Sully Pearson holds up a pair of dirty, tattered pink Crocs. The tired shoes are missing a decorative sun, a four-leaf clover and the back ankle strap is broken. They look as if they’ve been walked around the globe and back – not quite, but almost.
Sully, 12, wore the Crocs during an adventure around the world with his dad Jason and his 8-year-old brother Max. The shoes had belonged to Sully’s mother, Jane.
When she was 10 years old, Jane travelled the world with her family. Jason and Jane had always dreamed about taking their two sons on a similar trip when the boys were the right age. Their plans changed when Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and died on Christmas Day of the following year.
After Jane’s death, Jason decided to make their dream family trip a reality. It took five years of planning and saving, but Jason managed to take his sons on the trip of a lifetime to honour the memory of Jane. They departed on Aug. 7, 2015 and returned home to Toronto in July of this year.
”I thought they (Sully and Max) would be a good age where they are now that they would be able to remember enough of it,” Jason told Your Morning’s Anne-Marie Mediwake, “Sully happened to be the same age that Jane was when she travelled the world as well.”
Jason, Sully and Max spent 12 months visiting 26 countries. They started in Boston and then headed to South America before travelling to Southeast Asia, visiting family in New Zealand and then stopping in India, Hong Kong, Greece, France and Iceland to name a few more places. The three of them documented their entire trip on their blog and with photos on Instagram.
Besides bringing Jane’s Crocs on the trip, the boys found another way to pay tribute to their mother. Before they left for the trip, Sully and Max had their fingernails and toenails polished and painted. Jane had always enjoyed getting manicures and pedicures and her sons wanted to continue the pastime throughout their adventure.
For Max, who was only a year old when his mother died, the trip was a way to connect with her by seeing some of the places she had been to in her lifetime, such as India. Max told CTV’s Your Morning that he thought about his late mother when they visited the Taj Mahal and rode the camels.
Sully’s standout destination from the journey was Burma and particularly the ancient city of Bagan.
“We got up before the sun rose actually, at like 4 o’clock every day because we just watched the hot air balloons,” he said. “They rise up every day over the 2,000 temples, each over a thousand years old.”
Jason’s favourite part of the trip was not a specific place but the opportunity to be a part of his sons’ journey every step of the way. Jason said that would have been Jane’s favourite part too.
“She would have just loved being there with us,” he said. “It was fun for me to be able to watch everything through their eyes. That was my favourite part and it would have been hers as well.”
