John's website

I am a proud Canadian with a Czech heritage. See my biography

See my personal web page

See my list of favourite books

I love to sing in church, dance with a girl

and I enjoy learning to play my Dad's Czech guitar

that he brought over with me, my sister and my Mom

when we arrived in Canada as refugees

fleeing from the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I love chasing Alan Jackson's "Neon Rainbow"! with my Dad's Czech guitar, but I am slowly learning to play :-)

I love Good Soldier Svek!

I also enjoy being being Financial Secretary for my Knights of Columbus Council.

See my hobbies

See my first English essay at Ryerson when I studied Architectural Science

Also see my Applied Math web page

Also see my Applied Math web page with my detailed heritage

That's me above standing in front of an Italian Palace from the 1700's near Prague, Czech Republic. There were beautiful mazes of hedges.

Here is a display of my personal art works:

My birch creek acrylic painting

My winter wonderland acrylic painting

My blue horse wartercolour painting

My three kings copper sculpture

My Pencil Sketches:

That's me with "Orza" perched on my arm, just outside Karlshtein Castle, Czech Republic.

Our horse carriage that we rode up the hill to Karlshtein Castle.

A snapshot corner of Karlshtein Castle, Czech Republic. There were castles with bears living in pits and peacocks.

Click here for a very helpful website for travelling in the Czech Republic as suggested to me by Frantisek Smutny of discoverczech.com.

Here's a recent picture of my family at Bertoldi's Italian Restarant in London, Ontario (My Dad, my sister Zora, my sister Sandra and her son Cole and I are celebrating my sister Zora's birthday)

Here's a picture of me pretending to be a Scottish cowboy!

I just got back from a vacation in beautiful Dutch St. Maarten and French St. Martin as well as the British island of Anguilla. We enjoyed a sunset dinner, wine and dancing cruise on the Catamaran sailboat "Tango" and we enjoyed a super fast ride to the posh French island of St. Bart's and made several snorkelling stops near the British island of Anguilla. Below is a picture of the fast boat that whisked us away to St. Bart's and Anguilla. The boat is called "Swaliga" which was the original name of St. Martin before Christopher Columbus renamed it. "Swaliga" means salt island.

We enjoyed some delicious French Desserts at this beachside restaurant in St. Bart's.

Here is a boatside picture of the British island of Anguilla where we snorkelled around caves with flying bats.

More pictures will be posted soon. Here is a poem that I wrote about charming St. Maarten/St. Martin.

And let's not forget the shopping malls on St. Martin.

And of course the nightlife!

Here is a picture of a Canadian moose that I saw in Algonquin Park, Ontario on July 20, 2009. We took a drive to Algonquin Park while we stayed at a rented cottage on Lake Simcoe.

Here is a Winzip file of my portaging trip to Loon Lake north of Barrie, Ontario. I went along with friends and relatives of my close friend Rom Kowalski. Rom was my Polish landlady's son who worked as a shift supervisor at McDonnell-Douglas before he got cancer and died. I hope Rom's relatives don't mind me posting their pictures on my web site. Rom knew a lot about automechanics so he also helped me tinker with my favourite first car which was a bright blue Chevy Z24. I am in my twenties in these photos. Rom was a Boy Scout Leader so we "roughed it" in a Scout Cabin. Us boys went skinny dipping in Loon Lake! Thank God there were no girls around :-) We did have an incident however. While we were sleeping at night we were awoken by this huge buzzing noise. We all freaked out thinking it was a huge bug! But it turned out that Howard had turned his electric razor on by accident! :-)

I went snorkelling at a remote island in the Bahamas and I loved my first time snorkelling! There is so much life (colourful corals and fish) to marvel at in the ocean and sea!

Here is a poem that wrote conveying my heartfelt feelings about Hawaii. I love poetry because it comes from the heart.

I love and miss my parents very much. This is my parents' beautiful wedding picture when they were married in Brno, Czech Republic.

happy wedding picture I know when I die one day, I will be looking forward to seeing them in heaven again. Here are my family's odes to my beloved mother and father.

I often visit my parents' grave after going to my Holy Family Parish church on Sunday and sit on a sculptured stone bench at their gravesite at Oakland Cemetery in London and pray to them to tell them about my life. I like to put my mother's favourite red carnations in the vases at their tombstone. One day, as I was praying the Lord's Prayer at my parents' grave, I heard and saw a rustle of wind blowing wildly through the tall trees. The branches were waving to me; I know it was my parents' way ot telling me they were saying "Hi :-)" to me. I feel my parents are watching over me from heaven. We have "Together Forever" engraved in our tombstone, so my sisters and I can be buried in urns alongside my parents' urns.

Here is a picture of my father's urn.

Death is part of life and transitions to everlasting life in heaven, hopefully. I like to plant flowers at my parents' grave in the summer. Colours cheer me up :-)

I loved spending time with my father at SpringBank Park in London. Dad was all smiles, just like me. When I was a kid, I was teased for smiling all the time. :-)

Dad and I would sit on our favourite bench and watch the chipmunks.

, or go to the riverside

. There used to be a cruise boat that went up and down the Thames River in Springbank Park. My father, sister and I liked vacationing in Collingwood and Blue Mountain, Ontario. Here is a picture of Dad and I at a restaurant in Blue Mountain.

I have videos of my family and parents on my Facebook page which I enjoy viewing a lot. My parents come alive in these videos! Some of these videos on my Facebook page are 8 mm films transformed to videos of my family and little 4 year old me with my father playing his guitar and my mother celebrating Mother's Day and her May 24 birthday! :-) Dad loved going to the Bahamas so I bought Dad this Father's Day cake when he was ill at home.

It is an Eastern European culture to take care of your elderly parents in your family home. I took care of both my parents with my sister. Now my sister and I live in our family home which I cherish, because it reminds me of the good times that we lovingly shared and enjoyed with our parents. This family love is depicted in the videos on my Facebook page :-) The Knights of Columbus value is "Families come first". I am proud of being a Sir Knight! This is me on the far right in our traditional Knights Regalia celebrating Fraternity, Unity and Charity on Columbian Services Day at the Lady of Czestochowa Polish Catholic Church in London.

This is me dressed in my regalia at the Remembrance Day celebration in Byron at the Royal Canadian Legion.

There is a new regalia uniform now with berets that was recently introduced.

I have to buy the new regalia uniform. We still get to wear our Knights of Columbus sword. For now, I wear my black tuxedo when I am an Honour Guard. Here is a picture of me with my smile wearing my black tuxedo in front of my home in London.

To finish off, here are pictures of me cajoling with my buddy, the superheroe Iron Man in Hollywood, California. Iron Man and I were talking and we want to stop bullying in schools! I was at a conference in San Diego at that time with my good friend Jirasak from Thailand. My friend from Thailand, Jirasak, and I drove up the California coast from San Diego to Los Angeles, stopping along the way at the beautiful Laguna Beach. We also visited Beverly Hills which has a beautiful public library. We drove across the San Diego bridge to Coronado Island and had a beautiful Mexican meal. My burritos were delicious! We ventured and had ribs at the restaurant in San Diego that was featured in the "Top Gun" movie starring Tom Cruise. We finished the evening having beers at a local brewery pub. In San Diego, we stayed at the Keating Hotel that was designed by the designer of the Ferrari sports car. The hallways had plush red carpets and models of red Ferrari cars in glass cabinets embedded in the walls of the hallways. Our hotel room had an Italian Cappucino machine and a pad for charging our iphones.. There was a see-through glass shower in the bedroom of the hotel room. I guess Italians are not shy of their bodies! :-) I have posted on Facebook many pictures from this California trip for public viewing :-)