What does a retired pedagogue from Waterloo, Ontario do once retired? Well, Faye Teal is a retired school principal from the town near Toronto (100km west) famous as the home of the Blackberry.
She isn’t the kind of lady that let’s the grass grow under her feet. She now has the freedom to travel and indulge he life-long passion “Contract Bridge”.
Unlike a lot of card games, Bridge is pretty sophisticated and intellectually challenging. We didn’t know much about the game so decided to read up on it for this blog.
After a half hour or so, we gave up as it is (putting it mildly) a pretty complicated game. But according to tennis legend, Martina Navritilova “Bridge teaches logic, reasoning, quick thinking, patience and partnership skills”.
There are national and world governing bodies for the game and sanctioned tournaments are held regularly around the world.
Two of the world’s wealthiest men are avid players/competitors. Investor extrordinaire, Warren Buffet imparted his passion for the game to Bill Gates and both multi-billionaires often attend and enter tournaments. (Faye has played against Gates – and won!)
The list of celebrity Bridge players is long and distinguished and shows that the game is not for lightweight thinkers.
Afficianados have included Dwight Eisenhower; Winston Churchill, Deng Xiaoping; Margaret Thatcher; Mohandas Gandhi; Omar Sharif; and Snoopy.
Faye is in Toronto to play in a sanctioned tournament and like many other passionate Bridge players has little time for anything else.
