The summer before University, Dad got me two jobs through his contacts. Why two? I don’t remember.
Night elevator operator at Queen Elizabeth Hotel
The Queen Elizabeth Hotel is in downtown Montreal. For some reason, they had employees operating the elevators. No need for this. Guests could just push the buttons, but hey, luxury hotel.
During day, elevator operators were women. But overnight it was men. There were 3 or 4 of us, one per elevator. Met a lot of drunk businessmen late in the evening.
The other part of the job was to deliver the morning newspapers to all the guest rooms. We’d get maybe 900 newspapers in the middle of the night. Had to glue a “courtesy of” cover sheet on every one with rubber cement. Then wheel luggage carts of papers down the hallways and quietly put a paper in front of every room in the hotel.
One of the guys, a long-term employee, was a glue-sniffer. He’d take a pot of glue to the washroom after we’d delivered the papers.
The nicest thing about the job was leaving the hotel at the end of the shift. Could watch the sun come up. Streets were empty of people. Few cars. The walk to the subway was magical.
Assistant Groundskeeper at McGill University.
Later that summer, I worked in the grounds department at McGill University. I was the assistant to one of the guys who worked there. Main job was weeding and watering the gardens around the buildings, sweeping the paths, and picking up trash.
A special project that summer was to move a garden full of chrysanthemums from one field to another. Chrysanthemums are perennials. There were gardens behind some of the buildings where last-years plants were over-wintered, to be replanted for fall foliage. New construction was planned for one site, and the flowers had to be moved. We spent several weeks digging up plants, wheelbarrowing them to another garden, and replanting. Guess who pushed the wheelbarrow.
We had scheduled coffee breaks, and I think that’s when I first started drinking coffee – lousy coffee out of a vending machine.
One weird memory from that time: I remember an interview with a Physics professor (maybe, Dr. Langleben?) that I went to in my grubby work clothes. What for? It was probably part of the process to be accepted for the McGill Honours Physics programme. I was accepted, so I guess the clothes didn’t matter.