I was going to say that my first backpacking trip from Singapore to beirut in 1962 was my start. (Getting to Singapore from Japan to Vietnam is another great story) But I realize it started long before that. I was always persistent in finding ways to see the world free. I joined the Canadian navy at university, not for patriotic reasons but to ‘ see the world’. For stretches of 4-5 months between school years, I worked on a Norwegian freighter to Africa and worked as an apprentice in the gold mines outside johannesburg at the height of Apartheid managing a crew of 12 zulus a mile deep underground. I worked on another freighter in the South Pacific -Tahiti, Samoa etc before airports there. All for free. My dad called me ‘the Gypsy’ (with apologies to Roma ) as a teen I somehow knew this would all happen. I wrote a story about when I was in grade one my mom packed a lunch for me . I took the street car at the end of my street to the far end of the city and come back the same way. It was the Queen Street car that went from the east end of the city to the far west end through all the ethnic neighbourhoods, one after another -chinatown Italian, Greek/Macedonian Polish ukrainian, Jewish, Roma . When I got to the west end I was too scared to wander off so I sat on a bench at the terminal, ate my lunch. got back on the next streetcar home. I ran down my street, exhilarated. A friend yelled, "hey jer? Where have you been? "
"around the world" I shouted back.