What I decided to do at my retirement?

To retire at 55 may seem to be the perfect life.

Not to battle traffic for two and half hours morning. and night.

No more boss on your back to tell you what to do and how to do it. The:

you can do better.»

Not to have to cater to customers, to be nice to them, to be able to be home on time for dinner, find time for wife and children. But, it may already be too late.Children are already leaving home to go on their own and you are left all by yourself with your wife, if you are not divorced. (I am lucky to still be happily married), to be able to play golf whenever you want, to go fishing, hunting. Do whatever you want whenever you want to.

But it does not take long to realize that you have to do something else.

I was lucky I had started to prepare our retirement. Ten years before, we bought property in the country, a farm of about 150 acres with a house and its dependances, located about 100 miles from Montréal, and we were traveling between the house and the farm every weekend, as well as most of our vacations time. When I retired, we decided that there was too much traveling between our city residence and the farm, so I sold the city residence and we moved to the country.

Our house in the country

and the thousands of flowers Françoise grows.

I fixed the house with a lot of arm grease and money, even adding an extension of twenty by forty, so, a large living room and a large bedroom. I build it myself, with almost no outside help. It took me a year, but I was very proud of the results.

Before Françoise was sick, we used to go fishing and hunting at a place where I was the owner of a log cabin, comfortable enough, even if there was no electricity or running water, located on land that we were renting from the government. In summer, we were going fishing. In the fall, it was moose hunting and we were staying over for a week or two. But it was located three hours from the nearest hospital and when Françoise had her health problem, it became evident that we could no longer take a chance. Medical care was really too far in case of relapse. She could easily succumb before receiving help.

So, I sold the cabin and we used the money to dig a lake here at the farm. Fairly large, 400 feet by 200 and 20 feet deep in its deepest part. We seeded it with trout and we could fish in our backyard.

Then, people started to ask me if they could fish in our lake. They were even offering me to pay to do it. But I could not accept money from them as I did not have a government permit to do so. And I could not financially afford to let them fish for free.

That is when I decided to get all the necessary permits. It took me a year to get them. I had to deal with all the different ministries involved , to get all the necessary permits. Do not forget that we live in Québec, and everything is controlled. The government is omnipresent in about everything. It is probably one of the reasons why we pay such exhorbitants taxes and that the Province of Québec is so deep in debt. To enforce all these rules, cost money, a lot of money.

Then, I had three other lakes dug, where I was growing my trout

.

A view on two of our lakes

I was operating fishing lakes commercially.

When I started, I was operating under the name of

LES TRUITES DE GASTON.

I finally changed for

"LES TRUITES DE MONSIEUR GASTON"

for a very simple reason.

Kids, (our place was a fantastic place for children to fish) were addressing me as

"Monsieur Gaston".

Why not make it the name of my business.

Our site was an extraordinary place for older people as well. No walk, no luggage carrying and they could fish at about fifty feet from their car.

Many older people that could not go in the bush anymore, could practice their favorite sport at our place and this at a very reasonable cost. We offered speckled trout of 8 to 12 inches. Our trout had a nice pink flesh and was renowned for the quality of its taste. The water in our lakes was pure and not polluted. It was easy to catch a meal in very little time. And there was no catch limit.

So it was possible to fish at our place surrounded by a magnificent scenery.

An autumn view on our lakes taken from our son's helico

Now in 2001,

we finally sold the place and are now living in a nice condo.

It is certainly a different way of life, but we are now, both 70 years old and our time has come to rest a little.

Gaston

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