by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Gern f

Age: 40

Occupation: Musician/bartender/ ex-truck driver

Bio: This burly hunk of a Little Burgundy resident was weaned in the blue-collar hamlet of Cobourg, Ontario, just up the road from scenic Oshawa. Coming of age during the recession of the early ’80s, Gern, with no family connections to secure him a decent union gig in his hometown and sick of the low wage factory/warehouse work available to him, relocated to Toronto to find employment in the glamorous world of long-haul trucking. After a gruelling two-week training period in which he spent almost a full 15 hours behind a rig, Gern, then a ripe 20 years old, was handed the keys to his first 40-foot truck and set loose, first on the streets of Toronto, and later up and down the Eastern Seaboard. After 15 long years on the road, often driving an average of 18 hours a day, Gern finally gave it up to relocate to Montreal, and today, when not wowing them with his band, the United Steelworkers of Montreal, or producing multimedia projects through his company, urbanhandedworks.ca, is the resident bartender at Grumpy’s on Bishop street.

Why these trucker dudes are happy to work non-stop: “Back then everybody worked 15 to 18 hours a day. You just drove and drove and if somebody would say, ‘Geez, this is a lot of work, I should get some sleep,’ all the other drivers would look at him and think, ‘What a wus.’ Also, there’s that blue-collar myth of being a company man, you know, you’re the guy who’ll bust his ass and in return you’ll always have a job and that kind of crap. I never really bought into that though.”

Is it safe to assume he’s no stranger to amphetamines? “There were speed guys and coffee guys. I was a coffee guy, I’d drink about 18 cups a day and believe me, that kept you awake. But with conditioning you can drive 18 hours a day. I’m not encouraging this, of course, but if you seat yourself properly in your cab, use your mirrors correctly and scan the road correctly, you can do it.”

One downside to long-haul trucking: The pussy is terrible. “There were truck stop waitresses, but they never wanted anything to do with you.”

Did he carry a guitar in the back of his cab with him—à la Elvis Presley—to write future Steelworkers hits? “Yeah, but one of the reasons I stopped driving trucks is because when you’re working 80 hours a week, you don’t have time to write a cool song about it. When you finish work you drink a lot of beer and pass out. But yes, a lot of our songs are about the blue-collar experience.” The United Steelworkers will be playing le Divan Orange April 7. Go to www.USWM.ca for more info.

Childhood ambition: To become a plumber.

Musical preferences: The Cains, Katie Moore, Dan Livingston, Lee Mellor & the Mudhounds.

Last book read: The Ghosts of Griffintown by David O’Keefe.

Words of wisdom: “Find your life’s work and start doing it now.”

Comments? dimwit@hdot.net