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Self-penned article about myself when I was nominated as a City Councillor candidate for which I finally declined, with the understanding that I could not do it justice - It's a full-time requirement having to also manage my business; to take good care of my clients - who depend on me to be there, and I on them.

GROWTH HAS BEEN the main constant of my life. As a young boy I played in the open fields north of Kent Avenue and watched in awe as the face of my home environment changed; as both myself and my world here in Cote des Neiges, and our people, all changed, grew, evolved.

As a young man I grew first into an educated musician; as a man, into a teacher; then into an business professional. Always with the constant of personal involvement that permitted me to care about people, to participate, to give.

Personal growth and helping people have, I like to think, been a companion to both my personal life and my career growth. On my own since the age of 16, I worked at everything from a packer & shipper in the garment business, to a labourer - 12 hrs. a day, seven days a week - at the Churchill Falls power project - to earn money for university. Then through my university years I worked 20 hrs. a week to survive while going to school full time.

I obtained my Baccalaureate in Fine Arts with a major in music from Concordia University, and the following that, I earned a Diploma in Education as a music specialist, from McGill University. I had worked summers as a child care worker with juvenile delinquents and had also been a replacement music therapist with severely retarded persons - the most significant personal work experience that I have ever had - and the theme of doing `people work', where I could help, where I could give of myself, began to solidify. I had learned that I could give and I could make a difference! While still attending McGill I was taken on as a student teacher at Northmount High School (my OWN old high school) and, due to the good offices of principal Gwen Lord, I was then granted a full time teacher's substitution card and my career life began in earnest. The next year brought me to the Jerome-Le-Royer School Commission working as a music teacher - a six month contract. I had been recommended by the Head of the McGill Music Education Department, Lorraine Thibeault, not only because of my specialty, but also because of my experience with juvenile delinquents.

The principal asked me to remain and teach physics. I explained to him that I knew nothing of physics, to which he replied that I could still probably teach it better than most of the other teachers because I worked so hard and actually gave a damn about the people with whom I was involved - an accolade which I will never forget; I still had to decline as I new nothing of physics. It was time to round out my education, this time in a business-oriented direction.

With due consideration, on August 1, 1979, I entered the insurance business. After a year's working and training with a large life insurance firm, and having started to give advise to management and marketing staff about my financial analysis of their own products, within my first sixth month with the company, I felt sufficiently certain that I would both learn more as an independent and also do far better for my clientele as such - I went into business for myself, and have been an independent financial and insurance broker since that time.

But I haven't neglected my ongoing education. Besides reading volumes of materials, constantly, on financial matters, I have also continued to take professional courses through the my professional associations; business law, tax and taught at the same school here, where both my parents and I still reside, and this is where I have committed myself to involvement in municipal affairs.

My three year involvement with the M.C.M., my two years on Marvin Rotrand's City Councillor's Executive committee, my emotional involvement here as both a youth and now an adult. This involvement, coupled with `people studies' at university, business experience, and my participation in our local political life have practically molded me to be THE District 54 City Councillor for the M.C.M.; for my own home town, for OUR COTE DES NEIGES! It is my time to give back all those good things that my life here in Montreal, in Cote des Neiges, has brought me.

When I ask you to elect me as your Candidate for the Montreal Citizen's Movement on May 25th, '86, I truly feel that I am saying, "Come on! Let's help ourselves!"

-David Philip Gladstone-