter rallycross series down outside of Dartmouth.
With my son, Brock, marrying in August, I took a trip to Edmonton and Whitehorse for the wedding and to visit Edmonton. Chelsea was working, so no time off, so I was away for two weeks, visiting son, daughter, grand-kids, brother, sister and yes, even my ex-wife, all in Edmonton or Whitehorse.
So it would seem that I did end up doing some traveling after all - I just left it a lot later than I had planned way back in high school. Back when I was teaching Global History & Geography, I had no idea that in a few years, I'd be living and working in a country that I had taught about in my classes. Strange to think that I used the 1989 Tian'amen Square incident in my lessons, and a few years later, I was dong 100kph right through that same square on my motorcycle (only did that once - too many cops there). It can be surreal to experience places and things that I had previously only read or taught about.
Yup, funny how life works out sometimes!
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