Former Ladner resident pens children’s book

Darryl Busink is paying homage to his time living in Ladner in a new children’s book.

A Very Important Trip is based in Ladner, when he lived from 1975 to 1989.

“It is about my two children who secretly take a rowboat and leave via a little river/canal to go meet their cousins in Taiwan,” he said. “My wife is from Taiwan, where I met her and taught English for seven years.”

In the story, the kids leave in the middle of the night from their backyard, where they have access to a river.

“This part of the story was inspired by the Crescent Slough, where my teacher lived next to, at the end of 47^th Street,” he recalled. “My dad once told me as a kid that it was possible to reach the other side of the world by a little river, such as the slough, which slowly gets connected to the Pacific Ocean. The idea never left me, and last year I wrote a 32-page children's book based on that idea.”

Busink says he has fond memories of Ladner.

 “While I haven't lived in Ladner since 1989, I visit there often as I am currently a courier and drive through it every week, which brings back lots of memories,” he says. “During my time there my next door neighbor for a short time was Jason Priestly (which I didn't know at the time) and I only found out recently when I hired his step-dad to be a business teacher at the language school that I was a director at. Jason's sister Justine was my babysitter.”

A Very Important Trip is available at Amazon.ca.