In Over His Head
Keeping your head above water can be a tough job – especially if you’re a Master Diving Instructor with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) like our own Dan Rusciolelli.Dan’s absolutely passionate about what he does, as any of his students can attest. So can his two sons, Greg, 29, and Brian 24. For the past 15 years, the three men, along with a friend, have been traveling to some of the world’s best spots for scuba diving, making diving forays to places like the Turks and Caicos, Belize, Cozumel, Bonaire, the Virgin Islands and Cuba. They go for a week, do two boat dives a day, at least one shore dive and one night dive everyday. And, according to Don, when they’re not diving, they’re enjoying some liquid refreshment at a hotel bar.
Sound wonderful? It sure does. Indeed, Don describes himself as having “led an enchanted life.” The London, Ontario native graduated the University of Western Ontario at 19 and went on the University of Chicago where he got a PhD in Expanded Maxwellian Geometry of Space. And what did he do with his doctorate? He promptly took off for Hawaii to learn how to surf on the waves at world famous Sunset Beach on the island of Oahu.
He returned to Canada, but only for a few weeks before he was off again. This time his youthful wanderlust took him through Europe, onto Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, then across India to Katmandu in Nepal before finally ending his odyssey in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
When he finally returned home in 1971 he still wasn’t quite ready to put the Doctorate he earned to work. So for the next 6 years he played professional hockey as a goaltender in the International Hockey League, well enough that the Chicago Black Hawks made him an offer. But Don decided that wasn’t really wasn’t where his future lie.
Around this time that he met and married his wife, Patti, a high school Phys. Ed teacher and went back to school at Mentor College. There he earned a teaching degree, and in 1977 began his classroom career teaching physics, chemistry, calculus and marine biology at high schools around the Toronto area. It was while he was at Mentor that he first started diving in the school’s program and last year, when he retired from teaching, he decided to pursue his passion full time.
No better place to do that than Sherkston Scuba. Here, Don teaches adventurous would be divers on weekends and a couple of days a week, helping them get PADI certified in our four day program.
The first part of the course is knowledge development and confined training in a safe environment – our pool – where new divers learn the skills they’ll need for survival. Then it’s out to the open water of the Sherkston Quarry for four open water dives over two days. By the time the course is over, students have learned to be safe independent divers. Their reward is the opportunity to explore the depths of the Quarry and discover the remnants of the limestone mine that once flourished here and the railroad that serviced it, before an accident caused it to flood one night.
When season’s over and Sherkston closes for the winter, Don will be taking a busman’s holiday to his favorite spot in the Caribbean, the Turks and Caicos Islands, to do some diving. Next season he hopes to return to Sherkston so he can continue to share his passion for the deep with new and returning students. Like we said, Don’s guy who has a tough time keeping his head above water.
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on Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Sunburst.
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how can we sign up for this?
Marylou, You can sign up for a multiple of Scuba classes at our very own Sherkston Scuba, convienently located between the entrance and exit of the park. Visit the scuba page on our website http://www.sherkston.com or call 1-855-894- 8419 for more details. The scuba team would love to talk to you.