The Early 80s - Three years in Paris, France.

This, of course, is the famous Arc de Triomphe which stands at one end of the Champs Elysées, one of the most famous streets in the center of Paris. You can get up on top of this enormous edifice, and from down below the people up there look like little ants milling around. On the ground level, inside the Arc but right out there in the open air, you will find an eternal flame that burns to honor the unknown soldier.

I did indeed spend almost three years "living the life" in Paris, France, from the end of 1982 until mid 1985. And it was glorious - the "before kids" part of our family life. But we returned to the United States primarily because my wife could not get working papers (being a Yank) to work in France, a problem that I didn't have primarily because I'm a Canadian.

When we first moved to France I worked at as a full time researcher at INRIA - a famous European research center, at their Paris - Rocquencourt facility. In those days, they had teams of people doing things like re-writing Unix in Pascal; go figure!

After 18 months at INRIA I spent a good while building Ada development tools as a Senior Software Toolsmith at Alsys S.A., (now owned by Thompson) where I worked directly with the inventors of the language ("Green "), focusing on innovative CASE tools written in and for Ada development. Alsys was such a great company that when we decided to move back to the US, I joined the newly-formed American subsidiary called "Alsys, Inc." in Waltham, Ma.

I do hope to find the time to write more about my life in France because it was a very interesting and very rewarding part of my life.

Last updated: April 6, 1998.