My Story

My story is really the story behind Gravel Roads, my pen name for a personal website I launched around 2013.

Back in 1995, I had the urge to build a website for myself. I know. I know. Most people have urges to go shopping. Or eat chocolate ice cream. Or even buy a new car. But this urge was different, somehow.

I had permanently relocated from Canada, state-side in the late 80’s. Born of a heritage rich with tradition and resilience, I began to wonder why people move from place to place, in particular how and why so many stumbled onto my site — since I’d never promoted it — so I asked.

The following is an excerpt from Gravel Roads which pretty much sums up who and what I am. The original draft was started in 1997 and so, some of the information may be dated, but then what isn’t?

So what brought you here? To this place? (Sidebar: The context here refers to folks who stopped by the website, Gravel Roads).

Were you born in the 1950’s?

Perhaps you’ve encountered a Canadian somewhere along the way, at an airport (likely) or in a bar (more likely) or on vacation (most likely if you visited Vancouver, B.C.)

You may even have one or two Canadians as friends and associates (very most likely).

As for myself — at least in spirit — there came a day when I knew, absolutely knew that those gravel roads would take me here, to this place, state-side.

That day was November 22, 1963

I had just turned eight.

It was Indian Summer.

I was in a small-town Saskatchewan school pressing maple leaves. Yes, pressing. My teacher was Mrs. Turtle. Yes, Turtle. The school bell sounded. It wasn’t time to go home, and yet it became time. Curious.

I scooted off to Auntie Tillie’s where we all watched the news coverage well into the wee hours of the morning.

Hours of life and death played out in black and white.

Until then, my exposure to the U.S. amounted to wondering if everyone in California drove a convertible like Perry Mason. And why would Hollywood name a television show after our beaver? Then of course there were the Illinois duck hunters who came by each fall to, well, hunt ducks.

So how did I finally get here and why?

I’m a product of the Free Trade Agreement, pre-NAFTA, between Canada and the United States, a consultant sponsored by an international systems integration firm, SHL Systemhouse.

Arriving at the tail-end of Miami Vice, Nintendo and Ronald Reagan.

After relocating to California, my work travels catapulted me across this beautiful country, coast to coast and everywhere in-between.

Not to mention Hawaii and the Bahamas and Mexico and the Dominican Republic (DR).

I lived in California. I lived in Las Vegas. Then both the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico sides of Florida.

Where I witnessed first-hand the bad, but especially the good, that can come from three miserable hurricanes.

Missed a crash landing in Mexico because I missed the flight in the first place.

Choppered into undeveloped parts of the DR, had fresh coconuts cracked with a rusty machete, and stumbled upon Architectural Digest’s annual award recipient’s private retreat, at the peak of nowhere. It goes on and on.

Why so driven? I love what I do

I was a first generation Ukrainian Canadian, raised on a small farm. My mother, father and brother toiled from sunrise to sundown yet we immersed ourselves in an upbeat life with music (we even had a band) and family and neighbors and lively discussion, especially about politics and events of the day.

My grandmother passed away at 103 still hoping to have had her Catholic marriage annulled, after twelve children and living apart from her husband, of 96, for decades. (They had irreconcilable differences).

I had a nun for an aunt who moved with me to California for the first few months to care for me — I was thirty-three at the time.

My Grandmother seated on the far left edge. My Grandfather seated on the far right edge. Stoic. The Nun in the center next to Gravel Roads. Circa 1959-60.

So what can you expect from Gravel Roads?

I had my first Underwood typewriter by the age of nine, thanks to my brother, Orest.

And so here I am. Which is where we started.

Stay with me. It’ll be fun. (Sidebar: Again, in the context of the original post).

If it hasn’t been fun already, I’m sorry. You know, it’s a Canadian thing. We’re always sorry. It’s because we’re so polite. Watching the movie, “Canadian Bacon” should explain everything.

Footnotes

I’m partial to good coffee, ethnic food and cooking from scratch. And my travels on the cruise ship, Paul Gauguin. Other favorites?

Authors: Jan Brett and Judith Viorst

Things to watch: Perry Mason, Turner Classic Movies, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Lilo and Stitch, Johnny Carson and Benny Hill re-runs, BBC News

Things to read: anything by Allan Fotheringham, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, The New Yorker, Tolien, Mackleans, C-NET, WIRED, Daily Mail, Forbes, Zane Gray and Archie comic books, Narratively, BBC News America and Canada

Movies: Scent of a Woman, Blackhawk Down, anything Bruce Willis, Cool Runnings, The Lady and the Tramp, anything Muppets, anything John Wayne, and of course, Canadian Bacon.

Things to appreciate: anything about my daughter, any old-school country music, Чорні Брови, Nana Mouskouri, Bryan Adams, Strauss, Patsy Cline, Springsteen, The Very Quiet Cricket, Bachman Turner Overdrive, and The Police