Najah, Eric Martin, Simon Cardinal, Catherine Simard..these were some earlybird class taker in May and Early June, people who didn't mind the cold...Mylene Dion, Stefano, Dominic...The Entire Amazing Godin Family(Olivier, Simon, Pierre, Julie) and who can forget Stephanie Bruneau, Mellisa Horvat, Mellisa Rattue, Caroline Samson(Miss Confident), Tim and Gordon from freaking far away Ontario, Karen Ho(my Private Lesson student that almost watched me drown...lol), Donovan(hope you stay at it), Ralph and Sarah. The Adelson Shopping Sisters, Venessa, Frederick, JF, Rod and Mike Waterstone(who never stopped trying)...I'm know there are more of you out there, but these are the names I could remember..there is however, two more names I wanted to mention. One that i want to mention because of the awesome smile on her face and amazing peronallity and joy that she brought to my life as a surf instructor...Samuelle Bergeron(see video) her wonderful and supportive parents(Marie-Claude and Hugo) signed her up for class making sure that I was the instructor and I had just as much fun teaching her as she had taking the course..It's great to see great parenting in this day and age, and it was awesome having such a fun young lady in my class that was always and I do mean ALWAYS smiling...The second name I want to single out touched me in a profound way, not because he is recovering from lukemia, not because he has only 20% lung capacity, not because he of all the people I taught had an actual excuse to say that river surfing was hard and give up...He touch me cause he F*&^ing tried harder than anyone I've ever taught, to catch the wave and surf and he did. Not only the first day but the second also... Jeff Clifford you absolutely made my summer. And I want to thank you for taking my class, the hardcore tattooed extreme sport guy that I think I am, was blown away by your determination, and humbled by the experience. I didn't know any of the details of why you were having trouble swimming back, or why you were breathing so hard, all I knew was that I was impressed by your lack of whining, I thought to myself " Here's a guy that's out of shape, huffing and puffing, but is not complaining or bitching about how hard it is, he's just going run after run, and giving it 100%. " After your Dad told me the details, the only opnion that I change was the one for myself...I'm so not hardcore compared to you, Rock on Jeff, the first pic is for you....
