Sad to hear about Dan’s passing. We lost a wonderful human being, a tough old guy, a great cyclist. Blessed are we who had the opportunity to meet, cycle, talk and laugh with Dan. I had that luck to cycle with Dan, June, Gerry, Luis, John, Wayne in the early 80s.

As I moved around the globe a lot I lost touch with the group, but when I reconnected with Gerry Pareja, I finally managed to sit down again with Dan after 30+ years in Vancouver in 2015. Although his speech was hard to understand, together with Gerry Pareja we looked at some of the old cycling magazines, old Vancouver Bicycle Club newsletters and other mementos I had among my travel diaries from the early 80s which I had brought for Dan to look at. It was a good visit to the memories of the early era of randonneuring in BC. We had a good laugh about some of our trips, that day.

As we talked I heard the story of Dan’s cycling trip to the 4 dirty corners of the Canadian landscape towel. Dan had still one corner of the Canadian towel to finish at the age of 82, the section of Dempster Highway to Inuvik in the Yukon and NWT. It weight heavy on his mind and he wanted to finish the journey, no matter the Parkinson disease that slowly had crippled him over the years. I told Dan I would use my contacts to help organise the road support for Dan’s second attempt.

Getting Dan a motorhome rental so late in the season was a hard task but I managed to convince the CEO of Fraserway RV rental division with whom I worked for a number of years to get him a vehicle. Timing however was difficult. And as we know, Dan could focus intensely on an idea and the tasks that lay ahead.

Loved to have been there when Dan finished that journey in Inuvik. My thoughts are with his daughter Tara who lost a great dad and to all of us who were blessed to have journeyed, even if only briefly, with Dan on the same road and in the same gear.
Here is a picture of the 1981 Triple Mountain Challenge on the top of Mtn Seymour.