Lucie MH Lachance

I am the youngest of a family of 7. I am the sixth girl and all of my sisters have treated me bad since I can remember. They all said at one point that I was either a dreamer that could'nt keep a job or that I was a bad seed who just wanted the attention from my dad.

Excuse me for being the baby of the family.

It was me who my dad was bringning on week-ends to go sell all the products he was selling. I was his kind of little apprentice, I would take notes on a pad, place in the orders, writting the name and infos about the customers. Sometimes I would remember the address he forgot,, no Dad it's on this street not this one. He would smile and i think he was testing me, I do the same today with my girls.

When he died in 2011, I cried for a week none stop, because I knew I lost my only ally. His sister, told me he was so proud of me at the service, she told me that he wished he could have help me more with my carreer. I have been telling him about it for years and he was always listening with stars in his eyes.

The day I moved from Quebec to yet another city , he stood in the doorway and looked at us till we took the elevator. When I looked back to wave bye, I felt something strong inside my body,,, not a month later he died.

He was there with my mom and my uncle and aunt at my wedding in Florida. They all came to the Cool It after, we celebrated onboard.

Next week I will be at the Fort Lauderdale boat show , where my passion for boating really started. It was in 1989 I was 22.

Today, at 47 I have all I need to start my Charter/Broker business. I have been doing my homework and it paid off.

My ambition is way more than all my family ever dreamed of, they always have negative comments about how I would move from city to city, with my young girls in tow. But little they will know that one day, in a near future I would become what I always told them.

My dad had in mind something else when I was 19, he had a friend who was working for the government, he ask him if he could give me a job again. Because at 16 , I worked there for a summer, I did land the job but soon I realized that it wasn't my cup of tea. With all those ladies who were screening everything I did, tell the boss with whom I would have lunch etc. So I quit three months later, he was pissed at me for a while but when I went to Toronto to learn more English as a babysitter, he was fine with it.