This year, my birthday in....

Today is my birthday. I grew up in a household that celebrated birthdays. As I grew older, I discovered that sadly, not everyone did. 

For as long as I can remember, on January 1st as I started a new calendar, I would make a prediction as to where I would spend my birthday that year. I was usually wrong. However, in 1968 I knew I'd spend my 21st birthday (which is an important one for those of us born in UK) in UK.

It was a memorable 21st birthday, celebrated with a party in my house at 1 Birch Hall Lane in Manchester. (Coincidentally, I recently connected with Susan, the young lady who joined me at that party. She now operates a restaurant in London.) It was a great party until we discovered that during the course of the evening, some uninvited guest stole many of the girl's hand bags. 

My 30th birthday was spent in Toronto where I had moved from Vancouver with Sally to oversee the St. Lawrence redevelopment project. My 31st was in New York, 32nd in Montreal, and 33rd in Ottawa. (I know this only because I have kept a diary since 1968.)

My 40th birthday was held at Sooke Harbour House with good friends Richard and Carol Henriquez, Holly and Peter Horwood and Craig and Coralie Waddell. We took along a 1947 Cotes du Jura which was one of four that my late brother-in-law Claude Paget had given to me when we first met five years earlier in Brest. It turned out to be quite special since the then owner of the resort/restaurant Frederique Philip had his mother visiting him, and she came from the Jura region. She and her son joined us as we opened the wine to see if it had turned to vinegar. It hadn't.

For my 50th birthday celebration Sally managed to book the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino that had just reopened, and arranged for a bus to transport 50 friends for a surprise party weekend. As happened when she previously arranged another surprise party, my work plans interfered a bit since I had agreed to attend a meeting in then premier Glen Clark's Victoria office. But it all worked out. I thought the two of us were going there for a pre-birthday weekend, but many friends still remember the astonished look on my face when I showed up in the lobby barefoot (I had been relaxing in our room and was told there was a package at the front desk) with my favourite song 'O Lucky Man' playing in the background, to find my father and other family and close friends enjoying a drink. Many also remember the rain-soaked golf tournament. We enjoyed another bottle of the Jura wines.

My 60th birthday celebration was not a surprise. We had just returned from our around-the-world trip and booked the SFU Segal Centre at Granville and Dunsmuir. My friend Eli Harari, with whom I had spent my 21st birthday came up from Silicon Valley and it was a wonderful evening. But we forgot to open the wine.

My 70th birthday was a more modest affair spent with Claire, Georgia and Sally golfing in Washington State.

This year, I predicted I would spend my birthday in Dubai, attending the World Fair. Again, I was wrong. Instead I'm heading off to New Westminster for lunch with my daughter Claire and to see the house I helped her purchase. We're then off to Victoria for a weekend celebration with Georgia and my sister Estelle. Hopefully I will get to Dubai after a planned trip to Russia, now postponed until November.

Next year will be my 75th, and all being well, we will have a party and invite many of the people with whom we have enjoyed past parties since most remain friends. We will open one of the two remaining bottles of Jura wine. And if I make it to 80 we'll have the last one then. (While I like to think of myself as an optimist, I don't exercise or eat properly enough to expect to last much past 80.

In the meantime, let me wish a happy birthday to Vancouver's man about town Malcolm Parry. While we haven't seen much of him over the past 18 months, he too has a birthday today. If you see him, wish him many happy returns of the day.