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Clifford (Cliff) Thurtell

Born in Cape Town, I was in Pretoria for most of my schooling before I went to Grey from Std. 8 to 10. Played cricket (not well), and was mostly involved in academic things at school. I was a library monitor at one point!

I did my bit in the Navy, then went to Rhodes University before working in Pietermaritzburg for the Natal Provincial Administration in IT, until I emigrated to Canada in 1980. I lived in Vancouver for 3 years and then Victoria until 2003. Since then, I have been in Long Beach, California, where my wife, Mary (Canadian), and I both had jobs at the California State University. I was in Computer IT all my working career and retired in 2017.

We do travel back to South Africa quite regularly. We have a small condo in Cape Town which we stay in. My daughter did her final teaching year at UCT, so we bought the condo for her to use while she was there, and then rented it out until I retired.

My daughter and our granddaughter are now in London. I have two other children: one in Eastern Canada (two grandsons) and one in Western Canada (dogs plus a new grandson). All my other family (brothers, etc), live in Cape Town.

Amongst other things that I have done, is help crew sailing a yacht from Hawaii to Vancouver in 1983, as well as taking a whole year off in 1983 to travel around the world with my youngest brother, Jeffrey (also an Old Grey).