My grandfather began our familys
traveling ethos by emigrating from Russia to Canada -- a happy
ending to the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution -- and passed it
on to my father and, in turn, to me, the last of dads three
children. Three generations developed a sense of wonder into
wanderlust.
Growing up on
Vancouver Island, my family and I had nature to explore, mountains
to climb and the sea and rivers to fish and snorkel in, not to
mention all manner of sports to play.
At age 15, I left
home to play for a junior hockey team 300 miles away. From that
moment, travel became my way of life.
At 19, I became
eligible for the National Hockey League draft. I signed with the
reigning Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens and first played
with their farm team in the American Hockey League
(AHL).
My abilities were
enhanced by the quality of the players who surrounded me, which
enabled me to garner an AHL scoring title, Most Valuable Player
award and league championship and play on two Stanley Cup-champion
teams in Montreal before being traded to the Colorado
Rockies.
In 1978, I was
selected to play for Team Canada in the Isvestia Tournament in
Moscow, and as a result I left the NHL, moved to Europe and joined
the Mannheim Eis-und-Rollsport Club in the German National Hockey
League. Grace smiled on me again as I added a fifth professional
championship.
I retired from
professional sports a year later, pursuing an entrepreneurial path,
which led me from simply traveling to becoming part of the travel
industry itself.
In the late 1990s,
as a result of a conversation that began with my travel agent, I
co-founded Fare 1, which used the Internet to aggregate
consolidator air fares and blend them with published fares on a PC
screen.
In 2001, having
taken Fare 1 public on the London stock exchange in a combined
company named World Travel Holdings, I stepped down as president
and CEO to pursue a new idea: a global online travel directory.
Four years later, Tralliance, the company I co-founded for the
initiative, has been designated as the registry for
dot-travel.
Building awareness
for dot-travel has me traveling 180 days a year, as frenetic as 16
cities in 13 countries in 28 days, but I truly enjoy the work, so I
feel fortunate.
Before they stopped
a few years ago, my parents had traveled across the length and
breadth of Canada, through all 50 U.S. states and to 26 countries,
so its fitting that my generation has brought forth the first,
quintessential million-miler in the Andruff family tradition.
-- Edited by Andrew Compart
To contact
reporter Andrew Compart, send e-mail to [email protected].