Jerry Rideout

MY BIO IN POINT FORM

• I grew up in my early years in Newfoundland, Canada, without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing.

• Without finishing grade nine, I dropped out of school.

• I worked in the woods… including logging, sawmill work, pulpwood harvesting, and trucking, and played in a rock band on weekends.

• After being in the hard-labor workforce for a few years, I returned to school. All I wanted to do back then was to get grade ten and take a welding course.

• I left King’s Point and my life took a huge detour. I arrived in St. John’s as a totally “green boy” from Green Bay and rented a room. Being homesick, every chance I got I hitchhiked home for a weekend.

• My interests changed and I got interested in the medical field and applied to become an x-ray technologist.

• After my radiography program, I applied to go to Halifax to study Nuclear Medicine.

• Over the next few years, I played with radioactive material and learned to concoct various pharmaceuticals and inject them into the bloodstream of my patients, and took high-tech images of their organs. As my confidence increased, I became more certain that this was what I would do for the rest of my life.

• I returned to newfoundland in1979 and started my work.

• After a couple of months in St. John’s, I was ready to run away, so I resigned and headed for Corner Brook to open and run their new Nuclear Medicine department. I spent four years immersed in the planning, building, and running of that new department.

• For four years, I was totally satisfied with my lot in life, but my new wife was not.

• I reluctantly agreed to leave. The Halifax Infirmary was looking for a clinical instructor for its nuclear medicine program. I applied and was offered the job. For the next few years, I taught nuclear medicine and eventually ended up being in charge of the program.

While teaching in nuclear medicine, I also taught some of my hobbies to the general public, as evening courses. I had always been interested in the arts but was not quite good enough to teach the ‘art’ part. What I did know well, was computer software, and became proficient in photo and movie editing, website development, etc.

• While working in Halifax, in my early tenure, I wrote several articles for Downhomer magazine in Ontario, and for “Asia One” online.

• I co-wrote and produced a jazz CD, with April Wine alumnus, Jim Henman.

• I wrote 5 Children’s songs.

• I co-wrote a couple of songs with well-known singer, Terry Kelly. “TIES THAT BIND” was written to help raise money for the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEWFOUNDLAND. That song was played at the installation of the 28th Governor General of Canada, the Honourable David Lloyd Johnston, in 2010. It also was performed live, by the Nova Scotia Symphony

• I became involved in Los Primos a [nonprofit Nova Scotia – Cuba] music exchange program in 2001, and volunteered as a cameraman for a Los Primos documentary, in Cuba in 2004.

• I have developed a functioning board game. Hopefully… a project to return to within the next couple of years.

• After seventeen years of instructing in the medical world, my program was transferred to Dalhousie University. I didn’t want to become a little fish in a big sea, so I inquired about what else I might be able to teach at my campus. They offered me a teaching position in the applied arts department—essentially teaching my hobbies. I accepted.

After thirty-six years as a faculty member of NSCC, I retired. I could not be further from what I was and did those many years before. I have spent a lifetime as an employee of the government—something I always made fun of when I was in the private workforce back in Newfoundland.

• In 2017, after my retirement, I wrote a book of short stories about my early life in King’s Point, NL.

[MY LIFE IN SHORT FORM] has sold well and is available on Amazon in 14 countries.

• In 2019, I published a children’s book, [A DINOSAUR LIVES NEXT DOOR], and in 2022, I published a second, [I WISH I LIVED IN A TREEHOUSE]. These are based on children’s songs I wrote many years ago. I have 3 more kids’ books to finish.

• I have begun a true crime novel, based on a murder that happened in my hometown back in 1931.

• I finally released a Christmas song this year (2020), after 35 years of it sitting on a hard drive in my desk drawer. My song is available on most streaming platforms and on YouTube.