Canadian Sam Blyth is the founder of Blyth Academy & CEO of the Global Summers Academy, and a man with a love of international travel. Born in 1954 on a military base in Shilo, Manitoba, he moved to Ottowa as a toddler, where he attended Ashbury College. His father accepted a job with the diplomatic corps, and Sam, now 13, moved too. He went, sequentially, to Trinity College School, Uppingham School, and Pembroke College Cambridge, where he acquired a BA in Anthropology. He followed this with a spell in Paris, at the then strike-bound Sorbonne.
Perhaps more significant in his career, at 17, he took a summer job as a baggage boy for a European tour run by a Toronto travel firm. In subsequent summers he worked up to becoming assistant tour leader for a bicycle trek from Vienna to London. He once described the students who took the biking tours through Europe as "overprivileged kids," but by 1977 he had set up a travel agency back in Canada.
One of his early enterprises was the Great Canadian Show Train - "a train consisting of two sleeping compartments, a lounge, a dining car and a caboose that was made into a cabaret" which trekked across Canada with live performances on board and stops in cities for passengers to explore the local arts scenes. A critical success, but a financial flop, said The Globe & Mail.
In 1980 he caused a stir as the young paramour of a better-known woman 15 years his senior: Barbara Amiel, journalist and future wife of Conrad Black. Ms Amiel divorced CBC radio producer George Jonas in 1979, and was shortly infatuated with the “altogether so physically perfect” Sam Blyth. Having no money, they moved into a cheap, rodent-infested apartment recently vacated by Blyth’s university friends. The new couple attempted to visit Mozambique without visas, and spent ten days in jail. The Canadian government appeared uninterested in freeing them, and eventually the British consul secured their release. They lasted two years.
In 1985, Blyth married Rosemarie Bata, daughter of business magnate Thomas Bata, at Lake Joseph Community Church in Muskoka. Thomas Bata was once the world’s largest shoemaker. Blyth married under his real name, Graham David Blyth, with the announcement noting his nickname of Sam. They divorced in 1996. Mr Blyth then partnered Rosemary Phelan, from a famous Canadian food empire. In 2008, they started funding Canadian students on scholarships to Cambridge.
In February last year, from his base at Casa de Campo, in the Dominican Republic, he wrote to the Globe and Mail complaining about 'thousands of Russian tourists' and called for 'an indefinite ban of travellers from Russia by democratic nations'. Casa de Campo is 'one of the safest and most luxurious gated communities in the Caribbean' covering 7,000 acres. It was also where Boris Johnson took a break last year, as Liz Truss battled for survival as PM.
Sam's connection to Boris ? Blyth’s mother was the granddaughter of Sir George Williams, founder of the YMCA. Sir George is Boris Johnson’s great-great-great-grandfather.
Sam's connection to Richard Sharp (a 'friend for forty years' ) - not yet clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment