More Than Nine Lives

Ilan’s stories describe many of his brushes with death which he met with a fierce determination to survive and thrive. He begins with the story of his mother’s harrowing escape from his bipolar father, with Ilan in her arms. On reaching Israel from Canada, he spent his younger years in a seaside town near the Gaza strip, with a freedom familiar to latch key kids. In adolescence, Ilan was moved first to Iran, then Ethiopia and finally back to Israel. The moves challenged Ilan both scholastically and socially, but he found solace in books. His keen intellect and curiosity and a good deal of luck saved him through more near-death experiences.

On returning to Israel, Ilan began his army service during a time when sleep deprivation was one training tool to toughen recruits. His training in the infantry of the Golani unit, while harsh, was to be Ilan’s ticket to the reconnaissance group and officer status. But fate intervened and his attempts to achieve that dream were thwarted. Ilan survived extreme fatigue, a direct hit on his armoured personnel carrier, and serious illness. Ilan’s discharge after the Yom Kippur war was a relief.

Ilan and his friend Rafe took a post service trip to Canada and the US. His father and step mother lent the two young men a car and they spent the summer touring. They marvelled at Canada’s fresh water lakes, traversed the US having adventures and faced unusual challenges. While there, Ilan applied to, and was accepted, to several universities, choosing to remain in Toronto where his Canadian adulthood began.

Ilan never wrote about establishing himself as an IT strategy consultant, building his software companies as an entrepreneur, and semi-retiring as a business and life coach. Nor did he write about his fulfilling years with his wife, travelling the world, and their many and much-loved godchildren. His life is an inspiration to them and to the many recipients of the Ilan Levy Post-Graduate and Oriole Scholarships that he established for youth in care through the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada.

Ilan Levy died in 2016. He faced his terminal brain cancer diagnosis with the equanimity born of his experiences described in this book. Of his diagnosis he said, “I’m not that upset by what’s happening to me. I’ve had a wonderful life”.