John Graham Hancock
Engineer, yachtsman, proud Canadian, true-blue Aussie. Born on Feb. 21, 1933, in Melbourne, Australia; died on Oct. 20, 2014, in Langley, B.C., of cancer, aged 81.
My father, John Hancock, was a born explorer, a jackaroo who got his start in the Australian outback and whose fearless adventures inspired awe in all who knew him.
Born in Melbourne in 1933 to Lady Joan and Sir Valston Hancock, it became clear by the time he was a teenager that academic life was not for John. He left Melbourne's prestigious Wesley College at 16, and at 17 was conscripted into National Service. In 1951, he went to work on our relatives' sheep stations in Western Australia, at Mulga Downs and Wooleen. He thrived in the harsh outback and found his calling working in nature's extremes, developing an interest in drilling from a humble start maintaining the stations' windmills.
Oil had been discovered in Western Australia and he went to work for Geophysical Services International, where he learned seismic drilling. He spent two years in Iran before returning to Perth, where he bought a yacht and joined a sailing club. At 28, he was introduced by friends to Gloria Grier, an equally intrepid British expat who worked at the University of Western Australia. They married in 1964, and two years later faced a choice: embrace suburbia in Perth, or travel the world? They chose adventure.
John's father served as commissioner-general for the Australian exhibit at Expo 67, so the couple headed to Montreal to see the world's fair. John's seismic expertise came to the attention of the Canadian International Development Agency, which recruited him to train people in developing countries to find and drill for potable water to sustain their crops.
For the next decade, the couple crisscrossed the globe, living in places such as Africa and the Philippines. In 1978 they settled in Langley, B.C., with their young daughter Diana, to await the birth of their son Alex.
John readily played up the archetype of a Crocodile Dundee bushman in his new Canadian community. With his Akubra hat and hard-talking Aussie slang, he was the toughest dad on the block, belying the caring and generous heart under his formidable exterior.
In the early 1980s, to stay closer to home, John trained as a welder working on B.C. projects such as the Alex Fraser Bridge and the pulp mill in Gold River, becoming a long-standing member of the operating engineers and millwrights unions. He continued to work on contracts across the Canadian Far North and internationally for CIDA, in the Middle East and the Caribbean.
Friends and family were thrilled by his tales of adventure, such as being rescued by Bedouins while drilling for water in the Balochistan desert; swimming to safety when a snapped towline whipped around his leg on a seismic drill-platform in Manitoba's icy Nelson River; and escaping a barracuda attack while diving in St. Kitts.
A real outdoorsman, Dad loved to fish and sail, and even helped to build a 42-foot yacht. In his spare time, he co-created a 1980s toy, the spherical Wombler, in which kids could rock, spin or float, which was sold in Eatons and Woodward stores.
Yet he placed scant value on material possessions, accumulating a wealth measured best by his many friends, generous ways, humour, and creative works. John's true legacy is the values he instilled in his children – to embrace the road less travelled and to seek self-reliance.
Diana Hancock is John's daughter.