Early Immigrant Days-9

Shortly after arriving in Canada I was sent by Employment and Immigration to a job interview in the suburbs of Toronto.
I don't know what the powers that be there had in mind because the job...which to my surprise I got right after the first
interview...was as a dispatcher for a company that manufactured "domestic tanks"...i.e. the tanks you keep your heating oil in...the perfect job for someone just off the plane and therefore...with zero knowledge of the geography of Canada...and
having to pronounce names like Hochelaga and Etobicoke...in a way that would be understood by the person at the other end of a phone line...with a broad Guyana accent to help things along. It must have been years later that I finally twigged that
Etobicoke didn't actually ryhme with "joke" and I must have sounded silly for a long time. From the first day I knew I was
fighting a losing battle...but I kept dispatching tanks to places to my East..North...South...and West...many with names I
could not pronounce. Mercifully...after two months I was relieved of the job...not needing to ask...what possible reason there
could be for such a termination...and actually feeling relieved at having been relieved of it. Losing my first piece of
employment in the new land so quickly...put a crimp in whatever immigrant grandiosity there may have been in my letters
"back home" to that point. There have been times when I have wondered if there are still some off-spring of this brief
engagement...rusting away in the railway yards of Capreol or Sioux Look Out...with a now barely visible scribble on them
saying "Address Unknown"...victims of my brief career as a dispatcher...in a country...whose geography...I did not know..........Quester.