Our family did a 2 year stint in Northern Ontario. Kapuskasing to be specific.

This was a pretty big boon for me. Imagine moving from a community of 290 people to a town of about 14,000 including surroundings! 🙂

Kap did not have a very active model airplanes scene. I managed to promote it at school and get a few kids interested.

Perry Pogany and Steve Pogany were in this group. I was friends with both those brothers. Steve in my class at school and Perry a year ahead of me. I remember Andy Spaciek as well.

I had hoped up our family lawn mower and we went to a field out on the highway across from Groleau Diamond drilling and we used it to cut and level a huge landing strip for our airplanes. I remember I was dating Susanne from the Groleau family at the time. Her parents, who were very nice, thought I was a bit eccentric bringing groups of people the the vacant field with a lawn mower and running all these crazy creations down the runway and buzzing around.

I also kept an inventory of parts so that my friends’ projects and my projects would not be held up by mail order.

I completed many fun projects such as a Sig Kiwi, a second Kavalier, cox S-Tee, a couple of Sig Kadets which I sold and many more.

Kapuskasing was a great experience (minus the mosquitoes).

My parents returned to Saskatchewan after two years. I elected to stay and finish high school by myself since the school systems were incompatible and I had figured out that it could be academically costly for me to make the move. I lived in a room at the Lafleur residence near the famous “Circle” and eventually got a basement with the Weighenger residence on Avenue Road.

From there, I did not return home except for a summer visit before I went to Ottawa for more school. I studied physics and computer science for the first couple of years then just switched to physics. Turned out to all be good choices.

No more model planes for me for a while as school proved to be a full time occupation.