I have itchy feet. I love to travel and I really think my mother’s adventurous spirit had much to do with it.

I was born in Belleville ON where my father was working for Northern Electric installing the radar at a nearby military base. When I was 10 months old the job was done and he moved on to install the radar at the airport in Gander NL – and my mother and I soon joined him after my first ever plane ride. According to my mother, this was on a Canadair North Star – as the DC4 was known at the time. I gather my first flight was very unpleasant for my mother as not only did I cry throughout but we were both quite sick due to plenty of turbulence. Later my father moved on to a military base near Morin Heights PQ where my brother was born. He then left Northern Electric and went to work for Westinghouse in Hamilton ON. For a small town farm girl, my mother had already travelled pretty far!

She stayed a housewife but when I was about 7 or 8 she started volunteering for the African Student’s Foundation at nearby McMaster University and became their “secretary” for a couple of years until she applied for and became McMaster’s International Student Advisor/Lounge Secretary. Her job was to supervise the International Student Lounge, arrange get togethers and resources for the international students and, in August and September, help the students with everything from pick up at the airport in Malton to finding accommodation to figuring out class schedules. By this point in time I had already been given my grandfather’s and my great-uncle Harry’s stamp collections and become fascinated by stamps and the countries they came from. My mother’s new job was a joy to me as she mailed out, with early information that went to the international students, postcards to be returned with arrival information as well as information on whether the student needed accommodation to be found. Needless to say, some of the students ended up spending a few nights in our spare bedroom on arrival.

In those days, many of our international students came as Commonwealth Scholars while others were independent or children of former Commonwealth Scholars returning to their parent’s alma mater. Once Mom was done with the postcards she gave them to me and I plundered them for the stamps. Many African countries were represented, India, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Pakistan, Singapore & Malaysia.

We often had the students to our house or the International Student Lounge for potluck parties and I really enjoyed the wide variety of new foods they brought to these events. Sometimes the students would spend Christmas with our family and I have a photo of all of our family and two students from Nigeria who came to dinner. Other students became even more part of our family. One, Stan, was a geology major and went to work in a mine in Sudbury. We were devastated when he was killed in a mining accident but a scholarship established in his memory is still awarded at McMaster University:

The Stanford N. Katambala Earth Sciences Prize

Established in 1965 by contributions from friends and associates of Stanford N. Katambala, a Year 3 Honours Geology student from Tanzania, killed in a mine accident in Northern Ontario in September 1964.

Another student, Alfred, from Kenya, became a part of our family spending summer holidays and Christmas and Easter vacations with us. I am not sure what work Alfred got on campus but he would go into work and come home with Mom. He had stories of Africa that were fascinating and one Christmas a cousin of his, who was a student in Maryland came up for Christmas with us – and gave me a manicure kit in a green leather case. Unbelievably, all these years later, I still have it! She eventually joined the Kenyan diplomatic service and served in Washington DC and visited us once more while there. Alfred went on to Glasgow where he completed a law degree and married his wife Ruth and their first child was born. My parents travelled to Glasgow for Alfred’s wedding and entertained us for years with stories of Sauchiehall St. and Glasgow. Eventually, Alfred, Ruth and their child returned to Kenya where he set up what is still a prominent law firm in Eldoret, Kenya that is continued by his son.

My mother, in a brave move for one of her generation, travelled alone to visit Alfred and Ruth and their family in Eldoret, in 1970. Her stories of the airport in Cairo en route – the heat and the soldiers with guns surrounding the plane while it refueled – and the rough state of the roads in the hills of Kenya simply whetted my appetite and longing for travel.

In the meantime, my family had moved away from Hamilton and, in our new town, become involved with the Experiment in International Living which then wanted to contribute to international understanding through placing students in homestays in other countries. We hosted a number of students from the UK and India and I applied, when I was 17, for a homestay in The Netherlands and was accepted for a 2 month homestay in June and July. They still exist – see http://www.experiment.org and appear to do much more than they did “back in the day”. Before I went, a Dutch colleague of my father’s gave me some Dutch lessons which I really enjoyed since I was then studying French, German, Spanish and Latin in my high school.

. There was a one week orientation session at Upper Canada College where we met our team leaders (I am not sure my parents ever realized they had turned their 17 year old daughter over to a male team leader that was 19 … however he was fantastic and far more mature than one would expect a 19 year old to be). The group heading to the Netherlands was the team leader and three of us: myself, someone else from nearby in Ontario and a girl from Newfoundland. And then we were off! My parents picked me up from UCC and drove me (and one other participant) to Buffalo NY to catch a charter flight to London that had been arranged for our summer contingent of exchange students headed to various European, African and Asian countries. Our charter flight was overnight and delayed by an air traffic controllers strike so we arrived in London mid-morning and boarded a couple of buses at Stanstead Airport with UK hosts from “the Experiment” on board – and taken on a whirlwind bus tour (no getting off) around most of the major tourist attractions in central London then dropped off at our hostel for the night. Next morning we were introduced to the continental breakfast and then boarded a train to Dover and the Ostende ferry. We crossed to Ostende in Belgium on a very rough crossing where everyone else was leaning over the rails while I was so tired I curled up on the luggage racks and slept. From Ostende our small group took the train through Brussels, Luxembourg and on to Rotterdam where we got off and headed to a hostel. We spent a couple of days in the company of the local Experiment liaison person visiting museums and Scheveningen Beach and The Hague. Then we attended a week long camp in Enkhuizen followed by a week long camp in Appeldoorn: all filled with international students. So much to learn and see and do!

I then had a 4 week homestay with a family in Enschede in eastern Holland which I really enjoyed – meeting other young people, attending classes at a local secondary school, travelling to visit the Nordoost Polder, Groningen, the Canadian cemetery at Holten and a wave pool (somewhere!) that was filled with salt water and had a wave machine! I also attended a family anniversary party of my host family and learned to enjoy Heineken at local bars as well as visiting across the border in Germany one day. So much has faded but I had the time of my 17 year old life and it certainly was but an introduction to the travel I have done since!