Why a book on Riviera’s as a high school music fundraiser? DIFFERENT WORLDS For us eastside boys growing up in Vancouver in the fifties and early sixties, our world consisted of our neighborhood. We all had paper routes to make extra money and delivered prescriptions for our local drugstore on our bicycles. As far away from home as I had ever been was Birch Bay for our summer vacation, oh I did travel to Spokane one summer with my parents and then, came DELAMONT into our lives. Almost overnight we could now spend three months in Europe in the summer. Where was Europe? We were so naïve. I remember standing on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle with my best friend I was sixteen and he was eighteen looking out over the city of Edinburgh. We were being interviewed by an international travel journalist who took our picture and said it would appear in her magazine. We couldn’t believe it. What were we doing here? It was a completely DIFFERENT WORLD than the one we were used to and it has made all the difference in both of our lives because it started us thinking outside of the box.

I can’t take you on a three month trip to Europe like Delamont did but I can introduce you to a DIFFERENT WORLD through The Riviera Book. Not everyone gets to travel to a Riviera in their lives so they don’t often even think about it. The name Riviera still conjures up images of the jet set lifestyle, glamorous Italian movie stars and expensive hotels because the name was first coined in the sixties and referred to the original Riviera, the French Riviera. Today, there are some thirty Riviera’s all over the world. All evoke the same lifestyle and image as the original but you can travel to a Riviera on a budget as we found out. I remember standing on a hilltop looking out over the city of Nice on the French Riviera in 1968, my first Riviera, from the youth hostel where we stayed. We spent our days at the seaside, marched in the Battle of the Flowers Parade on the Promenade des Anglais and rented motor scooters and drove them to Monte Carlo along the Cote de d’azur forty of us on twenty scooters just like Peter Fonda in the movie Easy Rider.

While I can’t take everyone on a trip to Europe like Delamont did we are going to take one hundred lucky people to Cannes on the French Riviera for a one week all expenses paid vacation to attend the European premiere of The Riviera Book. Everyone can get in on the opportunity by purchasing a book from any one of one hundred high school music programs in B.C. Your name will go into a barrel and you will have a one in five hundred chance of winning. Buy ten books as Christmas presents. It will also be available from fifty high school music programs in Washington State and fifty programs in Oregon but the winners of that draw will not be going to Cannes, instead they will be going to Miami on the Redneck Riviera for the American Book Launch of The Riviera Book.

While I can’t guarantee that the book will change your lives like Delamont did ours, it will introduce you to a DIFFERENT WORLD and get you thinking outside of the box, while, at the same time, you will be supporting your local high school music program. You might learn a thing or two as well such as where the other Riviera’s are located around our beautiful world.