Dear Sons:

I want to connect you back to our great adventure. I yanked you from your comfortable lives in Oakville to follow a dream, my dream, that I wanted you to share with me. If you think back on how it turned out, it became your dream too, although I bet at times you wished it wasn’t, moving to live in Australia in 2007.

Think back to our first night when Joe, our waiter at the Hawaiian burrito bar, asked us who we were, and where we were going. There he was, a Navajo, just graduated in opera, interning as a tattoo artist, serving burritos, conversing, making connections. Remember what we said? “This year isn’t about the places we go, as it is the people we meet." Joe was the first of many interesting people.

A few days later we met the family we were exchanging lives with. We connected with the other exchange families who were with us. Remember the website I set up so we could connect with them? We met and became friends with so many.

We also connected with the fascinating people in the Hobart market and with Canadians on Mount Wellington. We connected with the spiritual power of Uluru. We connected with the painters and their images on the sacred rocks in Kakadu. We connected with the artist in the Darwin Market who sold us art that now hangs on our wall. You connected with George in Sydney, my mentor from when I was a teen. You connected with new friends at school. You became friends with my students when we travelled to the Centre. You’ve continued those connections.

Life is making connections. People. Places. Ideas. Connections. Each person you meet, each place you go, each idea you connect to, molds who you are. The people you have connected with in places you’ve travelled have shaped you. Remember Pepito from Cuba? We shared music together, and then language barriers did not matter. The connection became richer and continues to this day.

One of the greatest ways to enable and maintain connections is through technology. Whether it's your social networks or the tools you use to assist you - think about how those connections are facilitated and are part of your life and how they help you to interact with people, places and ideas. Connect ideas. Create new ones. Great big new ones.

I want you to keep these things in mind as you complete your University education and continue your lifelong journey of nurturing connections- with people and places and big ideas.

With love, to the guys who are the best part of my connected journey,

Dad