Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 11/02) - It's a funny thing, window-washing.

It can be too cold to whip out the squeegee at 0 C . Or Guido Faes, owner of ULA Service Limited, can strap on his safety harness and slowly winch himself up a 17-storey building in -40 C weather to clean your window with a specially-mixed solution that won't freeze.

Guido Faes cuts through caulking on a window he is replacing on the seventh floor of the Anderson-Thomson Tower. Faes has cleaned and replaced windows since 1965. - Nathan VanderKlippe/NNSL photo

The difference is in your wallet.

"It all depends how much you pay me," says the 59-year-old veteran window-washer with a deep belly laugh.

Charging what you want is a particular joy of being the only man in town with a particular talent, and right now Faes -- who cleans windows, replaces them, and does exterior building maintenance -- has it made.

He started window-washing in Yellowknife in 1974, when he travelled North to clean highrises owned by Bellanca Developments. He moved to Yellowknife from Edmonton in the early 1990's.

Before moving to Yellowknife, he spent his days scaling buildings in Edmonton -- he's cleaned all the tall ones -- and travelling to parts beyond. The job is simple enough: mix some dish-washing detergent and water, then whisk it off a window with a professional squeegee.

Before you do that, make sure your bucket or swing-stage is secure. The rule of thumb is four kilograms of counterbalance on a roof-mounted outrigger to a single kilogram of hanging weight.

On a good day, a window-washer can do about 40 windows an hour. Faes and a partner can finish off the Bellanca Building in two days.

For Faes, who was born into a baker's family just outside of Antwerp Belgium before moving to Canada's wide-open spaces in 1963, the travel was one thing that drew him to the job.

The satisfaction was another.

"I love looking at myself in a clean window. ... That's what I live for, to make people happy," he says.

He has fallen twice -- once seven metres, once 15. The first time a cable scraped his neck so badly he couldn't eat for three days. That was after he assumed his partner had secured his lines. He was wrong and the whole assembly came crashing down on him.

The second time it took him two years to fully recover from his injuries.

Falls aren't the only exciting element of the job, however. On particularly high buildings, window-washers often carry binoculars, an important tool for close-up glimpses of surrounding, shall we say, scenery.

"When you're stuck up there for four hours, you've got to keep yourself motivated somehow," he said.

But the motivational looking had an unexpected consequence once: a window-washing crew Faes worked for in Edmonton was high on the 38-storey Manulife building when they were confronted by undercover agents.

The agents had received a tip that the Toronto Dominion building nearby was going to get robbed. "They thought the window-washers were casing the place from the swing-stage," said Faes.

After washing windows for nearly four decades, Faes said he doesn't have any tricks of the trade to impart. "It's straightforward to me."