Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 15/02) - Josie Gould pulls her forest-green Taurus station wagon up to a handicapped parking spot in front of the Yellowknife Elks Club and waits patiently for a car to drive away.

"He's blocking my spot and he better move or I'll report him," she chides. "I've done it before and I'll do it again."

Lucky for the driver, he eases away before Gould's patience runs out.

A Yellowknifer for almost 40 years, Gould may be a small fry at just under five-feet tall, but she certainly makes up for it with her super-size sassiness.

Just take the day of her birth as an example.

Born on a her parent's farm, March 28, 1939, in Smokey Lake, Alta., Josie Yasinsky was the youngest of 15 children. Although she couldn't have known at the time, her baby brother drowned in a pail of water during the commotion of her birth.

When she was just three months old, both Josie and her mother were diagnosed with tuberculosis and immediately sent to different hospitals for treatment. Until she turned seven, Gould lived in the Edmonton's University hospital with little contact from her family.

For five years she was confined to a body cast from her ankles to her shoulders. This treatment was designed to stop the kyphosis, or weakening of her bones, due to TB.

"I asked them to paint it blue because I wanted to feel like I had clothes on. They put a leg cast on my dolly too," said Gould.

It took seven years for her to take her first steps. The doctors told her she would never walk. By the time she was 18 years old she was dancing four nights a week.

Gould was released from the hospital at 13, and lived with her sister until she was 18. She then went to business college in Edmonton. At college she completed all the schooling she had missed during her days in the hospital.

"We didn't learn at the hospital. Our days were spent playing. It wasn't all bad. We did have fun," she remembered.

Painful reunion

Three years after Gould was released from the hospital was the first and last time she saw her mother alive since being hospitalized. The pain that this meeting caused for both mother and daughter prevented Gould from seeing her mother again.

"My sister took me to see her and she didn't know me. My mother couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Ukrainian or Polish. My sister said this is Yustyna (Josie). My mother would not believe her. She thought she was lying and I had to be taken out of the room. Too much time had passed," she said. Her mother died when Gould was 24 years old.

Man falls for woman

Gould's penchant for dancing also attracted some male attention. A young army man Howard Gould from Gananoque, Ont., was smitten from the start.

"I made him think he was doing the chasing, but I was the one to snag him," she laughed.

It was at a Moose temple dance when Howard, four years her senior, literally fell for 18-year-old Josie.

"One night when we were dancing he fell on top of me. In those days you really swung your partner, eh? To this day I joke that he really fell for me," she added.

On June 12, 1959, Gould married her army man at Camp Wainwright in Edmonton.

During her first pregnancy, less than a year later, Gould experienced some divine intervention.

Due to extreme nausea, she visited her doctor and was given a prescription. Before she had a chance to fill it, a nurse at the hospital she worked at in Alberta told her to try a little trick.

" 'Have a nap and the minute you wake up eat some crackers. Don't sit up, just chew them while lying down,' the nurse told me," Gould said. "It worked."

The prescription was for Thalidomide.

"Thank God I'm not a pill-pusher because my young daughter might have been born without limbs," she said.

Gwen was born healthy, and a little over a year later she was given a sister, Dawne.

Coming North

In 1964, Howard got a job offer at Yellowknife's Con mine. He brought his young family here within the same year. The lived in a quaint trailer on the mine's lot.

Gould had a job within two days of arriving in Yellowknife, which was no surprise, considering she had been working since she graduated from business college.

She left her two young daughters with a neighbour and became part of the workforce in Yellowknife where she continued until she retired last year.

On the job

Her first job was as a bill collector for Stanton Regional Hospital. She didn't last more than six months. Gould gave her resignation after a woman she called for payment said her husband had died in the hospital and as a result did not think she should pay for his bill. Gould was outraged at the hospital for making her upset the widow.

"I said 'I'm really sorry. I did not know that and you will not be bothered by me again or any other collector.' I marched into my boss' office and handed him my resignation. 'If you don't write this off I will go to the papers, go to the hospital board and you will lose your job' I told him."

The bill was written off, her boss didn't hold his position much longer, and a spark was lit that made Josie Gould a champion for the less fortunate from then on.

Gould moved on to work for John Parker at Precambrian mining. The same John Parker who was the former mayor of Yellowknife, and became the deputy commissioner of the NWT. This position proved fateful, as Gould followed Parker to a position in the territorial government. She remained there for 33 years.

She moved to different positions within the government. Gould finally moved to the Department of Justice's administration wing. It was this branch of the government that inspired Gould to become actively involved in the Union of Northern Workers, which is affiliated with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Gould helped create the union in 1970 and has been a member ever since.

She served for more than 14 years as an elected official on the union's board. She was voted in as secretary in 1987, then secretary-treasurer and became alternate regional vice-president for Yellowknife in 1991. Two years later Gould was voted regional vice president Local No. 1 Somba K'e , the title she will hold until her term runs out this fall. Gould was awarded a lifetime membership in the union for her exemplary service.

During her various positions with the union, Gould has seen major payouts for workers who have been layed off included in employee collective agreements. She has also been instrumental in pushing for pay equity. Ironically, Gould is still waiting for her portion of back pay.

"The public service alliance is still in the process of fighting it (pay equity). I should be receiving back pay for all the years I was underpaid. I'm not holding my breath though," laughed Gould. "Pardon the pun."

Gould now suffers from a respiratory illness that gives her a shortness of breath when she is exerted. She attributes this to her allergy to cigarette smoke. She smoked for only a year, but her union days were spent around heavy smokers.

While working at the her full-time job, attending to union duties, and raising her two daughters, Gould also made time to become a member of the Yellowknife Disability Council, and coach bowling. She had a lot of practice at Con Mine's own bowling alley.

"My best score was 448 with 11 strikes in a row," said Gould.

Gould has coached too many bowling teams to mention here. From seniors, to junior boys and girls, she has seen many travel to the nationals under her direction.

Gould also made time to "sling booze" at the Elks club every Friday and Saturday night for five years. With her tip money she managed to single-handedly buy the house in Yellowknife where she still lives with her husband, Howard. With her tiny voice, Gould calls her little mixed puppy Keesha, and the chubby cross between a shih-tzu and a lasso-apso obediently scampers through the basement of the Elks hall and curls up at Gould's feet. Keesha knows who's boss.