Jeffrey Alan Groombridge

Jeff was born in Kingston, England at a crucial historical moment. The Battle of Britain had ended in 1940, and the Blitz in May of 1941, but an Allied victory in Europe was still two years away, and his father would not return from service in Egypt and Palestine until he was 4. What gave Jeff’s parents – Joan (Harding) and Alfred the courage and optimism to start a family in a time of such strife and hardship? Perhaps they sensed the world of unlimited opportunity and promise that would come with peace, and wanted their first child to be a part of that new world. Those opportunities wouldn’t have been apparent for the first 9 years of Jeff’s life, though, growing up in an England where food and other essentials were still rationed. Fortunately, opportunity beckoned overseas, and – although Jeff would have finished his youth as an Australian if his dad had had his way – Joan won the argument and the family moved to Rexdale, Ontario. Fairly soon, Jeff was even allowed to stop wearing short pants to school and to dress like a normal Canadian boy.

It must have been a shock for Jeff to leave behind everyone and everything he knew except for his parents and start a new life in Canada, but it was a time when many others were doing the same thing. He enjoyed acting in school theatre productions and rooting for the Chicago Blackhawks (which must have made him popular with the other kids in the Toronto suburb) over the other 5 teams in the NHL. An Ontario boyhood might have transitioned uneventfully into an Ontario adulthood, but in 1959 the now family of four was uprooted once again. Alf had been working for A.V. Roe Canada Limited (Avro), and when the Avro Arrow was cancelled in 1959, he – along with 15,000 other Avro employees and 15,000 more in the supply chain – were suddenly out of work. As for so many others, California offered a fresh start, and Alf took a new job in the Bay Area in what later became “Silicon Valley”. For Jeff, this may have been an even bigger disruption than the move from England. Joan always thought so. Jeff graduated from Ravenswood High School in 1961, then received an A.A. from the College of San Mateo. He began pre-med studies at Hayward State University, in hope of becoming a pharmacist, but chose not to continue when required to dissect a cat.

Again history intervened in the form of the Vietnam War. Although still a Canadian citizen, Jeff received his draft notice. Rather than becoming one of the 60,000 young men serving in the U.S. military who died in a pointless war in Southeast Asia, Jeff returned to Canada in 1965. After a brief stint living in the hippest bachelor apartment building in Vancouver’s West End, Jeff gradually began moving east. He married Ineke (Bontius), who had also lived in Rexdale. They started their family in Burnaby and eventually moved to Port Coquitlam. He worked in materials testing for a while, and then started his own landscaping business, and with the birth of three children – Robert, Alan, and Marieke – he must have seemed like the stereotypical suburban man, and his life might have continued along a very familiar track.

That isn’t what happened, though. The marriage ended. Jeff studied network systems at BCIT, took up running, and even performed in a cast of hundreds in Vancouver Opera’s Aida. He started a new job running a computerized lathe, and married a new wife, Sylvia, but neither of those worked out. Instead, a visit to Guatemala to study Spanish resulted in a new romance with Elena, the head of the host family with whom he was staying. Soon, a new son – Miguel – had arrived, and for many years Guatemala was Jeff’s home, and Canada was somewhere that he just visited. The difficulties of life in Guatemala led Jeff and Elena to encourage Miguel to start his own new life in Canada, though, and Jeff moved back as part of that effort. Doing so meant that he was in the same country as all four of his children and all eight of his grandchildren. At the time of his death, Jeff was sharing a house in Surrey with Miguel and his family, and the peripatetic part of his life was over. Wherever he lived, he enjoyed being close to nature and exploring outdoors.

Jeff is survived by his partner Elena Cuyun, his children Robert (Denise), Alan, Marieke (Matt), Miguel (Joeanna), his grandchildren Sarah, Abigail, Kees, Jasmin, James, Naomi, Joehann, and Jaira, his Guatemalan family Dayana and Raquel, and his sister Jane (Michael).

Jeff’s ashes will be scattered at a gathering of his family and closest friends.