Do you like pina colada?

 Do you like pina colada?

I once went after a job in Canada. Obviously I ended up not moving to Canada but it remains one of the big What Ifs of my life. Some explanation of how this came about is called for. At the start of the 1980’s I had left Unilever Research and joined Unichema, a chemicals manufacturer based near my home. Unichema was a Unilever subsidiary which didn’t stop a most rigorous and long winded recruitment process.

I was just settling in when the higher echelons decided to merge Unichema with a rather similar company Unilever-Emery which was part owned and based in Holland. As a result they were closing down the Unichema development operation I had joined. I was very angry at the way I was treated being made redundant after a few months.

At this time I was in my late thirties with three young children and a mortgage and I was extremely worried. The country was entering a recession and jobs seemed scarce. I responded to a small advertisement saying that a small Canadian chemicals company was looking for a chemist and the principal was conducting UK interviews.

I travelled to Leeds and met a personable guy who explained the situation quite frankly. He was a first generation Canadian whose father emigrated from the UK and set up a chemicals business. The son didn’t want to work in the business as his interest was building another business using the ( then new ) personal computer to automate the accounting for small business. He explained the location was Quebec province which was in the middle of a culture war and insisted on the use of French language wherever possible, compulsory for immigrants in schools. Because of this language issue recruitment in North America had proven impossible. Saying he thought I was possibly suitable he also said the only way we both could be sure was if I visited. He said if I paid my own air fare he would pay for hotel etc. in Canada.

This seemed a fair offer and Annette and I decided to go for about a week with the children left with her parents. We flew out on an Air Canada Tristar to the new Montreal airport. We were met there and taken to the Holiday Inn at Longueil in the far west of Montreal City. It was explained this was the terminus of the Montreal underground railway so we could access the city while being about 30 miles north of St Jean where the company was situated.

I have to say we were treated very well although some things were very strange. On the first morning the company CEO joined us for a breakfast meeting and we then headed off to the company. There I was introduced to the chief development chemist who immediately took us off to meet his wife who took Annette under her wing. She loaned a bicycle to Annette so she could get around the locality. The chief chemist was Swiss originally who had come to Canada as a young man, married a Canadian girl and settled. He was about my age and we got on well. He went out of his way to entertain us including a picnic ( with fast food from Kentucky Fried Chicken  ) and a Canadian style football game. I was fascinated by the snack seller who precisely threw his wares to customers. His accuracy was phenomenal. We didn’t think much of the game which seemed quite opaque although I liked the cheerleaders.

I was used to house buying as a fraught process with mortgages taking a long time to obtain. I was assured this wasn’t the case in Canada and that I would get one with no trouble. I tested this by going to a bank where I posed as though I had just arrived after taking the job. I was offered a mortgage on the spot although the interest rate seemed rather high.

After a couple of days it seemed pretty clear everyone assumed I would be offered the job and the issue was one of selling the life style to us. We were visiting in June and the weather was glorious. However the throwaway remarks focused our attention that this wasn’t always the case. We would drive past a golf course to be told nonchalantly that that would be a cross country ski course in winter. We remarked on large and elaborate garden sheds where the snow shifting equipment would be stored. The houses of apparent two storey construction all had full size basements covering the whole building footprint. This with many other signals such as Montreal’s massive underground shopping streets lent credence to our concerns. Annette had borrowed a book on Canada before our visit. This said “ Canadians spend their lives preparing for winter, enduring winter and recovering from winter.”

At the weekend we hired a car and drove north into the Laurentian Mountains. I was quite surprised that after no more than 100 miles we were on dirt roads.. Even before that we were passing through “outback” style small towns like in Western movies.

The hotel had pretensions to sophistication such a rooftop bar. With three young children we had little time together to go out together as a couple so it was the ideal time and venue. I had been impressed by the earworm inducing “Escape” by Rupert Holmes with its line “Do you like pina colada”. This extremely cheesy song tells the story of young man who seeks another girl asking questions like this only to find that girl is his existing partner. I was vaguely aware that a pina colada was a cocktail so deciding to find out I ordered one. It turned out to be a mix of mainly coconut milk, pineapple juice and rum. This Escape song is now become famous as the pina colada song. My curiosity satisfied I have never drunk one since.

We decided not to move to Canada. A mass of reasons such as the children pitched into French speaking school, fear of winter, worries it wasn’t the type of work I wanted; but perhaps we just were not brave or desperate enough. I have though since how devastated my parents would have been with their only child and their grandchildren an Atlantic away. I must say they never even hinted at this at the time.

Annette’s parents had had the children and I think the were quite worn out by the experience. I remember getting back finding the children grubby but happy using an old fowl pen as a den and playhouse. Annette’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Nell had stepped in taking the children out on expeditions giving their grandparents a little respite