"It’s a small and connected world". How easily those words fall from our mouths. It takes a day like Friday November 12th to bring that truth home.
On Friday I was in Kelowna speaking to the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association (TOTA) – a beautiful part of British Columbia where I started the Canadian portion of my tourism career in the mid 1970s. On the very same day, some 4 hours earlier, two young men had proudly carried the Olympic torch through their tiny community – Hopedale, in northern Labrador – several thousands of miles to the east and sitting on the very edge of Canada.
Hopedale is a community that had been home for me as a 17-year old in 1967 (yes, really!) when I spent a year as a young English woman, volunteering as teacher of Grades 3 and 4. Hopedale is where I experienced true, selfless hospitality for the first time.
So when I look at the official photo of Boas Mitsuk and Tyler Edmonds, I have to wonder whose parents raised these young men and whether they were in my class – some 43 years ago!
Hopedale Labrador was my first exposure to Canada – a country that I moved to seven years later when I met a Canadian in New Zealand (as you do!).
Here's a photo stream with just a few images of my time in Hopedale - while it is likely that most of the elders may have passed on, many of the "children" depicted here are now leaders in their community. With the help of people at the Gros Morne Institite for Sustainable Tourism, Destination Labrador, and Stepping Stones, they are delivering highly authentic experiences to new visitors. Sadly I had lost contact with my former friends and students in Hopedale - so November 12th marks the beginning of a journey back to a place that treated me as a daughter and that shaped me as a person.
On the same day (the 14th day of the Olympic Torch relay), the Olympic torch was carried to L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada, where a much earlier encounter between Vikings (now Norwegians) and the indigenous peoples likely took place. So it’s not surprising that my work has, more recently, enabled me to get to know and serve the lovely people of Norway through working with BIT Reiseliv and the Lilliehammer Kinnskapspark.
So in one day, three threads connected and re-freshed aspects of myself and my experience: Labrador, Norway and British Columbia.
Life is very rich indeed…..
