He has been around the world and back again — and now a former Winnipegger is promoting a book chronicling the adventure.

In 2009, Rik and Zara Leaf sold their North End home on Scotia Street to spend the next 13 months traveling around the world with their children, son Zion and daughter Riel.

"We invested our life savings in the adventure of a lifetime," says Leaf, who now lives with his family in Victoria, B.C.

A travelogue of the family trek, Four Homeless Millionaires, published by Friesen Press, was inspired by the people and places the family encountered during their journey.

Leaf says a trip around the world wasn’t the initial plan.

"First we extensively toured across Canada, learning about and seeing this nation."

Leaf says he and his wife Zara, both professional artists, had been talking about the idea of extended travel with their kids for a few years before selling the family homestead and doing it.

 "We didn’t want our kids to think the world was the size of an Xbox and wanted to wait until our kids were a bit older," he recalls.

The Leaf’s children, son Zion and daughter Riel, now 13 and 11 respectively, both remember their exotic family adventures fondly. Some of the highlights included swimming off the Australian coast, crashing a Hollywood film set in Hawaii and surviving a feral dog attack in Malaysia.

After travelling Canada in the fall of 2009, the family decided to visit friends in Hawaii before moving onto Malaysia.

"Then we made the decision to check out Australia and New Zealand and you need an exit visa when you arrive so we had to start thinking ahead," he says.

The family also toured Europe and Scandinavia during their adventures around the world, which lasted from July 2009 to August 2010.

Since then, Leaf has been focused on writing and editing Four Homeless Millionaires.
"I hope the stories grab people’s attention," he said.

In addition to learning and experiencing new and exotic cultures first-hand, Leaf says  it was important for his children to learn how to take advantage of the opportunity.

"It is important to teach them how they can make the world they’ve seen smaller with the connections made around it."

While the family toured the world, Leaf kept an extensive notebook and produced a series of videos from the various locations around the globe. Quick Response, or QR, codes in the book link to videos for readers.

"There are all kinds of visual components to the book and with the QR codes, there’s a little bit of innovation going on as well," he says.

For the 11 years in Winnipeg, Leaf worked as a tattoo artist and founded the Canadian performance collective Tribe of One.

He will be in Winnipeg next week from April 18 to 25 for a handful of dates throughout the city.

During his ‘Odyssey of Adventure Tour’ 2012 he will be sharing stories, songs, and spoken word poetry as well as reading excerpts from Four Homeless Millionaires.

Leaf will be appearing at 7 p.m. on April 19 at Gordie’s Coffee House located at 127 Cobourg Ave. in Elmwood, at the North End Artist Collective reunion concert at Sonya’s Flowers at 1459 Main St. on the evening of Sat., April 21 and at the Flatlanders Studio and Gallery, located at 782 Main Street, at 7 p.m. on Sun. April 22.

He will also be appearing at a handful of Winnipeg schools while in the city.
For more info visit www.rikleaf.com

Facebook.com/TheTimesWPG
Twitter: @TimesWPG

rob.brown@canstarnews.com