The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

k335p35sw r b 8 weekender saturday may 10 1997 t scholasaurus 5ay f pupils choice teacher of the year award winner in markham is mrs neprily grade 5 teacher reesor park public school nominated by adam dee age 1 0 congratulations from everyone at scholars choice stux saved from brex from bad investments in past what do you plan to do with your bre- incorporating them into roasts for those x stock certificates special friends suggestions i have heard include fram- but while i can afford to sit back and ing them and hanging them on a wall as laugh at others who got caught up in the keepsakes using them as gag gifts or stock market scam of the century there n j j swimming pool heater repairs i 1 jh9 m mmm cfcorte markville shopping centre 5000 hwy7 at mccowan rd 5137262 71 natural gas v propane i4v off with this ad stouffville electric co ltd 905 640- 1 1 52 visa gas electric pool hook ups i i i i 1 i i i i from where i live bruce stapley was a time in my younger and even more foolish days when i would have been ripe for the picking for such a giltedged dud like back in 1980 when i was feeling my oats upon incorporating a small pine furniture retail operation for instance unaware that the telemarketing stock hustlers on bay street feast upon the innocent and the naive especially those of us sporting brand new ontario corpo ration numbers which are easily attain able for these vultures i was an easy mark indeed i still recall the name of the con man who sucked me into springing for a couple of hundred bucks worth of red rocket explorations sid insisted that this junior canadian oil exploration outfit whose stock certificates he held in his hot little hands was going to take off like an apollo missile he dazzled me with statistics told me id surely lose out on the next big increase if i waited anoth er 10 minutes then signed me up a few weeks later after sucking in hun dreds of others with the same spiel thus causing the stock to rise he called back with even greater desperation in his snake oil salesmans voice i fell into the trap again eagerly mailing sid the squid another couple of hundred smackers then came the gold rush another cad combing through the lists of the newly incorporated convinced me that the com pany he represented claremont mines a different claremont altogether than the local durham hamlet stood on top of a find that was going to make the yukon gold rush look like a picnic once again i fell for the message being so earnestly delivered by this silver tongued gold peddlar i carved a cheque for a hundred bucks and sent it off in the next mail several months later when i couldnt locate either of these cant miss opera tions in the stock market listings of the big toronto papers i realized id been had oh sure both companies continued to send me notices and redinked financial statements for a year or so each one looking more and more like the pieces of paper i once used to keep track of my meager paper route earnings as a kid in grade 4 needless to say both my mis guided investments ended up a dead loss red rocket crashed and burned while claremont mines went under although i wouldnt be surprised to dis cover if it had resurfaced all these years later under the name of brex minerals of course i also got hosed big time on black monday october 19 1987 when the stock market experienced its worst nose dive since the great recession once again actingout of blind optimism i had entrusted a chunk of money earned from the sale of my house along with bor rowed funds to a big city investment operation whose sols aim was to flip my portfolio on a regular basis in order to earn lucrative commissions the big crash was the final straw causing me to run for cover with what was left of my investment never again i swore nope its established mutual funds and safe investments for me as i attempt to mount a belated rrsp campaign that will add a couple of bucks a month to what will likely be by then a paltry cana da pension cheque upon my retirement at age 79 but at least ill always be able to pride myself having resisted the pull of brex when others were running to it like politi cians to a spring barbecue