Rick the Clam - A Brief Biography

Rick The Clam – a brief biography

   Although a Great Lakes bi-valve mollusc by birth, Rick can trace his roots back to Ming, the giant clam of the Arctica islandica species, caught off the coast of Iceland in 2007. Ming, so named by the scientists that studied him and gave him a home at the time, was eventually found to be over 500 years old! (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam )

    

Rick’s paternal grandmother, Shelley, married to Ming for only one short year, migrated in 2008 from the cold shores of Iceland to the warmer climes of the Great Lakes, trapped aboard a fishing trawler that had accidentally caught her up in its cod nets.

   

 Working as a secretary to Warren Asperglum, the deputy assistant to the head of the Toronto Harbour Commission, she later met and fell in love with Asperglum’s young, homely son William at a beach party. The couple were wed in a scuba ceremony just off of Sunnyside Beach in Toronto in June of 2009. It wasn’t long before Shelley gave birth to Rick’s father, Gastro, shortly before she was eaten by a carp.

   

 Gastro was the first of the ‘two-eyed’ clams born in the metro area and it was owing to his foresight in taking up residence at the mouth of the Humber River that he soon became the dominant clam there. The rich nutrients flowing from this heavily polluted river accounted for Gastro’s amazing size and also his incredibly high rate of reproduction. Being the first ‘sighted’ clam provided both Gastro and his ensuing off-spring the rare ability to both survive and propagate. In fact, it was the birth of several thousand of Rick’s brothers and sisters that forced Rick to realize at an early age that he should move on if he wanted to stand out. It was at this time that he moved to the Cherry Beach area.

   

 An A-student and remarkable athlete, Rick did indeed become a ‘stand-out’ in the various schools that were scattered around the harbour. However, Rick found that his relatively sedate life, buried in the sandy bottom of the bay, didn’t afford him the opportunity he sought to help not only his own kind but his human relatives as well. This brought him to his decision to live a life of social activism and political involvement.

    

He volunteered, for a brief time, at the Daily Bread Food Bank where he was almost eaten and with various other charities around the city, work he found both rewarding and exciting but which also saddened him deeply. Rick also helped out at Leaside High School coaching the swim team there to several victories. He had to give it up though after being repeatedly stepped on. He spent time after this involved in municipal politics campaigning for both David Miller and later Rob Ford, not being able to decide exactly what his political positioning was. He later dropped out of the political scene as he was becoming more and more jaded with the process. He traveled to and spent several months on an island in Georgian Bay before a passing Large Mouth Bass brought him up to date on the terrible events of last year’s Mayoral debacle. Rick had had enough! It was then that he made his decision to go for it and run for the top job himself.

   

 Rick currently lives two hundred feet off Cherry Beach, is unmarried but is currently dating former Olympic swimmer, Missy Franklin. Rick also enjoys his hobby as an amateur sleuth and his part-time job as a small-engine repairman.