BEFORE THE
BEGINNING
1948–1969
24
I KNOW WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT MY SHOES:
Creative. Original. Funky. Sassy. Groovy. Artistic. The
funny thing is, I didn’t have a clue that I was artistic
until I was in my thirties. I didn’t even really like artistic
people. I thought they were kind of sketchy.
It turns out that I’m both practical and creative.
That was quite a discovery for a kid who was dyslexic
and bad in school, who almost didn’t graduate and who
never really knew what he wanted to be when he grew
up. A lot of my life was me not thinking I was good at
things, then finding out later that I actually was.
It’s been fifty years since I’ve been selling and making
shoes, and after all this time, I’ve just started to under-
stand who I am. It’s taken me this long to realize that
my business has been my spiritual journey. Now I want
to encourage and maybe inspire others who are setting
foot on the same path.
So let’s start at the beginning. No, let’s start before
the beginning.
I was born on May 15, 1948, to Ruth and Sigurd
Fluevog, in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, on
the far-left coast of the North American continent.
My sister Gail followed three years later and my brother
Glen five years after that. We have an older sister, too,
Karen, who was born in 1943.
We had a very free childhood. Even when I was little,
I rode my bike everywhere. We lived at 6th and Fraser
and one day, when I was eleven or so, I rode my bike
all the way from home across what was then known as
the Second Narrows Bridge, up that steep hill to North
Vancouver and back again. Must have been twenty
kilometres, maybe more. The bridge, which spans the
Burrard Inlet, had just been finished, and it was crazy
and dangerous and a little bit scary. But we just went
off and did stuff like that back then.
My dad was an eccentric character, really smart,
and a big personality, the kind of guy who was never
embarrassed by a moniker like Sigurd Cornelius. It’s
royalty, right? That’s the kind of man he was. He was
a huge influence in my life—it took me a long time to
get over being Sigurd’s son, because that’s what I was,
Sigurd’s son. I didn’t have an identity of my own for a
long, long time. Where Sigurd was often critical and
demanding, Mom was loving and kind; she encouraged
us, whatever we decided to do, as long as we were
good and believed in God.
They were both devout Christians—in fact, my mother
always said she married my dad because he was the only
true Christian around. Their faith was a huge influence
on me as a child and for a long time after that. Even now.
John Fluevog is born to parents
Sigurd and Ruth in Vancouver, BC.
He has an older sister, Karen, and
two younger siblings, Gail and Glen.
To future generations, May 15 will
become known as International
Fluevog Day.
MAY 15, 1948
1948
24
25
My parents grew up in rural Alberta farm country—
Dad in Irma and Mom in Kinsella—but my grandparents
were pioneers in the truest sense of the word. My
father’s parents came from Norway and homesteaded
in South Dakota and Minnesota before heading up to
Alberta. Their name was originally Nielsen, but there
were so many other Nielsens in Minnesota, the mail
kept getting mixed up. So my grandfather, Nikolai Tobias
Mathias, changed it to Fluevog, which was inspired by
the name of the tiny hamlet back in Norway where the
family came from. There’s also a little lake up in Alberta,
near where my grandparents homesteaded, called
Fluevog Lake. I never met my father’s folks, though I
wish I had. They died back in the 1930s when my dad
was in his twenties; my dad always told me his mother,
Gina, died first, and then his father died of heartache.
My grandfather was tender-hearted, and I think I’m that
way
