Al Landoni’s interest in fencing goes back almost 40 years.

“I looked into fencing when I was in my 40s but I was too busy with my career and my family,” the 77-year-old Niagara-on-the-Lake resident said. “I didn’t do it because of the commitment. To me, I have to fully commit to something or I don’t do it at all.”

The retired computer system manager kept himself active in his younger days by coaching his kids in soccer, basketball and hockey and later he turned to cross country skiing in the winter and dragon boating in the summer.

But his interest in fencing never waned.

In 2018, his kids came over to his house with a City of St Catharines parks and recreation booklet and told him that he needed to do something in the winter to keep busy.

“I looked at it and it was ‘Oh they have fencing.’ But I wasn’t going to tell them I was into fencing in case they didn’t want me to do it.”

Instead, he expressed an interest in ukulele and yodelling 

“They said, ‘Ukulele, that’s nice’ but when I said yodelling they said, ‘Oh no.’ I told them that they had asked me to find something and they told me to find something else.”

Five minutes later he came back with the idea of fencing and his kids agreed with it.

“If I had told them fencing originally, they would have told me that I was crazy.”

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