This is the story of my life so far: 68 years and counting.
Prequel: A Brief History of my Family in France
The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 101
Before moving with my four children to British Columbia, I had to organize the move of our furniture and stuff. It would go on a boat to Montreal, then on a train to Vancouver, before being delivered to the house I was renting in Richmond.
The moving company was supposed to come on a certain day and the packing was supposed to last for two days. But two days before the agreed-upon date, they called me and explained that, because of a strike by the longshoremen in Le Havre, they needed to come early the next day, pack everything during the day and the moving truck with the container needed to leave before 4PM to go to Antwerp, otherwise it would miss the boat to Montreal.
And that is exactly what happened. While usually in a move, there are two or three packers, they were five or six and they worked from 7AM to 4PM without a lot of breaks. And the truck left exactly at 4PM, as scheduled. We would receive the furniture 3 to 4 weeks later in Richmond.
When they saw the house empty, my children knew finally that I was not joking when I said that we would move to Canada. And for young people 16 to 10 years old, they were very sad to be forced to leave all their friends for a long time. I had told them that we would not come back on vacation before 1996.
They asked me if they could invite their friends to visit them in British Columbia, and I had replied: "You may invite all your friends, but nobody will come". It was a little exaggerated, but the first of their friends who came to visit did it after at least 6 years, and I believe that there were less than five of them in total who came to visit.
We flew to Vancouver through London with British Airways on Tuesday July 5th 1994. We all had business class tickets, so on the transatlantic flight all the seats had a screen, which was not the case at the time in economy class. The four of them watched at least five movies during the ten-hour flight from London to Vancouver.
At the Vancouver airport, we went through immigration and our papers were stamped appropriately. Hughes Aircraft had reserved rooms in the same hotel I had already spent 4 months from February to May. And they also gave me a rented car, so that I could come to work.
At the end of the day, we were finally in the hotel and we were happy to go to bed early, as it had been a long day.
Continue to Part 103
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Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7
Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14
Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21
Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28
Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35
Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40 - Part 41 - Part 42
Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45 - Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48 - Part 49
Part 50 - Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54 - Part 55 - Part 56
Part 57 - Part 58 - Part 59 - Part 60 - Part 61 - Part 62 - Part 63
Part 64 - Part 65 - Part 66 - Part 67 - Part 68 - Part 69 - Part 70
Part 71 - Part 72 - Part 73 - Part 74 - Part 75 - Part 76 - Part 77
Part 78 - Part 79 - Part 80 - Part 81 - Part 82 - Part 83 - Part 84
Part 85 - Part 86 - Part 87 - Part 88 - Part 89 - Part 90 - Part 91
Part 92 - Part 93 - Part 94 - Part 95 - Part 96 - Part 97 - Part 98
Part 99 - Part 100 - Part 101