Garry's Story

As the sun rose on a 1947 Vancouver morning, sixteen-year-old Garry Rowse stepped on the school bus without any idea he would not return to his hometown for more than five years. Without money, identification, or a plan, Garry exited the bus at the end of its route, stuck out his thumb, and left a less than ideal childhood behind. In a lively chronicling of his nomadic adventures, Rowse begins by detailing his journey from the side of the road to his eventual decision to accept a job as a cabin boy on a Norwegian freighter in Halifax. As his travels continued, Rowse shares anecdotes from his past that highlight unique experiences that included running contraband from Borneo to Zamboanga; working as a strike breaker on the docks of Marseille; becoming stranded in a former slave village in the jungles of Guyana; and escaping prison by swimming across shark-infested Manila Bay.