Rick Wood
Into Teens
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After his mother and I separated Rick and Jeff moved to smaller towns in North Ontario; Powassan, Timmins and finally Thessalon. Ice hockey is the number 1 sport there but Rick preferred the non-combative pursuits. He excelled at baseball with a deceptive cannon for an arm. When he threw the ball you’d hear it hiss towards you, smacking into your glove. He also loved skateboarding – though he routinely damaged his ankles.
Rick was a city person at heart. He and Jeff liked coming to visit me in Ottawa in the summer or for school breaks. We went to plenty of pro sports games: the Senators, Roughriders and Expos, built fires at ‘the shack’ a small cottage just outside of town, and generally had summer fun. One summer he had to do a make-up course in Math. He scraped through the final exam and the teacher was so impressed with his effort that she called the house to personally congratulate him.
We went to Montreal with Dave & daughter Stephanie.
When Rick was about 17 (1997) I had an opportunity to move to the UK for work. I softened the news to the kids by promising that I’d arrange for them to visit anytime. About a month before I moved Rick announced he was quitting school in Ontario and coming to the UK for the adventure! He squeezed in a Metallica concert and also recorded my band at The Whipping Post days before the plane left.
Rick loved his first visit to the UK, staying at The Forge, the house in St. Mellons. He got a part-time job at Halford’s repairing and building bicycles, and he completed his high school by correspondence courses – all done by snail mail in those days. He was happy with the simple things: making a nice lunch for work, watching X-Files and Southpark, being amazed that he could wear a T-shirt outside at Christmas. Discovering Gregg’s custard slices was life-changing.
Most weekends we were tourists, popping off to see some town or attraction in the UK. I recall a trip to Cornwall in the winter – nobody there! – and Rick accompanied me on a business trip to Scotland, seeing Edinburgh and the countryside to Aberdeen.
Click Photo to See Slideshow
Click Photo to See Slideshow
That first summer in the UK we had visits from brother Jeff, cousin Greg and Aunt Deb. We saw London (a memorable night in a disgusting hotel), Stonehenge and of course Blackpool where we got the infamous roller coaster photo.
Jeff stayed most of the summer and the three of us went to West Wales, illegally riding bikes on the coastal foot path (hey, we’re tourists), seeing the Blue Lagoon and learning that you shouldn’t park a car on a tidal beach (there are no tides in Ontario). We explored the caves of Ystradfellte (easy for you to say) and brought road hockey to Wales.
Jeff, Greg just lose it...
Jeff, Greg just lose it...
By the next summer Rick was ready to move back to Canada to attend University, but he managed to squeeze a trip to the Glastonbury Festival where he got a ride with members of Placebo.
I wanted him to see a bit of Europe before he left so Rick & I did a road trip, hopping on the ferry to France and just heading off. Enroute (and quite by accident) we saw a huge WW1 Memorial and a battlefield where the remnants of foxholes and bomb blasts could still be seen. We’d been travelling through miles of open countryside then all of a sudden there it was.
We then made our way to Switzerland, Interlaken. There I bought Rick a simple Swiss army knife and the next day we passed through the Alps, hiking to a great high spot for lunch and stopping so we could walk on snow in the middle of summer. This was a good-bye trip so I took a few photos of Rick with my old 35mm, one being us at the top of that climb, another of our lunch with the swiss army knife we used. (It was an important gift to Rick. He accidently lost it in the lake a few years later. So I bought him another one and we pretended it came from Switzerland. I found that knife on his key chain when I went to clear out his apartment – he’d kept it close for over 20 years.)
We popped by Euro Disney for a day before grabbing the ferry and heading back to Cardiff where he’d soon be packing his things, ready for uni.