Myself, age 11

In 1957 our family made its final move, to a nice house in the small town of Burgess Hill, Sussex.  Burgess Hill is on the London-to-Brighton railway line, which was convenient for our father who had a one-hour commute to his job in central London, and for Robert and I, who had a ten-mile train commute to attend the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School for Boys.

17 Park Road in the ‘60s. When I visited in 2000 the paint and Virginia creeper had been stripped prior to repainting.

 Playing bridge 

My school days were uneventful. I passed the exams. One term at age 16, I came first in my class in both English and maths. My Report Card said I didn’t deserve the maths result. In fact I was not the least interested in maths – but I swotted up the easy formulas used at that level, and simply applied them.  I was not attracted to team sports and did not participate. I founded the school Angling Society instead. More about fishing later… 

 Mum and Dad in the ‘60s

I got my first experiences of overseas travel in this period. About 1956 Dad drove the family through France in our Rover car to Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava, Spain. This was before the days of package air tours. We had some adventures on the way!  I also went on a school trip to Paris, and by invitation from my Dutch girl pen friend in Holland, visited my uncle Howard’s gravestone there.

As a lawyer

After leaving school in 1962 I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, to be trained by the articled clerk system.  A lawyer in Brighton took me on as a probationer for six months. I found the law to be very dull, with all man-made theories and nothing “real.”

I did not like it at all.

University of Leicester

So I snapped up a place at Leicester University when it was offered. (In those days university education in England was generously funded by the state. Tuition was free, and a grant system, based on one’s parents’ income, provided sufficient money for living expenses. Each place had about twenty applicants competing for it, but we all made about four or five applications. You couldn’t just pay money and attend, except in certain cases).

I graduated with a B.A. Special Degree in the Social Sciences (2^nd Class Hons.).  This had involved courses in Geography, Geology, Economic History, Politics, and Social Sciences. As customary in England, it was a three-year course. In my third year I specialised in Geography.

I was Chairman of the Economic History Society, and Secretary of the Conservative Association, in connection with which I went to a couple of conferences and helped at elections. I’m not so sure my politics are quite so right-wing now!  

I was also university representative for AISEC, an international student job exchange programme. Companies in other countries offered jobs for our students in exchange for jobs for their students. This position made me a de facto member of the Student’s Union Council.

An aside - Our Student Entertainment Committee was particularly on the ball. They booked up-and-coming groups before they became famous, and one was the Rolling Stones. The Stones honoured their contract even though they by now had two hit records, and appeared at our Saturday night ‘Hop’ one night in Spring 1964, playing on our makeshift 4 foot stage in the cafeteria. Most of us just stood around the stage in awe - including me. I stood about six feet from Mick Jagger. The Beatles were also booked, but found a way to back out of their contract.

I took advantage of AISEC and went as far as I could in Europe – Istanbul, Turkey. Another student signed up for Turkey, and we travelled by special low-fare students’ train across the whole of Europe. The ‘job’ was a nominal office job for one month, but we were paid. My friend left after his month was up, but I stayed for an extra month, looking around Istanbul and its environs.

Turkey was so exotic that it became my ‘favourite country.’  For our graduation dissertation, Geography specialists had to study some aspect of a place, and write a report. Most students wrote about their own home town (although one went to the US), but I went back to Turkey, again c/o AISEC.

After the one month ‘job’ I travelled throughout Turkey with Hassan Tumer, the son of the family we had lodged with the year before. We went by ship along the Black Sea coast, on to the eastern city of Erzerum, and  zigzagged back by bus and train, seeing the whole country. Hassan had an aunt who lived in Kirkpinar, an agricultural village near Istanbul, so we went to stay there for a couple of weeks. I investigated the village’s life and economy and wrote my dissertation.

I had financed these trips each year by staying in Leicester for a month to work night shift in a bakery. Official hours were 6 p.m. to 2.30 a.m., but to put in maximum hours I hung around helping the foreman until the day shift arrived at 8:00.

Graduation Day, June 1966

A hitchhike around Europe

After university I had a plan – take a year off and travel around the World. The original idea was to emigrate to Canada first, work and travel there for six months, then across the Pacific to Australia and back home through Asia. My best friend, John Smith, decided to come with me.

We were accepted by Canada Immigration but were told the papers wouldn’t arrive for six weeks, so we decided to spend that time travelling in Europe. In fact the papers came through within a week - before we left - but we still did our trip.

We travelled for two months throughout Europe the way many students did back then, the  cheap way - hitchhiking, Youth Hostels, tent, cooking our own food.

We explored many cities, including Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Bonn, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Saltzburg, Vienna, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Belgrade, Skopje, Thessalonika, Athens, Corinth. We spent a week resting on the island of Corfu, and then ferried across to Italy, and up through Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan.  In Milan we split up – John headed across to Bilbao in Spain where his father was working as a consultant engineer biulding a blast furnace, and I headed home. Finances were tight. I had only thirty shillings ($4.50 at the time) to hitchhike 450 miles to the Ostend Ferry! But I was very lucky to be picked up by a German doctor who was heading to Cologne.  He drove me for two days and paid for food and accommodation on the way, so I made it home.

I noticed later in Canada that not many young Canadians were aware of how cheaply Europe could be seen. They thought rented cars and hotels were the way. So I wrote and self-published a booklet Cheapest Europe for Student Travellers.  I didn’t promote it much, but some were sold  by mail order from ads in student papers, and one university bought ten copies. 

To Toronto

John and I sailed to Canada on the S.S. Franconia. It was a stormy voyage. We disembarked in Montreal on 9th November 1966, each with about two hundred pounds in our pockets, and first went to Kingston to look for jobs. We were advised to go to Toronto and were lucky enough to get Christmas sales jobs at Simpsons Department Store.  For New Year’s  we took  a bus to New York to visit a friend of mine from university. His apartment overlooked Central Park.. We met Frederick R. Koch, the art connoisseur, who took us to lunch at the Harvard Club. I kept up a correspondence with Fred for some time, and met him for lunch a couple of times when we were both in London.

It was hard to find good work, but eventually I found a union job as a welder’s helper at $3/hr., and John did commission sales jobs. We each bought a car, and spent the summer exploring Ontario - Niagara Falls, fishing trips - mostly in John’s Volvo.

We hadn’t saved enough to go on to Australia (our plan), but didn’t want to face another cold Ontario winter, so we decided to head for Vancouver.

To Vancouver
We left in October 1967. We didn’t take the direct route across Canada. We took the long way….

Expo 67 was still on, so first we headed east through Ottawa to Montreal and visited Expo. We then turned south through New England to Boston. We by-passed New York because we had already been there, and went on to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C.

When we reached Washington on October 21, we found ourselves amidst 70,000 demonstrators taking part in the first of what was to become huge bi-annual anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. We had no idea it was going to take place, although as we drove towards Washington the atmosphere had seemed very strange and tense. At the Pentagon we saw hippies putting flowers in the guns of the guarding soldiers, and we attended the speech by Dr.Benjamin Spock at the Reflecting Pool. We saw the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, but were disappointed that the Smithsonian Museum was closed and we could only view the White House and the Pentagon from a distance!! 

Finally we turned west towards Vancouver, and visited Charleston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita.  We were particularly keen to see the old cowboy towns from the movies and comics, so Dodge City was a highlight.

From Salt Lake City we turned northwards to Vancouver, taking the Boise, Spokane route.

We took John’s Volvo car on this trip, since the seats folded down to make a sleeping platform. We slept mostly in the car, using motels occasionally to clean up and rest properly. Our plan was to average 400 miles/day. Having visited a city, we would drive as far as we could towards the next one that evening. Waking early, we would usually arrive at the next city with a day to visit all the sights….then on towards the next.

Vancouver

We arrived in Vancouver in November, and rented an apartment in Kitsilano. It had a view of Kits Beach. We immediately took a liking to Vancouver, for its beauty and scenery. But jobs are hard to find in winter in Vancouver, since many young Canadians migrate there for the warm weather, and this was the ‘60s – the hippie era.

We ran out of money by Christmas. We lived on baked beans and toast with no butter. Our Christmas dinner that year was the nuts and fruit on the table of some girls we visited! We didn’t have a dime for a paper or for a phone call, so a couple of times we walked two miles to the public library and its free newspapers, then begged to use the library phone! No jobs though. We were too proud to write home for money and admit we were failures.

In early January, John had the idea of knocking on doors asking for odd jobs. He went to West Vancouver, a wealthy residential suburb. The first day he swept leaves. Finally we had a way to make money! I went along the second day and we were asked to clean windows. The customer gave us some Windex and paper towels, and we assumed this was how pros cleaned windows. So we bought our own Windex and paper towels and knocked on doors telling people we  were window cleaners.  We were soon told that pros use ammonia and special brass squeegees, so we bought these. Our initial investment in business was $3.50.

January was hard going with several snowstorms that interrupted our work. Sometimes our water froze on the outsides of the windows before we could squeegee it off! But we soon built up a window cleaning (and later grass-cutting) round, with repeat customers. We regularly made about $4/hour, which was good money in those days (beer was $1.60/case, cigarettes $2.10/carton, gasoline 23c/gallon, 3 course restaurant meal $1 or less, coffee 10c, rent $90/month, nice house $18,000).

 At first we did not own a ladder, but relied on the customer having one . If they didn’t have a ladder we canvassed the neighbours for one we could borrow. In April, a customer asked if we could paint his house for $4/hour. We had no idea how to paint a house, so we read books about it. We were far too thorough and slow however, so he fired us. But we started telling our window cleaning customers we were also painters, and successfully painted some houses. We put up our rate to $5/hour.

Every weekend we drove out of town and explored ‘Beautiful B.C.’, particularly its rivers and lakes, since we were both very keen on fishing.

 In October a customer offered us jobs as surveyors’ helpers at a proposed new ski resort (Brohm Ridge). We moved to Brackendale (50 miles north of Vancouver). I didn’t like this work, so carried on window cleaning, commuting every day back to West Vancouver. 

I wanted to return to England by Christmas, so we advertised our window cleaning business, and sold it for $1000! 

John stayed on in Brackendale, and I flew home. John returned in April, looking very sun-tanned. 

With John Smith at Vancouver Airport

 Back in England

After an interesting sojourn in Canada, it was time to start a career. I thought I would try the travel business, and immediately got a well-paid (£2500 p.a.) position as Manager of the Costa Brava Administration Section at Clarksons Holidays, in London.. I had a secretary and eight staff. I commuted to London with Dad for a while, then rented an apartment in Bromley.

 Clarksons was a pioneer of package tours to Europe and was growing very rapidly, doubling every year.

 One benefit of the job was that if there was an empty seat on a plane, employees could fly free for an ‘inspection visit’. I took advantage of this and made half a dozen trips to different Mediterranean resorts. 

For my ‘real holiday’ a friend and I went somewhere Clarksons didn’t go - Morocco. We flew to Gibraltar, ferried to Tangier, visited Rabat, Casablanca, and Fez, and explored the High Atlas Mountains by donkey.

But two years of commuting and sitting in an office in Central London was enough for me. I yearned for the scenery and wide open spaces of British Columbia! I quit Clarksons. (And by coincidence Clarksons went bankrupt soon after. They over-extended themselves by investing in their own fleet of planes, which proved uneconomical). 

I went back to Vancouver in spring 1970. John, meanwhile, was living in the Seychelle Islands. His father had some property there and he had gone to inspect it. He liked the Seychelles so he got some kind of office job there and was thinking of settling down. 

Drive – New York to British Columbia

Someone had told me about the “Auto Drive-away” system in the US, where one is given a car to deliver to an address, and the only cost to the driver is fuel and oil. I decided to drive across the US again using this system, and it worked.  

I flew to New York and was given a Volkswagen to drive to Atlanta. In Atlanta I was given an air-conditioned top-of-the-line Ford Mustang to drive to Portland Oregon!  The only condition was that I couldn’t enter Nevada.

 I decided to take the southern route - through New Orleans, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

 I didn’t mind driving on my own. I met people along the way including hitch hikers (less risky then), saw many interesting places (such as the Kennedy assassination site), and had some interesting experiences (such as being invited to a catfish BBQ on the Mississippi).

 I dropped the car off in Portland, and caught a bus to Vancouver.

 Back in Vancouver

I had to make an income while looking for a career, so contacted some of our old painting customers to say that I was back, and started painting again.

 I checked out the travel business, but found it undeveloped at that time in Vancouver – just lots of small travel bureaux. A customer/friend was a big wheel in insurance, and offered to get me into that, but it sounded boring so I didn’t follow up.

 When John heard I was back in Vancouver he decided the Seychelles were not perhaps for him, and decided to return to Vancouver too. He arrived a couple of months later and we were business partners again. After a few months he brought his girlfriend Susan over from England. They decided to move to Victoria, a beautiful city on Vancouver Island, in Spring 1971. They were married in Victoria on 29 April 1972, and I was Best Man.

 At some point in this period I thought that Australia might be a better bet, so I actually bought a plane ticket there. I had arranged a week’s stopover in Hawaii and during that time I chickened out, cashed in my ticket, and went back to Vancouver! At least I saw Hawaii.

 Work

So John Smith and I had been partners again for about a year, advertising ourselves as ‘student painters’. We were self-taught and learned all the tricks of the trade from scratch, since neither of us had ever worked for another painter. Business was good, and we were earning more money than any of our friends who had regular jobs.

 After John left for Victoria I took on an assistant and began to build up my own business. Eventually I had about eight employees in summer, and less in winter. It was not a high prestige business to be in, but one way or another it suited me:

       -     I was the absolute boss, inspectors or anyone else to report to.

      -    We worked outside in the summer and inside in the winter.

-         I did not have to wear a suit or go to the same office or shop every day – we moved around to different locations constantly.

-         I was free to arrange my time however I liked (for a while I tried a 4 day week). I was not committed to regular hours. I could take holidays or days off whenever I wished. (I took four to six weeeks off at Christmas time in order to travel). I could switch my company’s long weekends to a different date when the weather was better or the roads would not be so crowded.

-         It was a challenge to organise  jobs in the most efficient way.

-         I enjoyed meeting the customers, and advising them about colours and design.

-         I enjoyed relating to my employees. I paid them generously and reliably, so I got the best and they remained loyal. Many of them stayed with me for years at a stretch..

-         Overhead was low, and there were lots of tax write-offs (office in home, storage, vehicles, etc.)

I did it just for the money, so that I could pursue my many other interests. The money was good, steady, and quite adequate for my needs. My policy was to charge for labour double what it cost me. So minus some expenses, my income in summer was the equivalent of the total of the wages of up to seven skilled tradesmen, and in the less busy winter season, that of two or three, plus the work I did myself at full rates. I had no office or secretary to pay for, and recently calculated that recently my fixed overhead (generously calculated for tax purposes) was only $840/month – less than a day’s work.. 

I didn’t make a quick fortune, or attempt to. Naturally I sometimes thought I should be doing something else and had a few ideas over the years, but nothing I considered seemed so good, or it would have required more commitment than I wanted to give.

 We did not do new construction, with all its mess and dirt (and interfering builders, architects and designers) but concentrated on high quality residential and some commercial work, dealing directly with the clients. We worked entirely on the prosperous North Shore of Vancouver and met lots of interesting people – entertainers, TV and radio personalities, hockey and football players, authors, well-known businessmen, and others not so famous but still interesting in their own right.

 We did a few commercial contracts. We were the painters of choice for the City of North Vancouver, and painted City Hall, the Library, the Police Station, the Fire Hall, the Museum, the Social Centre, the Works Yard, and other buildings they owned.

 An interesting job was the very ornate interior of the Freemason’s Lodge, a four storey building built in the ‘20s and not much changed since then. A few secrets in there – hidden strings that make things move, boxes with skeletons……

 I would like to thank the following employees in particular, for their long service and good work: Derek B., Scott B., Dan C., Clayton C., Paul F., Chad K., Steve L., Chris P., Jim M., Dan P., Norm R., Orville S., Dan S.,  Jeff S., and most especially Clint M., who has taken over the business, with help from his wife Tammie. Tammie has helped me with my medical care, I don’t know what I would do without her 

Company golf tournament, 1999

Company golf tournament, 2000

 Deaths of Parents

My mother died, after battling breast cancer, on 10 August 1970.
Father died, of a brain hemorrhage, on 20 May 1972. 

One summer two friends and I went to Jasper, hoping to climb Mount Robson, at 12,972 ft. the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Yet again we were foiled by bad weather, but were able to ascend Mt. Edith Cavell (11,032 ft.). We decided to head south to Banff and the Bugaboo Range. The weather was bright and sunny there, and we had a wonderful week exploring this spectacular mountain range.

I did do lots of successful day, weekend, or long weekend ascents of local mountains. In fact I can drive along most of our roads and highways and point out that I’ve climbed most of the mountains in view. I went mountaineering almost every good weather weekend when I wasn’t fishing. When up a mountain looking down at a river I wished I was down there – and when on a river looking up at the mountains I wished I was up there!

Regular companions were John H. and his friend John O., two young hikers whom I introduced to mountaineering. John Howe developed his interests and went on to write about climbing, and is now head of Mountain Search and Rescue for Squamish. He owns a forestry consulting company there. I was touched when, visiting me because of my illness, he brought a framed photo of three of us atop a peak, which he keeps on his desk to this day.

John H., John O. and me on top of Welch Peak.
Photo by Danny W., John keeps it on his desk at work to this day.

                        Rapelling                                                     Peak of Mount Frosty

Skiing
Skiing was naturally my winter sport, and I skied at every opportunity during the ‘70s and ‘80s.  I never had a season ticket at a resort, preferring to go to different ones each time. I skied every resort in B.C., Washington State, and Banff and Jasper, taking many weekend or week-long trips with friends. I preferred to ski off the runs in the powder snow and explore as much as possible.

I also did ski-mountaineering – climbing mountains uphill on special short skis with hinged boot bindings and removable ‘skins.’ This involved some overnight trips, staying in Alpine Club cabins in the mountains.

I did a course in Nordic skiing, but did not really take to it.

One winter John H., John O. and I wanted to be at the top of a mountain for New Year’s Day. We were to drive to a lake and from there climb the mountain - a three day trip in all. But there had been recent heavy snowfalls and the road that passed by the lake was not ploughed. (That road has since been paved and would be ploughed daily now). My 4WD Jeep, even with chains, got bogged down. It took us a whole day to hike to the lake. We found the snow on the trail up the mountain was too deep and soft, so we had to abandon the climb. We camped by the lake for two nights in sub-zero weather and explored the nearby surroundings.