Who am I?

I've been writing for this site for quite a while now. But readers still don't know who I am or what qualifications I have to write a column. so.... I was born at the height of the depression and grew up into one of the worst districts in the city. We were just a walk from the Italian Mafia area. Our next door neighbour was a small time mafia killer who was found one morning in a shallow lake with chains wrapped around him. The English population in that district was very, very small. And the French gangs would patrol the streets to kick us into the sidewalks. (boys fought. girls played. My sister was quite fluent in French by the age of six.) At the age of 9 I moved into a school notorious for overage and brutality. In grade 11 I was notorious for skipping school. They Principal called me down. Let's face it, he said, you have no brains at all. Pack up your books and get a job. So I got one in the horrible factory my father worked in. Well, where I lived it didn't matter. Almost all my friends dropped out even earlier. We weren't expected to have any brains. However, I finished high school in a special class for morons. And that got me into night courses in university where I did terribly but (barely) passed. My father was very upset that I was trying to rise above my station. Kids where I lived weren't supposed to rise. But my next step took me to a teaching diploma which was a happy choice. I learned how to teach , and I had three wonderful years as a grade four teacher, then three more as a high school teacher. Then there was that glorious summer in a Nova Scotia university (Acadia). I got an A. I went home and crushed my parents who felt I was rising above my station. My father, a very powerful man, tried to throw me down the stairs. But I went to Acadia for 2 years. That got me into a PhD programme at a prestigious school. And I passed. Dr. Graeme Decarie Ph.D. I wish I could say was was impressed by professors. I wasn't. They had a quite bloated image of how wonderful they were. And they really didn't know how to teach. They still don't. (I published an article on that which has never made me any friends.) But I liked the teaching part. I also was on radio ever morning. And I was on TV uncountable times acoss Canada. In a typical year, I also gave public talks to large audiences. My favourite audiences were Jewish. (Christians, I learned, were a pretty trivial bunch.) Oh, and I often wrote - but didn't like it. Our news media are liars that I preferred to have nothing to do with. Oh, I also had rather exciting times. My university often sent me to teach in universities in Hong Kong and the Netherlands. I was to boost students who would come to my university. loved it. Another oh, I was over twenty years as a senior executive in Alliance Quebec, an organization to save the English in Separatist Quebec. And that was over twenty years of death threats, extremely dangerous situations, an attack to plunder my home........