Author Archives: Erich Schmidt

About Erich Schmidt

There are remarkable stories in every crevice and chasm. My mission is to find them and capture their essence, with clarity, creativity and compassion. Digital and social media help me convey the tales in interesting and interactive ways. I am a broadcast media veteran with nearly 15 years of professional experience, much of that with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Citytv, both in Toronto. I am also a novelist who relishes the challenge of the blank page and injecting grandiosity into common life.

photo of Peter and Sydney for blog article

Heartfulness and Heartbreak Over the Holidays

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The Story Isn’t Always Pictured
One of the coolest things about having a smartphone is scrolling through the photo roll at calendar’s end and reflecting on the memorable moments of the outgoing 12 months, and determining whether or not those moments amount to a year worthy of mention.

A brief sifting through 2025’s photos reminds me that the year has had more than its share of family highlights: our daughter’s continued development into an incredible person, her boyfriend’s increasing presence in our lives, the welcoming of a new family member, our unforgettable 12-day Alberta vacation, and special visits with family and friends.

Then there were highlights that aren’t pictured: namely the announcement of another family member coming in 2026. Also not pictured were two relative lowlights; a pair of accidents that made life trying at times for Kim: a wrist injury early in the year, sustained via an awkward fall on ice during an otherwise wonderful day in Elora. My photos only show the beauty of the picturesque town on a snowy day. Then there was the fractured jaw at the start of summer, sustained via a freakish trip on the sidewalk during a morning jog. That incident nearly derailed our Alberta trip and caused Kim weeks of facial discomfort plus a few trips to the dentist.

Sometimes life’s lows render the highs nearly null and void. This was certainly the case this year. A photo or two may have been snapped for perpetuity but in truth none were needed because we will never forget what happened. In the first case, we knew what was coming months ahead of time and had ample time to prepare ourselves emotionally. In the second case, we had little time and place to prepare for a heartbreaking loss. Continue reading →

Sydney image, four squares

Sydney, Forever In Our Hearts

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June 28, 2025

Dear Sydney in heaven. It’s Daddy here. I hope your first day beyond the rainbow bridge was okay and that you are comfortable and settling in nicely. We know that you were met by Opa and you are rekindling your bond since he predeceased you two years ago. Please tell him we are still thinking of him often, although I believe he knows.

I hope you don’t miss us too too much. Honestly, I can’t say the same thing for me, Mom and Ailsa. We miss you a ton, even though we understand that you had to leave us. Nineteen years is an awfully long time for a doggie here on earth and you were ready to go. We know this in our hearts.

It must have been hard for you in recent months to have lost your ability to see and hear, and to feel that something was wrong inside. I’ve never had kidney failure so I can only imagine how awful it is. I would say the dementia was hard for you too although the weird thing about dementia is that it’s hardest on those that love you. Seeing you look confused and unaware and walk into walls was sad and we hated it.

It’s been several years since you could run like the wind for hours and you probably miss that, as much as we miss seeing you do it. Your walking in the last few months was slow and lethargic, especially since your seizure last March. You recovered from that in nearly miraculous style. Then you just got old, more so than before. You barely sniffed any more, certainly not with the usual familiar gusto.

We didn’t want you to suffer so we made the best arrangements possible to say farewell. The lady veterinarian from Peaceful Passing Home Pet Euthanasia Service was so nice. She made it as easy as possible for us. Did you hear me ask her if she’s ever seen a giant grown man cry? You know me; I couldn’t hold back the tears. I didn’t much try. You already looked so close to passing away before the process began. You barely acknowledged when the vet came into the room and hardly sniffed her as she held her hand close to your nose. I don’t want to dwell on the rest of the half hour. It went quickly and so did you. You laid in Ailsa’s lap the whole time, the way she wanted it. It reminded us of all the cuddles you two shared when you first came home to us and we called you sisters. Continue reading →

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Cults, Wine and Warehouses

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Trumper at the Wine Counter

Typically, when I visit my local grocery store, I don’t expect to become embroiled in a contentious discussion. I frequent this higher-end establishment weekly. It has everything I like to eat during my five days on the road. When you enter on the west side, there’s a fridge section full of wraps, sandwiches, salads and sushi that are tasty and nutritious. That’s the gateway to my trucking provisions. I know where everything is and often, I’m in and out in half an hour.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned, and that was the case on Saturday March 1st. I was in the store the day after the infamous meeting between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zalensky and US President Donald Trump, accompanied by Vice President JD Vance. In case you live in a cave and didn’t catch it, Trump and Vance seemed to ambush Zalensky, whose country is embroiled in a bitter war started by Russia. They insulted him and embarrassed him and his country, calling them ungrateful for past American financial and military support.

This meeting wasn’t front of mind when I walked into the small wine store that’s nestled inside the store. Rather I was thinking more of Trump’s economic campaign against Canada, which he had just begun with promises of tariffs and encouraging Canada to become the ’51st state.’ I wanted to support the fast evolving ‘Buy Canadian’ movement.

Yup, me, a trucker who spends almost five full days each week in America. Until now, I’ve never considered myself much of a ‘homer.’ I’m more a ‘man of the world.’ But a swift and unprecedented attack on my homeland changed that in a heartbeat. Suddenly I’m backing my country to the glorious end. Continue reading →

hurricane helene, north carolina, I-40, storm, asheville, highway

“We’re Good People” – For Asheville

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On the evening of September 25th, 2024, I parked at one of my favourite truck stops, the Hot Spot in Inman, South Carolina. I had two aims: get rest and work out. I was ten minutes from my customer in Spartanburg and wanted to get there the next morning, get loaded and get out of the Carolinas. I knew a hurricane was coming and I wanted no part of it. I understood little about the imminent storm, aside from tidbits I read on Facebook links. I figured that as with the majority of storms, the forecasts rarely match the results. So, I’d learn about any devastation soon.

My evening began with a nap, as is typical for me, to slough off the effects of a long day. After waking and eating dinner, I looked on my phone at the Weather Network’s local forecast. It showed intermittent showers coming soon. As I began to stretch and walk outside my truck, light rain began falling. I grabbed my portable pop-up lamp, opened my trailer doors and pulled myself up onto its wooden floor. I started with pushups and jumping jacks and kept an eye on the rain, as I moved to the beat on my headphones. Continue reading →

composite photo of me and my broken arm, from the trucking injury

Suddenly Wrist-less: Anatomy of a Trucking Injury

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Wounded, on the job, far from Canada

Sometime in early December, 2023

If I didn’t mention it, you wouldn’t be privy to the slow typing and the banging of the cast against my laptop. You also wouldn’t know about my constantly tapping the wrong keys on the keyboard and needing to go back every few words and correct my mistakes. You wouldn’t be aware of my need to stop every ten minutes or so because keyboarding with a new cast on is stressful on my lower arm. Persisting through the discomfort results in stress for the entire arm. These things are regular occurrences for me now, as I sloppily navigate my laptop, with my three-week-old broken wrist. Until the last few days, I wasn’t able to do much at all, on the computer or off it.

I’ve only had one very minor workplace injury before. That fingertip laceration was easily repaired by a short trip to the local hospital’s emergency department and some light bandaging. I’ve never broken a bone, even in many years of playing baseball and in about a thousand karate classes, including during some aggressive sparring.

I’ve had childhood scrapes and bruises, but less than most boys my age. I’ve had a few good bruises from being hit by baseballs on various parts of my body. I’ve jammed toes and fingers from working out on the heavy bag. I’ve had severe bursitis in my shoulder, brought on by trying to be cool on the monkey bars in the water park as a 45-year-old. I’ve also had moderate knee discomfort from many hours of driving the truck non-stop. Physiotherapy and well-placed stretching helped overcome that.

Still, no broken bones.

It’s taken a freak situation for me to finally get my first one at the ripe age of 56. It happened on the job and out of the country, more than a full day’s drive away from home. It happened suddenly, in the early morning hours that I hate so much. Continue reading →

dangerous opinions and new information

In My Utterly Useless Opinion…

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I’ve held a lot of opinions in my life, none too far-reaching nor absurd in my estimation. In recent times I’ve grown increasingly mistrustful, and often downright disdainful, of these opinions. It’s not that I don’t have the conviction of my beliefs; quite the opposite actually. I believe wholeheartedly in the things that sustain me: family, friends, and living a clean and honest life. As for most other things, which means just about everything there is to have an opinion on, I prefer to leave myself receptive to new information.

The funny thing about new information is that it often pops up at inconvenient and surprising times, like a sudden hard rain when the forecast said sunny all day. It forces us to confront previously held beliefs, norms, mores and beloved traditions. It contravenes cultures, religion, politics, and societal ebbs and flows. It simply shows up unannounced and thrusts itself upon us. And, despite our best attempts to suppress it, ignore it or challenge it, it doesn’t go away; never has. Continue reading →

latta, south carolina, truck stop, swamp, snakes, gators, bears, boars

Swampy Southern Things

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“There could be gators in there,” said the short round trucker in overalls. “Probably three footers.”

“Oh yeah?” I exclaimed.

Both him and his friend nodded their heads in agreement. The three of us were standing a few short feet from the swampy muck at the back of the truck stop. We had just met after I returned from relieving myself behind my trailer.

I rounded the corner and there they were: two short, oval, middle-aged locals who appeared every bit a stereotype of a southern hillbilly. They were standing next to their flatbed tractor-trailers on this unseasonably warm September evening.

It’s my nature to just start talking. So, I did.

I joked about the possibilities of there being snakes in the swamp, an unruly mixture of disgusting pea green liquid, long grass, garbage and mud. They seemed to be sizing me up for a few short seconds.

The talkative one then pulled out his phone and showed me snapshots of a skinned and mounted python that he’d killed with his shotgun in a town to the nearby south. He mentioned some specific detail about the gun. It meant nothing to me. I tried to look impressed.

Soon came the revelation about gators. The next photo was of a wild boar. They both assured me it was possible to see such a monstrous creature here in the dead of the night. Continue reading →

Evonik Goldschmidt, Hopewell Virginia

Rare Kindness In A World of Wrong Addresses

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Why would Evonik Goldschmidt ever stick out as a customer? It’s not like I was picking up anything of note there. As far as I knew, it was to be another faceless warehouse. This one was in a small town just south of Richmond, Virginia.

EG was my second last stop in a tightly packed four days of deliveries and pickups. So far, I had crammed a lot of driving and freight moving into about 58 hours.

I had begun the whirlwind trip with two deliveries in upper state New York. Then I headed southeast for several drop-offs in the Baltimore-Washington area. Much further south, I unloaded a single pallet in Virginia Beach before burning all the way down to Washington, North Carolina. One big pick up there and I was headed back north into Virginia.

If your head is spinning just thinking about doing all that mad scrambling in three days, you’re right on target.

By the time I hit Wednesday evening (June 15th – my daughter’s birthday, incidentally) I was feeling drained. More importantly, legal-wise, I was running out of service hours for the day and was trying feverishly to get parked, to stay ‘in compliance.’ Personally, I was anxious to get home to a weekend of outdoor concert fun.

EG shouldn’t have been tough to find because it’s a huge factory and warehouse complex with a clear sign, a long wide driveway and prominent gated entrance. It’s the kind of well-marked compound that a communications junkie like me loves.

My arrival ought to have been swift and seamless.

But this is the trucking world after all, and chaos often reigns supreme. So …

Wrong address. Continue reading →

Image of my comping shower bag

The Makeshift Shower Conundrum

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Picture the startling scene

It could be any truck stop or rest area, at about 11pm, on a warm late summer evening. A large and nearly naked man stands beneath his truck’s ajar passenger door. In his hand he holds a spout that trickles water from the droopy bag which hangs above. He moves it quickly over various parts of his head and body, trying for a decent initial soak. He turns the small lever on the plastic spout to the off position and reaches for his container of Nivea Men Shower Gel – the ‘Energy 24 Hour Fresh Effect’ kind – that sits at the edge of the open door. He squeezes a medium amount into one hand, puts the container down, pours some into the other hand, then speedily spreads it over his exposed body, legs and feet. Within a few minutes he reopens the spout and fastidiously washes away all the gel, making sure to leave no skin untreated. Once satisfied with his work, he looks around, twice, to confirm there’s no one watching. Why would they watch, he wonders. He clumsily pushes his free hand down into his quick-dry shorts and feverishly soaps then washes the parts that will forever be unknown to unfamiliar eyes. All before the water in the bag runs out. Continue reading →

Photos from Langley Hall reunion

The Pit And The Montreal Throwback

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February 13, 2021: With the Covid-inspired lockdown still in effect here in Ontario, seven weeks running with no end announced yet, I wanted to go back to a happier time. In recent weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about times when I’ve gotten together with friends to share memories and laughs. I wondered briefly which moments stick out the most and it didn’t take me long to focus on a huge university reunion from just 16 months ago. I started this piece not long after returning from Montreal. Now seemed like a great time to finish it and smile at the thought of better times, then and in the near future.

From Langley Hall To Here

In walked Joe. The ever-elusive Joe. The same wiry, soulful, curly-haired Joe who once lived on next to no money, ate his morning porridge from a borrowed dented pot with a broken-off handle, and made a giant tub of Price Club peanut butter last an entire school year.

With his arrival, on this Saturday mid-afternoon in Montreal (October 12, 2019) – on the 24th floor of Hotel le Cantlie Suites – the moment was finally real. The reunion of the original Pitsters plus friends, from Langley Hall circa 1991, was here.

The other eight of us had already made at least one appearance each and it was a mind-blowing moment as each one joined the gathering: at the hotel, at lunch at Schwartz’s deli, at the Concordia University bookstore. It was like a dream where an important person from your distant past randomly shows up and you wake up saying to yourself “What the hell is Andy doing in my dream?” Continue reading →