It’s a cliche that you hear in movies, poems, and songs If I had known then, what I know now, would I have taken the job with Suzanne Castonguay when she said, “You’re going to work for me”, I am at a loss to say yes or no. Without being dramatic, there is so much about that working relationship, my connection and friendship, and the insights I received about her personal life that I will respectfully take with me to the grave. It was an intense two and half years working for her. My role as her assistant was to give her the space to heal her body, stay grounded in her presence, and remain true to her chosen passion. Catching elite pedophiles. That work I didn’t witness personally, she sensibly kept me out of it. That area of her psychic ability took her into places that even angels would fear to tread. It is the underbelly of the very echelons of the parasitic class who classify themselves as elites. Their perversions and actions are in my perception the work of people who are no longer occupying their bodies, they have given them over to demonic astral and interdimensionals who use their avatars for horrendous activities that harm countless men, women and children.
Suzanne was the kindest and most generous employer I have worked for. She was also one of the funniest. The French-Canadian sense of humour was brazen, real, and authentic in a way that pulled no punches and suffered no fools. One Halloween her former husband (let’s call him Jim) Jim and Suzanne were heading out to a party. It’s not for me to dish out the nature of that marriage, but like all partnerships, there are often moments of lovelessness. On this Halloween night, Jim said to Suzanne, “I haven’t got a costume!” Suzanne, sharp and as quick as a mongoose predating on a snake said, “That’s easy Jim. Go to the pantry, take out some peanut butter and smear it around your mouth and go as an asshole!” We got some mileage out of that one. This was one of the stories she told me when I first started working for her, a great introduction to knowing just how ridiculously funny she was. I was on the end of that wrath to myself several times and often would end up in tears laughing at being insulted in a way that stung but also had the comedic dark humour that I loved.
Being psychic, Suzanne knew about the nature of my life experience before I met her in September 1999. I was an open book. From my past lives to my potential future, it was all there for her to acknowledge, but respectfully maintain a boundary around (unless I asked for a reading and that would come in late 2000). I won’t go into her processes too much, but what I can say is that when I first came into her house she was working on a case for one of the alphabet agencies in the USA at the behest of a psychic that this particular alphabet agency often used in California. When Charlie and I came into her house to build her closet in her bedroom, the curtains were pulled, a lit candle was on the dining room table and there was a photograph under it. Suzanne lay on the couch, in a soft trance state, and when we walked into the house, we talked to her husband. It was when we left that she told me that I would work for her. Later that day she gave the coordinates of the target she was searching for to the alphabet agency, both longitude and latitude. He was on a yacht in the Caribbean. This agency had been looking for this fugitive for years without success. She caught him in hours.
Her clientele was small, and she had worked with them for many years. They were people of great influence in their countries, some of them humanitarians, others specialists in their fields. They would travel from around the world to work with her, and I would be given a list of jobs, and would go and do them, and often leave groceries, letters, and written documents out on the porch while Suzanne spent time alone tuning in with her client over three days before their reading. My reading in 2000 came when I was at a crossroads in my life. Some of my closest friends in the United Kingdom (who were Canadians from Vancouver) asked me to come and live in London. They had a job for me working bar at the Met Hotel, they had accommodation for me, and I was all set to go. I was also in love with Karen. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to leave her, and I was in the throes of a cocaine addiction that I knew would be easy to continue in London, but she wouldn’t be there. My reading was music to my ears. Almost fantasy. I had always wanted to write songs, and my poetry was the lead-in to do just that. She told me that I would meet someone in London that would put music to my words and everything would blossom from there into so many doors opening for me that my head would spin. To this day, I wonder what my life would have looked like had I gone. Would I have returned to Vancouver at some point as part of a singer/songwriter duo, a Bernie Taupin to an Elton John? I’d love to peer into this timeline and see.
On the Xmas of 1999 I was sleeping on a couch in a downstairs flat in Kitsilano with two friends that I had met through other travellers, Pete and Sally. Sally I had introduced to Suzanne, and their connection was instantly tight. They got along famously and to this day, they keep in contact. Sally was Suzanne’s house cleaner and also an assistant like me. The three of us got along famously in this sense and Suzanne’s generosity that Xmas made our time together very special. She spent hundreds of dollars on a Xmas ham, fruit pies, and a smorgasbord of food that graced the dining table. All the travellers and friends from Vancouver we knew came around that night for a feast. She spared nothing, Xmas crackers, decor, everything I had bought thinking we were going to decorate her home, she told me to take home and decorate ours. Nothing was spared that Xmas. I would continue to work for her up until May 2001, when I was given the ultimatum to come to Toronto to work a case with her or be released from my role. By the beginning of the spring of 2001, my life had given into party overdrive. I was holding down my job for Suzanne, working occasionally for my friend Geza doing restaurant maintenance and small building, painting, and decorating jobs, and saving money for the trip of my life from Mexico to Argentina and then back to New Zealand in the spring of 2002. I had intended to leave Vancouver in mid-November 2001.
Suzanne and I had a falling out over my choice to stay in Vancouver. She asked me if I wanted my savings, which were in a place where they were collecting interest (not a bank, it was a scheme, and I trusted her choices, she had also invested in this scheme) and I wanted to keep collecting interest on my money till I left later in the year. Meanwhile, I was living like a rock star, hooked on sex with beautiful women from all over the world, feeding a monkey on my back who held a bill or a straw under my nose, and meeting some of the most wondrous people, going to the craziest parties, gigs, and dance parties. I was living my rock n roll dream, and I had an end date of mid-November to wake up and become the traveller I had always been at heart. On September 10, 2001, Dena and I became lovers. That night is forever overshadowed by what happened the next morning. I was awoken around 5.30 – 6 am by a thumping on my door. “The phones for you!” No one called me that early in the morning. They knew that I was always up till the wee hours and would get up usually for work around 9-930. I stumbled out the door. I took the call, “Hello?” I said still waking. “Pha. Turn on the television.” It was Suzanne in Toronto. My flatmate Jen was already up after answering the phone (it had been ringing non-stop apparently) and she turned on the television in her room. In around ten minutes everyone in the lower part of the house was in her room watching the screen. When the second plane (hologram) smashed into the second of the Twin Towers I said, “It’s an inside job for sure!” Suzanne replied, “That’s not the point. Your money is gone. So is mine. The ‘pot’ is empty.”
The blood drained from my head at that moment. “Where did it go?” I asked baffled. This cannot be fucking happening I thought. “You don’t ask questions of these people,” Suzanne said and then wished me all the best and hung up. The ground gave way beneath me. I had NOTHING saved. I was living hand to mouth, working probably 20-25 hours a week to pay the rent, I was eating at the restaurant I was working at, and getting staff prices at other restaurants that I had helped build, I had no working VISA, no money and had overstayed my holiday VISA by almost 1.5 years (although Suzanne said I had residency through her contacts, which I didn’t see any proof of). Utter fucking tragedy. There was some speculation about where that money had gone amongst some of my flatmates, and I incurred Suzanne’s wrath by questioning her, blowing the bridge that connected us from a dilapidated wreck into smithereens. Suzanne never returned to Vancouver while I was there, and we never reconnected. I spent the next year in a state of constant denial. Partying harder, living in complete destitution, relying on the kindness of friends and fellow drug addicts, picking up work wherever I could, unable to save a fucking cent. It was a year of super highs and cataclysmic lows. That my friends is a story for another blog.
