blaine16's photostream  

I'm the greatest Country Music Legend who never got his big break, that you never heard of. I was born and rasied in a small rodeo town in British Columbia, called Williams Lake (home of the Williams Lake Stampede, 2nd largest Rodeo in Canada.)
At 6 years old I began a battle with a rare form of Glandular cancer, which I beat. The Doctors predicted I would live "2 years With Treatment", I am 34 while I write this. During my senior year of highschool I started working part time as a Radio DJ at the local Country Station CFFM-FM. After school I took my first full time radio job in Courtenay, on Vancouver Island where I worked for 2 years as the morning DJ. Radio gave me the confidence I needed to step outside the booth and onto the Karaoke Stage. (In my defence Karaoke was brand new at the time and everyone was doing it.) I soon found myself leaving radio in favour of being a Karaoke host. I moved from Courtenay to Nanaimo and started a 4 Peice Country band called Western Electric. I was 23 at the time and the lead singer, our Drummer was a 24 year old girl named Alida Schedelle who also sang and did harmony, our lead Guitar was 34 year old Max Perry, and our Bass Guitar Player was 43 year old Jack Butler. I listed their ages so you could imagine what a diverse group it was, yet we made music together. It's living proof that music is the great unifier when a young gay man, a funky girl who always wears shorts, a logger, and the guy who picks up your garbage every week... can make harmony, and do it successfully for four years. Unfortunately just when it was looking like this was going to go somewhere really great, the universe dropped a bombshell on my head, in the form of Leukemia. Twenty Years (probably to the day, I don't know) after being dianosed with Child hood cancer I was about to relive the experince. I started to take a variety of drugs and moved to Victoria to be near the cancer clinic. It was in Victoria that I met the love of my life who I am still with today, Darrell. He was originally from Ontario, had lived in Victoria, moved back to Ontario and was visiting. We got together on May 14, 1998 and he left for home the next day. My birthday was the 19th and he gave me a call to say Happy Birthday, which gave me an excuse to e-mail him back right away (I was going to wait a week or two) and say thank you. We corresponded via e-mail and icq everyday. Darrell is a video producer who used to do underwater betacam work. He was planning to move to New Brunswick and open a video production company. (because competition in the prvate market was too extreme in BC and Ontario.)I was basically doing nothing in Victoria, but waiting for someone to find a bone marrow donor so I could rid myself of that pesky leukemia, so I descided I could wait just as easily on the East coast as the west and hopped a plane. I shed nearly all of my possessions that wouldn't fit in my suitcase and landed in Toronto on August 15, where he picked me up in a white station wagon, pulling a small trailer with the few possessions he was bringing, and together with a 6 month old female black lab puppy named Tiff we hit the highway headed for Saint John, New Brunswick... where we have lived ever since. I went into the Hospital in Halifax for my Bone Marrow transplant in May 1999 and received my donor marrow on May 14 (the significance of the date didn't escape anyone's attention). I have pretty much been recovering from that ever since. Six years later I am Leukemia free, but dealing with a common problem called graft vs host disease... it is managable with drugs, and, I'm told, will eventually burn itself out. During my recovery I looked for creative outlets, and began painting, wrote a novel, and taught myself 3d animation. I now work with Darrell at the video company doing 3d animation and graphic work as well as video editing. We also got a second dog the same year I had my transplant, a male yellow lab we named Elton. Darrell and his business Partner Mike have been in business for five years now and the company has grown and expanded. We do corporate, documentary, and commercial work, and have several large coporate clients, and various other regular work, as well some television work. We've even shot stuff for ABC and TSN. I joined the Saint John Theatre Company and have performed in two of their musicals as well as one production for Opera New Brunswick and Symphony New Brunswick. In March Darrell and I bought our first house, and have been really busy doing all the little chores and changes that come with homeownership. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and there are no accidents in the universe. I also think I might want to resume my interupted music career (provided I'm not too old...hehehe)..... we'll see what happens. (written in 2005) I put that because chances are I'll forget to update it.