Paul Condie:  

First of all, I have to say that these Q&A questions are somewhat limiting... I'm still trying to wrap my head around my two favourite outdoor activities being "walking" and "court sports," but nothing else seemed more appropriate. Put it this way - while I certainly have snorkelled on more than one occasion, I really wouldn't say it defines me. Furthermore, I'm not sure what I'm even doing here... I have spent my entire life running away from this kind of thing, but apparently the lure was just too strong... so the question I am asking myself now is, "the lure of what?" So, here goes nothing... Apparently I was never aware that there was an actual Guidance Department at TSS, because not once in the five years I spent wandering the hallowed halls of that fine educational institution did I ever seriously wonder (or ponder, take your pick) just what I was going to do with myself once the umbilical cord was cut and I was released into the real world, let alone ever seek professional help to figure it out... mind you I occasionally drank Molson Stock Ale back then too, so obviously I had more than a few issues on my plate... in any case, since it's my bio, I suppose that I can admit now that I generally started worrying about getting a date for the Prom around Thanksgiving. Anybody who thinks getting a verbal commitment to be my date was a simple matter of asking one easy "yes/no" question has absolutely no idea how much planning went into it on my end. Script writing... focus groups... wardrobe analysis... dry runs with my sister... planning my reactions to both positive and negative responses... seriously, it's little wonder I had any time for my studies at all. I have always said that if I hadn't been such a complete loser socially I might have made the honour roll more often... but then I started thinking that if I was such a loser socially, why didn't I make the honour roll more often?... because obviously I wasn't out on dates or anything... 'tis one of life's unexplained mysteries... I think it may have been because my favourite show "Toma" was on every Friday night and I rarely missed an episode. Anyway, my Dad had gone to Queen's and it seemed like a logical next step, so I thought I'd try to get in there. I probably should have realized that not knowing which program I was actually going to apply to was some kind of sign, and not a good one. In the end I applied to Commerce. I got into Arts. That sounded as good as anything, so I took it. Unfortunately, as my brother once said in a speech in his role as best man at my wedding (yes, miracles can happen...), when the smoke cleared, four years had gone by and I emerged with a three year degree in Economics. I distinctly remember sitting in my last exam at Queen's and thinking "what is going on here? I'm no economist, for God's sake." This was also the first time I thought I might have a foot fetish or something, because I spent at least fifteen minutes staring at the young lady in the next aisle kicking a sandal on and off her foot... maybe I should have studied psychology... After graduating, I quickly gathered my impressive collection of economics text books and Devo LP's and headed back to the safety of the family homestead on Almond Ave. to consider my future... Initially I thought I might try to get into teacher's college but kyboshed the idea in short order when my father, who by that time was an Area Superintendent for the Scarborough Board of Ed., told me there was absolutely no way he'd hire me as a teacher if I had just thought of doing it because I couldn't come up with anything better (which pretty much hit the nail on the head). I tried to convince him that nobody else would even know that and I might actually make a half decent teacher after all, but such was his influence that I gave that plan the heave-ho... I now realize I might have lost his backing somewhere around the time I used the term "half decent," because that didn't usually cut it with him... Therefore, following in the famed footsteps of noted Thornhill historian R. Paul Burnham, somewhat quickly I decided to go to Ryerson. I took the Graphic Communications Management (which is basically a fancy way of saying "printing") course there. I guess by that point in time I was technically a "mature student," however I was still as immature and apparently unfocused as ever. Nonetheless, I did pretty well at Ryerson. When the smoke had cleared this time I'm pretty sure that I emerged with my B. Tech, but somewhat typically I didn't really much like printing, although the overwhelming smell of ink and other press chemicals in the print lab sometimes made me forget how much. During my Ryerson days I also reconnected with many of the boys from TSS and resurrected my hockey career playing on a team with many of them out at Doublerink. I insisted on wearing the C on my jersey (which back then was still called a "sweater") as partial payment for humiliating myself publicly every Monday night. Amazingly nobody tried to talk me out of it, which is when I first realized that the best player on a men's league team is not the captain, but rather the guy who doesn't totally stiff you for his money or string you out until Christmas with a series of small payments which sometimes include coins. Later in my career I would realize that the guy who brings the beer is a close second and can even be first if its been on ice in a cooler for a while instead of just having a pile of snow from the zamboni thrown on top of the case in the dressing room. My first job was as the Assistant Production Manager at an advertising agency downtown in Yorkville. We dealt mainly in "pharmaceutical advertising." Insert a joke here if you must. Our offices were in a renovated church. We had a killer company picnic on Centre Island with a lot of great food and beverages of all kinds... during that picnic I claimed to have invented Army shorts... I'm not sure why I did that, but it seemed to make sense at the time. (Editor's Comment: later in his life Mr. Condie would also claim that the song "Teacher" by Jethro Tull was written about the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Unfortunately, nobody ever seemed to buy that one... probably because there was not any muted trumpet in the song... but of course this was something that he only realized with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight). The people at the agency were pretty young and pretty cool. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. In fact, it took many years for me to be convinced that heaven wasn't in fact a renovated church and, even at that, I have always maintained that if I have anything to do with it or ever have any pull with "Big Guns" upstairs, that it will be just that. I do realize that maybe there is no heaven and if there is, it probably is whatever you want it to be, or a state of mind or whatever (man, I'm definitely breaking my own rule of not discussing politics or religion here)... but I'm just saying that to me a renovated church seems cooler than a lot of clouds as something we should all aspire to... Unfortunately the "greatest job I ever had" lasted about four months... apparently I had been hired in a wave of optimism and the economic reality had turned somewhat pessimistic over the summer. Sadly, I dealt with my grief by having far too many beers with my sympathetic co-workers at The Pilot and was jostled out of the fetal position by a TTC conductor at 1:30AM at Yorkdale Station. I spent the next few months collecting pogey, watching way too much professional wrestling and trying to market John Lingeman as the world's greatest men's league hockey player. Eventually overcome by guilt, I applied for and got a job working for a very small ad agency in Markham. I worked there for about six months; one day when I was on a press approval, one of my suppliers told me about an opening at another one of his clients' and I started working there as a print production coordinator in September 1987. Twenty-four years later I'm still working at the same place. We are a print management company; we handle creative and print for everything from brochures to point-of purchase displays and retail solutions. Over the time I've been here our offices have moved and my title has changed from, uh... nothing to something that is supposed to sound impressive and I actually have a few people working for me as well as with me, but the reality is that my day-to-day job is pretty much the same as it was the day I walked in the doors for the first time. It's a super casual workplace unless we have to meet with customers, either here or at their offices, otherwise we can pretty much wear what we want when we want and you'd likely find me in shorts at work...Expand for more