view . summer 2010
7
Opposite page: Steve Bull BA ’05 stands on top of Mount Kenya.
Steve Bull’s personal mantra is: work hard, play hard.
It could also be: been there (and there, and there), done that
(and that too).
Since he received his Honours Business Administration degree
from UWindsor in 2005, he has:
• backpacked Europe, covering 17 countries in 10 months;
• bungee-jumped out of a gondola in Switzerland, skied the
French Alps, swam in the Mediterranean, saw mountain gorillas in
Rwanda and rode safari on the Masai Mara in Kenya;
• played an extra in The DaVinci Code movie;
• retraced his great-grandfather’s
footsteps through the battlefields of
World War I in Europe, and lived and
trained as a soldier himself for two
weeks in the CBC docu-drama The
Great War; and
• covered a deadly riot between
police and the African wing of Al Qaeda
in front of the television station where
he worked at Nation Media Group in
Nairobi.
Oh, and he climbed Mount Kenya
and Mount Kilimanjaro too.
Steve Bull turned 29 June 2 and there’s a lot more hard working
and playing to do yet.
“I’m in that readjustment phase,” he says. “So now I’m looking
for the next adventure,” he said during a recent break in Windsor
where he was being interviewed for a position at CBC Windsor.
(Like most things in his event-filled life, he got the contract position
as a fill-in reporter and was hoping it would last the summer.)
It wasn’t always this busy and adventurous for Bull. In high
school in Toronto, he wasn’t a joiner.
At UWindsor, that all changed. He ran unsuccessfully
(surprisingly) for a position on the University of Windsor Students’
Alliance in his first year then joined the Sigma Chi fraternity and the
Commerce Society. His involvement “snowballed” from there, he says.
He discovered the rewards of philanthropy and his whirlwind
life of activity and adventure – whipped up by extensive travelling –
spun off from there.
Bull started volunteering for the Windsor Spitfires then got
paid for his work. He then went back home to do inside sales
work for the Toronto Argonauts the year after they won the Grey
Cup in 2004.
He left that job, got a four-year visa to work in the United
Kingdom but ended up working as a ski guide in Les Gets, France.
Between September 2005 and June 2006, he travelled the continent
and started thirsting for more adventure.
He took a sidetrip to Latvia and had front row seats to watch
Canada defeat the U.S. in the first round of the World Hockey
Championships in 2006.
A friend told him that North
Americans were wanted as student
extras in a feature film being shot in
England. Bull applied and got a 6 a.m.
casting call in East Croydon, England.
He had no idea what film was being shot
although on the train ride there he read
that the blockbuster novel
The DaVinci
Code
was being made into a movie.
On the set, he was given a grey
American University of Paris hoodie to
wear and ushered into a lecture room
with other university students when a “scraggly looking” director
walked in and talked to the extras.
“I said to the guy beside me, ‘He looks like a homeless Ron
Howard’,” Bull recalls.
Then the star of the show walked into the room. “Oh my God,
this is
The DaVinci Code
!” he told the guy next to him. “That’s Tom
Hanks, this is
The DaVinci Code
!”
Bull’s next role came after he returned to Canada that summer
and was among 150 people chosen from 6,500 online applicants for
the CBC film
The Great War
. They were looking for descendents of
World War I veterans and Bull, whose great-grandfather fought at
Vimy Ridge, found himself re-living his experiences, from field-
stripping a Lewis machine gun to fighting in the trenches.
Bull returned to UWindsor to work for the student recruitment
office and campus pub and wrote about his travels for
View
magazine, then went back to Europe.
This time, he worked for two weeks at the BBC World Service
program “World Have Your Say” in London, England. He returned
HE DISCOVERED THE REWARDS
OF PHILANTHROPY AND HIS
WHIRLWIND LIFE OF ACTIVITY
AND ADVENTURE – WHIPPED
UP BY EXTENSIVE TRAVELING –
SPUN OFF FROM THERE.
NEVER
MOMENT
BY PAUL RIGGI
a dull
