Depressed man refuses the jab,
loses high-paying job and...
opens a skateboard shop

In 2022, Scott LeBlanc says he'd "worked at the same job for fourteen years and wasn’t really getting any fulfillment from it. I had all the money in the world but still wasn’t happy."

That's when his work told him he had to get vaxed or he would be axed.

He chose not to get the COVID-19 quackshot.

Before losing his job, Scott says he was already "going through some heavy depression."

Depression + job loss + turning thirty.

Don't worry, he didn't turn to drugs, alcohol or a shotgun to the head.

Instead, he returned to his childhood pastime of... skateboarding.

"So, rather than getting down, and not having anything," says Scott in a video, "I started Square One Skate Shop and it’s been the greatest experience of my life. The depression started to go away. I started to see an impact that I was making on not only my community but the skateboard scene. And, overall, I just met some of the greatest people that I’ve ever met in my life."

What's more he opened his skateboarding shop in the small town of St. Marys, Ontario. This is particularly significant for me for two reasons:

1) His shop is located two doors away from where The Stonetown Diner was located. The diner was a grease trap I'd never eat at unless you put a gun to my head, but overtop were two apartments, one of which was where my late wife, Nicole, and I used to live.

2) In its early drafts, my novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, was originally set in St. Marys. I later renamed the city Moosehead and moved it to Northern Ontario. Nonetheless, the layout of Moosehead remained very similar to St. Marys.

I've been meaning to visit St. Marys and record a video showing how main street, the park, town hall, the train tracks and the river, parallel that of my fictional town of Moosehead.

So now I have two reasons to visit.

While I've little interest in skateboarding, I'd love to visit Scott's shop, shake his hand and gift him a complimentary copy of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story in gratitude for him being a phoenix rising out of the ashes of tyranny and depression.

I do not doubt that part of the COVID agenda was to destroy local communities, make people suicidal and ruin small businesses. Scott LeBlanc and Square One Skate Shop foiled their monstrous plans with narrow boards mounted on four wheels.

"Skateboarding has given me an opportunity to actually impact people’s lives," says Scott, "and that’s what I realized I was missing in my old line of work. No matter how much money I made, I didn’t feel I had a purpose. Now, having my own team, sponsoring people, hosting events, giving to youth... you know, skateboarding was a refuge for me, it helped me through a lot of the darkest times and now I get to do it for others."

You can watch his short four-minute video, which shows him and his fellow skateboarders doing some incredible stunts that are probably far too dangerous to perform under the influence of any mRNA injections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcZ56Id9UdI 

— John C.A. Manley

PS If you or anybody you know is into skateboarding, you can support Scott LeBLanc's inspiring business venture by:

1) Visiting Square One Skate Shop at 29 Water St. in beautiful St Marys, Ontario (located minutes away from my favourite spring-fed quarry and the Grand Trunk Trail).

2) Purchasing decks, wheels, clothing and whatever else skateboarders need through Square One Skate Shop's online store at: https://squareoneskateshop.square.site/ 

3) Or by joining the Square One Skate Shop Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/squareoneskateshop/ 

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/