I call this 'web log' or 'blog' "From Wawa To Paris" because, as I look back over my career to date, it never ceases to amaze me that a kid who grew up in Wawa would end up traveling the world, meeting so many interesting people and seeing sights that I thought would only be available "from a book that I took from the shelf".
This blog is a work in progress. Like Sinatra mentions in a great song entitled 'Cycles', I've been many places over the years and I am blessed - or cursed - with a memory for detail. With Scottish and Irish blood in my veins, I'm also a storyteller and have managed to turn that into a career of sorts. A good friend of mine, Jack Nadeau, once remarked, when I told him that I rented out my head for a living, that half a living was better than none. Did I mention that he was a friend?
The photo accompanying this posting was taken of me and my two brothers, Greg (middle) and Norm (right) in Sinterville, a small collection of ramshackles houses a few miles from Wawa. That's where Dad was sent when he returned to Sault Ste. Marie expecting to get his old executive job back at the Algoma Steel Corportation after being away fighting Nazi Germany for several years. Our dirty, gritty trip from the Soo to Wawa aboard an Algoma Central Railway train pulled by a steam locomotive ignited a love of travel in me that burns to this day.
My blog is a way of sharing travel stories and tips. It also allows me to highlight some of the other articles I've had published over the years and to promote the military books I have written. And finally, it lets me rant about some of the idiotic and downright disgraceful things people do to each other in our time and rave about the wonderful acts of kindness and common sense that, thankfully, still prevail.
And so it goes...
(Photo by Dorene Douglas)
