Roger Dial has a mistress!
With nearly seven decades in his rear view mirror, you might think he’s getting a bit old for that sort of thing. Well, the fact is this particular love affair started shortly after he arrived in Nova Scotia back in the late 1960s to cofound the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Halifax’s Dalhousie University. Truth be told, Roger had a couple extra-marital affairs even before coming to Nova Scotia. One of these romances obliged him to earn a PhD from the University of California (aka “Berkeley”) so that he could profess his passion for the politics of China. Alas, after a couple decades, and an assortment of much applauded (but really pretty unromantic) sonnets on the subject, his Sinological courtship dissipated into something pretty close to alienation. Call it a divorce-of-the-mind.
However, Roger’s other California-spawned grape-romance has remained close to his heart (and balance sheet) all these years. Oh yes, as you may have suspected, there were substantial offspring from this oenological passion: his four decades of pioneering development of wineries and vineyards on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and a Goggle-izable array of related entrepreneurial progeny, some successful, and others...well, perhaps a little disappointing...C’est l’amour! But through it all, his one true mistress has never disappointed him, nor failed to keep the home fire burning in his heart. Their intimacy and his affection for her has grown richer year-by-year. Literally, Roger Dial will be bonded to this mistress right into the grave.
Her name is Nova Scotia. And, while he has the time, he most sincerely would like to introduce you to HER.