About Mr. Bob
Ski bum, African Game Warden, outdoor writer, wildlife ecologist, advocate for tourism and conservation, river bum, mountain bum, outfitter, rancher, African tour guide and African Chief, and finally, late in life, a father. From the Northern Rockies to the deserts and rivers of the southwest to the African savannah and beyond; Bob* has had a good time. (My friends in Ghana couldn’t pronounce the “J” in Jamieson, so I was always “Mr. Bob” there.)
In our family we have a tradition of writing our life stories, dating all the way back to the 1880’s and book called “Bemocked of Destiny”. That book, written by a distant cousin, has given us all a sense of our family history in the 1800s. It is fascinating to be able to read about of our family and especially, the love affair between our great-great grandfather and grandmother in that now distant time. More recently, our mother wrote her life story, of growing up in the homestead era in Alberta and Dad wrote his memoirs about World War II. Then together he and I wrote a history of our family. (All of these are available, if you are interested, in the family history section). Mom always said that we needed to write our personal stories to add to the train of stories in our family. When she was in her eighties, she made me promise to do so. Here you are mom. I hope that someone will read this story, 100 years hence, and get a sense of our time on the planet.
A campfire in wild country is the only true and best place to tell stories. Firelight bouncing off faces, some hand gestures and pantomime to add to the story make for the best kinds of stories. And laughter. What I have tried to do here is create a new kind of storytelling, a new kind of book, a new kind of campfire. Story telling has morphed substantially in the internet age. Think of this as the 21-century version of a campfire.
This website is set up in such a way that you can see a Power Point with pictures from throughout my life, (Life of Bob (No Pie) - A photo history) with little text, to get an overview of my life and all the good times I have had. (It is a very large file and will take a while to download). On the next page of this website called (Life Chapters), there are a whole range of stories and such from each part of my life. On that page you can jump around and read the chapters that may be of most interest to each of you. It starts with some stories on growing up in southern Alberta and some of our family history, then follows my life more or less chronologically, with ski stories for skiers and those I have met over a lifetime of writing about skiing, hunting stories for others, other adventures for still others.
This site, a project with my niece, Lanna, is in early stages; there is lots of work to do in various sections. At this point the most complete sections are the first section on my early life, the section on our family history and the section on the Cowboy History of the Western Wilderness.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the photos here were taken by Pat Morrow, Penny Ohanjanian, my dad and a few others.
DEDICATION
To the good women, horses and dogs that have put up with me over a lifetime; and especially to all my friends in Africa, who changed not only my life, but how I have lived my life. They taught me how to dance through life. And to Luke and Megan, young adventurers that are continuing a family tradition of climbing mountains, skiing and seeing the world.