As the Crow Flies

The month of travelling has finally drawn to a close. Over the last five weeks I have travelled all over England for my research. We also had our trip to London, and I attended the conference in Plymouth. Of course there were also 12 trips to Sheffield for my job as a Lecturer.

I’ve done the math (no small accomplishment for those who know my mathematical prowess) and here are the totals:

I went to Sheffield 12 times. This adds up to 498 miles (stupid UK uses miles) or 802 kilometres.

The rest of the travel, the conference, the London trip and all my research interviews, adds up to 2468 miles or 3972 kilometres.

That makes for a grand total of 2966 miles or 4774 kilometres.

Just to put this in perspective, if you travelled in a straight line, as the crow flies, from Hamilton, Ontario to Los Angeles, you would need to keep going for 1300 more kilometres to reach this total. Or you could head in the other direction and choose to arrive just outside of Dublin Ireland. Alternatively, for those who would like to remain faithful to the True North Strong and Free, you could travel between Antigonish, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia, but you would still need to go 241 kilometres further.

All of this took place between September 23rd and October 26th. Its five weeks I’m not soon to forget.

Now as if this travel was not enough, we will be travelling another 5548 kilometres on Wednesday. We are making the trip from Manchester to Hamilton for a week to get things sorted in preparation for coming home. This brings us to the grand total of 10,322 kilometres travelled. That’s a quarter of the way around the world. Plus, this was the final component I needed to successfully include planes, trains and automobiles in my methods of transportation over this period of travel.

I feel like this has been quite the accomplishment. This was the big hurdle of time I knew I had to get through before we could prepare to move back to Canada. My interviews went well, the conference was great, London was a blast. If only there was some kind of Girl Guide badge or something that I could have to outwardly show my accomplishment. Maybe the lines on my face and the dark circles under my eyes are all I have to show for it!

Tired of London?

‘When a man is tired of London, he’s tired of Life, for there is in London all that Life can afford.’ Samuel Johnson

The good news is we are not tired of London, nor tired of Life. We spent 48 hours in London to say our goodbyes to a city that we have come to love. This trip was intended as a chance to see the last few must-see spots we had not yet visited and to go back to some of our favourite haunts.

Both Brent and I were able to cross a couple of must-see items off our list during this trip. For me, it was Kensington Palace. For someone who as a little girl was so obsessed with Princess Diana that I had commemorative china, photo books, paper dolls with all her dresses, her wedding ceremony recording on record, and even at one stage a ‘Princess Diana haircut’ it was great to see where she had lived. A special exhibit to mark the 10th anniversary of her death was on at the Palace so it was full Diana overload! I was in heaven!!


For Brent, the must-see location was the Churchill Museum and War Rooms. This place was fantastic. We were able to walk through the bunker rooms used by Churchill during WWII. We saw the War Cabinet meeting room, the map room, and many private accommodations for the important big-wigs. The Churchill Museum was excellent as well. We would recommend this stop to anyone going to London. After two and a half hours I had to drag Brent out of there kicking and screaming!

Speaking of Brent kicking and screaming, I also had to drag him unwillingly out of the British Museum on our last day so we could catch our train home. And sadly for Brent, I usually hit the point of cultural and historical overload well before he does. But now, thanks to his two visits to the museum, I think he has had his fill for a little while and his happy museum memories will last him until we are able to come back in a few years.

We were happy to spend a few hours walking in both Hyde Park and St James park during our visit. Hard to believe we have to go to the big city of London to see trees, rivers and wildlife. We also made it a priority to eat dinner at our favourite spot, Bodean’s BBQ, and eat breakfast at our favourite café. It is nice that we have been to London enough times to feel like we have favourite spots, almost like locals.

Of course there are many, many, many sights, sounds, activities, and experiences in London that we have not seen. London is like Nintendo for adults: it is stimulating, challenging, and never the same way twice. We have really just scratched the surface. It is the kind of city where you could live there your whole life and still only scratch the surface. We are so thankful that we have been able to explore London and experience it at a leisurely pace. We’ve been there four times now. It is nice to be able to have small, frequent visits rather than a mega 10 day holiday, which includes a few days in a jet-lagged zombie state. I guess we are spoiled. It is nice memories of our travels and excursions here in the UK that will bring a smile to our face and warm our hearts on cold Ontario winter nights.

The Wedding Day!

It was a beautiful wedding. The words, the music, and the people had all been selected by Stephen and Pleuntje as a reflection of them and their new life together. The service was in the Iona Abbey, a 13th Century Abbey - the site of where St. Columba brought Christianity to Scotland and where generations of Scottish Kings are buried. Not too shabby.

The reception started with tea and scones in the Village Hall with Irish folk musicians filling the air with lovely sounds. A delicious meal was enjoyed by all and a few speeches were shared. In an attempt to work off our dinner, everyone helped clear the tables and chairs to make room for the dance floor. We were then led through a traditional Scottish Ceilidh. The dances were interspersed with skits, songs, and movies. The creativity and thought that went into what people shared was really incredible. After we were all tuckered out from the Ceilidh a disco began and those who still had the legs and the stamina for more dancing carried on until they collapsed.

The wedding and the reception blended the Canadian, Dutch and African traditions seamlessly. All those in attendance seemed to be caught up in the magic of the day. It was really a wedding like no other. It really felt like a community was formed by all those in attendance. Instead of spending a few hours with the other wedding guests as you would at any other wedding, we spent a weekend with the other guests. We had a chance to make new friends, to rekindle old friendships and to enjoy the warmth of family. I had joked prior to the wedding that I always knew my brother would find a way to make gortex the official clothing of his wedding and the Scottish climate was perfect for that. Yet, I had never really considered that he would also create a wedding based on the principles and ideas of community building that we learned all those years ago in YLTP and camp and which he has never stopped using. Just further evidence that this was the perfect wedding for Stephen, which is as exactly as it should be – gortex, community and sheep poop. The holy trinity of Stephen!

Is this Dundas?

One of the classic statements leading up to the wedding came from our friend David Linn, who was quoted as saying, ‘why do we have to go all the way to Scotland to hang out with people from Dundas?’ For us, hanging out with people from Canada was definitely one of the highlights of the wedding.

It was really fun when we started bumping into people from Dundas in strange locations in Scotland. We bumped into Matthew and Leslie in the Glasgow Queen Street train station. It was so unexpected to see them, at first we didn’t recognize who they were. We then rode the train with them to Oban. We had a nice time wandering around Oban with Matthew, Leslie, Margaret and Greg. Although it was funny, if you put your back to the sea, and just looked up and down the main street of Oban you could easily mistake it for Dundas. Had we really travelled all this way to end up in the same spot?

The next morning we woke up and made our way to the ferry terminal. However, while wheeling our suitcases along the streets of Oban we were almost run over by David and Susan Linn. What a small world! What are you doing here? We waved and exchanged brief pleasantries and continued on our way. Shortly after arriving at the ferry terminal we ran into Jim and Susan. And, who’s that over there? It’s Bregje, Pleun’s friend who we met in Amsterdam! The excitement about the wedding was reaching a new level. With each new person we ran into we kept getting more and more excited!

We had a fun ferry ride across from Oban to Craignure on the isle of Mull. And then a very picturesque bus ride from Craignure to Fionnphort. Our gaggle of Jim, Susan, Bregje, Margaret, Greg, Brent and I were just about to embark on the ferry across to Iona when we spotted the bride and groom!

So this was it, the wedding weekend had begun. People were arriving, the festive mode was beginning. Over the next day or so the ferry kept bringing over new groups of wedding guests. We attended a service at the Abbey, we strolled around the island and got acquainted with the sheep. Brent and I also spent Saturday with our gang of fellow decorators at the village hall and helped turn it into a magical spot.

Wedding stories

We've been a little tardy in posting about the great Iona Wedding. Since some people are still asking for more details about the wedding, we thought it time to get on with it. Also, as usual we write the blog just as much for us and for our own memory as we do for others, so it would seem odd not to blog about such an eventful time. So without further delay here are a couple of posts about the wedding in Iona.

A little piece of Ontario in the heart of Devon

We were in Ontario recently. Sorry that we weren't able to stop by and visit anyone, but we were only there for ten minutes. How is this possible, you may ask? Here's the story....

We were recently in Plymouth for me to attend and present a poster at a conference. Being the naive Canadian that I am, I also scheduled a research interview in Southampton for the day the conference ended. Those of you not familiar with the geography of England, may like me, think that Plymouth and Southampton are both somewhere down along the south coast, so how far apart can they really be? Well, they are actually about 3.5hrs apart, mostly on account of the winding, one lane roads, not simply the mileage. Not exactly close by. Not a horrific drive though, unless you were also naive (read stupid) enough to plan to return to Leeds the same day. We left the conference at 11am and finally returned to Leeds at 9:30pm. That's a long day in the car. We did stop in Southampton for me to do my interview and stretch our legs, but no matter how you do the math, it was a long trip.

Moaning and whinging (classic Brit words!) about the drive aside, there were some fun moments on this trip. Our drive took us through Glastonbury and Oxford. We can cross those off the list of places we need to visit now. There were some nice sea views from the road along the south coast which also made the drive quite enjoyable. Also, we had some time to wander around Plymouth. We saw the Mayflower memorial which, in all honesty, may be the only thing worth seeing in Plymouth! I suggested to Brent that perhaps they made Plymouth dodgy on purpose so that when the Pilgrims were leaving on the Mayflower, if they were having any second thoughts about wanting to leave their home land they would look back, see how bad it looked and decide that their decision to move to the new world was the right one. Brent tells me that Plymouth was very badly bombed in WWII and that most of what is visible today has been built since the war, so likely it wasn't as dodgy when the Pilgrims where departing. I think he was being polite.

The highlight of the trip was our stop in Ontario. Somewhere along the A30 just outside of Exeter we saw a sign with a Canadian flag on it. I thought this was a worthwhile detour along the way so we wandered a little off the road to follow the sign. The signs led us deep into the middle of nowhere, on a tiny road with 20 foot high hedgerows. But, at the end of the road we spotted the Canadian flag flying over Wolford Chapel (we forgot our camera on this trip, so check out the picture at this website: http://www.heritagefdn.on.ca/scripts/index_.asp?action=31&U_ID=0&N_ID=1&P_ID=8802). The chapel was built in 1802 by General John Graves Simcoe - first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. The Simcoe family is buried on the grounds and a the tiny Chapel building holds antiques from the Simcoe family. In 1966 the deed for the land was given to the Premier of Ontario, John Robarts, so it is actually a piece of Ontario in the middle of Devon. It was definitely worth the detour. Perhaps our stop at Wolford Chapel was a bit of foreshadowing?

It is interesting to think that our trip to Plymouth will likely be our last before we return home at Christmas. Our last views of England are remarkably similar to the Pilgrims leaving on the Mayflower. I think we will fly home though rather than take a boat across the Atlantic, but this is just a matter of taste. Hopefully this will prevent us from contracting scurvy, TB and pneumonia like the Pilgrims. New World here we come!

34

I am 34 today. On first impression, being 34 is worse than being 22 but better than being 40. At least I assume it is ... I've been 22 but can't say that I have been 40. I'm not even half-way to 40 (if you count from 30). See how great math is. It is alarming that, after Beth's birthday extravaganza and some M&M cookies that appeared out of nowhere, my waistline also appears to be 34.

If this keeps up, I'm not really going to enjoy 60 ... if I make it that far.

Postscript: I've adopted a strict constructionist approach to my earlier no beer vow (it is, like the Constitution, a living document). Accordingly, to give effect to the pith and substance of the vow, the vow is construed to mean no English or European beer allowed. However, North American beer, specifically including American beer, is allowed.

Hello Anchor Steam. Where have you been all my life?

The Canada Gang - S&P

Looking back, it was a pretty incredible stretch of time from the end of August to the middle of September. It seems like a lot happened but it was really only three weeks. The fun started with Stephen and Pleun’s arrival in Leeds. Their flight was not punctual in the slightest so, instead of arriving at 6pm, they didn’t arrive until 10pm. By the time they arrived, Beth was so excited she made us wait outside the building for their taxi to arrive.

Apart from how great it was to see S&P and how much we missed them, I was curious to see what it would be like to spend time together after so long. Stephen saw us off at the airport on September 3, 2006 and we hadn’t seen him since. Although there were regular phone calls, the phone can’t replace hanging out with family. As for Pleun, we met her in February 2006 and got to spend a good amount of time with her on her first trip to Canada. A few weeks after we arrived in England, Stephen announced their engagement and Pleun moved to Canada in December.

The net result of all this moving about is that Beth and I were meeting our new sister-in-law (if you count the visit in February as 1 visit) for the second time 5 days before the wedding. The rest of the Canada Gang has been able to spend plenty of time with the new couple and S&P were old news by the time the wedding rolled around. But for us, in our little, far-removed world, S&P-the-couple remained new.

On our trip to Amsterdam, when we met two of Pleun’s friends, we learned that we weren’t the only ones who had been missing out on seeing S&P start their new life together on the same continent. Stephen had visited a few times, but then Pleun moved to Canada and their great friend was suddenly very far away. But, being the extremely wise souls that the four of us are, we concluded that when you find The One, bold, ocean-spanning actions are necessary. If only we could figure out how they could be in Hamilton and Amsterdam at the same time.

From the first time I met Stephen and Beth at Canterbury Hills, it was easy to see that they were close. Our busy professional lives and our extended absence from Canada has been a challenge for all of our friendships. Trying to stay in touch across the ocean takes some work and it is easy to feel that we are missing out on big moments in the lives of those close to us. I am happy to report that, as with all of our visitors this summer, everything was the same as it ever was. Stephen was the same guy who would come over to our house to do his laundry and watch the Blue Jay game. Unfortunately, he now has his own washer/dryer and no longer needs to come over to our house in Hamilton for laundry. Hopefully, he will anyway. Beth was the same little sister that tries to please her big brother. As for Pleun, she is our new sister and we couldn’t possibly be happier about that.

So today, we wish them a happy one month-iversary.