Background
John Duff was born in Kiukiang, China. His parents were Canadians from Hamilton, Ontario who established a commercial outpost in nearby Kuling. As a boy, the rambunctious young Duff was sent to Hamilton for a good Victorian education. He lived there until he was sixteen. In 1912, Duff was back in Kuling. When war was declared in 1914, he travelled across Russia to England, where he joined the army. Gravely wounded at the Third Battle of Ypres, Duff was sent to a hospital in England where he met and married his nurse. In 1919, John Duff learned how to drive a car and became a dealer. In 1920, he started racing.
Read more about this topic: John Duff
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)