First of all, thank you VERY much for all the detailed information!
Unfortunately most of the things mentioned in your second post seem above my skill level at the moment. However, your mention of bridge mode led me to turn that off so that it is as if I didn't have the second nic, and should be back to the same as when port forwarding did work. So I turned off bridge mode, the mac address for the interface physically connected to the ISP modem/router is showing connected. But now Shaw's broken app they force you to use for port forwards doesn't work and won't let me sign in, sigh. I guess I will wait until their app comes back online and see if that solves my problem!
Once again, thank you for the replies and I'll provide an update to my situation when I can.