The first Volkswagen van

In the summer of 1955, Ghylaine was pregnant with Süzel. She had a really difficult pregnancy and felt uncomfortable except when riding in a car, so we decided to hit the road, first to visit her brother Maurice near Denver, and then on to Mexico. I had ordered a Volkswagen van with a pop-up roof direct from the factory in Germany, and the day it came off the boat onto the dock in Montreal, we loaded it up with a mattress and our luggage and left with Christian, after entrusting our cats to some reliable neighbours. Ours was the first, or one of the first, Volkswagen vans in North America and it drew a lot of curious stares everywhere we went! In the mountains near Denver, we stayed with Maurice and Rachel, but from then on we camped in the van all the way through Salt Lake City, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and Los Angeles, where Disneyland had just opened. I was offered work in television, and then at the Disney studios, but was never really tempted. The freedom and dynamism of the artistic environment at Radio-Canada were unmatched anywhere, and we were very close to our families.