At my branch office, that Myrwood renovated.

Once in a while we come by a person where there is an instant connection. This story is not only about one such connection, crossed paths and forks in the road. This story is about a four decade long friendship.

The shear number of coincidences can not possibly be accidental, I have to believe that a higher power is at play. I simply do not have the ability to list them all here in a short story. Believe me when I say the list of these is way longer than this story can cover.

In 1982, Donna and I decided it was time to redo the stairs at the front entrance of our home. I began exploring the many options available, trying to determine what would be both practical and, hopefully, attractive.

One of our neighbours was planning to get an estimate for a precast-concrete stair system. They told me when the representative was coming and suggested that I keep an eye out for him. If I was interested, I could have him take a quick look at our stairs while he was there. As it turned out, he arrived exactly as expected.

It was a beautiful, sunny, midweek morning. I happened to be home because I was working the evening shift in the Sears carpet department and didn’t have to leave for work until just after noon. I approached the representative, and he said that once he finished measuring our neighbour’s property, he would come across the street and have a look at ours.

True to his word, he did.

During our conversation, he asked the obvious question: why was I home in the middle of a weekday morning instead of being at work? I explained that I worked at Sears and was scheduled for the evening shift.

He chuckled and said, “My wife works at Sears, too.” At that time, Sears was at the height of its success. I don’t recall the exact number of employees, but there may have been 40,000 people working for the company. So, I asked where his wife worked. “The carpet installation department in Rexdale,” he replied.

He probably wasn’t expecting my next question. “Is her name Carol?” The look on his face was priceless. I worked in the carpet department, selling installed broadloom. I would frequently wander over to the installation department at the warehouse—not always for strictly business reasons. I had become friends with all the women who worked there, and one of my good friends was Carol.

Carol was his wife. His name is Myrwood Scott.

Neither of us could have known it at the time, but that chance encounter over a set of front stairs was about to become the beginning of a friendship that would span more than four decades.

As it turned out, I didn’t think Myrwood’s precast-concrete solution was the right answer for our stairs. But the stairs themselves became almost irrelevant. The important thing was that I had met Myrwood.

Not long afterward, an opportunity came up to hire a new salesperson in the Sears carpet department. Myrwood immediately came to mind. I contacted Carol and asked if she thought her husband might be interested in applying. He was.

With his background in outside sales and my recommendation, Myrwood was hired. And so began a friendship that has become one of the enduring relationships of my life.

Four Decades of Stories

Since that day, Myrwood has played a significant role in my life. We have travelled together, shared countless meals, celebrated milestones, endured frustrations, and—perhaps most importantly—collected an extraordinary number of stories.

Some are touching.

Some are ridiculous.

Some are probably best left to the imagination.

And some make me wonder how we ever managed to get away with them.

What follows are a selection of the more memorable activities, trips, adventures, and antics that Myrwood and I shared over the years.

It was never entirely safe when the two of us were together.

I should add a small disclaimer before proceeding. Some of the antics from our Sears days would not happen today. Some would not even be considered appropriate, and a few might well have crossed the line into illegality.

Times change.

I am not passing judgment on the people we were then or the people we are today. At the time, many of these things were simply considered fun, and some were accepted as part of the culture of the workplace. Looking back now, I can certainly see some of them from a different and more sensitive perspective.

The stories that follow are not presented chronologically. They are drawn from different periods of our friendship and are grouped more by theme than by date. They are really a collection of memories, with Myrwood as the central character and me, more often than not, standing somewhere beside him.

But among all those memories, there is one that stands apart.

It is the story of a phone call that changed the direction of my The Phone Call

One of Myrwood’s most important contributions to my life was introducing me to Ed Tower and, ultimately, to a career in financial planning.

My interest in finance had developed gradually. In the late 1980s, I had an unfortunate experience as an investor. It made me think carefully about the relationship between an investment, its suitability for the investor, and the cost of doing business.

I decided I would never again invest in anything I didn’t understand. My answer was to educate myself. I began taking industry courses in finance, investing, and financial planning. I became increasingly fascinated by the subject. Since I had no intention at the time of making it a career, I never bothered to write the exams.

That was a decision I would eventually regret.

Interestingly, the idea of a career in financial services had actually crossed my mind as early as 1982. But Donna and I had a two-year-old, and a career change simply wasn’t in the cards. Family came first, as it always has.

Ten years later, however, circumstances—and one particularly bad day at Sears—would change everything.

It was the summer of 1992, and I was having an absolutely terrible day at work. I used to joke that everything I touched turned to dirt. The problems were all solvable, but there comes a point when even solvable problems become too many problems. I had reached that point.

At the Castillo San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida

Myrwood and I shared season tickets to the Toronto Blue Jays. That evening, he picked me up and we headed to the game. As if the day hadn’t already provided enough frustration, we got stuck in traffic.

I was becoming increasingly exasperated when I finally blurted out: “I’m tired of playing store. I want to do something I really enjoy—like financial planning.”

What happened next is my favourite Myrwood story.

There was absolutely no pause between my statement and his response. Myrwood reached for his car phone—a magnificent, brick-sized contraption that seemed better suited to a construction site than the passenger seat of a car—and immediately made a call.

I knew it was someone he knew well because of the way he answered the phone: “Hi, you horse’s patootie! How are you?” That was Myrwood.

At this point, Myrwood had already left Sears and was working elsewhere, once again selling concrete steps. After a little friendly banter, he got to the point.

“Naguib Kerba is in the car with me. He’s thinking about a career change and going into financial planning. Would you mind talking to him?” Then he handed me the brick.

His introduction was about as formal as Myrwood ever needed it to be: “Naguib, meet Ed Tower. He’s a good person to talk to.”

And so, I talked to Ed. We spoke for only a few minutes. At the end of the conversation, Ed asked me to meet him at his office in a couple of days.

I did. And in what would become one of the most consequential meetings of my life, Ed hired me on the spot.

No résumé.

No lengthy interview.

No elaborate career plan.

Myrwood had already told Ed enough about me that he was willing to take a chance.

There was, however, one condition. I had to write a licensing examination. If I passed, they would pay half my course fees, and I would have a job. I passed the exam at the end of August.

On September 2, 1992, I began my new career. The rest truly is history.

What began ten years earlier with a chance encounter over a set of concrete stairs eventually led to a 33-year career in financial planning.

And the pivotal moment came while two friends were stuck in traffic, when one of them decided that my offhand complaint was actually a career plan—and immediately picked up a phone the size of a paving stone to do something about it.

That’s Myrwood.

He didn’t just open doors for me. Sometimes, he simply walked through them first, held them open, and said, “Come on.” We also fed off each other.

And for that, and for the friendship that began that sunny morning in 1982, I will always be grateful.

The Adventures Continue

My career in financial planning eventually took me well beyond the office. Through my involvement in three professional associations, I had the opportunity to contribute to the profession at both the national and international levels. Those efforts were ultimately recognized when I was awarded the designation of Fellow of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), an honour reserved for those who have made a significant contribution to the profession.

Throughout those years, Myrwood and his wife, Cynthia, were two of my most trusted sounding boards. I often spoke with them when I was considering a new idea, developing something I wanted to introduce to clients, or simply needed another perspective. They were always willing to listen, challenge an idea, or offer an opinion. Sometimes you don’t need someone to give you the answer—you just need someone you trust enough to ask the question.

One of the many trips. Fenway Park was a dream trip.

The Sears Family

Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, Sears at Square One was home to an extraordinary collection of people. We were colleagues, but we became much more than that. Many became lifelong friends.

It wasn’t simply a workplace. It was an extended family.

We worked together, partied together, and eventually vacationed together. At first, our adventures were relatively modest: fishing weekends at our cottage, ice fishing, and other outings. As the years went by, however, our ambitions—and our destinations—got bigger.

One of those adventures became known as The Big-Ticket Cruisers.

Seven of us saved $40 or $50 a month and pooled our money until we had enough to take the trip of a lifetime. We flew to the British Virgin Islands, chartered a sailboat, and spent seven days sailing around the islands.

The full story deserves its own chapter—and, in fact, it already has one in my blog under the same name. But since this is a story about Myrwood, I can’t resist including a few of his contributions. We’ll go chronologically.

The Case of the Forgotten Keys

Myrwood had a fairly substantial keychain in those days. It contained keys for all sorts of places and things, including the lock on his luggage. In the excitement of arriving at the Buffalo airport and getting ready for our trip, Myrwood decided that he didn’t need to carry around that bulky keychain. Instead, he took a secondary keychain containing only the key to his car. A perfectly reasonable decision.

Until we arrived in St. Thomas.

At the airport, customs officers randomly selected Myrwood’s locked suitcase for inspection. It quickly became apparent that Myrwood and the customs officer were having a rather animated discussion. Myrwood eventually announced the problem.

“I forgot my keys back in Buffalo.” The officer did not find this nearly as amusing as we did.

He told Myrwood that he had to open the suitcase. “I wish I could, Officer.”

The officer then asked whether he had a knife he could use to open it. Myrwood found this particularly amusing. Asking a passenger if he had a knife on an airplane seemed like an odd line of questioning. He didn’t have one.

The officer persisted, asking to see the contents. Myrwood persisted in saying he wished he could. Neither side was getting anywhere.

Eventually, security determined that they didn’t have anything available that could unlock—or break—the tiny luggage lock. So they let him go.

The problem was finally resolved at the hotel, where the little lock was clipped off in about two minutes. That was the end of that lock. Now, 40 years later, it is still funny.

The Two-Minute Customs Office

That wasn’t Myrwood’s last encounter with customs.

While we were in Jost Van Dyke, we came across a fascinating little customs operation. The building housed two offices side by side—one for the British Virgin Islands and one for the United States, for people travelling onward to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Essentially, it was one long counter divided by a panel. One side was BVI. The other was USA. Myrwood needed a stamp on his passport from the U.S. side.

He walked into the office, where the agent sitting at the BVI side told him to come back after 11:00 a.m. It was 10:00 a.m. Myrwood accepted this and went on his way.

About forty minutes later, he apparently thought there was no harm in checking whether they might have opened early. It hadn’t. The same agent behind the BVI desk became impatient and reminded him that the office was closed because it wasn’t 11:00 yet.

At precisely 11:00, Myrwood returned. The same fellow sitting at the BVI desk simply stood up, walked about five feet to the other side of the counter, and announced that the American counter was now open. That was it. No great bureaucratic process. Just five feet.

Myrwood shook his head over that one for the rest of the trip.

Nothing Was Going to Stop Myrwood

There was another side of Myrwood that became very apparent during that trip.

He couldn’t swim. In fact, being in water over his head was something he genuinely feared.

So, we bought him a flotation belt.

By the end of the trip, this same man who had been afraid of being out of his depth was swimming circles around the boat in forty feet of water.

Nothing was going to stop him from participating.

Once Myrwood decided he was going to do something, he found a way.

That determination was one of the qualities I admired most about him.

The Gentle Soul and the Euchre Tournament

Myrwood also had a gentle and thoughtful side that could sometimes be surprising, especially when compared with his competitive nature.

One example came when he and I attended a euchre tournament in Barrie organized by his brother’s service club. I thought it was a terrific idea for a fundraiser.

I eventually brought the idea back to the Scouts.

Thanks to Myrwood introducing me to the concept, we started our own euchre tournament to raise money for the Scouts Canada camp fund. Over the years, that simple idea has raised more than $120,000 for Scouts Canada.

But there is another Myrwood story attached to those tournaments.

Myrwood and Cynthia would arrive with what could only be described as a busload of octogenarians from their condominium—the euchre players from the 3100 Club.

These were serious euchre players.

Very serious.

Ironically, somehow, this gentle soul managed to intimidate my neighbour, Susan.

Unfortunately for Susan, she confided this to me. Our tournament format had four players at each table: two visitors and two members of the home team. As the rounds progressed, the visitors moved up the tables. The visitors at Table Three would move to Table Four, and so on. Susan was relieved when she saw that Myrwood and his partner were visitors and were sitting just one table above her. That meant, under the normal rules, they would be moving farther away from her.

She looked at me and said how happy she was that Myrwood was going away. Well, that simply presented an opportunity. As tournament organizer, I felt it was my responsibility to address this obvious flaw in the system.

So, we announced a rule change. That year, the visitors would move down instead of up. Myrwood and Susan met in the second round. But something wonderful happened. Once Susan got to know the real Myrwood, the intimidation disappeared. By the end of the evening, the two had become great friends.

Sometimes the best way to overcome intimidation is simply to sit down at the same table.

Whenever we played a game, it was to win, but ultimately, it was just for bragging rights.

The Competitive Spirit

Myrwood and I have always been competitive. But ours was the best kind of competition: serious enough to make it interesting, but never serious enough to matter. We played hard. We played to win. We challenged each other. And, most importantly, we had fun.

Back in the Sears Square One days, our store was the national prototype for the company. We were the most successful store, and everyone at head office knew it. Management knew it. Salespeople knew it. And, perhaps most importantly, we knew it.

We had developed something of an ego simply from being part of the store everyone else looked to. Myrwood and I enjoyed playing with that reputation.

We developed a standing joke that we called our $300 bet. We would bet $300 on almost anything. Not because we actually intended to collect the money, but because announcing a $300 bet in front of other people was a wonderful way to get a reaction.

In all the years we did this, neither of us ever actually made the other pay. One example came after an event near Don Mills and Eglinton. We decided to race back to Square One.

The debate was over which route would be faster: north on the 401 or south along the Gardiner Expressway. Myrwood was convinced the 401 was faster. I was equally convinced the Gardiner was.

Naturally, the standard $300 bet was declared. We announced it loudly enough for everyone around us to hear, just to make the whole thing more entertaining. Myrwood took the 401. I took the Gardiner.

I pushed my luck so hard on the Gardiner that I nearly got into two accidents. And after all that? We both pulled into the parking lot outside Sears at exactly the same time. A total dead heat. Neither of us won. Neither of us lost. And, as usual, neither of us paid the other $300.

The All-Star Game

The Sears group also gave us another great tradition: Blue Jays baseball.

Seven of us got together and purchased season tickets during the first twenty years of Blue Jays baseball. Myrwood and I shared one of the thirteen ticket shares. In 1991, we drew the All-Star Game.

As you might imagine, even sitting in the stands at a baseball game could become competitive between Myrwood and me. Whenever we sat down, one of us would inevitably announce that we had the better seat. Then came the justification. “My seat is better because…”There was always a reason.

At the All-Star Game, I decided to have a little fun with him. A very attractive young woman from the Jays’ Dunedin complex happened to be sitting beside me. We struck up a conversation and chatted throughout the game. I made sure Myrwood noticed. I kept reminding him that while I had someone interesting sitting beside me, all he had was an empty seat. I may have enjoyed that a little too much.

But Myrwood had the last laugh. Because he had that empty seat beside him, he was perfectly positioned when the only fly ball to come anywhere near us in thirty years of attending baseball games, came into the stands. He caught it.

Of course he did. After all my teasing, he ended up with the one thing nobody else had. The baseball. That was more than thirty two years ago now.

The ball is still sitting on Myrwood’s dresser. And even today, despite everything he is dealing with, when that story comes up, his eyes light up and that unmistakable winner’s smile appears on his face.

Some victories never get old.

When We Ruled the Carpet Department

Sears provided us with an enormous number of stories but make no mistake: we worked hard. When Myrwood and I were in the carpet department at Square One, we ruled. Our store was the national prototype, and our salespeople were among the best in the country. One sales contest involved approximately 200 carpet salespeople competing for five prizes across Canada.

From our Square One store, we had three of the five top finishers. Myrwood finished second in the country. Angelo finished third. And I finished fifth.

Three of the top five came from our little corner of the Sears carpet department at Square One. We were proud of that. Perhaps a little too proud.

But then again, we had earned the right to be.

Head office really respected us, and buyers would listen when we spoke. We had earned a voice—not because we were the most senior people in the room, but because we were close to the customer and seemed to have a good instinct for what they wanted. One sales meeting stands out in particular.

A new line of carpeting was being introduced. It was exclusive to Sears, was expected to be an incredible deal, and everyone was anticipating huge results. At the time, there was enormous consumer interest in a clean, crisp blue grey. The problem was that the new line did not have it. It had what was supposed to be a grey, but to us it looked muddy.

Myrwood and I had developed a keen sense of what customers were looking for. In fact, Myrwood had already lost a significant sale because we simply didn’t have the right colour. Emboldened by Myrwood egging me on, I stood up in the middle of the meeting and asked the national buyer why they hadn’t included the clean blue-grey that customers were asking for. He pointed to the grey in the new line and said, “We have a grey right here.” I looked at it and said, “No, that’s a taupe. It’s not the clean grey our customers are asking for.” He challenged me: “Show me.” I said, “Fine.”

I got up and walked out of the training room—in the middle of the meeting. There was a little more at stake here than simply proving a point.

As background, Sears was making a commitment of somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 rolls of broadloom for the sale. At the time, that was a massive commitment. Typically, an individual colour would capture somewhere between seven and ten percent of the total sales distribution.

I went down to the floor, found a sample of the grey I knew our customers wanted, and brought it back to the meeting. The reaction was immediate. The others in the room could see the difference. In fact, they commented that the buyer’s original grey looked dirty next to the sample I had brought back. To his credit, the buyer listened.

And the results proved the point. By the end of the sale, our grey had captured 27 percent of the total colour share—roughly three times what would normally have been expected.

I remember that moment because it reinforced something Myrwood and I had come to believe: if you listened carefully to customers, you sometimes knew more about what would sell than the people making the decisions from behind a desk.

The Bigfoot Experiment

Another episode came about for a completely different reason. We were bored one day. That was enough to get Myrwood and me into trouble—or, more accurately, into another experiment. I took one large carpet sample and cut it into two fairly large pieces. Then I made what could only be described as Bigfoot-sized footprints. We attached an underpad to the bottom of each piece. Then we created a strap that allowed someone to slip their feet into the contraption. The result was ridiculous—and surprisingly effective.

Once you put your feet into the straps and started walking, it felt as though you were walking in snowshoes. You had to walk with your feet spread far apart, and every step felt very different. Naturally, the next step was the fun part. Myrwood and I convinced both staff and customers to put these things on and walk around the department.

Our rationale was actually to have fun; we wanted to convince people that this was a test to experience what it felt like to walk on that particular combination of carpet and underpad. Instead of simply looking at samples, they could actually feel the difference under their feet.

Of course, having people walk around the department wearing homemade carpet snowshoes made it considerably more entertaining.

We had a lot of fun with that one. But, as often happens, word eventually got back to head office. We not only heard about it—we discovered that they thought it was such a good idea that they decided to turn it into a national demonstration.

The concept was adapted into a special carpet display in Sears stores across the country. Each display had four windows, allowing customers to see exactly what colour and quality of underpad they were walking on. Our little experiment went from two guys fooling around because they were bored to a national retail demonstration.

Once again, Myrwood and I were the talk of the town. As one can imagine, these are but a few stories; there are plenty more. For now, thanks for the laughs and an amazing journey my friend, stay tuned for more stories about road trips, renovations and fun.

This article is far from complete; there are so many other stories to share. The boys’ trips, the cottage stories, and renovation stories. Stay tuned. We leave you with one more of my favourite photos taken with Myrwood.

A Chance Meeting, a Friendship, and a Life-Changing Phone Call

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A Chance Meeting, a Friendship, and a Life-Changing Phone Call

Hockey Alumni Lunch June 3

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