Scrapping Across Canads ( How this idea came to be )

How It All Began

In short, my story began with me. I was thrown to the curb like a piece of scrap by the woman that I loved. At first I did not see how similar my situation was in comparison to stuff we all throw out, everyday of our lives. Funny enough, I own and operate a very successful junk removal company in Vancouver called ihaul Disposal Inc. ( www.ihauljunk.ca )

I married this beautiful Princess in a small church located in West Vancouver nearly 18 years ago. She was the woman of my dreams and I imagined loving her till the day we died. But unfortunately she had a change of heart and left me for another Prince in London Ontario.

During our marriage we slowly spent less a less time together due to our ever increasing responsibilities that came from our family and three businesses. We became more and more overwhelmed with the responsibilities that we chose to take on. 15 years later we were both stressed to the max. This created frequent confrontations between us both. We both became a product of our environment.

Being a handyman of sorts I figured that I could fix our problems and renew us both back  but I guess my skills in this department were lacking greatly. In the end my Princess left me and moved to London Ontario along with my three beautiful children were she now resides with another man.

I fell into a deep sadness but I continued on. Our home in Maple Ridge was sold for less than cost. I packed what I could into my dump trailer and gave the rest away to nabours and charity. The Princess had already taken all of our Royal Treasure so there was very little money to scrape together for my trip across Canada in my rusty old 1968 GMC truck with dump trailer in tow.

And so my next great adventure began.

For a year and a half I struggled to resolve our problems and renew our relationship. I failed to succeed. I cut my losses and decided it was time to turn my focus on myself if I were to survive. So I let go of the dream of spending the rest of my life with her and decided to go on alone with the rest of my life's journey, I new this would not be easy but I new I could do it now. 

It was at this point that I realized that I was much like a piece of scrap that was thrown to the curb and forgotten.

While living in Burlington Ontario for those 15 months, however;I met some great people. Their friendship help me get closer to renewing my spirit and heart

I packed what little I had, which was very little, and started driving back to my home town in BC on March 12, 2013. I did not have enough for gas or food to make this long trip back so I asked my family if they could help out with a little money. They offered to only help if I got stuck along the way. So I decided to come up with a plan B and make it my Plan A.

The Plan A has become one of my greatest adventures yet. I decided to collect scrap metal in each town along the way and sell the scrap to recyclers. In one way I figured I would be helping the environment and in return the wasteful nature of people would be helping me. It would also give me more awareness to the never ending and growing problem we all face here in Canada and the rest of the world.

The good news is that Plan A is working. It is now March 24th and I have successfully made it to Thunder Bay entirely on the money I have made on collecting scrap metal. The money has paid for my food, gas, coffee and some minor repairs. I have even been able to see a couple of movies.

I am now working on an idea to turn this into a reality show and I decided to call it " Scrapping Across Canada". I have one producer that likes the idea but nothing for sure yet. If you know someone that can help me make this dream come true please contact me by email at: michaelenglmann@shaw.ca or by phone at: 416-824-7880.

I will try to update this blog as often as I can. I can use all the help I can get.

Sincerely,

Michael K. Englmann

To be continued.....see part two