Yim and I met in Montreal at a party, which was being held by mutual friends, in an old warehouse along the Lachine Canal in March of 1998. For those of you who don’t already know, it was a blind date, as in we were each invited to the party with the pre-conceived plan of setting us up. To the credit of our friends, it worked out well.
Since then, we have lived a full and interesting life – traveling, accepting challenging new professional opportunities, launching our own businesses and spending our lives together. We’ve made some fabulous decisions, some not so fabulous decisions and some bad decisions but through it all, we’ve owned and worked through them.
Over those years, we made several pivotal decisions together, which included accepting my appointment as Creative Director at BBDO / Chrysler Canada, and required our relocating to Windsor, Ontario, which then started several subsequent years of traveling, first across the country to Vancouver Island and then all the way down to southern Belize for several years before heading back up to Canada.
27+ years later, we’ve had a lot of really good adventures and are two very grateful, retired people.
Travel has always been, and continues to be, a big part of our lives. For us now, that can mean weekend trips to Montreal for a special event or dinner with friends, evenings in Toronto with family or at a show or hiking around Georgian Bay in the summer. It also means at least one big late fall and one winter trip somewhere now because I still don’t like the winter.
When Yim and I first met, I jabbered on during our early date dinners about all the places I wanted to go in my life and Yim has often said it was that adventurous spirit of mine that attracted her to me. At first, many years ago, some of the travels we took were a bit rocky because I was used to travelling pretty haphazardly and on my own but after all these years, we are in a nice groove now. We spend hours talking about where we would like to visit and then planning the trips, always considering what each other will enjoy during the trips. I spend hours researching the locations so our experiences are everything we hoped they would be. This has become a treasured part of our life.
Everyone reading this probably knows of our early years together, including the five kooky years spent building our own little house along the beach in Belize and managing the Five Star Resort, The Inn at Roberts Grove before we moved back to Montreal and then out to Victoria, BC.
It was a pretty wild first ten years together. We met in Montreal, moved to Windsor, then to Vancouver Island, then to Belize, back to Montreal and then headed back out west to Victoria.
After we relocated to Collingwood in 2013, our life settled down considerably and we spent the next few years finishing up our ‘careers’, planting our gardens and traveling around the Georgian Bay region of Ontario doing lots of hiking, although we did get excellent trips in to New Orleans and the British Virgin Islands.
Then something Yim said convinced me that it was time to visit Europe and in 2017, we chose Catalonia, Spain as a place to start, mostly due to our both wanting to visit Barcelona. Until then, I had always focused on travel involving being in, on or around the water but this trip changed that for me.
We spent two weeks exploring Barcelona, enjoying and giggling at the architecture of Gaudi, shopping, walking, eating, then touring the Montserrat Monastery high up in the mountains before heading up the Costa Brava coastline to Tossa de Mar to hike a bit of the Camino de Rondo and tour the ancient walled village. From there, we travelled to The Pyrenees to hike the Encantats Trail before heading back to the coastal village of Llafranc, where we spent a few days exploring the surrounding area. The differences of day to day life were remarkable to me. I loved the region. I loved the civilized culture.
In the spring of 2018 we travelled to Puerto Escondido to visit some friends and because I wanted to learn to surf, then we enjoyed a spectacular three week RV tour of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, which featured hikes in Bryce Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, the North Rim, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde and the South Rim before heading off to Sedona and then Vegas for a few nights.
In 2019, we spent a week scuba diving in Cozumel, took a cruise through Alaska and the Inner Passage, and then stopped off on Vancouver Island to visit friends.
2020 started with a trip to Hualtuco and then Covid hit, so we hiked locally during that period, which really only lifted in the beginning of 2022. Highlights of the lockdown were Kilarney Provincial Park and Manitoulin Island but we hiked the Bruce Trail extensively during this period. If you are interested, those hikes are nearly all featured under the Ontario section in the navigation.
Once we felt comfortable traveling again, we headed off to Newfoundland for a few weeks with our Victoria based friends, Dorothy and Mark, then headed back out west to Victoria for a visit.
2023 was a fabulous trip to Paris and in the fall, we thoroughly enjoyed a road trip through The Catskills into Maine through New York State and Vermont, then headed home through Prince Edward County and up to Collingwood.
In 2024 we visited Venice, Cinq Terres and Tuscany as well as most of the villages of the region and flew out of Rome.
In January, 2025, we spent three weeks hiking in Madeira, which was absolutely fantastic. I loved our time there and it has inspired me to spend longer periods of time away in the winters.
As of today, we have booked seven weeks in Costa Rica for January and February 2026.
A fun look back at the past 27 years below chronologically starting with our first vacation together in Belize. Change has been a constant for us as our life together continues to evolve.
Fun huh?
I’m pretty content at this point and being able to spend hours considering where we want to spend winters is a gift to me. Life is now about creating the best life we can for each other.
To achieve that, we both enjoy a committed fitness lifestyle. Fitness was always a common thread for us and that part of our lives has become considerably more important to us as we age.
Yim takes multiple strength training sessions weekly, does ballet twice, teaches Zumba twice and enjoys a Burlesque class on Sunday afternoons. I have taken to running over the past five years and like to start my days with a 15 kilometre run before either strength or core training for 45 minutes. Once the weather warms up, I add a 90 minute bike to that regimen daily, which usually includes picking up whatever groceries we need for dinner plus we hike together regularly around Collingwood. Over our life together, I have learned that we both function well when we are active and moving our bodies.
That mutual commitment to fitness will allow us to hopefully continue our travels for many more years.
We both enjoy and continue to develop our plant based cooking, and try and add at least 2 new recipes a month that we both enjoy. This spring, we took some sushi lessons, which added a different skill set to our meals.
I have taken to doing much of the grocery shopping and half the cooking and am enjoying spending time in the kitchen learning to prepare heathy meals for us. Feeding someone good food is a very pleasurable pastime.
Our life is fairly simple now and we like it that way.