My Background

I grew up in Hamilton with one brother and three sisters, and a mother and father. We lived in a government subsidized, two bedroom house, known as a “wartime” house. My brother and sisters and I all lived in one bedroom until I was seven, later moving to a larger, government subsidized four bedroom house in Hamilton. We didn’t have much as a family due to the fact that my father drank his pay cheques away and as a result, the necessities of life to us as children were not provided.

My mother died at the age of forty-four years when I was fifteen years old. I came home from school one day, saw my mother laying on the couch, unconscious and blue, and I attempted to revive her with mouth to mouth resuscitation to no avail. I was in grade ten then, knew I had to get an education, but could not focus on my education given my mother’s death and I left school with a grade 9 education having not completed grade 10.

I left home at seventeen years, was homeless for four months living in my car, until I found a job washing clothes in a hospital laundry where I stayed for five years until realizing that this was a job that I did not want to do the rest of my life, my incentive to continue my education.

I enrolled in a college in Hamilton as a mature student in a Law and Security Program and worked to support myself by driving a taxi in Hamilton on weekends. In my second year of college I was hired by the OPP as a police officer where I stayed for two years before being hired by the Hamilton Police Service in my hometown.

I left the Hamilton Police Service after fourteen years needing a further challenge and took a position with the Ontario Human Rights Commission as an investigator with a Special Task Force travelling the province addressing the back-log of cases in Ontario. As an investigator, I analyzed investigative evidence to determine whether or not the evidence warranted a recommendation for a Board of Inquiry. I was promoted to a manager position supervising twelve investigators and subsequently became a provincial mediator with the Commission resolving human rights complaints in a formal setting.

During my time at the Ontario Human Rights Commission, I seconded to the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner, Ministry of the Attorney-General, investigating complaints against police officers and reviewing and recommending changes in police service policies if appropriate. I further seconded to the Independent Investigation Unit, Ministry of the Solicitor-General and Corrections, wherein I investigated complaints under the province’s workplace discrimination and harassment prevention policy (WDHP) within the province’s correctional facilities.

It was during this time that my wife, the mother of my two sons who were fifteen and sixteen years of age at the time, died at the age of forty-one years. My subsequent years were devoted to raising my two teen-aged sons by myself who have now grown to be two good men of whom I am very proud.

As a further intellectual challenge to myself, I left the Commission and joined the Office of the Fire Marshal, as an investigator (Fire Marshal) wherein I investigated the causes of fires and explosions including those that resulted in a fatality. I retired at the age of fifty-three years from the provincial government being given the opportunity to do so.

What my mother and father instilled in me was to be honest, compassionate and to use my common sense in making decisions, qualities that I have carried throughout my personal and working life in interacting with people both personally and professionally.

What age has given me is the wisdom to know that growing up without much as a kid has been an unintended “gift” in that I appreciate everything that I have today, no matter how modest. Life has taught me through life experiences that many others have had it worse as a child growing up than I and that thought has never left me having seen it first hand in the homes and faces of children in the poorer areas of Hamilton as a police officer, there I am as a child some thirty years earlier.

As a result of my life experiences both personally and professionally, I am unpretentious and able to talk and relate to people and their problems and concerns and address those problems and concerns on a professional basis, as I have done for some thirty-five years and will continue to do as your Ward Six representative on council if elected.

Every position that I have held professionally involved a sharp learning curve and I am quite confident that I can learn in a short time, as well, what I need to know as a respected and knowledgeable member of council. I have that responsibility as your elected representative on council and will fulfill that role to which I was elected by you with honesty, integrity and common sense.

I encourage you to contact me to voice your concerns either by phone at 705-331-5011, by email at robjyoung12@gmail.com, or if you wish in person at your residence.

Respectfully,

Bob