I thought this title might grab your attention. This past September, a group of friends and I celebrated 30 years of what we have come to call the Golf Weekend Classic or GWC. This post is about that group of guys, but its more about creating traditions to preserve the important things and people in your life. In the shot below, you see 6 (dare I say) middle-aged men, that came together once again to share work and family updates, a little golf and a lot of wine, food and laughs.

It started as a group of 4 people, me and my brother Al, my high school friend Lorne (who later became my brother-in-law after I used him to get close to his beautiful sister Loreen) and my college-mate, best friend and best man Rick Oliana. In 1984 we all ended up in Toronto in the early part of our careers and Loreen was working for Canadian Airlines. Her standard shift on any given Sunday was something like 6:00 am to 4:00 pm so the 4 of us would gather in our apartment at 2770 Jane Street for a game of Risk and some beverages and food. This mostly weekly event became known as Sunday-Sunday and continued for the better part of a year.

In the Spring of 1985, I was offered a production engineering job with Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie and Loreen was able to transfer back to Canadian Airlines in the Sault so we packed up and left Lorne and Rick in our apartment on Jane Street. Around the same time, at our last Sunday-Sunday session, the 4 of us decided that I would return sometime in the summer for a weekend of golf, Risk and other merriment and so was born what would later be called the GWC. To truly recognize the foresight, leadership and wisdom held by these founding 4 members; we became affectionately known (in our own minds ;-) as the Original Four.

In the shot above and below, we can confirm several things: 1) Al's work buddy Bill McDonald had joined us by the 3rd year, 2) we hadn't yet adopted the moniker GWC, 3) the dot matrix printer had been invented already, 4) Al had very bad taste in hats at the time, 5) Risk was still our game of choice and 6) either Bill, Al and I don't like wearing clothes or Al didn't have air conditioning in his apartment on 10 Tan Green Court in North York.

Regardless, by 1988, the group had grown to 5 with the addition of Bill. Lorne was working slinging bags at Air Canada on this Friday night and he later would join in for golf and what would become our traditional feast on Saturday night; Caesar salad, T-bone steaks, baked potatoes, vegetable de jour and of course, mushrooms and onions to smother the steak.

In 1993, Lorne had moved into a beautiful house in Maple with a finished basement and he and Bill hosted one of the best GWCs of all time. They had a registration table, "Schwing" branded GWC golf shirts and beer mugs and a great line-up of activities planned. It was also the year that a we invited a new member to join us. Around that time, I had decided to leave Ontario Hydro and start a software company. To ensure that I didn't lose contact with a good friend I had made at Hydro, Marc Clement, I "applied" to the group for permission to bring a new candidate the GWC for consideration for full membership. Al has said many times since then, "The minute I saw Marc come down Lorne's stairs with those shorts and Hawaiian shirt on, I knew he was going to be a good fit". And so we became an even six in number. BTW, Mark is the handsome French gentlemen in the centre below with the straw hat on. 

As for a 7th, member, we struggled for a while and there were a couple of false starts with other candidates, who were either too good at golf or too good looking to be included with the rest of us. Finally, after a few years, we let the rookie introduce another Ontario Hydro work buddy of ours, Bruce Dowds. After many years, these 6th and 7th members are still on probation but we're pretty sure they will eventually be given full tenure. On a related note, Marc, at one time, mentioned some idea of an 'Original Six" and we scoffed and told him that, there was only the Original 4, not 5 not 6... you just can't change history like that.  

Bruce was also the host of about five GWCs at his family cottage on Lake Panache near Sudbury. Above is a shot of us out in Al's boat on the lake and below are the fruits of our labour, golden pickerel fillets, replacing the traditional steak for our Saturday dinner. Lake Panache was also the home to the "Dance of the Seven Veils" and Al's best-ever air sax session played to Foreigner's Urgent. We did, for a short time, have that video, which would have been a You Tube sensation launching Al into a world of fame or infamy. I guess the risk of the latter compelled someone (Al) to erase the file before it ever got uploaded to the eternal Internet.

Our last trip to Lake Panache was also the our first extra-terrestrial experience for the group; an experience that was witnessed by everyone but me. We were sitting on Bruce's dock late on Saturday night having a drink and telling tall tales as usual. I was the only one sitting on the dock facing away from the water and the sky while the rest of the group was looking out at the water and starry sky. So while I looked at their eyes widen and mouths drop open, across the sky the group saw what looked like a large falling star but it was not falling, it was instead traveling across the sky. Shocked by the sight, the group was slow to tell me to turn around (or I was too inebriated to turn quickly at the time ;-) and when I finally turned, it was gone. We speculated for the rest of the weekend as to what it might have been. Only after we returned, did we find out that what we had seen was a Space Shuttle reentry which we confirmed happened at the exact time we were sitting on the dock. 

In every group, there is a rock; someone who's character and groundedness is so substantial, that it provides 'true north',  or 'absolute ground', for the rest of the group. For us, that member is Rick Oliana. Rick has often been described as 'salt of the earth' or 'as good as they come'.  This year, for our 30th GWC, Rick was in B.C. on a project and he dipped into his personal funds and time to fly back to be with the rest of the group for this special weekend. Rick is also the 'bringer of the salami' as it were. Being a first generation Canadian from Italian parents, Rick has almost without failure, brought out the finest Italian meats and cheese that you can lay your hands on. Most times, the salami was the product of his and his dad's own hands but other times we had to resort to less special but almost as tasty morsels brought from one Sault Ste. Marie's many fine Italian delis.

While the GWC is rarely about great golf, it IS about great guys getting out and hacking away at that little white ball and uttering profanities when the ball doesn't cooperate which is far more than likely to be the situation.

We have been as many as 7 and as few as 3 or 4 throughout the years. Sadly, since Lorne has been in Dubai, he has not made it back much to the chagrin of his golf partner Bill; below, the two of them are shown gazing out and hypothesizing about such philosophical questions as the creation of the universe or how Bill can hit a 7-wood almost 300 yards.

As stated, our annual get-together is not really about golf; it is mostly about fishing, campfires, and about a bunch of (now older) guys still doing silly things and telling silly stories such as Al's both chilling and hilarious rendition of the "Monkey's Paw". It is amazing how funny a classic campfire story like that can become when you swap one 'appendage' for another throughout the story.

The point of my post, buried way down here for only the avid readers to grasp, is that there are long and lasting benefits that can be had when you commit the time to get away with friends on a regular event like the GWC. This could also be an annual lunch or dinner, as I do with another group of friends, or any other regular activity that keeps you in touch with the people that you have come to respect from the various stages of your life. I would shudder to think of what would have become to my relationship with my best man and college buddy Rick, if we did not have the GWC to bring us together year after year.

I'm not sure how long we'll keep doing this thing but it was great to see that our 30th GWC brought almost the whole group back together. This is a very fine collection of men and I consider it an honor to be among them. As you hear from almost every groom at almost every wedding regarding his groomsmen, 'I would take a bullet for any one of these guys'... Okay, that's not totally true, but I would surely do my best to push them out of the way of the bullet's path if I was close enough and it didn't put me that much out of my way ;-).

Seriously, I love you guys and I hope to share many more bad golf swings with you, and more importantly many more salami, cheese and wine sessions.