Welcome!

Hi, I'm Brian Babineau. Breezeway Enterprises is a catch-all for some of my passions.

My love of travel took me to Belize and my travelogue Think Belize was a natural outcome.

My love of art lead to a modest art collection which lead to the Breezeway Art Gallery, a house-garage converted to a breezeway converted to a quick-assembly art gallery.

My love of writing has endured throughout a career that paid it scant attention. Now it has burst out in the form of poems and songs that express something of the joy and pain of living.

My love of my wife is constant and ever-lasting. Of course, my songs and poems are my own, but my experiences in Belize and my enjoyment of the visual arts are so inter-twined with my relationship with Evelyn as to be inseparable. I use the personal pronoun singular to shield her from any responsibility for my errors.

My love of life remains strong even in a world so incredibly fucked up that yesterday’s misanthropes are today’s comedians. If it’s kill or let live, my thumb is up. If it’s a vote on life, I vote ‘aye’. If it’s ‘affirm’ or ‘deny’, I affirm, though if the choice was less absolute I might hedge my response a little.

I was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, many years ago. Brantford then was a depressed industrial city of about 60,000 people, many of whom were blue-collar workers in the factories that manufactured farm machinery. I was raised in Eagle Place, a community of Brantford, in what was called the ‘wartime housing’ project where inexpensive homes were built for veterans of the second-world war. My recollections of boyhood shine in my memory. My memories of adolescence dim considerably and my memories of late teens and early twenties are downright gothic. But in those un-golden years, I hitchhiked over the Rockies to Vancouver, wintered in Winnipeg, lived for a year in Montreal, and finally returned to school and civilization.

While at university, I met Evelyn with whom I instantly fell in love and asked to marry, though it was more than six months before we were married in civil court in Kitchener, Ontario. Our son was born the year I graduated from university and we took him with us to Ghana, West Africa, where we served four years as Canadian University Students Overseas (CUSO) volunteers. After our second two year tour of duty, we returned to Canada with our son and a six-week old daughter.

Back in Canada, my home and native land, I addressed the need to make a living by teaching high school. As time went by, I became involved with the teachers’ union and finally left teaching to become a full-time union activist, a vocation, like teaching, to which I had never aspired but which gave me the most satisfaction and enjoyment of my working career.

In retirement, I am on the road again, traveling as I did before. Now, I can open the door of the Breezeway to artists young and old to let them show a tiny portion of the world what they can do. And I can open the door to my own creative efforts, letting my poems and songs be seen and heard.

Check out the website. Who knows where our passions might intersect?