I am always amazed by the small world that we live in or how we run into people by chance, people that we haven't seen for many years.
This is the case with my friend Jean Bayne, whom I met by chance 25 years ago here in Prince George.
We lost touch and I hadn't seen Jean for the past ten years and then one day - there she was volunteering in the kitchen down at the Elder Citizens Recreation Centre.
What a small world!
You are not likely to forget a smiling, cheerful, kind and positive person like Jean Bayne.
Jean (Borowski) Bayne was born in Grand Prairie, Alta. in 1944.
She met her soon to be husband, boxing enthusiast, Boyd Bayne at a wedding in Alberta. Boyd had traveled from Prince George to Alberta for the wedding of his cousin who was also Jean's childhood friend.
Jean met Boyd and she said, "It was love at first sight - or something like that."
The young couple got married at the United Church in Grande Prairie and in fact Boyd's cousin and her new husband stood up for their wedding. That was 51 years ago and the rest is history,
Boyd Bayne was born in Trail, B.C. in 1942.
His father worked for the railroad and the family moved to Prince George in 1943.
Boyd grew up in Prince George and attended school at King George V.
He worked at CN Rail for 32 years in the express delivery department and the maintenance department.
His job consisted of unloading box cars and then delivering the freight all over town. When the CN express department phased out he went into maintenance until health issues caused him to go on a disability pension.
Boyd has been a boxing enthusiast and has volunteered in the sport nearly all of his life.
His father Reg Bayne along with Irving Mann, Torge Larson, Jack Liddler and the members of the Prince George Lions Club organized a boxing club in the old Civic Centre.
The gym was first known as the Spruce Capital Boxing Club and over time it became the Spruce Capital Warriors Boxing Club.
Boyd coached the members of the club for over 20 years; he still holds a level three judging license.
Boyd said, "The boxing club was always about the kids. We trained them and taught them discipline, respect and not to use their skills outside of the gym with the intention to harm others.
"We taught them to lead a healthy life and encouraged them to be hard working students at school.
"The gym was not a place to mingle and hang out with their friends; they all knew they were there to train and that is why we had such a successful club. We often had 40 to 45 kids taking boxing lessons and man, could they fight! We turned out several champions, including my son Allan, as well as a lot of young good citizens over the years."
Because of his many volunteer years in boxing serving as a B.C. provincial team coach and a 20 year coach of the Spruce Capital Warriors Boxing Club he has recently been honoured by being inducted into the British Columbia Amateur Boxing Hall of Fame.
Jean was a stay at home mom and raised their three children - daughters Cheryl (Rod), Nadine (Robyn) and son Allan (Marnie); they have five grandchildren.
Their son (and boxing star) Allan is a former Canadian boxing champion who was also inducted into the B.C. boxing hall of fame in 2012.
Jean remains an active community volunteer at the senior centre, in her church and at the Lighthouse Ministry. When her kids were growing up she attended all their sports games and competitions; she always volunteered as needed.
Jean never learned to drive a car until she was in her mid 30s.
She said, "If I needed to go anywhere I just walked. I was used to walking and I did not want to learn to drive a stick shift. One day Boyd bought me my own car, an automatic and said he would teach me to drive it and he did. I got my drivers license for the first time and I have to admit that it changed my life."
As we chatted, Boyd reflected back and reminisced about some of his preteen antics.
The family home was on Tofield Street at the bottom of Carney Hill and near the Cameron Street Bridge.
It was always a routine dare to cross the Nechako River via the underside of the old bridge.
Boyd, along with anywhere from four to ten of his childhood friends, crawled across the underside of the bridge and squeezed along the girders and trestles just to get to the other side.
Boyd said, "We could have easily walked across the bridge but boys will be boys and we were always up to a dare.
"I remember crawling and if a car or truck passed while we were under the bridge we had to hang on and fight off all the dirt and dust that came down and in our eyes. We loved the outdoors and we were usually a mess at the end of the day; as I look back it is a miracle that none of us got injured or killed under that bridge."
He told me how this same group of friends often dared one another to a race running completely around the old active and red hot beehive burners down on Planer Road.
They did not realize until years later just how dangerous that stunt was.
Then there was the time that the same group of young boys moved over to the stored stacks of lumber and routinely ran and then jumped from one stack to another.
They loved it when they found a board sticking out that served as a diving board or a spring board that would propel them forward to the next stack.
They always felt lucky when the board did not snap under their weight.
Boyd admitted to the time that he came up short and missed the stack nearly biting his tongue off as he fell to the ground.
That event required a trip to the hospital and surgery to fix him up.
He did not tell me what his parents had to say about that one.
If you ask me, Boyd's parents got those kids organized and into the boxing ring just in time to save their lives.
