FINDING YOUR DRIVE

By Miles Patrick Yohnke

© 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Barry Shutiak, 1974 - Miles Patrick Yohnke, 1974

I was the tender young age of eight, and oh, so very small. I knew almost nothing, nothing at all. I shook with fear, all alone with eyes full of tears. One day, another young person came along and asked: "Do you want to play?" I replied: "Yes," and my tears went away.

Childhood for most consists of many games, hide and seek, hopscotch, and such. When I was young, we played with dinky toys, sticks, and stones. We built ourselves dens that we called homes. We explored the woods, climbed the trees, and played with marbles on our knees. We'd tell tales of ghosts and things we had done, exaggerated boasts. During the long school summer holidays when the sun shone bright, we'd play outside from morning to night.

Barry Shutiak

One of my childhood friends was Barry Shutiak. Barry lived three doors south of our family home at 48 Lindsay Drive. Barry went to Greystone Heights public school, and I went to St. Patrick's elementary school. Because of this, he didn't know that I had the worst case of dyslexia which meant that I could barely read and write. He didn't know the bullying I faced from both the teachers and students. He didn't know how much I dreaded going to school each and every day and how horrific those hours were for me. Losing my father at the age of 5 in a terrible potash mine accident was devastating for me, but Barry was there when I came home from school to play, and boy did we play.

We played so many sports including street hockey, baseball, and football. We shared the same passion for the Boston Bruins hockey team, and the Oakland A's baseball team. If we weren't playing sports, we were talking about Boston players like Bobby Orr, Gilles Gilbert and Gerry Cheevers, and Oakland players like Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and Catfish Hunter.

Barry never really knew that he was my safe haven throughout the 1970s.

Barry had a complex model train set that took up a large portion of the basement in his family's home. He spent a lot of time with it. Barry's father worked for the Canadian National Railway (CN). His three uncles did as well. I always knew that Barry would follow in their footsteps.

Brent Schelle and Barb Shutiak, 1984. Photo by Blair Alderton

Barry Shutiak had two older sisters: Barb & Gail, and a younger sister named Giselle. Barb owned, operated and drove a top-fuel dragster in her late teenage years and throughout her 20s. Sometimes, you'd find her truck, a dragster, in its race trailer parked on Lindsay Drive.

In a sport dominated by men, Barb was a trailblazer. At the time there were just a few women in the world racing top-fuel dragsters including Shirley Muldowney and Lucille Lee. Barb was the only one in our province of Saskatchewan and possibly all of Canada.

Barb Shutiak, 1984. Photo by Blair Alderton

Hector Poncelet

Another friend of mine, Hector Poncelet, lived at 41 Lindsay Drive. Like Barry, he too went to Greystone Heights school. Hector was a year older than me. We'd see and hear Hector fly around the back alleys and on Lindsay Drive in his gas-operated two-seater go-cart. It wasn't like most go-carts. It was much larger, almost like a dune buggy. It was cool!

In the summer of 1975, we started hanging out. Hector was his own person, a real character. I was drawn to this. I knew then that he had that special "it" factor whose very presence left the world far richer from just being here. Hector was like Indian Larry, Bruce Lee, and Evel Knievel combined. He was a true original. And he was only 12.

That summer, we found a pedal go-cart in the garbage. During those days, 'push' go-carts were in fashion. Hector created a spot in the rear where he placed a stick (a hockey stick without the blade). One of us drove while the other one pushed. Kids often raced against each other. Hector and I never lost a race. Both of our legs were far too long to be inside, so Hector customized it by placing a tube on each side which he mounded right into the plastic body for our feet to rest. Hector painted the go-cart with a proper auto body paint gun compressor. His older brother Mark was already into painting, and the auto body industry with Mark's Auto Body which has become a staple in the Saskatoon marketplace.

Hector painted the go-cart a dark metal flake blue that had different hues of colour depending on the light. I already knew he was a special artist, just by his movements. Even at 12 he was working the paint gun like a seasoned veteran. He didn't stop there. He even airbrushed red flames on the go-cart along with few different shades of yellow and a white pinstripe. The tubes were painted silver.

Miles Patrick Yohnke in 2001. Photo by Shaun Salen

Every afternoon during the summer of 1975, Hector and I took the bus to The Roxy Theatre on 20th Street which, at the time was called Towne Cinema. We both loved film. In the summer of 1987, Hector painted my mother's 1976 2-door red Nova and my 1973 BMW 2002 ti.

At the time I didn't think these people on Lindsay Drive were different people. Looking back, I recognize their enormous impact on me. I came to understand just how much passion and drive they brought to their many interests.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you could eliminate the pain, and auction off your past? I sure have, and I am grateful for my youth as it helped shape me. I wouldn't be who I am today. My teachers at Sion High School, a special small high school, built up my self-esteem. The self-esteem that the teachers before them had taken. I am blessed because of those teachers and that school program.

There will often be times in your life where you feel like it's you versus the world but do not discard your life for less.

Learn to recognize negative behaviours. Learn to detect these types of people.

At any point in our lives, we can find ourselves caught inside a negative environment such as alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, overeating, harmful relationship patterns, or chronic procrastination, to name just a few. These harmful environments leave us ostracized.

Emotionally we can feel like we have been dragged behind a high-octane dragster, with no finish line in sight. Perhaps we were told that we are not smart, not pretty, not worthy of pursuing something churning deep within us. We develop a tendency to become bogged down in our feelings of inadequacy.

There is a darkness that prevails - a parasite in one's soul. It festers and feeds upon our very being inside our subconscious mind. We keep putting it off -- this fear of knowing -- this knowing that we want more from our lives.

And with this powerful feeling of inadequacy, we can often find ourselves attracted to like-minded people who carry similar dysfunctional thought patterns, which only serve to escalate the situation.

As with any dysfunction, if indulged in and well-fed, it can become tenacious and prevent us from choosing a healthy lifestyle thus keeping us stuck within a vicious cycle of despair.

How does one overcome? We can overcome by learning to recognize, take charge of, and change our thought patterns - undo what others have often programmed into our thought processes.

Miles Patrick Yohnke, 2023, age 59. Photo by Indigo Brodie

To free yourself, the discovery begins with the conscious action of deliberately stepping back from your thoughts. Become an observer and be watchful of both the content and the intent of everything arising within your own mind and heart. An awakened life is the same as a conscious awareness of an incomparable and undivided presence.

Accept that you are a worthy person. That you are entitled to whatever life's ambitions you choose.

I will always be indebted to those lives on Lindsay Drive. Those lives allowed me to keep the drive within. I felt worthy in their presence.

Hector Poncelet departed on February 23, 1996, and Barry Shutiak on April 27, 2023.

R.I.P. (Rest in Peace)

Barry Shutiak

R.I.P. (Rest in Peace)

Hector Poncelet

Barb Shutiak photographs by Blair Alderton.

To learn more about Blair Alderton, please click here