James Bay, Victoria

In September 2000, Yim and I moved to Vancouver Island.

I had been headhunted by an advertising agency called Copeland Communications and offered a considerable increase (+25%) in salary over what Chrysler/BBDO had just offered me, for whom I had just finished launching the PT Cruiser, which was widely considered the most successful car launch in Canadian history. I felt I was worth more than BBDO had offered. Copeland had flown me out to visit Victoria for three days, showed me the town, wined and dined me and offered me a job, which included complete moving expenses across Canada to Victoria and once again, I came home and asked Yim to move.

Yim liked Windsor by this point and was teaching T’ai Chi and was a bit reluctant to relocate but said Yes.

The job was a stepping stone for me as I had made the decision to complete my PADI Scuba Instructor Certification and was hoping to start building our houses in Belize in 2001. I wasn’t sure exactly how that was going to play out but the process had been started. The PADI Instructors Course was offered at Ogden Point in Victoria and that made my mind up. I would work at Copeland for a year, complete my PADI Certification, start working on building our houses in Belize and see what happened.

Yim and I decided we would drive to Vancouver Island and after the movers emptied our house, we headed west.

The route we chose was through Chicago, up through Wisconsin and Minnesota, through South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and into British Columbia before taking the ferry across to Victoria. Along the way, we stopped in Chicago for a night, then in South Dakota, where we spent some time visiting the Badlands.

Yim in the Badlands

Billings, Montana

We also stopped for a couple of nights in Billings to visit Rich and Tracy Lundy. We had met them in 1998 in Belize, became friends and stopped to catch up and for a tour of Billings. From there, we drove through Idaho then Seattle and up towards British Columbia. Before we knew it, we had crossed over and landed in Victoria. Now we had to find a home.

For the first few weeks, we rented a furnished apartment on Fort Street and then found an absolute gem of a home in lovely James Bay, which was a fifteen minute walk for the offices I would be working in.

403 Simcoe Street, James Bay, Victoria

We were lucky enough to rent this delightful Victorian era home (above) in the heart of James Bay.

This circa 1892, Heritage designated cottage was rich in character and beautifully maintained before we moved in. Some of the many features included original fir floors, 10 foot ceilings, two period fireplaces, antique light fixtures, an updated bathroom with a new soaker tub and separate shower and a cheerful updated country kitchen, which opened out to a sunny, south west facing covered porch.

The home also featured a partial basement, which was perfect for my scuba gear.

We were a twenty minute walk to my new offices, five minutes from a Thrifty’s grocery store, a Bank of Montreal (which were kind enough to extend me a line of credit to build our first houses after my settlement), a town centre and a fifteen minute walk to Ogden Point Breakwater, where I would be taking my Instructors Certification. Within weeks, Yim had found a job as an Executive Administrator at the Ramada on the inner harbour, which was also a short walk away and we started to settle in.

1000 Government Street, Victoria

My Work

For the first several months at Copeland, I found myself enjoying the change of scenery and the work, but there was a loud mouthed copywriter they teamed me up with and we never got along.

The first project we worked on was the Port Angeles Department of Tourism. We were asked to prepare both an ad campaign and a direct mail campaign and invited to Port Angeles to present to the Chamber of Commerce. The presentation went exceptionally well and after the presentation, we received a standing ovation. The campaign was green-lit instantly and I started working on it.

Our campaign picked five destinations to feature within the campaign, including a trip to Victoria, BC as an area to visit while visiting the Port Angeles area and highlighted the voyage aboard the venerable Coho Ferry. The campaign ran in Outside Magazine, National Geographic and virtually all major newspapers throughout the Pacific Northwest – creating awareness to the destination.

In the first year the campaign ran, visitation was up 19%. This was a happy new client.

This remains one of my favourite pieces of work from my career.

Chintz & Company

I remember the first time Yim and I walked into Chintz & Company. We talked about how much we liked what they sold and how cool it would be to have them as a client, so I handed someone a business card and told them I would really like to produce work for them. Three weeks later, Copeland was asked to produce their advertising for Christmas.

As always, we came up with a positioning statement first and began work on the creative from there.

It’s a Beautiful Thing was easy to come up with… because everything in the store was.

The ads ran nationally across Canada.

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I was pretty pleased to be able to work downtown, in a beautiful old building right on Government Street. My office had a view of the inner harbour (see photo of the building above). My office was right below the large arched window on the side of the building, where the cluster of three windows are. It was a very hip space. There was a complete production department and a staff room for hanging out at lunch and the three main creative offices had couches for account people to come and explain projects to us in. I felt good there for the first several months.

About 6 months into my contract, Copeland was losing clients at the same time I was helping them win new clients but my focus was as much on developing Oceans Edge and completing my PADI Certification as I  was on work. About six months into the first year, the President called me in to his office and told me he would have to let me go. The company had lost a couple of key clients and it was necessary for the company to make some staffing cuts.  He told me quite frankly that since I was the last person hired, and had a ‘big salary’, he rationalized that I could be the first to go.

I looked him straight in the eye and told him that was going to be a bad decision for him. I had brought in two new clients in six months, Port Angeles Department of Tourism and Chintz and was doing work for Royal Roads University, the YMCA and Centra Gas as well.

Nonetheless, he stood his ground and said he had made his decision.  I told him straight to his face that I would be hiring a lawyer and suing him for violation of contract and for headhunting me away from a secure position with a guarantee of employment. Be prepared for court, I told him.

After finding a very good and very aggressive lawyer, six weeks later he grudgingly agreed to pay me a full years salary as severance. While handing me the check, he said, “This is going to make it difficult for our company to remain in business”, and I said to him… “That’s not my problem. You were prepared to fire me without living up to our agreement, but I’ll tell you what, this is going to make it MUCH easier for me to build our house in Belize, so thank you very much”.

A couple of weeks later, I won my second Best in Canada Award from the Canadian Marketing Association and picked up the Huntingdon Ramada as a client in Victoria and had started to do work for the resort we were heading down to manage in Belize, Roberts Grove.

Mock-up of our Houses in Belize

It’s interesting to me that looking back, this is the home we lived in where I created the scale model for our houses in Belize. Yim and I spent a lot of time talking about that here. I made a mock up of the houses that I wanted to build to show Yim and after her approval, we gave the go ahead to Alan Reimer in San Ignacio to start building and flew down to Belize in August 2001 to oversee the delivery of the pre-fabricated houses, where they would be placed on their foundational stilts.

It was also then that I ‘made the deal’ for Yim to become General Manager for The Inn at Roberts Grove upon our arrival in Belize and for me to take over as Dive Operation and Marina Manager.

In looking back now, I’m glad I did that. We had a better life down there because of that.

In late October, Yim and I boarded the ferry to Port Angeles and headed to Belize.