How This Person Became A Private Investigator In Canada

Introduction to This Story of How He Became a Private Investigator In Canada

As this website grows, the only true way to have it grow even further is to incorporate others into the content you find on Private Investigator Advice. This will provide some insight into different experiences and knowledge that you will need on your private investigation journey.

The private investigator featured in this article is a private investigator and I asked him to send me photos of his credentials before he began writing about how he became a private investigator.

You may gain many things from this article but as more and more of these types of experiences are shared, what I really want you to understand is that there is no one specific path to becoming a private investigator. Everyone comes from something different before deciding this is the path they want to take. They all weren’t in law enforcement before deciding to do this for a living.

So that means even you can become a private investigator if you want to. I hope these different examples help you see that.

The Seed Gets Planted

The year was 2015. Not that long ago. I was watching Jessica Jones, the Netflix series based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. I was completely enthralled.

Jessica Jones is a private investigator whose “office” is her one-bedroom studio in a rundown New York City building. She’s an attractive brunette in her mid-thirties, a raging alcoholic, and a pathological loner. She’s a skilled researcher, wears black fingerless gloves, and has supernatural strength, which enables her to manhandle aggressive perpetrators and conduct surveillance from balconies and rooftops.

I looked at that and thought, I’ve got fingerless gloves too. The similarities ended there but I thought, I can do this!

Years in the music business had left me with debts, little or no other career prospects, a bad back… Oh, and just like Jessica Jones, I had been a raging alcoholic! It hardly mattered that at that point I was years into beautiful, soul-fulfilling sobriety because I was looking for similarities with Jessica Jones. Alcohol abuse, and its accompanying state of mind, was something I could relate to.

I needed to do something with my life. Something exciting and unpredictable, something that suited my thirst for adventure and that could, if not now then later, allow me to be my own boss. The closest I had gotten to that was long-haul trucking, which shows you how far off the mark I was. You cannot, in my humble opinion, be a good husband and father if you’re only there 36 hours a week.

Watching Jessica Jones awakened some long-buried fantasies about being a private eye. I knew I was grasping at straws, but I was 41 years old with three children, and, more importantly, I was totally desperate. I had a Bachelor’s degree in journalism, and even though I retained most of the skills required to perform that kind of job – research, focus on facts, writing and generally expressing myself well – that degree was more than ten years old.

Actually becoming a private investigator for me became a matter of, “Why not”, and, “Maybe this can be fun”. I had nothing to lose. I paused the show and looked it up. I found that I needed a license, and in order to get that license, I needed a full course. My excitement grew. Even though I was essentially destitute and paralyzed, I knew I could excel in a classroom setting. I enrolled with what little money I had left and my adventure in the private investigation world began.

The course was straightforward and relatively short. It always kept me interested. I was fascinated with the business, at least how it was presented in class. For the first time in a long, long while, I felt I had a purpose. I plodded on and passed with flying colors.

My First Private Investigation Job

In one of my classes the teacher, an older gentleman who ran the department of internal investigations for a nearby metropolis, told us that he had contacts in agencies who constantly asked him for references among his students. They wanted these students as undercover operatives. He told us that being an undercover operative was a fantastic gateway into the business.

I was floored. Undercover! Who even knew? Immediately I thought of Jason Patric in Rush, the 1991 film about agents who go so deep undercover with a drug lord that they become junkies. That, I thought, is devotion! I was so grateful for the opportunity to have a new life that I would do anything. Anything. Plus, I knew I had a knack for getting people to trust me – essentially a duplicitous personality.

I went to the teacher – I was at least six months away from getting my license at that point – and gave him my number. I’ll do anything, I told him. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure he had a good laugh about that. But he kept my number and when I got my license, he rang me up and referred me to an agency that needed an undercover agent. After a quick call, I got the job and I would start the following Monday.

I was ecstatic. I called my girlfriend at work, my mother, and my best friend and told them all. I played it safe enough, only revealing that I was “going undercover”. I couldn’t tell them the nature of the mandate, where I would work, or what I would do there.

Never mind that I didn’t even know myself. I only knew that I would be part of an assembly line for about a month and that I was to report on pretty much everything.

I had a vision of how things would go. I would sort of do the job, keep an eye out for anything or anyone suspicious, follow them, use a covert camera to document their wrongdoings, and report to my ever-grateful boss.

I was quickly disillusioned. First of all, I couldn’t carry anything to the assembly line with me – no phone, no “jewelry” (meaning my covert camera, a watch). Nothing. I was covered head to toe with sanitary equipment. I was about as comfortable as an astronaut in deep space. Second of all, I couldn’t move even one second off of the assembly line to go “investigate”. Once I went to the bathroom and when I came back, one of the old ladies working the line gave me the stinkeye. “You gotta let us know, man, ‘cause we’re here looking for you. Don’t do that $??# again!” Thirdly, and most disappointing, I realized that my “mandate” was basically being a propaganda agent to counter any talk or attempt to unionize. I was to rave constantly about how great the company was and that they were lucky to be there. No joke. These poor shlubs worked in sub-zero temperatures, basically repeating the same three gestures for ten hours, with one half-hour break. It was a hellhole! AND I WAS STUCK THERE FOR A MONTH.

There was no investigation, certainly no surveillance. The closest I got to being a private investigator during that time was typing and emailing my daily report at the end of the day back home, exhausted.

I was indeed disillusioned, but I was also still grateful for the opportunity to work. I remembered that not too long ago, I had been unemployed, desperate, and essentially adrift. Gratitude for a purpose, as bland as it was at this particular time, was my saving grace. I also knew that this job would lead to the next if I performed well. I kept my reputation in mind. I truly wanted to be the best I could, under any circumstance. So I kept at it, didn’t complain, and bode my time.

After six weeks, the mandate ended. There were no surprises, no Big Bang, no accolades. But somehow my boss was thrilled with me. He told me my reports were very thorough and well written, that I was punctual and respectful, and that he would call me if anything came up.

Gaining More Experience

During that conversation, I had what I consider today a stroke of genius. I asked him point-blank if he would let me tag along on a surveillance job. I told him I enjoyed undercover work (a total lie) but that I wanted to try surveillance, that I would learn a great deal and do it for free. He told me he would call back. Within an hour he did, and the following day I was saddled with two seasoned investigators on a surveillance job. How exciting!

I sat with one of them, a man about my age but with, of course, considerably more experience. We got along famously from the get-go. To this day we have worked on countless surveillance jobs together and I consider him my mentor. He was tough, to the point, and critical of everything. For the first time, I was forced to think about each and every decision. Whether that decision turns out to be the right one is beside the point, he told me, but you gotta be able to justify it. Why did you do this and not that, why did you follow the subject into the store and not stay in your car waiting for him, etc. He also told me that there were abilities one needed to be good at this, either immediately or eventually. Preferably immediately. You needed “a good steering wheel”, meaning both driving skills and a knack for positioning yourself for surveillance. Apparently, I had those, and this pleased him.

Eventually, my mentor, who worked all the time with everyone, referred me to his contacts and I began to work surveillance jobs pretty much non-stop. I had no problem being as grateful for the good jobs as I had been for the bad ones.

Again, gratitude is the key.

I also tried to stay humble. That part was easy because I was actually new to the job. I’d have to be pretty moronic to think of myself as some kind of reference point or to impose my views as gospel. Being teachable was another important key to my success, as it stands. I listened all the time and learned from the inevitable newbie mistakes.

I also tried not to bang my head against the wall too hard when I screwed up. This is harder for me than anything else. Recently I lost a target on foot, an attractive 5’8’’ blonde that stood out in the middle of a crowd, all this because my eyes darted about for a few seconds. I felt like a huge loser. I even went as far as to think word would get around and I would never get another call. I knew I was exaggerating but I couldn’t help it for a few minutes. I was crestfallen. I reached out to fellow investigators, including Andrew, and they all basically told me to relax. Stuff happens. We all lose targets once in a while. It’s part of the job. So I relaxed. Teachable.

At the time of this writing, I’m on another undercover assignment. It’s my fifth. All of them have lasted between two and three months, and all of them were me being a glorified union buster. I do not enjoy it, but I’ve accepted it as my own experience. I know investigators who have gone undercover and helped bust drug and theft rackets. But for me? I’m a glorified union buster. It’s okay. I can live with that if it puts food on the table and helps me get through the slower winter work cycle without resorting to unemployment insurance.

What I enjoy the most so far is surveillance work. I have a very bland family car. It is spacious, and has tinted windows. I carry MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and a windshield washer bottle (guess why). I have all the tools I need to do my job. But the most important one is gratitude.