The Invasion of Quebec

The tanks rolled into the Eastern Townships at roughly 3 Am to the surprise and shock of all of the people living along the borders of Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Maine, not to mention to all of the people of Quebec. Most of the population along the borders heard the noise, the confusion and the rush of bombings and gunfire to finally realize that the United States had decided that enough was enough with the civil war raging to try and capitalize on the situation to invade and therefore claim Quebec as an extension of the States.

After the Sept. 4 elections, several things began to take shape and to change for the worse. Once in power, the Separatist Party of Quebec, which had won the elections, had decided that it was now or never to try to stage a last ditch effort at separation. With only a 52 per cent popular vote in Quebec, most had thought that a referendum was or would be impossible. What the experts hadn't figured was that in a referendum, over 80% of the people would come out and vote in favor of separation. Why was just a question for observers and the rest of Canada, where most had wanted to be rid of Quebec and their whining that they weren't being given a fair shake by the rest of Canada.

Solidarity leader, Paula Martin, had the desire to create a country out of Quebec her whole life. It was only after years of futile efforts, in a life of politics, that she would realize her dreams. Born into a poor family without even the luxury of indoor plumbing, her father was a farmer who did the best he could while trying to raise a family of 8 with just what he sold at market from his garden. She realized at a young age that she had nothing but her smarts and vision if she ever wanted to succeed at anything.

This is the first excerpt of the upcoming fictional novel that Tommy and I are collaborating on. We've put a lot of time and research into this project and when finished, we're hoping that this will be a very entertaining story for all. Remember that this is fiction, where we take advantage of all kinds of recent events!

Trading Up or Sort Of!!

One Man's Junk.

      Not Really. The fact is, I walked onto a used car lot one fine day after finally receiving my school loan with the idea of obtaining a reliable vehicle to get me from home to school and back. Without going into specifics, this dealership was known as one of the last places you would go to buy a car. Most of his cars were junks that had been left for dead by people who were in need of money and he'd have his mechanic fix them up to resell. No problem. I was pretty handy myself and enjoyed fixing cars as long as they weren't lost causes.

 What do we have here?

As I walked along the rows, I saw several that were in pretty good shape and just about every time I asked about one, he'd tell me the story of the vehicle and why the previous owner had parted with it. I'd been to this lot a few times and thought the owner seemed like a nice guy and he never tried to sell me anything. He even pointed some out, that even though they looked okay, they were basically finished and that they were headed to the crusher. Finally, I saw one that caught my eye. It was a 1987 Volkswagen Jetta that looked like it didn't belong there. Clean body and very clean interior. I asked about it and he told me that it ran well but that the brakes needed to be completely replaced. A little further down, I was blown away to see a very sharp looking grey car and only as I got closer did I realize that it was a 1988 Toyota Supra MK III.

Too much money and needs repairs.

I asked about it and he told me that the transmission was blown and that it was left on consignment for $1750. Since I was just a poor student, my budget didn't permit me to even think about it. I could only afford in the area of $1500 and that included repairs, if any, along with sales tax and insurance. I was still driving a 1984 Nissan 200sx that had way too many miles on it and I knew that it was on its way out. The dealer had quoted me a price of $300 for the Jetta and I left with a few ideas. At home, I called a neighbor, who had expressed interest in my Nissan. It didn't take long to sell my car for $800, two days later. I went back to the dealer and decided to buy the Jetta for $300. I bought 4 used calipers for $160 and took it to a friends garage and had him put new lines all over for $125. I drove out of the garage with four new tires as well for $130. My next stop was to pick up a "for sale" sign, which I promptly put on the car.

Sold and sold.

Within the week, I had several people interested in my Jetta. I sold it for $1200 to a young lady who wanted exactly what I wanted, a reliable car for the back and forth driving, to and from school. It now looked as well as it ran, which was pretty good and I had almost doubled my money in a little more than a week.
Thinking back to the Toyota, I wondered if my luck was holding out and decided to visit the dealership once again. The Supra's problem was that you could drive it but that it wouldn't shift into the cruising gear. So, driving 50 miles per hour was kind of the limit. It still looked great and only had 53,000 miles on it. I figured I would just do what I'd done with the Jetta and get it fixed. I lived in the city and I could deal with 50 miles per hour until I got it fixed. After a couple hours of making phone calls to used auto parts stores and salvage yards, I found a transmission for $300 that had come out of a Supra that was almost new that had been totaled. The guy I spoke to said the thing had been there for several years and that they would test it to make sure it worked and that they needed the space for newer stuff.

Now we're happy and styling!!

Now you may have done the math already, but I'll just put it down here just for fun. When I went car shopping, I had just under $1200 from my loan and had figured to sell my car for about $500. The way it worked out was that I sold my car for $800 and had the $1200 = $2000 total. I bought the Jetta for $300 and put $420 worth of repairs in it to finally sell it for $1200. So, $3200 minus the $720 which left me all of $2480 to spend on the Supra. It cost me $300 for the transmission and $150 to put it in which only took the mechanic around 3 hours. I dropped it off at 8am and when I went by at 11:30, it was already out in parking area. After all of that, I felt like it was a mission accomplished. I had finally gotten a car that had I wanted for a long time and never believed I could afford. It had cost a total of $2200 to purchase including repairs and a couple of weeks of wheeling and dealing. I had $280 left for transferring my plates which was about $26 and the sales tax was around $120. I didn't end up paying book value($6200) for the sales tax because the dealer had made out the papers for a salvaged title. I got lucky because the car had one owner who took care of it and had the money to spend because he had paid $32,000 for the car 8 years earlier. Now, I was the new owner of this car that only had 53,000 miles on the odometer, a near new transmission and looked like it had just come out of the showroom. I couldn't have been happier. Oh yea, the almost $150 I had left over after all was said and done enabled me to take the
young lady who bought the Jetta out to dinner, but thats another story!




In case you were wondering, the year was 1995.