Canada Litter King

"Making A Difference" By Canada Litter King's 17 yr. old daughter, Rachel.

Dear readers, I write you today to tell you about our Canada King. This is a true story about an incredible man living in Comox, B.C, Canada !

Did you, the readers, know Canada has a legal King ? Well, now you do, his legal name is "Canada Litter King !" Born Sept 5th 1960, as Philip Gordon Ransom, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, son of Mr Ron Ransom, grandson of Mrs Florence King, brother to formerly Carrie Knight, and mother is Louise Royal ! My father always jokes that he was born in Canada, believes he was the pick of the litter, and imagined he was a king! Therefore one day, he decided, at age forty, he would make his dream come true! He paid the government the required funds and became legally Canada Litter King !

I am the daughter of this rather eccentric Canada Litter King, " formally Mr Ransom," we met when I was seven years old ! My mother, sister, and I were out buying groceries, my sister was hounding my mother for some Captain Crunch! Mom replied that we could not afford the more expensive cereal, and continued walking the aisle. Suddenly my sister, Courtney, appeared with a ten dollar bill and the cereal, and said a man said "God says you are to get the cereal today!" I kind of laughed to myself because my three year old, blue eyed, blonde baby sister had a funny way of getting her way most of the time. Our mother replied "go find this man, and tell him we will only accept the ten dollars if he will have lunch with us one day!" I found the man in the next aisle and did as mom suggested, he accepted the invitation, and I was the happiest little girl in Canada at that moment ! "Little did I have any inclination, he would one day become a man named Canada!"

I had one special reason for being happy, I saw a possibility of getting a father, my biological father, Mr. John-Doe , became addicted to drugs and abandoned my mom, sister, and I ! My mother was struggling, while we were on welfare, to raise us girls with very little financial support. Finally the day arrived that Mr. Ransom came to our home to have lunch! It was a rather shy meeting, as I recall, except little blue eyed Courtney kept us entertained.

Little Ms blue eyes stood at Mr. Ransom's feet, looked up into his eyes, smiled, and said, "are you going to be my daddy?" I watched as Mr Ransom tried hard to ignore Courtney, but my heart and instinct told me, Courtney's winning the game ! From that date on, my mom and Mr. Ransom seemed to be, what is known as "hitting it off!"

I was so happy for my mother, who suffers with the debilitating disease of Multiple Sclerosis. She is a great, loving mom and deserved to have a great, loving man! From what I recollect, Mr. Ransom worked late night shift's until 1 am during these first weeks of dating, Courtney and I would lay awake waiting for Mr. Ransom to arrive in a fancy truck he owned! We were living in a low cost, "town housing complex" and things were quite untidy "to say the least!" Mom did her best, and us children, although were very young, we tried to always help out!

One day Mr. Ransom said, "this weekend is spring clean up, and I will be bringing my work trailer over to make a dump run, and be prepared to work !" I didn't know what to expect, but Mr Ransom showed up as he said he would ! He started at the top level, and began throwing stuff down the stairs, and our job was loading the garbage into the trailer!

I was in the spare bedroom, where we often played, when Mr. Ransom lifted a mattress to vacuum, he looked like he saw a ghost! There on the floor laid two needles. I had seen needles before and did not think much about them! However, I am seventeen now and I know what Mr. Ransom was thinking back then.

It was not very long after this event that Mr. Ransom moved us into his home. As it turned out, Mr. Ransom had a nice home, and even renters lived there! We were now well on our way to becoming a family, thank god for blue eyed blonds. Life was pretty good these days. Dad, Mr. Ransom, had a huge 2000 square foot sundeck he built on top of telephone poles with a monstrous hot tub in the middle of it, and many other nice things!

For the first time, in a long time, I felt safe, and loved by a man, other then my grandpa and relatives, this meant the world to me! Suddenly something sad and unfortunate took place, my grand parents, a huge part of our lives, were moving from Prince George, where we all lived, to the Comox Valley because my aunt was ill and life threatened!

My mom was very worried about her sister, and also very lonesome for her mom and dad, who have always provided love and everything we needed to get by! We ended up leaving Mr. Ransom, and I cried almost every night. I was uncertain if I would ever see him again for my sister and I had become well attached to him, for he provided the void that we had longed for! Mom and him wrote lots and we called on the telephone everyday that passed.

Finally, after the longest month of my life passed by, my dad was coming to the Comox Valley. I was determined not to let him slip away from us ever again! Dad, as it turned out, lost his job because he was depressed, sad, and miserable at work, but I was happy about this situation that resulted in him joining us sooner than later! Dad managed to get the house fully rented out, bringing in enough income to pay the mortgage, and he came to the Comox Valley! We, as in all of us, "grandma, and grandpa, inclusive" ended up sharing a home together!

Several months later, my dad left to Prince George, B.C to bring his personal belongings to Comox, and complete family togetherness! We received a call from him, and the news was not good. The renters had virtually destroyed his dream home, sold and pawned off the majority of dad's stuff to pay him rent! What really bothered him was the fact that "they had sold off his tools" of which was how he made our family's bread and butter!

To say the least, dad was not a happy camper. He stayed up there cleaned things up, and sold the home at a huge loss due to poor housing markets at the time! Dad changed a lot when he got back, I could tell he was depressed and not his cheerful, fun, happy, go lucky self! We were now suffering financially on welfare because dad had collapsed most of his credit marketing a handy man business he had started earlier in the Comox Valley!

I remember dad saying to mom one day, "I can't take this not working and poverty lifestyle no more!" He told us that he was going to run a five hundred dollar ad for a week, and plead the public, at large, for a job and so he did! The ad was titled, "Desperate Times, Desperate Words." In short form, it stated, "proud family hard working man, doesn't want to be on welfare, can anybody help me?" Dad's ad was responded to, and he ended up getting a contract to clean up litter everyday from a commercial retail complex parking lot! It wasn't enough to get our family off of welfare, but it was a new start and dad proudly accepted the work!

Sometime later, a new McDonald's grand opening was announced in the local paper. They were hiring, and the franchise owner's name was given! Dad calculated working part time at minimum wage, thinking he could supplement his income and grow his handyman business! He concluded "yes, it would be feasible," and again wrote a personal letter seeking more employment and income!

Magic, more work for dad. Ironically, he was given contractual work and one of the contracts was to pick up McDonald's litter from public lands! Dad was tired of picking litter, not in the sense of the work, but he was very dismayed about Canadians destroying Canada and having no pride!

One day I overheard dad say to mom, "I am no longer just going to clean up societies filth, from this day forward, litter awareness is also my job!" Mom kind of grinned and ignored him because she knew he would do something. Suddenly dad started selling everything he owned. He was borrowing money from pawn shops, building high profile litter awareness trailers with anti litter pride signage with proud Canadian theme on them!

Then mom and him sponsored writing contests on, "why don't proud Canadians litter," etc. They gave away six $100 bills, and 500 children and teens wrote proud essays! One day, he amazed me with a super awareness trailer. This was a piece of Canada themed art, it had a two foot steel maple leaf welded on it, twelve feet off the ground! I said, "dad, you put a shrine up there?" I pointed to the maple leaf at the top of the trailer, "do you now think you're the king?" Courtney, dad's girl said, "he is, he's the Litter King!" And so, for his birthday, we bought him a $100 crown from a costume store and had a custom made crest that says, "Canada Litter King!"

My dad, the comedian he is, wears his crown as he publicly displays his "proud Canadian status cleaning up!" To give you, the reader, some idea of how patriotic my father is, I shall describe his routine hair cut. He has his own hair dresser customize his hair by shaving his entire head except "the two stripes and maple leaf" are left and dyed red at the back. This haircut has made Canada's MacLean's magazine!

Soon he became very popular through his patriotic proud Canadian actions and the general public would ask him for his autograph, and took pictures of him on countless occasions. Now he has been on the news about eight times, interviewed on the radio, and the list goes on! From everything that has taken place, one day dad decided to make his status legal and become the Canada Litter King and live out a dream he had now forged in heart and soul!

Since these days, Canada Litter King has purchased a $650 king's trashcan, and that's just the price of his, "Garbo King's body." Dad put hands, feet, eyes, and an electric moving mouth with a big tongue on him! Then he built in, a hidden automobile two hundred watt stereo system, now Garbo King talks as well as plays jazz and other great music, and yes he chows litter. In actual fact, Garbo King has now contained over one million pieces of human litter, and mostly cleaned for pride, not money!

My dad is now working on building, and producing a family for Garbo King. The family will become known as the, "Gladiators Trashcan Buddies Band!"

Canada Litter King has a plan to have this eventual, as money is afforded, Gladiator's Band travel to all Canadian schools and events to promote patriotism and pride! His dream is to do across Canada fundraiser for the MS society in tribute, and dedication to my mom, his wife, and queen !

Now is my dad, Canada Litter King making a difference? I proudly declare, without any question, that he proudly is!

Dad I love you.

Maybe next Prime Minister?