Nestor, Son of Immigrants

Nestor was born in 1997 in Richmond, BC. He was the third son of French immigrant parents, both university professors.

Nestor in "Tintin and the Picaros"

His father was a professor of software engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), in Vancouver. His specialty was software architecture, and he was well known around the world in his domain.

His mother was a professor of French at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, East of Vancouver. She specialized in 18th-century novelists.

They had discovered British Columbia during the eighties and they really liked the climate, the people and the culture. First, they had work permits, then they became landed immigrants and finally citizens in 1996.

The couple had four children: three sons named Valentin, Archibald and Nestor, and one daughter named Bianca.

For French parents, these were rather unusual first names, especially Archibald and Nestor. The reason they had chosen these names was that they were both fans of the Belgian comic series "The Adventures of Tintin", they were both amateur tintinologists. In fact, they met in Paris in a club of tintinologists.

Valentin is nicknamed Tintin, Archibald is the first name of Captain Haddock and Nestor is the butler of Marlinspike Hall. And Bianca is the first name of the Castafiore, the "Milanese Nightingale".

Valentin was born in 1994, Archibald in 1995, Nestor in 1997 and Bianca in 1999.

The family lived in Richmond, a city where most of the residents identify as Chinese and that has an immigrant population of 60%.

The four children had a very happy childhood, with many friends of different origins, some were Canadian born, but others were children of immigrants from China, Jamaica, Nigeria, etc...

At some point, they asked their parents the reason why they had chosen these rather strange first names; when they learn the truth, they made a pact between themselves to never tell it to anybody, until they would all decide that they were comfortable to divulge the truth.

They went to high school in Richmond: McRoberts Secondary School for the boys and Steveston-London Secondary School for Bianca.

So that they would not study in a university where one of their parents was a professor, they all went to the University of Washington, in Seattle. Valentin in electrical engineering, Archibald in robotics, Nestor in software engineering and Bianca in journalism.

Nestor graduated in May 2018.