= Steve’s Biography: Québec City, Canada (1984-1985) ― The Commodore =
Summer 1984. I was fourteen. My younger cousins Carl, Joël, and Serge and I spent a week learning computer programming in a course paid for by our parents, held in the vibrant town of Charlesbourg, a suburb of Québec City. We stayed at the home of Carl’s father and his sister Annie, at Georges’s house—the loving heart of the Rodrigue family.
In a school classroom with about fifteen students, we learned the BASIC language on a Tandy Corporation TRS-80. We enjoyed this trip mainly because we got to spend time as a family, savouring the delicious meals prepared by Carl’s mother, Ginette, swimming in the above-ground pool, and above all, laughing and having fun together.
Four months later, my father, Marcel, asked me if I wanted a personal computer. At the time, I wasn’t convinced that such a machine would bring me any joy. I preferred to play in my hard on the road Bélair West in the town of Saint-Jean-Chrysostôme with my Star Wars action figures, along with my creative neighbour Donald. I politely declined Dad’s offer.
Later in 1985, when I was 15, Marcel found a bargain on a Commodore Plus/4 that a private seller won and wanted to get rid of. The deal included the computer itself, the monitor, and the floppy disk drive. I accepted my father’s gift because I thought I could play games on it. That model of Commodore was designed for productivity (spreadsheets and word processing) and didn’t offer any games on that platform. I then realized why the seller hurried to sell to my dad.
So I opened the thick manual on the Plus/4’s advanced BASIC language. And that’s when I caught the programming bug, creating crazy ideas that kept me warm during Canada’s long winter months. However, this kept me too busy to notice my older sister Nancy’s pretty friends when they came to visit. I missed out on some wonderful relationships. That’s life!
If my father Marcel bought the popular Commodore 64 instead—a computer with a weak BASIC language but game-oriented—I would have been constantly spellbound, having fun with games on that machine. I would never have become a game developer, a career that has sustained me for over 40 years.
My father invested $600 that proved extremely profitable for his son. Thank you, Dad, for opening that door to computing, thanks to which I’ve been able to meet remarkable people throughout my professional career: “Hail Commodore!”
Text by Steve L. RODRIGUE — Version 1.1 — Friday, August 7, 2026 — Québec CITY, CANADA.





