Hard Work Deserves Credit

Ray Eyton
Vancouver
G&F Financial Group

"The bank welcomed my money but wouldn't give me a loan. So I switched."

The BC credit union movement was still relatively young in the early 1950s when Raymond (Ray) Eyton walked up the four flights of stairs to the Gulf and Fraser Fishermen's Credit Union's one-room, one-person office on Vancouver's Main Street. "They kept their money in a cardboard box ," recalls Ray, laughing.

The affable, energetic retiree, who is now seventy-four, has been entrepreneurial his whole life. He spent a good part of the last five-plus decades earning a living as a self-employed commercial fisher three months of the year. The rest of the time, he parlayed his talent as a carpenter and speculator - and his can-do attitude - into buying, fixing up and reselling properties all over British Columbia. His tenacity and fortitude even earned him some auspicious publicity. BC's legendary newspaper publisher Margaret "Ma" Murray wrote a one page feature about him. "She called me a dauntless young man," says Ray.

You'd think that Ray would've been just the kind of hardworking, goal-driven young customer a bank would want to help out, but this was apparently not the case back in 1953. Then in his early twenties, Ray had always worked on someone else's boat. Thinking big, with his eye on a lucrative future, he decided it was time to purchase his own commercial fishing boat. He walked into what was then the only bank in Steveston, a small, pretty community on a delta riverbank near the mouth of the Fraser River, and asked for a loan.

"Fishing is unpredictable," says Ray, "there are good years and there are bad years. When I had good years, they were pretty good. The bank certainly welcomed my money." But when it came to supporting Ray's livelihood and financial goals, the bank rolled up the welcome mat. They wouldn't give him a loan. So he terminated his account.

BC's credit unions started in the 1930s to help people just like Ray, dependable, financially responsible workers planning for a better future. People the banks ignored. Gulf and Fraser Fishermen's Credit Union gave him a loan. He repaid it in full right after the first fishing season on his new boat.

Ray has been retired for sixteen years now, though he still belongs to the credit union, which has since shortened its name to G&F Financial Group. "I have my RRIF with them, and also a term deposit." He lives with his second wife in a condo overlooking English Bay in Vancouver's West End. It's still difficult for young self-starters to obtain loans from banks, which is why so many people switch to a BC credit union. And when they switch they stay, because, as Ray says, "It's just like family."

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