Embracing Canada

Canada has had a special appeal for the author from an early age. Its image in the mind of the nature-worshipping ambitious European youth was combining the vastness of the wild northern land-bounded by oceans on three sides, the unfathomable beauty of endless boreal forests, sun-kissed prairies, snow- and glacier-capped mountains and toughness-testing winters-with the lore of its Indigenous past and the relatively young history of the accomplishments of its newcomers from the outside of the continent. His image of Canadians was that of straight honesty, physical and mental strength, determination in achieving their goals, and a love of peace and freedom. In spite of seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, all this culminated in his decision to choose Canada as his homeland. He immigrated to Canada in 1968 after the Warsaw Pact invaded his birth country of then Czechoslovakia. He arrived with a fresh MSc in Nuclear Engineering and settled with his Czech fiancée in Edmonton. Here, after "seven skinny years," he obtained a PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Alberta. Using his qualifications as a means of earning a living, he ended up working at UCLA and in world-renowned research establishments of particle physics in Canada, the USA and Europe, including the LHC Supercollider at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. He finally settled back in Edmonton working at the UofA as a Detector Engineer/Physicist until 2011, when he retired.

Throughout his modern frontier science work in Canada, there has always been the awareness of his wilderness backyard in the back of the author's mind, which drew him to Canada in the first place. He devoted most of his spare time to his hobbies: wilderness hiking, canoeing, skiing, cycling, dog sledding and riding, especially after his children grew up and left home (see his first book, Seven Campfires to the Nahanni, available on Amazon).