KIDS STUFF
The best job I ever had was stay-at-home Dad, for our son Quinn, from the time he was one year old, until, well, whatever he is now (a teenager ignoring me generally).
He was reading by the time he was three years old, and his junior kindergarten teacher used him to reach to the reluctant readers and to encourage them.
Naturally, we read a LOT of books, and the local Toronto Public Library branch got to know him well, to the point they’d set aside books for him that they thought he’d enjoy.
The natural result of all of the reading was writing, and together, we came up with the book, Duck with the Puck; be sure to check out that page, with the testimonials from Don Cherry, Roy McGregor and more!
And the opportunities he’s had? The story has been told often, but I took him out of school at lunch so we could go to meet Bobby Orr at a Canada Post stamp launch (which we got to go to through his grandfather’s connections).
By this point, we realized that Quinn wasn’t going to win a Stanley Cup as a player, so it was okay to touch it at a special Society for International Hockey Research meeting at the Hockey Hall of Fame research centre.
The Santa’s Day Job book was also a result of hanging around with so many kids, and various friends of Quinn’s made some suggestions as well. It’s a little more polished than Duck with the Puck but also never got the love that a kid who wrote a book did! For more on Santa’s Day Job click here.