Mark Tremblay was born in Lac la Biche in 1958. When he was 7 years old, he left his family home to live at the Michener Centre, an institution for people with developmental disabilities, located in central Alberta."I was sent there because I had a bad temper," he explains. "I have some kind of a brain disorder and the medication I was on was making me bananas."

"It was terrible there," Mark recalls. "Some of it wasn't bad. But how would you like to pick 200 acres of potatoes? I had to pick the potatoes out of the fields. They'd be put in storage rooms. Then we'd pick the carrots and turnips. I worked in the farm, too. I milked cows. Lots of them. Man, there was more than you could ever think of!"

Mark was 21 when he finally left Michener Centre. "It took my family a long time to get me out," he remembers, "about a year and a half. You have to go through all these procedures. They send you to a couple of places to see how you're doing. If you do OK, then you get out."

Because his family had moved to St. Paul, Mark decided to make the town his home too. He spent two years living in a group home before moving into his own apartment in what he calls "the 40-suiters" downtown. He's been living there ever since.

Mark is a born storyteller. He loves to talk, and he is very outspoken.He also has a flare for exaggeration and a dry sense of humour. Over the years, he's had a variety of work experience. One of his first jobs was janitorial work. "I got that through my support worker,"he says. "We cleaned campsites at lakes, cleaned firepits, picked up fish guts and junk. Sometimes you got a nice gut on your shoe and you didn't smell so good!"

Other jobs also spring to his mind. "I used to help make truck boxes for farmers. I used to weld stuff. I wasn't much good at it, but I did what I had to do. We had a funny guy there, he used to weld his pants to the table."

Mark laughs for a moment and then races on. "Lately, I've been working too much. I was doing janitor work in two different places at the bingo hall nights and afternoons, and at the recycling depot mornings. I was cleaning steel granary bins, too. It was too much. I didn't have time to sleep."

Because Mark likes to do lots of things when he has time, he's recently cut back on his work. "I like to walk," he says. "I clean up my apartment,and I like to do paint-by-numbers and jigsaw puzzles."

But what Mark likes most is make people laugh. "I make people laugh lots," he says proudly, "by just saying real funny things. I make them laugh real hard. I'm good at that. I make jokes. I do a lot of funny things."

With the help of his family and his support workers, Mark lives an independent life. "My aide does a lot of things for me. He takes me out shopping. He does whatever I think I need. He makes sure I don't go overboard when I get my AISH cheque."

"And I have a good family," he continues. "My brother-in-law is a farmer. He brings his toolbox over if I need help. My brother helps out, too. And my Dad's always around if I need help. And whenever something big comes along, my mom and sister are the experts."

Mark has come a long way from his early days in the institution. Angeris a problem for him at times, but he has learned ways to keep it undercontrol. "I have to stay away from stress and from people that drive mebananas," he says. "Then it's not so bad."

Clearly, Mark has many skills to offer. He enjoys being with people,and he's eager and willing to try new things. Listening to him speak, one gets the sense that Mark has the gift of turning every event in his life,happy or sad, into a good story.

And he's a great storyteller.