Volunteer Profiles

Introducing VoicePrint Volunteer (and Grocery Special reader) Peter Suschnigg

Hailing from the city of Graz, Austria, Peter Suschnigg is easily recognized by his loud shirts-a personal trademark. Peter has breathed new life into our grocery specials with his enthusiasm and upbeat recordings. Fresh, boneless, skinless chicken has never sounded quite so good. So here is a little background on the voice that adds flavour to our groceries, so to speak...

Volunteering for VoicePrint, by Peter Suschnigg

It's my good fortune that I'm retired and live with my wife Carole of almost thirty years in the South end of Sudbury in a small house with a garden that's really too big for both of us. Like so many things in life, my arrival in Sudbury was the result of some choices and a lot of serendipity.

I was born in Austria at the beginning of WWII. Even looking back, school was the worst time of my life and I left at age sixteen to take up an apprenticeship as a gold/silversmith. It was a trade I liked a lot and was pretty good at. But my ancestors traveling genes gnawed at me and I emigrated to New Zealand – the furthest place I could get to. I reckoned by the time I got there I had covered half the world.

I loved and still love “Godzone” as the New Zealanders call their country. My first job was with the New Zealand railways. I was given the job of servicing signal boxes. My boss assumed that if I couldn't read or speak English I could at least follow electrical diagrams. Was he ever mistaken! After some months I managed to find work in my trade and experienced my first and only period of unemployment that lasted for about twenty minutes. Much later, to make money for my studies, I worked as a heavy equipment and pot operator at New Zealand's only aluminum smelter. The first ten or fifteen years in New Zealand were golden years for me. I got married had two children and after my marriage failed I decided to attend university.

At that time I could not see further than a Bachelor of Arts. And when I got it I also got a scholarship to go to China to study Chinese. Although the seventies were difficult times in China, the time I spent there was fantastic. After returning to New Zealand I married again. No children this time but a wonderful wife. I continued my studies and after getting my Masters, I dragged my wife to Toronto where I got my PhD in a respectable time.

Although the employment climate in Canada seemed no better than in New Zealand, I got lucky and was offered a position at Laurentian University. After a little more than seventeen years I had to quit and eventually retire; and because I require the use of a cane for mobility, I had to ask myself what I could do to given my physical limitations? And, as she often does, my dear wife, suggested that my mouth had never suffered like the rest of my body.

VoicePrint was the perfect solution and gives me the opportunity to thank Canada in a small way for all it had given to me.

Find our more about becoming a VoicePrint Volunteer.