Okay, John, I'll trade what I know about my name in exchange for a little tidbit that will help all of us Cycleblazers to get to know you better. Here's my part of the bargain: As far back as I can ascertain, I'm a descendent of French Canadians. I have a feeling the French Canadian part of me came from descendants of actual French people. I don't speak French, but I do like omelettes and boeuf bourguignon. Your turn.
I almost forgot to mention that I grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There are many French Canadians who migrated to that part of the U.S.
Even though I remember no French speakers on my father's side of the family, I often heard my Swedish and Finnish great-grandparents speaking in their native tongue.
I am a member of the society of St Vincent de Paul aka Vinnie's in Oz. (The Salvation Army is known as The Salvos).
I am rostered once a week with one of my Brother or Sister Vincentians to deliver food parcels to those in need. As a Chartered Account I also act as the Hon Treasurer of our Conference.
Thanks, Gregory. Interesting family history, for sure -- over the years, a lot of French Canadians went to the States, usually looking for work. Many Québecois/es emigrated to the mills of New England in the mid-19th century, for example. (The Acadians expelled in 1755 had no choice in the matter 🙁.)
For myself: I was born in Dorset, in England (Thomas Hardy country). We emigrated to Canada in 1956 -- my dad came from a farming family in SE England, and after 25 years in the army, in sketchy places like the Khyber Pass and the jungles of Burma (lucky for him, hence me, his Sikh comrades looked after him) he wanted to go farming. Canada had land, and we disembarked across the river from Québec City. For my ninth birthday shortly thereafter, I was given a single-speed Raleigh. I was chuffed -- kept that bike for 15-20 years.
I spent my last four years of primary school on the farm --school was a one-room schoolhouse in the woods in southern Ontario. I found it magical. But we had to sell the farm, and my dad took a job in a nearby town. After university, I worked as a teacher of English & History in a secondary school in northern Zambia between 1969 and 1971-- this was under the auspices of a Canadian NGO comparable to the Peace Corps. That experience changed my life, and I am forever grateful to many people in Zambia for that.
In the four-plus decades that followed, I was hugely privileged to live and work throughout Southern Africa, and in Brazil, on all sorts of projects. I met my wife in Zambia -- we were both doing graduate research she from New York, me from Toronto -- and both of our kids were born in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. My first cycling tour was in South Africa, in December 2005 -- with a friend from Zambia days, a South African in exile who had returned home after Mandela was released, we rode from Pretoria to Durban to mark his 70th birthday. When we reached the ocean, he said, "So John, what do we do next?" Said I, "What about a ride from Ottawa to Halifax?" We did that in 2007, to mark my 60th birthday -- my friend Trevor was 72! He borrowed my hybrid city bike for our two-week/1200 km trip.
My wife and I still travel a fair bit -- our son and his family live in Queensland, and we'll see them in April. Our daughter spent five years in Berlin a decade-plus ago, and we enjoyed visiting her there -- she and I have done a lot of hiking, cycling and paddling together. Happily, she now lives just the other side of Toronto so we have family and a granddaughter in the same time zone.😊
Otherwise .... I enjoy cooking, having learned to cook on a wood stove on the farm. I enjoy far too much coffee, spoiled forever by the flavours of places like Zanzibar, Mzuzu, and the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. Now nudging 78 journeys around the sun, I find that I devote far too much of my days to maintenance -- body maintenance, house maintenance, vehicular maintenance, and the like. (Though my Thorn Mercury Mk 3 -- named Freddie, of course -- requires hardly any at all.) But, I've resumed skating after a break of five years and two hip replacements; and this past July, even managed a short tour of 8 days & 600 kms in West Québec. (No Cycleblaze journal, but you could read about it on the Thorn Cycles Forum, here: https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk... )
Come visit sometime,Gregory, and we can compare notes on lakes'n'hills'n'rivers!
Great work, Mike. I'm not much of a volunteer, but I sure admire people like you who are. Thanks for sharing that and helping us to get to know you a little better.
Thanks for the autobiography, John. You've clearly lived a well-rounded, well-traveled, and extraordinary life. Thanks for helping us get to know you a little (a lot, actually) better.
And yes, perhaps I will get up your way one day. Lakes and hills and rivers are three of my favorite subjects.
So I'm inspired to join in by the french canadian twist things are now taking.
As a linguist, I spent a summer in Quebec long ago for my university dissertation, which was about cultural manifestations of the Québécois desire for independence. Confusingly, it appeared that whichever language you used to address people, there was a 50% chance that they'd respond in another tongue entirely, generally as a point of principle. But it was a wonderful summer, almost as good as my year in Italy. (Academia was tough, back in the day).
Other important and little-known facts: I hold a taekwondo black belt, having got bored of watching my kids' classes from the sidelines, and subsequently outlasting their own participation by a few years.
I also have a third nipple, like Scaramanga of James Bond fame.
And I can waggle both ears. Independently.
Only one of these facts is untrue. 😁
Those multi-lingual Quebecois are tricky that way. I think they intentionally answer in the opposite language you are speaking. While interviewing them for your dissertation, did anybody ever take it a step further and alternate their answers between French and English? That's what I would do.
Thank you for joining this conversation and helping us get to know you a little better. I choose to believe all three facts are true, but one of them kind of freaks me out. LOL
Hey Gregory, let me ask: whence the "Garceau"? Was there a wandering French-speaker in your distant or not-so-distant past? (Not as far back as Radisson & des Groseilliers, I'd guess, but one never knows, do one?) And where did they come from & how did they wind up in the US mid-west? And did you lose/forsake a "ç" somewhere along the way? (Don't want to pry, but I am curious.)
Nice snowy trees, BTW, and a good thing you enjoy shovelling snow -- I always try to make a virtue out of necessity.
Cheers, John
2 weeks ago