Childhood
Daniel Ian Vranesic, "Dan" don't call me "Danny," now "Uncle Dan," started into being on October 5, 1971. He was skin on bone even then, weighing in at a plump 7lbs 9oz. Awful cute little guy, born with his full head of hair and pudgy cheeks. That was about the only time in his life his body had any pudge anywhere.
He used to like to suck his thumb and hated having baths.
In his life, starting from the very beginning, he's never had a spare pound on his frame, and as you can clearly see things are the same today. He complains about not being able to keep weight on. This is strange considering the appalling diet he's known for. Dan was always a fussy eater, and very much continues to be a fussy eater, although he is improving. As a child he would have nothing to do with eggs, fruit, vegetables, fish, ... in particular he thought eggs were some kind of poison ... and he had a great appetite for cookies, pop, and of course McDonalds.
I hope you all realize it is Carolyn and my mother who have saved us all from the main course here being fries and a Big Mac, with Oreos for dessert and Coke or Labatt 50 instead of wine. The family credits Carolyn exclusively with a somewhat dramatic change to his eating habits.
Grandpa
One of our childhood memories is that Grandpa Boyd used to come to our house every Saturday morning, for years and years, in his little red Ford pickup truck with Zack, his dog on the floor, to take the two of us the McDonalds at Renforth and Eglinton. After we finished wolfing down our Big Macs, sometimes two each, we would get "4 bits" each from him (50 cents) to play some video games over at Mac's Milk while he finished reading the Sun. If he missed five Saturdays in ten years I would be surprised. His truck would roll around the corner by the Shinozakis' house onto Upminster Crescent at just before noon, and whatever game or trouble Jeff, Mark, Dan and I were getting into would have to wait a couple of hours.
Shinozakis
As kids we did everything with our great friends the Shinozakis - Jeff and Mark. As Mark quite correctly pointed out at his wedding a couple of weeks ago the teams were always Paul and Mark against the evil coalition of Dan and Jeff. I don't remember evil winning very often, but it was always a good fight. Dan and Jeff must have won at least a few times since they quit everything they're not immediately good at. There were endless games on the street, from road hockey to tennis to baseball to basketball to swimming to snow ball fights to crab apple wars to Monopoly to Risk to ... Diplomacy. If there was ever a game which pointed to a weakness in Dan it was the board game Diplomacy. Dan just plain couldn't handle the emotional side of the game, and didn't like losing, and since after a while since it was clear he was going to lose every time he played, he just refused to play. When Dan makes up his mind about something there is no force on this earth which can get him to change his mind.
Losing
Dan's also not much good at chess, which Dad, Mark, Jeff, Vineet, Sameer and me are all pretty ok at. This is probably because of his fierce hatred of losing, and he was pretty much losing at chess to everybody but the house cat from the very beginning. Dan hates losing. Hates losing at anything. In Dan's world second place is just the first loser. In fact, he probably finished his dinner first tonight. Of course it's the same hatred of losing that has driven him in sports, at school, and at work to excel and to not accept second place as good enough.
His earliest example of placing first in school is 1977 when Dan was admitted to the Princess Margaret Junior School Hall of Fame for not violating the Declaration of Rights for Room 14 for a period of 12 weeks. "Congratulations Danny!"
England
In 1978 when Dan was just a wee lad of 6 we moved to Cambridge, England for a year, and lived on Highset Row, not far from the University where our father was teaching for his sabbatical leave. We went to an English school, got into Scouts for a short while, tried squash for the first time, and became Liverpool soccer fans, football. Over the course of the year, Dan and I both developed thick English accents which Dunja can attest to, and yes Dan we still have the tape, under secure lock and key.
Dan as you can see was ever the patriot - this photo was taken on the shore of the River Cam in Cambridge. Should have had your fly done up there buddy.
Dan in his life has never particularly big or strong, although he would like to be, and would like us all to believe he is. My mother always used to give him the pep talk "its not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog" Dan has a lot of fight in him for such a little dog. Scrappy Doo might have been a good nickname for Dan.
Small Athlete
As an athlete Dan always excelled at anything requiring good legs. Completed the Toronto Marathon one year, in '94. He's always been competitive as all hell, lean, fast, quick, and been generally able to run like a deer and skate like the wind. He's still that way. Its fun to watch him play squash, and dig up ball after ball after ball, and quite annoying and frustrating to be the one he's doing it against. He just never quits and hates losing. He thrives on digging up balls and making plays that normal people would have given up on.
Squash
One of the places we grew up in was the squash club, as juniors at the Valhalla Squash Club. Guess what? Dan's better at squash than anything else. He used to split winning all the junior tournaments between himself and his good friend Dean Brown, and as an adult achieved a ranking of 5th overall in the country, was on the Canadian University Squash Team playing overseas in Scotland one year, won the Ontario Open, and captained the UofT Blues to back to back squash titles. His achievements and ranking are truly great accomplishments considering the guys above him were full time pros, and he was studying to be a computer engineer full time.
In the winter we would spend pretty much every weekend playing squash with our dad. We were his "jokers" as he used to call us. Since I'm older, and have always been much bigger, probably because I ate cheese and fruit instead of cookies, I used to feel it was my obligation to wax Dan on the court, ... which worked pretty well when he was 10. From the time we were in France for a year in 1985-6, when I was 15 and Dan was 12, losing to Dan became a regular occurrence. These days I know he's being charitable if I get two points in a row. He takes it easy on me, in some new-found compassion. This must be another Carolyn influence. I always have and continue to play my best squash against Dan, but he still kicks my butt. He plays with dad these days and gives him two bounces instead of one, along with a generous spot of points, and easier scoring method, and still beats him when he's in a non-charitable mood.
France
In 1985-86 our family moved to La Celle St Cloud, France, for another sabbatical year. La Celle St Cloud is just outside Paris, and is as French as a town can get. Not speaking a word of French when we got there, Dan was quick to make friends and to integrate into the society at school with the French kids. By the time we left he was completely bilingual, and was indistinguishable from a French kid, except for maybe his excitement at finding 10 francs on the street, and our touristy matching K-Way jackets. One of his close friends from France, Guillaume, has kept in touch with Dan all this time, and he is actually here at the wedding. For several years after we returned from France, Dan and Guillaume would take turns visiting each other in Canada or France in the summers, for several weeks at a time. They loved their BMX bikes. We would all go swimming at the Leppers' pool and then lie on our blacktop driveway in the hot August sun baking dry.
Hockey
These days I certainly enjoy playing hockey with Dan. We play on the Kipling Grove Bruins together and we also play pick-up on Wednesday nights at Lakeshore Arena. Funny how we both hate losing, but have had to get accustomed to losing with the Bruins for a while - the last time our team won was the 1983-84 season, and we weren't on it at that time. We're due! We first started playing Kipling Grove on the Hawks, also with Jeff and Mark and the Stambolich brothers, and won just about every year. Dan also played Humber Valley minor hockey, and then for the Royal York Rangers - as an assistant Captain even.
Dan can probably skate backwards faster than most people can skate forwards. He accelerates like a race car and can stop on a dime. People always want to know who he is when they're watching him on the ice chasing some poor sucker down from behind, making the guy look as slow as a dinosaur. If only Dan could shoot, and maybe stickhandle a little, at least the puck off the ice! Its interesting in retrospect that Mark is a pure goal scoring machine ... although he can't skate. Jeff is a creative playmaker and born leader, and I rely on my reach and shot since its usually me that Dan's chasing down. Its amazing that we played every day and none of us developed the same style of play.
Sam
Some of you might not be inclined to believe this but early in life Dan was quite the thespian, and had a wonderful singing voice. For you non-believers and doubtmongers, for whom this is surely a stretch of the truth I have brought proof ... proof of Dan as a great musical actor!
Let me take you back to 1982, to St Andrews Presbyterian Church. Our mother, who was always involved with the Sunday School, organized a play called "Sam." The play was a take on the story of The Good Samaritan in the Bible. Dan, because of his great singing voice, was chosen as one of the stars of the play to be the merchant. Lets have a listen!
Play song
Thanks very much to Andy Krehm of SilverBirch Studios. In anticipation of your request for copies, we have some for sale in the lobby. Andy plays pick-up hockey with Dan on Wednesdays, and just might end up on the opposite team from Dan this fall.
Hair
I don't think any speech about Dan would be properly complete without at least mentioning his hair. First he had hockey hair, a real "mullet." Then during grad school he made some bizarre pact with himself not to cut his hair until he successfully defended his thesis. Thankfully his hair didn't get too far below his shoulders, because Dan, that was some bad looking hair! The long hair must have some Freudian representation of how deathly afraid Dan is of going bald. Dan, the hair looks much better now, and Carolyn I'm glad you were in Vancouver during his long hair days.
Carolyn
I would like to commend Dan on his choice of lifelong partner - Carolyn.
Our family is very taken with Carolyn, and we are all very excited to have her as part of the family; in particular my daughter Katie, who absolutely adores her "Auntie Carolyn."
We all find Carolyn to be kind, caring, generous with her time, dependable, clever and occasionally tight-lipped.
The Vranesic family often has dinner at my parents house on Sunday nights. Good food and lively conversation. Carolyn is clever enough to realize that even though she can prove my father's chauvinistic and ultra conservative opinions wrong, she realizes that since you can never actually change his mind or "win," why get into a big fight about it, since doing so would just upset everybody. So she's quiet at the Sunday dinner table when the provocation starts, although you can read pretty much everything from the body language and facial expressions.
As I mentioned earlier, we credit Carolyn exclusively with a turnaround in Dan. There are things in Dan's life which have only recently started to happen, strangely coinciding with Carolyn's arrival. Dan gets up before ten in the morning, actually has perishable food in the refrigerator. He seems to go to bed at a reasonable time, and has become somewhat of an environmentalist.
None of us are entirely sure how the Carolyn - Dan thing actually got started. We know they were in high school at the same time. We know she worked at the Valhalla Club where Dan spent every waking minute for a few years ... I guess we know why now. We've heard how his brother-in-law Eddie Walsh intervened when they were both single to make sure they both knew each other was available and how to contact each other. We know that he went to visit her in Vancouver, skiing at Whistler. We know she chose UofT for Teachers College, even though she was living in BC at the time. Coincidence ... I think not!
Well, however it happened, let me just say that we're all very pleased that it did happen.
Dan and Carolyn, my family and I wish you the happiest of lives together. I think you're starting out just great. Our love to you both. For very obvious purpose Mary-Kae has been storing all of Katie's baby clothes for you two. We have tried to make sure that there are enough baby clothes saved and stored to outfit the next generation of triplets. Grandma Anne needs some more little ones to spoil, and to help take care of. Dad's gotten quite used to being "Dido," and needs some more girls he can teach squash and chess to.