Many of my childhood memories with dad are airport and airplane related.

From my first flight as we left for Geneva October 13 1991, I was understandably upset about leaving everything I knew in my short time. But I was excited about airplanes, possibly even encouraged to be excited by my caring father.

Through the 90s I have a lot of memories of going to the Geneva airport and waiting by the window in the stairwell to catch a first glimpse of dad as he cleared customs and collected his baggage as he returned from saving the world.

One of the best parts of travelling with dad was the access to the lounges, where we would collect ourselves, enjoying the quiet and comfortable chairs before sitting still for 8 hours as we crossed the Atlantic. These were great starts to summers at the cottage, where my wake up call was dad coming back from his early morning swim across the lake.

Eventually, the subtle encouragement from dad and mum led to me to start flight training. When I inevitably hit a hard point in my training and was ready to call it quits, dad took me out to a lunch, just the two of us, at the Won Ton. He did the quiet encouraging thing, telling me that he really was proud of me for trying, asking me if my passion was still in flying, and making it clear that he would help in whatever ways he could. Once we determined that flying is the best, he sprung into action. The next day, together we headed out to Rockliffe Flying club to set up the next stage of my training. Of course he was my first passenger once I got licenced.

As flying took me further afield, dad and I would bond over the hockey games we could watch together or apart. Back in March this year we had a great visit watching the Sens, the Jets, the PWHL Ottawa, and just a little March madness for some basketball balance. Pretty much all of the teams we cheered for lost those games, but he and I got to win some time together.