As an adult I have always been interested in people and how they live around the world and through past times. After studying history and art history in university I taught all of the social studies subjects in the Ontario curriculum, but specialized in the Classics, European History, and Global/Environmental Studies.

As a teacher and later a department head I soon came to realize that my students (and I) could not really come to grips with the world unless we took the opportunity to visit the places we were studying. This lead me to travel extensively with my family and with students to places as varied as Greece, Turkey, Italy, England, Australia and the South Pacific, all of Canada, Belize, Guatemala, and the Amazonian rainforest.

I have had the opportunity to teach “on-site” summer credit programmes in several of these places.

I also came to realize that perhaps the most significant thing which joins the peoples of the world into one human family was our appreciation and love of music. This lead me to develop and run the Toronto International Music Festival for high school students to provide clinics and travel opportunities for music students visiting Toronto.