Hi, Robert Fox here from Silverfox Fitness in Cambridge, Ontario. I have been living here my entire life, and fitness is a huge part of who I am and how I think.
You may have taken a class with me at the Chaplin Family YMCA, or seen me out in the community at some point. Perhaps you saw me buying produce at the Cambridge Market while standing on one foot!
I am sharing this personal life and fitness journey in Cambridge with you, so that you can hear about what life has been like for me in Cambridge (Galt, Hespeler, Preston), starting from 1946.
Let’s begin with a brief account of my life between 0 and 18 years.
Growing Up in Cambridge
I grew up on the east side of Galt, Ontario, Canada, and lived with my mother, father, one brother, and two sisters.
Since my brother was almost 2 years older than I was, I went everywhere with him. He was very athletic so we played a lot of very active games.
I remember going out to play with the kids in the neighbourhood, and returned home only to eat and sleep.
My brother and I could hear our dad’s loud deep voice echoing through the neighbourhood … “Robert, John, come and eat!”
We climbed trees, rode bikes, and swam in the creek in Soper Park. Here’s a recent photo of Mill Creek, home to many crayfish and blood suckers.
During my childhood, I played “Hide and Seek” and “Capture the Flag” in the good weather. We also made go-carts and held races down McNaughton St. hill.
We could hardly wait for winter, so we could make a backyard ice rink and pretended that we played for the Montreal Canadiens or the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Sliding down the hills in Dickson Park was the best, especially after an ice storm.
In our later teens, we joined organized sports and got quite good at baseball, hockey, racquet sports and even track and field.
No one could beat my brother and I at horseshoes, and our dad even built us a homemade ping pong table. There was a trophy for that game too!
I don’t remember any organized resistance training programmes, but we did a lot of pushing, pulling, and and carrying things. This is sometimes called “functional fitness” nowadays.
19 to 55 years
I got married a few months out of highschool and my wife and I started a family and worked long and hard as elementary school teachers.
I coached baseball, soccer, hockey, wrestling, basketball, volleyball, and badminton as a teacher, and also taught all the grades from kindergarten to grade 8.
When we weren’t teaching school kids, my wife and I continued to be very active.
We did a lot of bike riding, walking the hills of our town, playing different sports.
But in our late 20’s, we joined our local YMCA.
The YMCA in our town was very close to where we lived and worked so we could access it easily.
Today the Chaplin Family Y is located on Hespeler Rd. It is a beautiful very modern building with a great pool which I swim laps in once a week!
My wife became a certified fitness instructor and taught a strength class weekly to a packed gym.
Mainly women attended her class because the men couldn’t do the exercises and they didn’t want to look weak in front of the ladies.
Because of the nature of my wife’s strength class, we were introduced to “weights”.
A lot of “pumping iron” was in our future.
I became a certified fitness instructor at the age of 54. I taught many group fitness classes at our YMCA on Hespeler Road in Galt Cambridge such as Step Class, Stretch and Tone, Move Together Strength, and even Zumba.
Today, my weekly resistance training class is mainly “newcomers to exercise”, and or seniors.
I want the participants to enjoy “exercising with intention” so we play games and always begin with a physical and mental warmup.
The strength, stretching, aerobics, balance, memory, and meditation activities are included into the 60 minutes together.
56 to 93 years
My son and I have a garden business called Foxy Gardens! Here’s a video of my house and garden from this past year.
Foxy Gardens, which involves a lot of yard work and lawn care, keeps us very active.
We have learned to be healthy eaters, sleep soundly, and keep our brain sharp!
My daughter and her orthopedic surgeon husband, Dr. Chris Raynor, own and operate a gym in Ottawa Ontario called Human 2.0.
Here’s Dr. Chris talking about swelling in the knee, which is something I know about since I got a knee replacement a few years back.
Here’s Mandy doing a “bridge”.
Take Away
My wife, Sue, was and still is my motivation to live a long happy healthy life.
She was the first fitness instructor in our family,
which motivated me to be as healthy as I can be.
Watch for us around town.
We will either be walking, gardening or riding our bikes.
Sue still volunteers weekly at the YMCA and has for close to 50 years.
Exercise is in our blood!