Overview

In a lifetime of diverse careers, Canadian Fred Madryga has worked as a logger, in an abattoir, as a roofing kettle, tin basher, a university lecturer and a psychologist in private psychological practice with sexual offenders. His literary essays demonstrate a keen eye for detail and insights into diverse personalities as well as a capacity for self-reflection and personal growth through a wide range of experience and openness to the world around him.

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9781778103605

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Fred Madryga has been my friend, mentor and hunting partner for many years. He has been many things in his lifetime, including a psychologist, a college instructor, and a brain researcher. During his earlier life, he worked on jobs as diverse as running a roofing kettle and tin bashing. He also worked for several years on the west coast near the end of the high lead logging era. After that he returned to school to complete a Ph.D.Fred has always been an explorer, both in areas of study and his own development. He has often shared with me the idea of life review as a part of creative aging. I have some sense that this collection of stories represents his honest and very personal representation of part of that process. There is a unique variety of stories in Fred's book. He shared many of them with me while we were sitting around a fire in a hunting camp. Or, he told them to me while driving to the drone of a pickup truck on a northern hunting trip. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did, knowing as I do, the exceptional life these vignettes are a part of.- Stephen Burles

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One might think that a person would be sure of their own name. I always thought mine was Frederick. Then one day my 90-year-old Mum said; Fred you don't spell your name like that. She was right too. It is Fredrick, no 'e, ' according to my birth certificate. In addition to correcting how I spelled my name, Mum, who loved me, told me on separate occasions not to worry so much and not to toot my own horn. It wasn't all that hard to avoid tooting. But being raised around the Fraser River canyon and in the east end of Vancouver BC, things to worry about were easy to find.I was able to achieve a doctorate in Psychology in my mid-30s. Guess which first name is on the sheepskin? The time it took to achieve such a goal was due to time-outs while working at many jobs along the way. From the age of 15 I included working in construction, logging, roofing, cladding and sheet metal work. I even had an early hiatus working at a club for the well-to-do. Later, I taught at a college and then ran my own private psychology practice.I played sports such as football and lacrosse in my late teens and early twenties and then badminton and judo back at university. Hunting, fishing and target shooting continued until my middle seventies. I found Tai Chi in my fifties and periodically go back to it.My father told me there would always be greater and lesser people in my life, and there were. He said to read between the lines and to look ahead, and I tried and still do. He added that I should believe nothing I hear and only half of what I see. And, he gave me a prayer to recite when asking God to help me keep my mouth shut: Oh lord help me keep my trap shut until I know what I am talking about. You know what? In the end, I have usually been good enough. I have also had love in my life. My job now is to feel the grief of watching, supporting, and loving my partner of 45 years as she becomes ill and begins to struggle. One fight more. . .

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